B000FC0RL0 EBOK (9 page)

I told him I was.

“Thank God. We’re the only ones. How’d you get here?” he asked.

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“Let’s get together tonight at the Post Library,” he said. “It’s nice and quiet. We can look around. You know, pick up a few books.”

That night, for want of anything else to do, I met Joe in the library. As we browsed we told each other about our eighteen and a half years on the planet.

“I lived on the Upper West Side when I was a kid,” he said. “West Sixty-seventh Street, near Ederle’s Pork Store. His daughter Gertrude swam the English Channel.”

“I’m not into pork,” I said.

“Neither am I,” Joe said. “Jews are right about that. You can get trichinosis. Why’d you join the army?” he asked.

“To get away from home. My parents were always fighting. It made it hard,” I said.

“I thought Jewish families didn’t fight,” Joe DiSpigno said. “Didn’t they love you?”

“Sure. They just fought with each other. They never laid a hand on us kids.”

“You’re lucky,” Joe said. “When Italian families fight, kids better go hide someplace.”

There was a pause.

“You’re Jewish and I’m Italian. Being from New York makes us exactly alike. Different from the other guys here.”

That was the truth.

“So. What are you going to do when you get out?” Joe asked as we were leaving the library.

“I want to be an actor.”

It didn’t shock or surprise him. It seemed to interest him.

“You really want to be an actor?”

I don’t know why I’d told him. It’s not something you tell everybody. It’s more of a secret wish that you harbor inside yourself. People usually would laugh when I mentioned it.

“What kind of actor?” Joe said.

“A comedian.” There was another pause.

“Why a comedian?”

“I like to make people laugh.”

We reached the barracks.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.

From that moment on, he was my friend. A real friend. I didn’t know what he’d thought when I told him my secret ambition, but he never blinked.

We seemed to know instinctively that we were different from everyone else there. We felt smarter than everybody in the company. But we knew we couldn’t act like we were smart. In the next few weeks we were both
taking international code at the highest speeds, and enjoyed being the best at it in the company. We’d go out in army half-tracks, which were like tanks, and practice sending messages, Joe in one half-track and I in another.

It was strictly forbidden to send anything out into the air other than official material. During a battle exercise, Joe sent a message telling me he’d met a WAC at the PX, and she had a friend for me that night. Everybody in the unit heard the message. The CO sent a message back, warning us that the next man who did that would be court-martialed. Joe’s next message was something to the effect of “Go fuck yourself.” Sending a message like that over the air, in code, and knowing everyone was taking it down, was like bringing the army to its knees. No one except me could believe that Joe had the nerve to pull it off. Fortunately for Joe, there was no way to figure which vehicle the message was coming from.

That night I said, “Why did you do it, Joe?”

“I hate officers,” he said. “Don’t you?”

“I wanna be one,” I said.

He looked at me. “Yeah, well, if you become one, it would be the end of a friendship. I hate them. I hate having to salute them. Look at this—what do you think of this salute.”

He raised his right arm then bent it slowly until his hand, palm out, came to rest, over his right eye, covering it as if he were taking an eye test.

“Isn’t this ridiculous,” he said. “I’m saluting another human being like he’s better than me. Fuck him. He’s no better than me.”

At the end of Armored School training we were both shipped to Italy on the
General Howze,
a troopship. We left Staten Island at night with upwards of a thousand men. The war had ended and we were replacements for guys who had won battles, eighteen-year-olds sprinkled in with regular army guys who had reenlisted after being through battles in Africa, Sicily, and mainland Italy.

As the ship pulled away from land, one of the enlisted men put on a life preserver and, with Bible in hand, proclaimed we were going to sink. We were to be lost at sea. Joe said the guy was bucking for a discharge.

The ship sailed and details were organized. Men were assigned to stuff like KP and guard duty. Rules were announced over the PA system as to expected behavior. Officers were to be saluted as they would be on land. The enlisted men were to eat in shifts, at counters, while standing. The officers would eat seated in a shipboard mess hall.

We slept in the hold of the ship on canvas hammocks, triple decked. The smell of the sleeping quarters was close to unbearable. To escape this, I would sleep on deck.

The GI with the life preserver walked the decks, Bible still in hand, proclaiming to everyone in a prophetic voice that the ship would sink before we reached Livorno, Italy. We paid him little attention as he made his rounds.

Music was played over the loudspeaker system, interspersed with warnings against gambling which, though they were repeated and repeated, were never enforced. Gambling was actually encouraged—it was a distraction that kept us from going bananas and committing whatever mischief men create on a ship that has no women on board. Soldiers would play crap games on deck. It was impossible to walk on deck without stepping on a blanket that was someone’s card game or crap game.

The ship’s library had books that could be borrowed. The most popular was a single copy of Erskine Caldwell’s
God’s Little Acre,
which kept making the rounds. It was the closest to pornography that any of the books came. I eventually got to read it.

As the
General Howze
slowly moved across the Atlantic, life on board took on a day-to-day monotony. We’d get up in the mornings, go to breakfast, and kill time until lunch.

During the trip, Joe and I befriended a tech sergeant who was a veteran of North Africa and Anzio. He was a rifleman, and his decorations included a Purple Heart. He buddied up to Joe and me, assigning us duties that were less demeaning than cleaning latrines. We were made MPs and assigned by him to guard duty. Our job was to patrol the decks. It felt good to be walking around in charge.

We’d finish a tour and take naps, four hours on, four off. At midnight we arose from our nap, put on our MP armbands, and walked the decks.

One night Joe said to me, “Come on, let’s go to the back of the ship. I want to show you something.”

At the stern of the ship we looked down at the huge wake churned up by the ship’s propeller. The moon lit up the sea around us. Joe looked out. “Beautiful, isn’t it.”

There were four steel chairs with leather upholstery. Across the backs of these chairs were the words: “For Officers Only.”

“Come on,” Joe said, “let’s throw them overboard.”

“What?!”

“We’ll throw them overboard.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because those bastards are no better than us, and they’ve got chairs that say ‘For Officers Only’ on them.”

After checking that no one was in sight, Joe lifted one of the heavy steel chairs and threw it over the stern into the ocean. I could see the moon reflecting on the white backwash of the sea churned into foam by the ship’s propellers.

We took turns hurling the chairs into the ocean. As each chair hit the water I imagined the bottom of the Atlantic infested with chairs that one day would be found saying “For Officers Only.”

The next morning the voice on the loudspeaker asked, “What happened to the officers’ chairs?”

Of course they never found out.

A few days into the trip the
General Howze
slowed to a crawl and began listing heavily. No one informed the troops what was going on, and in the ensuing days the ship almost ground to a halt—because of engine trouble, as it turned out. The rumors now had us going to Bermuda, but in the meantime we just struggled along, feeling like we were getting nowhere.

I was now assigned KP—kitchen duty. I decided to steal some of the food from the officers’ mess—huge unlabeled cans of sliced turkey. I stashed a couple. When my dishwashing tour was over, I snuck the cans to the hold of the ship and told Joe to get the guys together for a feast. Eight guys surrounded me as I opened the first can. It was … ketchup. What the hell? I tried the next one. It was green … relish.

“You got ketchup and you got fucking relish,” Joe said. “That’s worth a court martial?”

“Well, I tried.”

“We’ll have to throw it overboard,” Joe said. “Feed it to the sharks.”

Everyone was on edge, and even our beneficent tech sergeant started baiting me, saying “Jews are cowards” in earshot of the other men.

At first I ignored him, but the invectives continued. His battle decorations seemed to give him privilege. I tried to think of Jewish war heroes. My mind focused on my cousin Leo, who’d been awarded the Purple Heart twice and later a Bronze Star. I needed to prove Jews were heroes.

One of the activities on board was boxing matches. I found myself going down to the ship’s gym, putting on gloves, and trying to learn the manly art of fisticuffs. I was quietly punching the bag, shadow boxing, and sparring with guys who looked very much like they’d done this before. I was trying hard to learn courage. Joe became aware of my workouts, and watched as I sweated for the next few days.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I think I’m gonna box.”

“Because of him?”

I kept silent.

“You’re crazy, Stiller,” Joe said. “Some of these guys are good.”

“Hey, I’m just fooling around.”

“Well, he heard about it,” Joe said. “He’s telling everyone on the boat that you and him are gonna fight.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I haven’t made up my mind,” I said. “There are some bouts coming up tomorrow night. I want to see what they’re like. See if I can deal with it.”

The following night Joe and I watched the bouts. Hundreds of GIs jammed tight around a makeshift ring in the ship’s belly, smoking cigars and betting. The first bout seemed tame, two guys just managing to touch one another, to the derision of everyone. The evening turned ugly, though, when a kid from Ohio, fat but brawny, left his corner at the bell and pulverized his opponent for two minutes, nonstop. The bout was not halted until the bloody loser crawled to his corner on his knees.

The kid’s fury scared me. I knew at once I could not enter the ring. The sergeant who baited me sensed this, and the next day, as I was standing on the fantail, he approached me in front of the others and asked whether I was going to fight. I didn’t say anything.

“What can you expect from a Jew,” the sergeant said.

I don’t know what possessed me, but I grabbed his hand and marched him to the fantail. Even though the ship was almost motionless, the propeller was still turning over, churning up the ocean.

“Come on,” I said, “let’s do it. Let’s both of us jump into that propeller.”

He looked at me in shock. I took off my tie and unbuttoned my shirt. His face turned red.

“Come on, let’s see who’s got the guts.”

For the first time in my life, I knew I was bordering on committing suicide. Guys were starting to gather around. I took off my shirt.

“Okay, take off yours,” I said. When he didn’t move I did it for him, unbuttoning his shirt and untying his necktie. He was in even deeper shock. I started to unbutton his pants. Would he take me up on it? The entire ship seemed to be gathering around us. Would he go the whole route? Would I? Now our combat boots and pants were off, and we were standing in our underwear, the wind blowing hard.
What the fuck,
I said to myself. My life was miserable. I was thinking of my parents fighting all the time.
Look where it’s taken me,
I thought.

I took his hand as I would that of a schoolchild, and walked with him to the very edge of the stern. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. Nobody said anything. They just watched, mesmerized.

“Okay,” I said. “You and me, we’re going into the propeller together.”

I tightened my grip on his hand. I was proving to myself I could do it, and praying someone would stop us.

Suddenly DiSpigno appeared behind us with the officer of the day.

“What are you guys doing?” the OD asked.

“They’re going to jump overboard,” Joe said.

“Okay, both of you come with me. I oughta put you both in the brig,” the OD said. “It’d keep you out of trouble. Look, gamble, do something, but don’t do this again.”

The tech sergeant never baited me again.

The
General Howze
finally broke down completely off the Bermuda coast, and we remained stationary as repairs were made. Three days later we started back to the States, to Staten Island. There, we went down the gangplank of the
General Howze
and right up the gangplank of the
Newbern Victory
. Ten days later we arrived at Livorno, Italy, and were immediately transported to a former POW camp in the Tuscan countryside. We played softball in the warm Italian sun, surrounded by barbed wire. Outside the fence we discovered a watermelon patch. The game stopped, and we crawled under the barbed wire to pass small watermelons back into the field, fire-brigade fashion. Like teenagers on a rampage, we devoured the stolen watermelons, pits and all.

That night the entire company sneaked out of the compound, and an hour later we were in the waiting room of a whorehouse in Pisa. The matronly
signorina in charge asked each of us for 20,000 lire or a carton of American cigarettes, and instructed us to sit still until called.

This was to be my rite of passage into manhood. Minutes later, a hand appeared through the beaded curtains and a woman with golden hair and dark roots stood above me. She wore just enough makeup to highlight her soft face, and a negligee that revealed she was voluptuous and slightly overweight. She beckoned me as a kindergarten teacher would beckon a child on his first day at school.