Walk on the water

242 Pages·1952·12.234 MB·English

by  Ralph Leveridge

"Now he looked at her, his eyes traveling
up and down her body. As used to the stares
of men as she was, Norah felt she had
never known so intense or complete a
scrutiny •.• He seemed to be searching.
For what? She suddenly wondered. Strength
or weakness?"
Love and Death
Norah Calhoon met Sergeant Hervey when he was
hospitalized behind the lines. She feared, and yet
was irresistibly attracted to his overpowering mascu
linity, and in a few wonderful weeks they packed the
emotions and intensities of a lifetime.
But when Hervey's wounds healed, he chose to return
to the lurking death and filth of the Pacific jungles
to rejoin his squad because of his loyalty to his men.
To all the men-the cowards, the heroes, the brutes,
the weaklings-the men who had died and the men
who were still living and depended on him for lead
ership.
This is a stinging picture of war at its rawest, a book
whose tragic pity and understanding creates an unfor
gettable picture of men and women at their worst
and best.
"The book's primitive details indicate what some
times can be unbearable about the Army-not
the enemy, not even the physical discomfort, but
the continual assaults on a man's sensitivity."
-The New York Timt>s
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--
WALK On
The WATER
..
By Ralph Leveridge
A SIGNET BOOK
Published hy THE NEW A:\IERICAN LIBRARY
CoPYRIGliT 1951 BY FARR~, STRAUS & YOUNG, INc.
All rights reserved, including
the right to reproduce this
book or any portions thereof.
-
Published as a SIGNET BOOK
By Arrangement with Farrar, Straus & Young, Inc.
FIRST PRINTING, JUNE, 1952
SIGNET BOOKS are published by
The New American Library of World Literature, Inc.
501 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thiit keeps all his goings graces:
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is
Christ-for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
From the Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins,
COURTESY OF THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
/
TO the woman of Sherwood Forest
and ro the woman of Charlottesville
BOOK ONE
I
IT had not stopped raining for
a week, except for brief intervals. Sometimes it was a furious
downpour, the rain-spots stinging their hands and faces, as hail
will sting. Sometimes it was a soft, multitudinous drizzle, a
morning mist of rain. But always it was there, a relentless thing.
At last it seemed that its roar was a liquid poured intq their ear
drums, pressing against the membranes, tightening the hard
sense of suffocation within their hearts, building a scream that
somehow was never released. Their uniforms were like wet
dishrags, slopped around their bodies; and is they paced, re
volvingly, the tiny confines of their foxholes, these soggy
clothes washed them. And they did not want to be washed.
They wanted to stay dirty, for in dirt there was a comfort. Dirt
was allied to what they were going through. Cleanliness was
something foreign now; something belonging to the lost Amer
ica of fresh white sheets and newly laundered underwear, of
summer cotton and red lips and pink breasts, something tor
menting when known beside the now habitual filth, mud, stale
blood and dead rotting bodies. So they wanted dirt. They had
to have dirt-as their beards and itching scalps and sweating
feet suggested dirt. Instead, there was the monsoon, and soggy
clothes insidiously cleaning their bodies to leprosy white. Be
cause of this they raved and, raising their tired eyes to the
clouds, their fists clenched and tears in their voices, groaned
aloud.
But still the rain poured down. If anything, it mocked the
blasphemy that was the GI prayer. First it was a roar, then a
soft murmur, as irregular in sound as the China Sea beating on
the shore. It was hot and, despite the impetuous wind, heavy
with humidity. Cailini had said, before falling into a dream
filled sleep, that it was like swimming in an already dead sea.
Hervey, his buddy and foxhole partner, heard but did not re
ply. The full tiredness that shrouded him would not even let
him nod an appreciation. But the moment he heard Cailini's
soft snore, he turned swiftly. The sight of Cailini sleeping
was almost more than he could bear. He lifted his foot and was
about to kick the sleeping man when he saw Cailini's arms
suddenly, uncontrollably, jerk. Hervey stopped then and, look
ing down at the tired, war-dissipated face, felt a fierce onrush
of tenderness. His hand reached out, and he stroked Cailini's
forehead lightly, as if he hoped to wipe away his friend's
dream. He knew, watching Cailini, reality had pursued him
into sleep. There was no escape from the nightmare.
After a minute he forgot Cailini and leaned against the rear
wall of the foxhole. With his fingers and palms Hervey began
slowly to massage his own face. He had never been more tired
and, strangely, never more awake. With his fingers he pressed
his stinging eyes deep into their sockets. He ran his hands over
the puffy bags under his eyes. Carefully he explored the mouth
line tangents, the crow's-feet and forehead wrinkles. His sudden
vanity swore they were as deep as scars. He wondered how
war-old his face really was. Suddenly impatient with himself,
he shouted aloud, "Who the hell gives a shit?" His answer
came ringing back, "You do! You do!" And what was really
he, said, "Well, there's not a goddamn thing you can do about
it."
A sound ahead of him stopped his brooding. Swiftly he
peered through the camouflage, but there was nothing in No
Mao's Land or beyond to betray the existence of Japs. All that
could be seen were masses of thick, opulent vegetation, greener
than any emerald; stumpy incongruous banana trees; closely
knitted bamboo clumps and lanes of stately coconut trees that
looked like cathedral naves. Thick, juicy mud was everywhere,
a deep and tenacious gum upon the earth. It was caked on
the squad's clothes; it clogged their weapons, reducing the effi
ciency of high-speed fire. Especially was it concentrated in the
foxholes, which were not so much boles as depressions
punched by a giant fist in the soggy terrain.
Hervey began to raise himself, taking care that his head did
not appear above the camouflage. He looked to the right. The
neighboring foxhole was empty. Even the bloodstains that
earlier had been splashes of red on the brown and the greens
were gone now. Hervey wanted to call out, to shout Gruber's
name, for he still had a feeling that the boy was somewhere in
the foxhole. In his mind there persisted a picture of Gruber,
alive, sleeping and hidden from sight-a far more vivid picture
than the finality of a bursting mortar shell and Gruber's limbs
flying up, out, around. It took Hervey almost a minute to re
member, and then the sensation he was growing to know more
and more closed over him again. It was as though his body
were ice, and that ice on fire. In the startling silence that had
8
followed tl;le explosion, Rosinski, his eyes dilated and his Adonis
face stretched tight against his bones, had shouted, "They
got Gruber!" Adams had muttered a tired, "That's bad." Noth
ing more. Lunagan, who had winced involuntarily, listened to
his partner, Tuthill, voice a laconic, "Tough! But what the.
hell does Rosinski expect us to do about it?" Polson, the big
farmer, said three times that it was an awful thing, but five
minutes later his mind was back in Ohio, speculating on the
current bean crop. Hervey himself had raised his fist in the
enemy's direction, shaken it savagely, shouted every obscenity
he could think of and then, as abruptly, had shut up.
Wearily he had turned to Cailini. "What's the use? What's
the goddam use?"
Cailini nodded his head. There was nothing to say. Hervey
had said it all.
Bill Hervey now stared hard at the empty hole, but as hard
as he stared he could see none of the brilliant red that an hour
before had marked the brown and the ·greens.
He moved restlessly, briefly folded his arms, felt the sergeant
stripes against his sopping uniform. He thought of his mother,
or, as he called her, Emmy. He remembered her crisp humor,
her concern because he drank too much Scotch and would not
get a job, marry and settle down as so many of his friends had.
He remembered the nights he had lain on her bed and talked
until dawn. He wished he were on that bed now. Then he re
membered his father-the Senator, Bill and Emmy called him.
Though he was actually a senator, the title was infused with a
hundred private mocking connotations.
The Senator was a showman and a pompous ass, listening to
and in love with each rhetorical spiel he made. Words. Rivers
of words that became oceans the moment he opened his mouth.
And when the press glowed, Emmy and Bill, looking quietly at
each other, said nothing, but grew to understand each other
more.
He often thought about his mother, and then his fear was
like the big dip on a roller coaster. These were the only times
he was fille'tl with panic, the times when he was sure she would
never see him again. Now, on looking back, he knew she could
not live when the hope of reunion was gone. It would have
been different if .the Senator had been a lover, or a man. In
stead, he was something attached through a ceremony, some
thing irrevocably hers (or she his) because they had made a
mistake, and the scheme and pattern of their lives said there
must be no repairing. He, Bill, her one child, had taken the
place of a lover. He had eased her loneliness, mostly by being
9