employment agency, and so he'd seen her in New York, once or twice, when he passed through; and though they only thought about one another at random, though her yo-yo hand was usually busy at other things, now and again would come the invisible, umbilical tug, like tonight, mnemonic, arousing, and he would wonder how much his own man he was. One thing he had to give her credit for, she'd never called it a Relationship. 'What is it then, hey,' he'd asked once. 'A secret,' with her small child's smile, which like Rodgers and Hammerstein in 3/4 time rendered Profane fluttery and gelatinous. She visited him occasionally, as now, at night, like a succubus coming in with the snow. There was no way he knew to keep either out. IV As it turned out, the New Year's party was to end all yo-yoing at least for a time. The reunion descended on Susanna Squaducci, conned the night watchmen with a bottle of wine, and allowed a party from a destroyer in drydock (after some preliminary brawling) to come aboard. Paola stuck close at first to Profane, who had eyes for a voluptuous lady in some sort of fur coat who claimed to be an admiral's wife. There was a portable radio, noisemakers, wine, wine. Dewey Gland decided to climb a mast. The mast had just been painted but Dewey climbed on, turning more zebralike the higher he went, guitar dangling below him. When he got to the cross-trees, Dewey sat down, plonked on the guitar and began to sing in hillbilly dialect: Depuis que je suis ne J'ai vu mourir des peres, J'ai vu partir des freres, Et des enfants pleurer . . . The para again. Who haunted this week. Since I was born (said he) I've seen fathers die, brothers go away, little kids cry. 'What was that airborne boy's problem,' Profane asked her the first time she translated it for him. 'Who hasn't seen that, It happens for other reasons besides war. Why blame war. I was born in a Hooverville, before the war.' 'That's it,' Paola said. 'Je suis ne. Being born. That's all you have to do.' Dewey's voice sounded like part of the inanimate wind, so high overhead. What had happened to Guy Lombardo and 'Auld Lang Syne'? At one minute into 1956 Dewey was down on deck and Profane was up straddling a spar, looking down at Pig and the admiral's wife, copulating directly below. A sea gull swooped in out of the snow's sky, circled, lit on the spar a foot from Profanes hand. 'Yo, sea gull,' said Profane. Sea gull didn't answer. 'Oh, man,' Profane said to the night. 'I like to see young people get together.' He scanned the main deck. Paola had disappeared. All at once things erupted. There was a siren, two, out in the street. Cars came roaring on to the pier, gray Chevys with U. S. Navy written on the sides. Spotlights came on, little men in white hats and black-and-yellow SP armbands milled around on the pier. Three alert revelers ran along the port side, throwing gangplanks into the water. A sound truck joined the vehicles on the dock, whose number was growing almost to a full-sized motor pool. 'All right you men,' 50 watts of disembodied voice began to bellow: 'all right you men.' That was about all it had to say. The admiral's wife started shrieking about how it was her husband, caught up with her at last. Two or three spotlights pinned them where they lay (in burning sin), Pig trying to get the thirteen buttons on his blues into the right buttonholes, which is nearly impossible when you're in a hurry. Cheers and laughter from the pier. Some of the SP's were coming across rat-fashion on the mooring lines. Ex-Scaffold sailors, roused from sleep below decks, came stumbling up the ladders while Dewey yelled, 'Now stand by to repel boarders,' and waved his guitar like a cutlass. Profane watched it all and half-worried about Paola. He looked for her but the spotlights kept moving around, screwing up the illumination on the main deck. It started to snow again. 'Suppose,' said Profane to the sea gull, who was blinking at him, 'suppose I was God.' He inched on to the dorm and lay on his stomach, with nose, eyes and cowboy hat sticking over the edge, like a horizontal Kilroy. 'If I was God . . .' He pointed at an SP; 'Zap, SP, your ass has had it.' The SP kept on at what he'd been doing: battering a 250-pound fire controlman named Patsy Pagano in the stomach with a night stick. The motor pool on the pier was augmented by a cattle car, which is Navy for paddy wagon or Black Maria. 'Zap,' said Profane, 'cattle car, keep going and drive off end of the pier,' which it almost did but braked in time. 'Patsy Pagano, grow wings and fly out of here.' But a final clobber sent Patsy down for good. The SP left him where he was. It would take six men to move him. 'What's the matter,' Profane wondered. The sea bird, bored with all this, took off in the direction of N.O.B. Maybe, Profane thought, God is supposed to be more positive, instead of throwing thunderbolts all the time. Carefully he pointed a finger. 'Dewey Gland. Sing them that Algerian pacifist song.' Dewey, now astride a lifeline on the bridge, gave a bass string intro and began to sing Blue Suede Shoes, after Elvis Presley. Profane flopped over on his back, blinking up into the snow. 'Well, almost,' he said, to the gone bird, to the snow. He put the hat over his face, closed his eyes. And soon was asleep. Noise below diminished. Bodies were carried off, stacked in the cattle car. The sound truck, after several bursts of feedback noise, was switched off and driven away. Spotlights went out, sirens dopplered away in the direction of shore patrol headquarters. Profane woke up early in the morning, covered with a thin layer of snow and feeling the onset of a bad cold. He blundered down the ladder's ice-covered rungs, slipping about every other step. The ship was deserted. He headed below decks to get warm. Again, he was in the guts of something inanimate. Noise a few decks below: night watchman, most likely.
Вы читаете V.
