From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [256]
“You trapped me,” he said.
“You trapped yourself,” she said.
“Well, I love you now too,” she said. “And why? Because you fill a definite need in the pattern that my life is now. I like to be able to come home to you, after there. But that doesnt mean I’ll still love you a year from now, when the pattern of my life changes. How could anybody promise that and keep it?”
“You could, if you wanted to.”
“Of course. But suppose that after the need was gone we neither one of us wanted to?”
He did not say anything.
“You see? Of course, I could always kid myself. Just like you could kid yourself—when you told yourself you didnt really care if your wife was a whore; or when you told yourself you didn’t really doubt your wife; or when you told yourself you were not really afraid to let your wife out of your sight; or when you told yourself you wouldnt really be ashamed if other people found out your wife was a whore; or when——”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, okay.” It sounded as if she were going to go on into infinity with an unlimited number of Or when you told yourself you didnt reallys, and he found he was wanting to shake his head like a fish that has got a hook it cannot comprehend stuck through its jaw, simply because it bit at an ordinary fly like any other fly.
She stopped and there was a large silence.
“But that aint the real reason,” he said, feeling he had to say something. “Whats the real reason you wont marry me?”
“Maybe I just dont want to be the wife of a noncommissioned officer in the US Army.”
“All right. But I could become an officer, if I wanted, under the new advancement program that came in with the draft. If I worked for that.”
“Maybe I dont want to be the wife of a commissioned officer of the US Army either.”
“All right, all right,” he said. “Thats the top that I could ever do for you.”
“You want to know the real reason?” Alma said. “I’ll tell you the real reason,” she smiled, “why I cant marry you. Income has nothing to do with it. I cant marry you simply because you’re not respectable enough.
“Now lets go have that drink,” she said.
“Okay,” he said. “A drink would be fine.”
He was convinced. He would not bring it up any more. They made a kind of celebration of his convincement. They got very drunk and cried in each other’s arms because they could not get married. When Georgette came home from work she found them that way and when she wanted to know why they told her and Georgette got drunk too and they all cried together.
“She has to marry a man,” Georgette, who knew Alma’s plans, explained to Prew, “who is above suspicion and has so much position and prestige that it would be impossible for his wife to have ever been a whore. Its a shame, isnt it? You can see why she cant marry a soldier, even a general. Isnt it a shame?” Georgette started to cry again and mixed herself another drink.
It was a very fine celebration and it lasted almost all night. He told them all about Harlan Kentucky. Alma told them all about her little town in Oregon. Georgette, who was born and raised in Springfield Illinois, told them all about the State House and the Governor’s Mansion and Lincoln’s Mausoleum that some people still suspected had been mysteriously robbed of its glorious remains.
It was also a very apt celebration because he did not see either of them again for quite some time, although none of the three of them suspected that at the time.
When he got back to the Company, still hung over, in time for Reveille, he found field orders had been posted on the bulletin board. They were going into the field on one of the new sabotage problems for two weeks. They were going to Hickam Field to guard the plane revetments. There had been rumors in the Regiment that a sabotage problem was coming up but nobody had known just when it would come. He did not mind two weeks so much. He liked living in the field better than in garrison. Two weeks in the field would have been fine, if it was not that he could