The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [248]
In the morning none of it seems so awful, and by the end of a week he has nearly forgotten it. But on his side it marks the end or almost the end of one expectation from marriage, and for Natalie it means she must pretend excitement in order to avoid hurting him. Their marriage settles again like a foundation seeking bedrock. For them, that species of failure is not acute, not really dangerous. They ensconce themselves in their child, in adding and replacing furniture, in discussing insurance and finally buying some. There are the problems of his work, his slow advances, the personalities of the men in the shop. He takes to bowling with a few of them, and Natalie joins the sisterhood at the local temple, induces them finally to give courses in the dance. The rabbi is a young man, quite liked because he is modern. On Wednesday nights they have a baby sitter, and listen to his lectures on bestsellers in the social room.
They expand, put on weight, and give money to charitable organizations to help refugees. They are sincere and friendly and happy, and nearly everyone likes them. As their son grows older, begins to talk, there are any number of pleasures they draw from him. They are content and the habits of marriage lap about them like a warm bath. They never feel great joy but they are rarely depressed, and nothing immediate is ever excessive or cruel.
The war comes and Joey doubles his salary with overtime and promotion. He is up before the draft board twice and is deferred each time, but in 1943 when they start drafting the fathers he does not try for an exemption because he is a war worker. There is a sense of guilt in all the familiar landscape of his home, there is the discomfort of walking the street in civilian clothes. More, he has convictions, reads PM from time to time, although he will say that it upsets him too much. He reasons it all out with Natalie, is drafted against the protests of his boss.
In the draft-board office on the early morning when he reports for induction he talks to a father like himself, a portly fellow with a mustache.
Oh, no, I told my wife to stay at home, Joey says, I figured it would be too upsetting for her.
I had an awful time, the other fellow says, settling everything, it was a crime what I had to take for my store.
In a few minutes they discover they know a few people in common. Oh, yes, the new friend says, Manny Silver, nice fellow, we got along fine up at Grossinger's two years ago, but he travels in a crowd a little too fast for me. Nice wife, but she'd better watch her weight, I remember when they were married they were inseparable for a while, but of course you got to get out, meet people, it's bad for married people to stay alone together all the time.
Farewell to all this.
It has been lonely at times, empty, but still it has been a harbor. There are all the friends, all the people you understand immediately, and in the Army, in the bare alien worlds of the barracks and the bivouacs, Goldstein fumbles for a new answer, a new security. And in his misery the old habits wither away like bark in winter, and he is left without a garment. His mind searches, plumbs all the cells of his brain, and comes out with the concretion, the heritage, smudged for so long in the neutral lapping cradle of Brooklyn streets.
(We are a harried people, beset by oppressors. . . we must always journey from disaster to disaster. . . not wanted and in a strange land.)
We are born to suffer. And although he strains with the sinews of his heart and mind back toward his home, his cove, his legs are beginning to steady, his thighs to set.
Goldstein is turning his face to the wind.
3
The platoon forded the stream and assembled on the other side. Behind them, the jungle gave virtually no hint of the trail they had cut. In the last twenty yards, glimpsing the hills, the men had hacked away very little shrubbery, had crawled through the periphery of the brush on their stomachs. Now if a Japanese patrol should come by it was unlikely the new trail would be discovered.