So that‘s it. He figures I’m an Irish patriot, an English-hater. This guy wants something. Maybe I should play his game, lunch with the little guy. Pick his brains, subtly, of course, and pass the info on to Wally in the states, just to show him I do have feelings about what’s going on.
“Belfast,” Keegan said. “They weren’t interested in politics either.”
“Ah. And were you in the war?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Please forgive me. Just curious. I don’t often have an opportunity to talk with Americans.”
“Yes, I was in the war. The other side.”
The professor laughed again. Keegan’s smile remained the same, a little arrogant, a little mysterious. He poured another bucket on the coal pile. Steam hissed and swirled into the room. Keegan leaned back, closed his eyes.
“I don’t suppose you have a cigarette tucked away in that pile of towels you’re wearing?” he asked the professor.
“Sorry. I left them outside.”
“Excuse me a minute.”
Keegan got up and stepped outside the steam room. He opened his locker and took out his pack of Camels and lit one. There were two men in hats standing in the hallway outside the club room, trying hard to ignore him.
He went back inside and sat down.
“Hope the smoke doesn’t bother you.”
“Not a bit, not a bit.”
“I’ve got a hangover, Professor. It may be terminal.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“That’s okay. I don’t want you to think I’m unfriendly.”
“Not at all.”
They sat in silence for a minute or two, Keegan leaning back against the wooden slats with his eyes closed, smoking, the professor sitting uncomfortably, staring at the floor.
Now what‘s he going to do? Make his play or call the game? Keegan didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“I am in charge of a small bureau. It comes under the Ministry of Information, although I pretty much am left alone. To my own devices, so to speak.”
“Uh huh.”
“Mainly I keep the Fuhrer up to date on what’s happening in the world. Social notes, political notes, that sort of thing. Attitudes, he’s very interested in attitudes. But. . . he is so busy he doesn’t have time to keep up with everything. You understand?”
“Kind of like ... social intelligence.”
“Ja, that’s very good. Very good. For instance, we don’t think the American people understand how devastating the peace treaty was to the Germans. Do you think the peace at Versailles was fair? An honorable peace?”
What the hell does he want? Keegan was tired of playing games. He leaned forward again, staring through the steam, still smiling. An honorable peace? he thought.
They came home on a French liner, all smelling of linoleum and brass polish, with an arrogant staff and food that was too rich and sometimes spoiled. It took too long and many of the men were sick along the way, lining up along the rail, puking away from the wind in solitary agony. Along with this sweeping sense of malaise and mal de mer was a sense of apprehension, the hangover of battle. As much as they despised the war, there was that side of it that relieved them of responsibility, that directed life for them; when they got up, what they ate, what they did, where they went, all laid out by the omnipotent “they” that ruled their being from taps to reveille. “They are sending us to the front today; “they “are ordering us to charge; “they” are the dictators of our daily lives.
Nobody really knew who “they” were, it was a collective noun that encompassed the nameless, faceless, voiceless architects of their victory. Soldiers had only to respond. To march, fight, die, lie wounded in hospitals or, f lucky, to emerge unscathed except for the scars that all war leaves on the mind and soul and which, for now at least, they could ignore because these were the wounds that did not bleed, did not blind or cripple or sterilize their victims. That pain would come later, in nightmares and memories.
And so they were flush with victory and apprehensive of peace. Now they would once again assume responsibility for their own lives, to feed and clothe themselves, to find jobs, mend relationships, to look for love to replace the hate which is the driving force of all men at arms.
In his secret heart, Keegan felt he had been seduced by the victory marches and the speeches and the posters of an angry godlike Uncle Sam pointing his finger at him and demanding, “I want you. “ Keegan had surrendered his youth to the Marines and though he never doubted the urgency of the war or the need for victory, he harbored a resentment that somehow he had been betrayed, not by the politics that had drawn him to Chateau- Thierry and Belleau Wood as much as by the lie that all war is glory and all victory is sweet. When the horns stopped blaring, the wind swept the confetti into the sewers and the music died away, he ultimately perceived victory as a
