The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [273]
But he knew that he could never give up his sergeancy. I'm one man in ten, he told himself, they picked me 'cause I stood out. It was his bulwark against everything, his doubts of himself, the infidelities of his wife. He couldn't let go of that. And yet, he had added a further torment. He was bothered often by a secret guilt. If he wasn't good enough, he should be busted, and he was trying to conceal it. I gotta get Wilson back, he swore to himself. Something of the compassion he had felt for Wilson returned to him. There he is and he can't do a damn thing, he depends on me and I'm supposed to be able to do the job. The whole thing was very clear. It left him frightened, and he massaged Wilson's forehead gently, looking off into the darkness.
Goldstein and Stanley were talking, and Brown turned to them. "Keep it down. We don't want to get him stirred up again."
"Yeah," Stanley agreed softly, without rancor at the reprimand. He and Goldstein had been talking about their children, eagerly, companionably, welded by the darkness.
"You know," Stanley went on, "we're really missing the best part of them. Here they are growing up, getting to understand things, and we're not even there."
"It's hard," Goldstein agreed. "When I left, Davy could hardly talk, and now my wife tells me he carries on a conversation on the telephone just like an adult. It's a little difficult to believe it."
Stanley clucked his tongue. "Sure. I'm telling you, we're missing the best part of them. When they get older, it'll probably never be the same. I remember when I started growing up, there wasn't a thing my old man could tell me. What a damn fool I was." He said this modestly, almost sincerely. Stanley had discovered that people liked him when he made confessions like that.
"We're all like that," Goldstein agreed. "I should think it's a process of growing up. But when you get older you see things more clearly."
Stanley was silent for a minute. "You know I don't care what they say, you can't beat it, being married." His body was stiff, and he turned over carefully in his blanket. "Marriage can't be beat."
Goldstein nodded in the dark. "It's very different from the way you think it's going to be, but personally I'd be a lost soul without Natalie. It steadies you down, makes you realize your responsibilities."
"Yeah." Stanley pawed the ground for a moment with his hand. "Being overseas is no way to have a marriage, though."
"Oh, no, of course not."
This was not quite the answer Stanley had wanted. He deliberated a moment, seeking a way to phrase it. "Do you ever get. . . well, you know, jealous?" He spoke very softly so that Brown could not hear them.
"Jealous? No, I can't say I ever do," Goldstein said with finality. He had an inkling of what was bothering Stanley, and automatically he tried to soothe him. "Listen," he said, "I've never had the pleasure of meeting your wife, but you don't have to worry about her. These fellows that are always talking about women that way, they don't know any better. They've fooled around so much. . ." Goldstein had a perception. "Listen, if you ever notice, it's always the ones who go around with a lot of, well, loose women who get so jealous. It's because they don't trust themselves."
"I guess so." But this didn't satisfy Stanley. "I don't know, I guess it's just being stuck out here in the Pacific with nothing to do."
"Certainly. Listen, you've got nothing to worry about. Your wife loves you, doesn't she? Well, that's all you got to think about. A decent woman who loves a man doesn't do anything she shouldn't do."
"After all. she's got a kid," Stanley agreed. "A mother wouldn't fool around." His wife seemed very abstract to him at the moment. He thought of her as "she,"