The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [165]
Hearn fingered his collar. "I'd say your deepest urge is omnipotence, that's all."
"And yours too, whether you'll admit it or not."
Hearn's sharp voice softened a little with irony. "What moral precepts am I supposed to draw from all this?"
Cummings's tension altered. There had been a deep satisfaction in expounding this, a pleasure apart from all the other concerns of this discussion with Hearn. "I've been trying to impress you, Robert, that the only morality of the future is a power morality, and a man who cannot find his adjustment to it is doomed. There's one thing about power. It can flow only from the top down. When there are little surges of resistance at the middle levels, it merely calls for more power to be directed downward, to burn it out."
Hearn was looking at his hands. "We're not in the future yet."
"You can consider the Army, Robert, as a preview of the future."
Hearn looked at his watch. "It's time to go to chow." Outside the tent the earth was almost white in the glare of the overhead sun.
"You'll go to chow when I release you."
"Yes, sir." Hearn scraped his foot slowly against the floor, stared at him quietly, a little doubtfully.
"You threw that cigarette on my floor today, didn't you?"
Hearn smiled. "I figured that was going to be the point of all this talk."
"It was simple enough for you, wasn't it? You resented some of my actions, and you indulged a childish tantrum. But it's the kind of thing I don't care to permit." The General held his half-smoked cigarette in his hand, and waved it slightly as he spoke. "If I were to throw this down on the floor, would you pick it up?"
"I think I'd tell you to go to hell."
"I wonder. I've indulged you too long. You really can't believe I'm serious, can you? Supposed you understood that if you didn't pick it up, I would court-martial you, and you might have five years in a prison stockade."
"I wonder if you have the power for that?"
"I do. It would cause me a lot of difficulty, your court-martial would be reviewed, and after the war there might be a bit of a stink, it might even hurt me personally, but I would be upheld. I would have to be upheld. Even if you won eventually, you would be in prison for a year or two at least while it was all being decided."
"Don't you think that's a bit steep?"
"It's tremendously steep, it has to be. There was the old myth of divine intervention. You blasphemed, and a lightning bolt struck you. That was a little steep too. If punishment is at all proportionate to the offense, then power becomes watered. The only way you generate the proper attitude of awe and obedience is through immense and disproportionate power. With this in mind, how do you think you would react?"
Hearn was kneading his thighs again. "I resent this. It's an unfair proposition. You're settling a difference between us by. . ."
"You remember when I gave that lecture about the man with the gun?"
"Yes."
"It's not an accident that I have this power. Nor is it that you're in a situation like this. If you'd been more aware, you wouldn't have thrown down that cigarette. Indeed, you wouldn't have if I were a blustering profane General of the conventional variety. You don't quite believe I'm serious, that's all."
"Perhaps I don't."
Cummings tossed his cigarette at Hearn's feet. "All right, Robert, suppose you pick it up," he said quietly.
There was a long pause. Under his breastbone, Cummings could feel his heart grinding painfully. "I hope, Robert, that you pick it up. For your sake." Once more he stared into Hearn's eye.
And slowly Hearn was realizing that he meant it. It was apparent in his expression. A series of emotions, subtle and conflicting, flowed behind the surface of his face. "If you want to play games," he said. For the first time Cummings could remember, his voice was unsteady. After a moment or two, Hearn bent down, picked up the cigarette, and dropped it in an ashtray. Cummings forced himself to face the hatred in Hearn's eyes. He was feeling an immense relief.
"If you want to, you can go to chow now."
"General, I'd like a transfer