Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides [98]
“Yeah, sure,” my father said when he got the letter. “St. Christopher to the rescue.” He slipped the letter into his Greek-English dictionary and carried both to the incinerator behind the Quonset hut. (That was the end of my father’s Greek lessons. Though he continued to speak Greek to his parents, Milton never succeeded in writing it, and as he got older he began to forget what even the simplest words meant. In the end he couldn’t say much more than Chapter Eleven or me, which was almost nothing at all.)
Milton’s sarcasm was understandable under the circumstances. Only the day before, his C.O. had given Milton a new assignment in the upcoming invasion. The news, like all bad news, hadn’t registered at first. It was as if the C.O.’s words, the actual syllables he addressed to Milton, had been scrambled by the boys over in Intelligence. Milton had saluted and walked out. He’d continued down to the beach still unaffected, the bad news acting with a kind of discretion, allowing him these last few peaceful, deluded moments. He watched the sunset. He admired a neutral Switzerland of seals out on the rocks. He took off his boots to feel the sand against his feet, as if the world were a place he was only beginning to live in instead of somewhere he would soon be leaving. But then the fissures appeared. A split in the top of his skull, through which the bad news hissingly poured; a groove in his knees, which buckled, and suddenly Milton couldn’t keep it out any longer.
Thirty-eight seconds. That was the news.
“Stephanides, we’re switching you over to signalman. Report to Building B at 0700 hours tomorrow morning. Dismissed.” That was what the C.O. had said. Only that. And it was no surprise, really. As the invasion neared, there had been a sudden rash of injuries to signalmen. Signalmen had been chopping off fingers doing KP duty. Signalmen had been shooting themselves in the feet while cleaning their guns. In the nighttime drills, signalmen lustily flung themselves onto the rocks.
Thirty-eight seconds was the life expectancy of a signalman. When the landing took place, Seaman Stephanides would stand in the front of the boat. He would operate a sort of lantern, flashing signals in Morse code. This lantern would be bright, clearly visible to enemy positions onshore. That was what he was thinking about as he stood on the beach with his boots off. He was thinking that he would never take over his father’s bar. He was thinking that he would never see Tessie again. Instead, a few weeks from now, he would stand up in a boat, exposed to hostile fire, holding a bright light. For a little while, at least.
Not included in the News of the World: a shot of my father’s AKA transport ship leaving Coronado naval base, heading west. At the Esquire Theater, holding her feet off the sticky floor, Tessie Zizmo watches as white arrows arc across the Pacific. The U.S. Naval Twelfth Fleet forges ahead on its invasion of the Pacific, the announcer says. Final destination: Japan. One arrow starts out in Australia, moving through New Guinea toward the Philippines. Another arrow shoots out from the Solomon Islands and another from the Marianas. Tessie has never heard of these places before. But now the arrows continue on, advancing toward other islands she’s never heard of—Iwo Jima, Okinawa—each flagged with the Rising Sun. The arrows converge from three directions on Japan, which is just a bunch of islands itself. As Tessie is getting the geography straight, the newsreel breaks into filmed footage. A hand cranks an alarm bell; sailors jump out of bunks, double-time it up stairways, assuming battle stations. And then there he is—Milton—running across the deck of the ship! Tessie recognizes his skinny chest, his raccoon eyes. She forgets about the floor and puts her feet down. In the newsreel the destroyer’s guns fire without sound and, half a world