This Scorching Earth (21 page)

"No one, Major, just no one."

"Well," he said, narrowing his eyes craftily, "that one at the end looks kind of good to me." He stared at the young lady at the end of the bar, who was now deep in whispered conversation with three of the captains. The other captain was building matches on top of a beer bottle.

"Well, if I wore my dress slashed to the navel, you might like me too," said Gloria.

"But I do like you," said the Major, then laughed. "Anyway."

"Well, I hope she doesn't lean over," said Gloria. "It will be a second Hindenberg disaster if she does. All those matches."

But the Major didn't hear. He was too busy trying to look down the green-felt front—a bit difficult at thirty feet.

Gloria looked around her. The bar was full of people who, like herself, had never had it so good. We're a nation of nouveaux riches, thought Gloria, now nicely muddled, as she looked at her Orkney Scotch, as she fingered her Mikimoto genuine cultured pearls.

Had it not been for the Occupation of Japan, when could all these people, herself included, have enjoyed the benefit of servants, of an inflated social position, of tax-free liquor and unobstructed use of the Sears Roebuck catalog? They'd still be home in Kokomo and Tacoma and Muncie, still going to bed early, still dreading the dull expanse of Sunday. But the Occupation had taken care of all that. Here everything, including love, was free to an American citizen, here where there was a continuous air of the simply extraordinary, as though the end of the world were just around the corner and they'd rediscovered the calf of gold.

It was also a bit like being on stage before the final curtain, when the comedy of manners was reaching its height and the husband was about to burst into the plywood and chenille drawing room. One felt continually on display, and the groundlings all had slanted eyes and would have worn pigtails if they hadn't been white enough to cut them off. There was no doubt about it—those of the Occupation were sitting on top of the world.

Except, felt Gloria, that they were sitting on top of an enormous bubble, a balloon which was going to be pricked at any moment. It didn't much matter who did the pricking—the Russians, the Japanese, or the loyal American taxpayers—the important thing was that it was going to happen. The mushroom couldn't get any larger, and Gloria felt as though she were in Sodom before the sword fell, the tiptop of the tower of Babel before the revolution, the Garden of Eden before the Fall.

And so it was with a feeling of enormous self-satisfaction that Gloria looked around her and, in so doing, saw the Ainsleys.

Dave and Dot Ainsley were a pair and, like book ends, did not look well separated. Had Dave had his way they would never have been. He never called her Dorothy or even Dot; instead, it was always "Hey, Beautiful," or "What you say, Good-lookin'?" She was beautiful; she had the face of an expensive doll and the body of an aging athlete. She never called him anything except Dave.

He was Irish and cultivated the appearance of a newspaperman. Half the time he was sloppy in an open collar and dirty cuffs. The other half he was a meticulous dandy in Cuban-heeled shoes. When they had first met, the glamorous war was still on. She was a singer for the USO, and he was a correspondent for U.P. They married as soon as possible in Tokyo. It had been a case of love at first sight, for he had adored her instantly.

But they were often separated, despite Dave. He had his job, and she had her work. His job was that of an editor on
Stars and Stripes
and a stringer for
Field and Stream.
He had once been on the Washington
Post.
Her work was the opera. She was the premiere diva of her own group, "The Cocktail Hour Singers," and founder of the not-too-flourishing Dorothy Ecole du Voix. She was from Wyoming, and he was from Chicago.

At the moment they were separated as usual, sitting back to back on two of the love seats and not talking to each other. They had come together and would go together, and Dorothy would have resented any implication that she was not giving her husband sufficient attention.

She had just come from the Dispensary and was giving Mrs. Swenson, the other occupant of her love seat, a display of her fine temper: "... and then the fool told me that this breaking out—if that's what it is—god knows, he didn't—is just nervous trouble. Me! Nervous trouble!" She was furious and slapped the furniture in her irritation. "And as though that wasn't bad enough, I had to wait hours on a sedan—I spent the night, you know, out with those orphans. Such charming children—all Negro and Japanese and White—sort of dappled, you know. And, then, come time to go home to my old one and faithful here and—no sedan. Well, you can just believe me that that driver got a nice fat DR out of the thing. There he was back at the Motor Pool, had gone to the Naka Hotel—by mistake as he said it. And then—this damned itching. Oh!"

Dave Ainsley turned to Mr. Swenson, an old-Japan-hand, former society editor of the
Japan Times
before the war and at present connected with the
New York Tribune.
"Funny isn't it," said Dave, wrinkling his Irish nose, "how all beautiful women hate to see themselves marred." He slid over the word "beautiful" carefully, as though the loveliness of his wife were taken for granted. Then he turned and looked at her. She was pouting. He was intensely proud of her, proud to be seen with her, proud sometimes to have her in the same house, proud to be her husband. "No matter how unimportant the flaw," he finished softly, as though to himself.

Dottie, as usual, had caught just one word. "Unimportant?" she called over her shoulder. "Well, I'd like to see just how you'd react, David Ainsley, when you're all covered with some loathsome tropical disease."

He laughed easily, from long practice. At the same time, above the grin, his eyes wrinkled as though he expected to be hit. "Well, not every place, beautiful," he said and turned to Mr. Swenson again, this time man-to-man: "It's not been like sleeping with an elephant—not yet."

Mr. Swenson opened his mouth and laughed shortly.

Dottie had turned back to Mrs. Swenson, who likewise sat with her back toward her husband. "Oh, god, what stupid jackasses those colonels are. Nervous troubles!" She could no longer contain herself and, standing up, made a circle through the love seats, elbowing her way through the crowd. As always, her stride was a bit absurd because she was so small. "Four hours—four whole hours, from eleven to now. Just waiting, and then he tells me to stay in bed, fold my hands and—" She could think of nothing dreadful enough. ". .. and twiddle my thumbs!"

"There are so many incompetents over here nowadays," said Mrs. Swenson sadly, shaking her head. Whenever it became necessary to sympathize she usually retreated into generalities.

"Did it just appear?" asked Mr. Swenson turning around,

"About nine or so," said Dorothy, miserable.

"And where might it be?" asked Mrs. Swenson, now being motherly.

"It might be on my twat, but it's not. It's on my tummy."

Dave laughed loudly, so loudly that several passing people turned and looked. "Give it time," he shouted, and Dottie giggled. Any reference to the privates usually reduced her to helpless merriment.

"You're going to the opera tonight, I suppose," said Mrs. Swenson quickly.

Dottie groaned. "Oh, god, I suppose so. I do owe it to the public. But, believe me, I'm not looking forward to it."

Mrs. Swenson was bewildered. "But—
Madame Butterfly
and all, and you with the opera."

"Well, Mrs. Swenson," said Dave patiently, as though all the words were of one syllable, "that's a kind of opera, to be sure. But I'm afraid my wife has what we must call advanced tastes. It's a bit too—well, shall we say old-fashioned for her." He didn't mention that Dottie always wept from sheer nostalgia whenever she heard any part of
Cavalleria Rusticana.
"Besides," he continued, "Puccini, you know. It isn't as though Beautiful here weren't musical, after all."

This was a cue, and Dottie, standing up, performed what she called a parody of "One Grand Day." She clasped her hands: "Oh, one grand day, he'll come along. .."

Dave laughed very loudly. "It will be just as fine as that
Swan Lake
we were permitted to view last month. Boy, that's one lake that needs dredging."

The Swensons laughed politely at the performances of both the Ainsleys.

Dave himself had reached the last Beethoven quartets and
Wozzeck
through a very real appreciation of good jazz and saw no reason why Beautiful should not reach Bartok through Mascagni. He was doing his best to detour her past Puccini, had in fact carefully formed her musical tastes until now she thought that late Stravinsky was cute and found that bit in the Prokofieff piano concerto just darling—meanwhile humming Franck to show the part she meant.

"Well, I for one like
Madame Butterfly
," said Mr. Swenson suddenly and positively.

As a matter of fact, Dave did too. But whenever anyone obviously enthusiastic asked him how he liked something, he at once answered with disagreements. If this enthusiasm was stated positively enough, however, he would at once change his mind and find just as many things about it to praise as he had formerly found to condemn.

"Well, of course," he said, smiling, "I think the second act is about the best thing of its kind ever written by anybody, be it Bach or Beiderbecke."

This satisfied both of them, for Mr. Swenson had been thinking of a 1918 performance, and Dave, though he refused anything pure admiration on principle, could very easily revive dead enthusiasm for times gone by, whether represented by Puccini or by Glenn Miller.

"Of course, the performance won't be like the one I saw a few years back with the ever-lovely Galli-Curci," said Mr. Swenson laughing.

Dottie, taking this for a cue, stood up again and resumed her parody. But Dave interruped her, saying: "After all, it is rather a shame the Japanese try to sing. For naniwa-bushi they have the finest vocal equipment in the world—but just imagine a Mozart opera here at the Imperial Theatre!"

Mr. Swenson was unconcerned. For him Mozart was never opera, but a kind of vaudeville, like that hectic and trivial
Don Giovanni.
The real opera was Verdi, Mascagni, Wagner, Gounod, and of course, the late lamented Richard Strauss.

Dottie, seeing that she wasn't going to get to perform, sat down again and pouted. She sighed and then, to irritate her husband, said: "You're so right, dear. Oh, these Japs!"

The Swensons sat up straight, as though they had just heard a four-letter word, and Dave glared at her. Here he was without pity. Through the years of their marriage he had corrected her when she made the social mistake of disliking Kikes, Niggers, queers, Japs. And he knew well how to correct these little backward slippings.

"Honey, I think you got a run," he said leaning backward to speak to her in a half-whisper.

She did. He'd spotted it before they'd sat down and had been saving it for just such an emergency.

"Oh, my sakes," she said, reverting to Wyoming, as she always did under stress. "I go to stop it. 'Scuse me." And she hobbled quickly from the room.

Dave, very experienced, at once began repairing the damage. He shook his head lovingly. "Poor kid—all wrought up," he said. Then he added: "She works so much with the Japanese, you know, that I expect her to come home and bend right down on the floor to me any day. Of course, learning anything new—like opera—they're naturally a little slow—just as you and I would be if we tried to learn the Kabuki, say—if, indeed, we could at all. But she has the patience of a saint, I will say that." He smiled fondly in reminiscence. "And, then, there are days when she just comes home radiant. When she's been able to give a part of herself. Like last night."

"Poor orphans," said Mrs. Swenson, mollified.
"Well,
giving is what counts."

Mr. Swenson, however, was anxious to prove that he was completely open-minded on the burning topic of the Japanese. "No, in her way she is correct," he said. "They
are
slow. There is just no denying that. But they are thorough—I'll say that for them. They
are
thorough!"

"That's right—thorough," said Mrs. Swenson.