The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [285]
The muzzle blast deafened him momentarily, left him shaken and numb by its unaccustomed force. He felt rather than saw the great twenty-foot flambeau of flame that discharged from the muzzle, heard dumbly the long billowing murmurs of the discharge through the dark closeted aisles of the jungle. The balloon tires, the trails were still vibrating gently from the recoil.
It had all taken a fraction of a second. Even the backward blast of wind had passed him, roiled his hair and closed his eyes before he was conscious of it. The General was recovering his sense-impressions by degrees, clutching at them in the wake of the explosion like a man chasing his hat in a gale. He took a breath, smiled, heard himself say in an even voice, "I wouldn't like to be at the other end." He noticed the cannoneers, the Captain, after he spoke. He had said it because a part of his mind always considered the objective situation; consciously he had been unaware of the men about him as he talked. He strode away slowly, drawing the Captain with him.
"Artillery is a bit more impressive at night," he murmured. His poise was addled slightly. He would not have said this to a stranger if he were still not absorbed in the impact of firing the howitzer.
"I know what you mean, sir. I always get a kick out of firing the battery at night."
Then it was all right. Cummings realized he had almost made a slip. "Your battery seems in good order, Captain."
"Thank you, sir."
But he was not listening. The General was paying attention to the silent rhapsodic swoop of the shell, was following it in his mind's eye. How long did it take? Perhaps half a minute? His ears were alerted for the sound of its explosion.
"I never quite get over it, sir. It must be bloody hell at the other end."
Cummings was listening to the dull muted tones of the explosion, miles away in the jungle. He saw in his mind the bright destroying bouquet of flame, the screams and the rent iron singing through the air. I wonder if it killed anyone? he thought. He realized the tenseness with which he had been waiting for the shell to land by the weak absorptive relief that washed through his body. All his senses felt gratified, exhausted. The war, or rather, war, was odd, he told himself a little inanely. But he knew what it meant. It was all covered with tedium and routine, regulations and procedure, and yet there was a naked quivering heart to it which involved you deeply when you were thrust into it. All the deep dark urges of man, the sacrifices on the hilltop, and the churning lusts of the night and sleep, weren't all of them contained in the shattering screaming burst of a shell, the man-made thunder and light? He did not think these things coherently, but traces of them, their emotional equivalents, pictures and sensations, moved him into a state of acute sensitivity. He felt cleaned in an acid bath, and all of him, even his fingertips, was prepared to grasp the knowledge behind all this. He dwelt pleasurably in many-webbed layers of complexity. The troops out in the jungle were disposed from the patterns in his mind, and yet at this moment he was living on many levels at once; in firing the gun he was a part of himself. All the roaring complex of odors and sounds and sights, multiplied and re-multiplied by all the guns of the division, was contained in a few cells of his head, the faintest crease of his brain. All of it, all the violence, the dark co-ordination had sprung from his mind. In the night, at that moment, he felt such power that it was beyond joy; he was calm and sober.
Later, returning to his headquarters in the jeep, he was in an excellent mood. His body was still keyed, still the least bit feverish, but the excitement it caused him went beyond restlessness, and charged his brain to intense activity. Yet it was random casual thought; he amused himself the way a child would sport in a toy store if given complete freedom to touch everything and cast it away when tired. Cummings was not unconscious of the process. Any new physical action always aroused him, infused