Chapter 41: They will never hear you

War as an abstraction had not yet penetrated Serena’s

consciousness. She was like the communion seekers who received

religion only in the form of a wafer on the tongue. War as a wafer

placed on her tongue directly by the young aviator came suddenly

very close to her, and she saw that if he shared with her his

contempt for the placidities of peace it was only to take her straight

into the infernal core of war. That was his world. When he said:

“Get your bicycle then, and I’ll show you a better beach further

on…” it was not only to escape from fashionable reclining figures on

the beach, from golf players and human barnacles glued to damp

bar flanks, it was to bicycle into his inferno. As soon as they started

to walk along the beach, he began to talk:

“I’ve had five years of war as a rear gunner. Been to India a couple

of years, been to North Africa, slept in the desert, crashed several

times, made about one hundred missions, saw all kinds of things…

Men dying, men yelling when they’re trapped in burning planes.

Their arms charred, their hands like claws of animals. The first time

I was sent to the field after a crash…the smell of burning flesh. It’s

sweet and sickening, and it sticks to you for days. You can’t wash it

off. You can’t get rid of it. It haunts you. We had good laughs,

though, laughs all the time. We laughed plenty. We would steal

prostitutes and push them into the beds of the men who didn’t like

women. We had drunks that lasted several days. I liked that life.

India. I’d like to go back. This life here, what people talk about,

what they do, think, bores me. I liked sleeping in the desert. I saw a

black woman giving birth… She worked on the fields carrying dirt

for a new airfield. She stopped carrying dirt to give birth under the

wing of the plane, just like that, and then bound the kid in some rags

and went back to work. Funny to see the big plane, so modern, and

this half naked black woman giving birth and then continuing to

carry dirt in pails for an airfield. You know, only two of us came

back alive of the bunch I started with. We played pranks, though.

My buddies always warned me: ‘Don’t get grounded; once you’re

grounded you’re done for.’ Well, they grounded me too. Too many

rear gunners in the service. I didn’t want to come home. What’s

civilian life? Good for old maids. It’s a rut. It’s drab. Look at this:

the young girls giggle, giggle at nothing. The boys are after me.

Nothing ever happens. They don’t laugh hard, and they don’t yell.

They don’t get hurt, and they don’t die, and they don’t laugh

either.”

Always something in his eyes which she could not read, something

he had seen but would not talk about.

“I like you because you hate this place, and because you don’t

giggle,” he said taking her hand with gentleness.

They walked endlessly, tirelessly, along the beach, until there were

no more houses, no more cared-for gardens, no more people, until

the beach became wild and showed no footsteps, until the debris

from the sea lay “like a bombed museum,” he said.

I’m glad I found a woman who walks my stride as you do,” he said.

“And who hates what I hate.”

As they bicycled homeward he looked elated, his smooth skin

flushed with sun and pleasure. The slight trembling of his gestures

had vanished.

The fireflies were so numerous they flew into their faces.

“In South America,” said Serena, “the women wear fireflies in their

hair, but fireflies stop shining when they go to sleep so now and then

the women have to rub the fireflies to keep them awake.”

John laughed.

At the door of the cottage where she stayed, he hesitated.

He could see it was a rooming house in a private family’s

jurisdiction. She made no movement but fixed her enlarged,

velvet-pupiled eyes on his and held them, as if to subdue the panic

in them.

He said in a very low voice: “I wish I could stay with you.” And

then bent over to kiss her with a fraternal kiss, missing her mouth.

“You can if you wish.”

“They will hear me.”

“You know a great deal about war,” said Serena, “but I know a

great deal about peace. There’s a way you can come in and they

will never hear you.”