This Scorching Earth (32 page)

"History, morals, ethics!" screamed Mr. Ohara. 'They have nothing to do with Japan. You are too Western-minded. It is my fault, and I am sorry!" He ended on a great shout.

Those standing nearby turned and looked, but Ichiro was too preoccupied to be self-conscious. The novelty of the charge of being Western-minded had quite stunned him, but he had the presence of mind to reach for the lobby door and insist upon his father's entering first. Then, however, his father raced ahead to the inner door and grabbed it open, thus making Ichiro enter first.

Together they ran on backstage, arguing all the time and bruising their hands on the doorhandles. There, surrounded by relatives, friends, and the entire cast of
Madame Butterfly
, they not only settled no differences, but went on to new heights of humbleness and self-abnegation.

Colonel Ashcroft, standing by one of the gilded pillars in the lobby, saw both the Oharas race through. He also saw Major Calloway sitting on a red-plush divan. The lobby was becoming crowded, and the Colonel stepped a bit behind the pillar from where he could watch the Major without being noticed. The Major, however, had been watching the Colonel from the corner of his eye for some time. Each was very much aware of the other's presence.

Then the Colonel noticed that the Major was not alone. On one side of him was a very pretty though no longer young American woman and, on the other, was Mrs. Schmidt. They were talking, but from where he stood the Colonel could not hear their conversation.

"I feel I owe you a very great deal, Major," said Mrs. Schmidt.

"Pleased to be of service, ma'am," said the Major.

"But Colonel Ashcroft, who was so pleasant this morning—he's your superior I understand—shouldn't I say something to him. I'm sure he's around here some place."

"Oh, no, ma'am, that won't be necessary at all. Just paper work—that's all that's involved. No need to trouble him."

"Besides," said Dottie, "he's leaving soon. Isn't that so, Cal?"

"Yes, come to think of it, I've heard something of the kind."

"Well, really, Cal! You told me yourself. Aren't you sure?"

"Sure, Dorothy, he's leaving. That's right." As he spoke he stole another glance at the Colonel, standing slightly behind a pillar. He wished he'd go away, or at least stop standing where he could see him.

The Major was dimly aware he had done the Colonel a great wrong, but no sooner did the first nibble of conscience occur than he very successfully drove it away. In the atmosphere of freedom and security which was the Occupation, he reasoned, it was the patriotic duty of all good Americans to report an infidelity, to repeat a suspicious remark, to insure the disgrace and. downfall of those unpatriotic enough to have un-American thoughts. And it was these men—men like himself, men bold in their praise of democracy, sure of its need of protection and doubtful of its ability to continue without their aid—who were in very truth the backbone of America. At least, so the Major thought.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," said Mrs. Schmidt. "Is it soon? Only this morning he asked me to call on his wife and said any time would be all right. Didn't he know this morning?"

The Major looked away. It had just occurred to him that if you always found it necessary to run to the aid of democracy, then you weren't too convinced that it was particularly strong, or that it even existed. But abstract thought was difficult for the Major at the best of times, and now this was, after all, a separate issue, quite to one side. In this world it was not the side issues and moral quibblings that counted. It was results that counted.

And on top of all this, though the Colonel had lots of high-flown things to say about totalitarian governments, he'd been overheard saying he hated no individual Russians because of this. The confession had truly shocked the Major, who, on the contrary, hated all Russians simply because they existed, and who would have been tempted to refuse an invitation, had he ever received one, to any of the many parties given by the Soviet Mission in Tokyo, despite the rumored abundance of caviar and vodka.

All of which merely proved what the Major had long contended—that the Colonel was a suspicious character, if only because he refused to adapt himself to the times. As proof of how old-fashioned the Colonel really was, the Major need only recall the Colonel's quaint theory that wars were fought for possession, gaining, or protecting, scarcely ever for ideas. This opinion, though logical enough, was not only un-American but unmodern.

And so, when all these personal opinions, so unique and eccentric in the Occupation, were laid end to end, they stretched directly to the next ship leaving Japan and a disgraceful exile in America for the unfortunate Colonel.

Dorothy and Mrs. Schmidt were excitedly talking about the coming recital, and the latter was trying to decide whether to include portions of the
Schwanengesang
or the
Winterreise,
while the former was saying that the only thing which could conceivably interest their audience would be "The Beer Barrel Polka."

Continuing his reflections, the Major complimented himself upon having done a workmanlike job of weaving these opinions of the Colonel's into a pattern which anyone could understand. And from the conjunction of every two opinions in the pattern he almost invariably was able to produce yet a third. These contributions to the eventual fate of Colonel Ashcroft he called deductions. He hadn't been ungenerous in his offerings, and, before half his evidence had been placed before the proper authorities, they had become suspicious—and just the suspicions of these good men were quite enough. They were so advanced in their profession of guardians of liberty that they had quickly done away with the necessity of proof, a qualification that so often clouds the minds of smaller men.

This method, to be sure, lacked the finality that a less efficient procedure—such as the careful evaluation of any real evidence of the Colonel's guilt—might have produced, but to make up for this trifling loss, the turnover in officers might be expected to become reassuringly large and, after all, was not the real consideration the quantity rather than the quality of sin which they uprooted in this world?

The Major suddenly noticed that the two women were no longer talking about what songs to sing. They were whispering. He looked at them curiously.

Catching his glance, Mrs. Schmidt pulled her shawl tighter around her and said: "Major, you've been so very kind to me, promising to arrange for the recital. You have no idea how much it will mean to me. But I feel I must tell you something about myself—I feel you have the right to know." She stopped, and a small, hurt smile appeard.

The Major, having agreed in order to please Dorothy, began to dislike Mrs. Schmidt. He wished she'd stop looking at him as though he were going to strike her.

"You're a man of the world I know, Major—a practical man," she began.

The Colonel at any rate, thought the Major, was not a practical man. Major Calloway had never seen Ash-croft so mad as the day someone repeated to him what a noted admiral had said during the war: that if he ever saw a pregnant Jap woman, he'd kick her in the belly. The Colonel had turned white with rage, though he must have heard about it before. It just wasn't practical to act like that, not when the other person was an admiral and you were just a colonel or a major. The Colonel obviously didn't adapt well, and thus it was only right that a younger officer with more progressive, practical ideas should fill his place.

Mrs. Schmidt, seeing that the Major seemed to be paying no attention, had stopped, but his sudden glance started her again: "I mean that I—that is, my husband—was a member of the National Socialist Party in Germany."

"What?"

"I mean—I mean he was a Nazi."

"Oh, that. I already know that. Look, Mrs. Schmidt, that was almost five years ago. Don't let that trouble you. If he was a Nazi, then that means he hated the Commies, don't it?"

The Major was indeed a practical man. And he would have found further proof of the Colonel's impracticality if he could have read the Colonel's thoughts now as he watched the three from behind the pillar.

The Colonel was thinking about things which had nothing to do with his own misfortunes, had not the slightest bearing on his own particular plight. He was thinking of the youth of America—those young soldiers like that soft-spoken boy in his office. He watched them with sympathy. He saw their vacillation, their apparent poverty of absolute ideals. He saw they lived in a world sometimes meaningless and alway governed by comparative standards which, like the sands of time, shifted constantly. He found this both pathetic and destructive.

But—the Major would have continued—the Colonel was learning, for even he was not slow to realize that, given a somewhat limited choice of weapons, he was free at least to use those which had been used against him. Here again, however, there arose a childish compunction, for he hesitated to use the invaluable denouncement, that follow-up of suspicions.

Of course, the Major didn't know that the Colonel had long been clearly aware of the most vulnerable spot in the Major's defenses. He didn't know that the Colonel had noticed irregularities in payment for Japanese entertainment and had quickly—and correctly—deduced what was happening.

And still the Colonel, hovering behind his pillar, wrestled with his stubborn conscience. He realized perfectly that the means for revenge were at hand, indeed, that marvelous instrument the telephone seemed to have been perfected for this very use. Cloaked behind the anonymity of the mouthpiece he might, with absolute safety, set into motion the machinery which would bring the Major down to the same low level.

But he was thinking of the young soldiers of his country and of his responsibility toward them. Despite their decided antipathy toward him—he knew they thought him a martinet—he might ruin all of the many examples he had attempted to illustrate if it ever became known that he had informed upon Major Calloway. Even if it were not discovered that he told, still something would have died.

Until now he had been meaning, daily, to tell the Major that he knew, to allow him to go before the proper authorities and confess what he had done. That was the only decent way to do it. But the days had become weeks, and he had done nothing: he disliked the unpleasantness that this scene would doubtless provoke. Now he wished he had—because now he could not.

Yet he still might, if he knew the Major were alone in it. But perhaps he had already involved someone else. One of these young, confused soldiers, one of these boys. Maybe even the Private in his own office. The Colonel felt he must make sure.

A tall young lady—his secretary, Gloria Wilson—had approached the three, and now Mrs. Schmidt was leaving, smiling and nodding. For a second the Colonel felt something very much like jealousy. Then he smiled and pulled his moustaches. No, there was no more room for jealousy.

He turned and saw a soldier some distance from him. It was Private Richardson.

The curtain was to rise at eight-thirty. "That means nine at the earliest," said Dave Ainsley as they walked down the aisle of the red and gilt auditorium, with its ornate proscenium arch at the far end.

"I know," said Mrs. Swenson. "Time is the most expendable quantity in Japan. I should know—we have a Japanese chauffeur." And her eyes twinkled while her smile proclaimed that, even though the Japanese were the Chosen Race, still she wasn't without knowledge of their little shortcomings. "They are so like children," she said fondly. "Can't yon just imagine them sawing and hammering away in back of that curtain, right to the last minute, for all the world as though they were designing a Sunday-school benefit." She laughed merrily.