Someone went and painted it yellow.”
“That’s it.” Pug parked the car across the street and they got out. The unpleasant mustardy color surprised him too. It was all over the low stone wall and the wrought-iron fence, as well as the house — a sun-faded old paint job, already peeling. On the lawn lay a tumbled-over tricycle, a big red ball, a baby carriage, and plastic toys.
“But the trees are so much taller and thicker,” Byron said, peering through the fence, “yet the house seems to have shrunk. See, here’s where Warren threw the can of red paint at me. How about that? There’s still a mark.”
Byron rubbed his shoe over the dim red splash on the paving stone. “I had a bad time here, all in all. Warren laying my head open, and then the jaundice -”
“Yes, and that truck hitting you on your bicycle. I wouldn’t think you’d remember it pleasantly.”
Byron pointed. “That’s where we used to sit, right there under that tree, when you’d tutor me. Remember, Dad? Look how thick that trunk is now!”
“Oh, you recall that? I wouldn’t think that would be a pleasant memory either.”
“What not? I missed all that school. You had to do it.”
“But I was a lousy tutor. Maybe your mother should have taken it on. But in the morning she liked to sleep late, and in the afternoon, well, she was either shopping or getting her hair done, you know, or fixing herself up for some party. For all the times I lost my temper, I apologize.”
Byron gave his father a peculiar glance through half-closed eyes and scratched his beard. “I didn’t mind.”
“Sometimes you cried. Yet you didn’t cry when you got hit by the truck. Pain never made you cry.”
“Well, when you put on that angry voice, it scared me. But it was all right. I liked studying with you. I understood you.”
“Anyway, you got good marks that year.”
“Best I ever got.”
They looked through the fence without talking for a couple of long minutes. “Well, now we’ve seen the place,” Pug said. “How about lunch?”
“You know something?” Byron’s gaze was still on the house. “Except for the three days I had in Lisbon with Natalie, I was happier here than I’ve ever been in my life, before or since. I loved this house.”
“That’s the worst of a service career,” Pug said. “You never strike roots. You raise a family of tumbleweeds.”
The crab cocktail at the Army and Navy Club was still served with the same bland red sauce in the same long-stemmed cups, with one purposeless green leaf sticking up in the crabmeat. The roast beef from the steam table was lukewarm and overdone, much as it had been in 1928. Even the faces of the people eating lunch seemed the same — all but Byron’s. The thin little boy who had eaten with such exasperating slowness was now a bearded tall young man. He still ate too slowly; Pug finished his meat first, though he was doing nearly all the talking.
He wanted to probe Byron a bit about Pamela, and about Jochanan Jastrow. He described Jastrow’s sudden incursion into Slote’s Moscow flat, and his spectral reappearance in Spaso House out of a snowstorm. Byron exploded in anger when his father mentioned Tudsbury’s refusal to use the Minsk documents, and his guess that Jastrow might be an NKVD emissary. “What? Was he serious? Why, he’s either a hypocrite or an idiot! What he said about people not wanting to help the Jews is true, God knows. Hitler paralyzed the world for years by playing on that chord. But nobody can talk to Berel for five minutes without realizing that he’s a remarkable man. And dead on the level, too.”
“You believe the story about the massacre?”
“Why not? Aren’t the Germans capable of it? If Hitler gave the order, then it happened.”
“I wasn’t that sure myself, Byron, but I wrote to the President about it.”
Byron stared openmouthed, then spoke in a low incredulous tone. “You did
“Well, those documents got shunted aside in the embassy as probable fakes. I thought they deserved more investigation than that. It was an impulse — probably a stupid one — but I did it.”
Byron Henry reached out, covered his father’s hand, and pressed it. The bearded face took on an affectionate glow. “All I can say is, well done.”
“No. I believe it was a futile gesture, and those are never well done. But it’s past. Incidentally, have you ever met Tudsbury’s daughter? Natalie mentioned in the Rome airport that she knew her.”
“You mean Pamela? I met her once in Washington. Why?”
“Well, the Tudsburys and I travelled in the combat area together. She struck me as an unusually brave and hardy sort. She endured a lot and always remained agreeable and well-groomed. Never whined or crabbed.”
“Oh, Pam Tudsbury’s the original endurer, from what Natalie says. They’re not too unlike in that way, but otherwise they sure are. Natalie told me a lot about her. In Paris Pamela was a hellion.”
“Really?”
“Yes, she had this Hemingwayish boyfriend who used to room with Leslie Slote. She and this character raised Cain all over Gay Paree. Then he dropped her and she went into a bad spin. I’m ready for some dessert, Dad. You too?”
“Sure.” Victor Henry could not help persisting. “How — a spin?”
“Oh, can’t you imagine? Sleeping around, trying to drink up all the wine in Paris, driving like a maniac. She wrapped a car around a tree outside Marseilles and almost killed this French writer she was with. What’s the matter? You look upset.”
“That’s an upsetting story. She seems a fine girl. I’ll be here a week,” Pug said abruptly, “unless the Clipper changes its schedule. Can we get in some tennis?”
“Sure, but I’m not in shape, the way I was in Berlin.”
“Nor am I.”
They played early in the mornings to dodge the heat and after showering they would breakfast together. Victor Henry did not mention Pamela again. At night, lying awake in warm humid darkness under the moaning fan, he would think of ways to reopen the subject. But facing his son at the breakfast table, he couldn’t do it. He could guess what Byron would think of a romance between his staid father and Pamela Tudsbury. It would strike the youngster as a pure middle-aged aberration — disconcerting, shabby, and pathetic. Victor Henry now had spells of seeing it the same way.
One day Branch Hoban prevailed upon him to visit the house in Pasay for lunch. Byron mulishly would not join them. Pug took a long swim in a pool ringed by flowering trees, and enjoyed a superb curry lunch; and after a nap he beat Lieutenant Aster at tennis. It was altogether a satisfying afternoon. Before he left, over rum drinks on a terrace looking out on the garden, Hoban and Aster talked reassuringly about Byron. They both considered him a natural submarine man; only the military bone, they said, seemed to be missing in him. Transfer to the Atlantic was his obsession, but Hoban tolerantly pointed out to the father that it was impossible. The squadron was far under complement now, and the
Victor Henry brought up this topic at what he hoped was a good time — just before breakfast next morning after their game and shower, when they were having coffee on the lawn. On other days Byron had been in the highest spirits over this early cup of coffee. As casually as possible, Pug remarked, “Incidentally, Byron, you said Natalie’s flying to Lisbon — when? The fifteenth of this month?”
“That’s right, the fifteenth.”
“Do you think she’ll make it this time?”
“God, yes. She’d better! They’ve got every possible official assurance and high priority.”
“Well now, the fifteenth isn’t very far off, is it? This transfer request of yours -” Victor Henry hesitated, for a look came over Byron’s face which he knew only too well: sullen, vacuous, remote, and introverted. “Isn’t it something you can table, at least until then?”
“Table it? It’s tabled. Don’t worry. I’ve been turned down by Hoban, Tully, and Admiral Hart’s personnel officer. What more do you want?”
“I mean in your own mind, Briny.”
“Listen. I’m
