From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [363]
“Its been pretty damned nice for me too. Do you think I haven’t liked it? But if we have to be separated for a while, for the sake of our future,” she said firmly, “then well just have to, thats all.”
“You’ve got it all figured out. Okay, say we only have to be separated for four months. For the sake of the future. Just four months. And thats conservative. Have you forgotten that by a year from now we will be in the war?”
“Well, theres nothing I can do about that,” Karen said, thereby calmly cancelling it. “And anyway, I don’t think we will.”
“What the hell do you think all this new stuff is coming out for? Just for the hell of spending the Taxpayers’ money? I tell you we’ll be in this war a little over a year,” he said, believing it positively now in his bitterness, the very same thing that two weeks he had satisfactorily logically refuted absolutely.
“I dont think so,” Karen said.
“Okay, mark it on your calendar. On July the 23rd 1941 Milt Warden told you we’d be in the war in a little over a year. We’re hable to be in it in less than a year,” he, said, enjoying making it even worse. “Then what? Its all off then and no holts barred. They’ll probly ship the wives back to the States. And in a war everybody dies, unless they’re alive when it’s over. And out of that last year we can have together, four months of it is spend apart. And for the sake of the future.”
“Very well,” Karen said calmly. “Suppose we are in it in less than a year. Does that mean everything thats been between us is just to be marked off the slate? Does that mean we should say to hell with the future and to hell with the plans? And what’ll we do then, after the war?”
“I didnt say that!” Warden said, beginning to be angry at her lack of understanding. “What I said is its stupid to live all your life in the future when there may not be any. I say plan for the future, sure. But dont let the plans for the future that there may not be any of, displace what little life you can live now.”
“And I say,” Karen said, beginning to be angry at his lack of understanding, “that we shouldnt take chances now and do things that in themselves arent even happy and may cost us any chance at a future. I say if anything has to suffer, let the present suffer for the sake of the future.”
“And I say if we cant have the goddam afternoons,” Warden said, coming to the point they both knew he was approaching, “like we’ve planned, then we can at least have some nights, even if it is a little more dangerous. We may never get a chance at them, after a year from now.”
“You know how I feel about that,” Karen said.
“Sure I know how you feel about it. Now you know how I feel about it.”
“Do you think I give a damn, you fool?” Karen said, openly angry finally. “And I’ve got a whole hell of a lot to lose if we get caught, haven’t I? I’m only thinking of you, you damned fool. Where will you be? if we should happen to get caught in a scandal? You, an Enlisted Man involved in an affair with an Officer’s wife,—and not only just any Officer’s wife, but your own Company Commander’s wife!”
“And I say piss on that,” Warden snarled. “They cant shoot me any farther off my cross than the war will shoot me off it. When you got a war staring you in the face, you believe in living today. If you’d ever been in China, like I have, you’d believe it too.”
“Perhaps,” Karen said icily. “But let me ask you something: Is that the philosophical tenet that kept you from putting in your application for Officer’s extension course as you told me you had?”
He had been going good, and getting well warmed up, and even almost coming on to proving it. But that stopped him.
There was a considerable silence.
Karen fixed on him now the same steely-eyed look he had enjoyed so much seeing her get for Holmes, but that he did not enjoy now, as she waited for his answer.
“Yes,” he said in a strangled voice. “Thats why.”
“Then I fail to see,” she said crisply, “how I can be expected to take risks and jeopardize