Libra - Don Delillo [40]
“Deep into China,” Oswald said.
“How do you know?”
“It’s logic and common sense. Plus the Soviet Union.”
“It’s called a utility plane,” Heindel said.
“It’s a spy plane. It’s called a U-2.”
“How do you know?”
“Common knowledge, pretty much,” Oswald said. “You hear things, and the things you don’t hear you can find out easy enough. You know those buildings way past the hangars at the east end. That’s called the Joint Technical Advisory Group. Which is a phony name where the spies hide out.”
“You’re so fucking sure,” Reitmeyer said.
“What do you think’s there, dormitories for the wrestling team?”
“Well just shut up about it.”
“I go to the briefings. I know what to shut up about.”
“You see the armed guards, don’t you?”
“That’s my point, Reitmeyer. Nobody gets near this base without clearance.”
“Well just try shutting up.”
“Imagine flying over China,” Heindel said. “The vastness of China.”
“China’s not so vast,” Oswald said. “What about the Soviet Union, for vast?”
“How vast is it?”
“Someday I want to travel the length and breadth of it by train. Talk to everybody I meet. It’s the idea of Russia that impresses me more than the physical size.”
“What idea?” Reitmeyer said.
“Read a book.”
“You always say read a book, like that’s the answer to everything.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Maybe it isn’t.”
“Then how come I’m smarter than you are. ”
“You’re also dumber,” Reitmeyer said.
“He’s not as dumb as an officer,” Heindel said.
“Nobody’s that dumb,” Oswald said.
They called him Ozzie the Rabbit for his pursed lips and dimples and for his swiftness afoot, as they saw it, when there was a scuffle in the barracks or one of the bars off-base. He was five feet nine, blue-eyed, weighed a hundred and thirty-five, would soon be eighteen years old, had conduct and proficiency ratings that climbed for a while, then fell, then climbed and fell again, and his scores on the rifle range were inconsistent.
Heindel was known as Hidell, for no special reason.
He went to the movies and the library. Nobody knew the tough time he had reading simple English sentences. He could not always get a fixed picture of the word in front of him. Writing was even tougher. When he was tired it was all he could do to spell five straight words right, to spell a single small word without mixing up the letters.
It was a secret he’d never tell.
He had a liberty card, a gaudy Hawaiian shirt that made him feel like an intruder in his own skin, and a window seat on the train to Tokyo.
It was Reitmeyer who’d arranged the date, explaining to Lee that all he had to do was show up at the right time and place and flash his heartwarming American smile. A thousand forbidden pleasures would be his.
Welcome to JP—land of sliding doors and slant-eyed whores.
He walked invisibly through layers of chaos, twilight Tokyo. He walked for an hour, watching neon lights pinch through the traffic haze, with English words jumping out at him, TERRIFIC TERRIFIC, under the streetcar cables, past the noodle shops and bars. He saw Japanese girls walking hand in hand with U.S. servicemen, six doggie bakers and cooks by the look of them, all wearing jackets embroidered with dragons. It was 1957 but to Lee these men had the style of swaggering warriors, combat vets taking whatever drifted into meathook reach.
He walked through mazes of narrow streets mobbed with shoppers. He was remarkably calm. There was something about being off-base, away from his countrymen, out of America, that took the edge off his wariness, eased his rankled skin.
He checked the piece of paper with her name on it.
Lamps were lit along the alleyways. He saw a legless man with an accordion, his torso set on weird metal supports, like a Singer sewing machine—an ideogram sign flapping on his chest.
He found Mitsuko all right, a baby-face girl, sort of formless, wearing a skirt and white blouse and a handkerchief on her head, waiting by a sign that read SOLDIERS ACCESS, the rendezvous