In the Wolf's Mouth (8 page)

‘What do you say, George?’ Coyne asked. Ray looked up, waiting for George’s answer.

‘I think it’s what you fellows need.’

‘Why not?’ Ray said. ‘Why not? Could be dying tomorrow.’

A boy was easy to find. Puffing on a cigarette Randall gave him, the kid led them through alleyways on a winding journey that filled Ray with dread. A virgin, Ray had once been permitted to squeeze the breast of a cousin called Rosa, under the blouse but on top of a stout brassiere. That was about the extent of his experience with women. What he knew of the rest was hard to fit together. There was the dirty, mechanical, implausible and disgusting talk of his brother and
friends, and in movies the disembodying swerve of a camera away from a kissing couple up into the sky or to a scene of playing fountains. Well, he would know soon enough. They were through a door, handing over money, walking upstairs as other soldiers walked down.

While Coyne and Randall chattered, George was quiet. Ray wondered if he was disgusted and wouldn’t take part but that didn’t turn out to be the case. Frowning, as if at a bad headache, George entered the whore’s room before Ray and the others, even despite Randall’s obscene objections. He emerged ten minutes later drying his forehead with his handkerchief, making Ray wonder what on earth went on in there. ‘She’s a good girl,’ George said, taking out and lighting a cigarette. ‘Don’t you all be scared now. And act like the gentlemen you aren’t.’

Ray was scared. The fear had drained the swagger and abandon out of him and left him with an unwieldy, unwanted drunkenness that he felt trapped inside. Too soon it was his turn inside the room. He entered, struggled to fix his eyes on the girl and to take in the dim surroundings. The girl was small, plump, tired, with loose black hair, lipstick, tin rings on her short fingers. She wore two large pieces of black underwear that she must have replaced between each visitor. There was a basin where she rinsed herself. A large crack forked across the wall over the plain crumpled bed where she had laid some sort of towel or protective cloth to keep the sheets clean. On the wall above the bedstead, Ray saw that she had tacked a picture postcard of some mountains with snow on them.

She looked at Ray standing there. She nodded at him, her mouth hanging open, and reached behind her back to unfasten her brassiere. ‘Yes, Joe,’ she said. ‘Happy time now.’ The garment loosened and slid from her shoulders, revealing two large, soft, unevenly sized breasts that ended with startling nipples of dark brown. Their haloes were textured with little bumps. The bits that stuck out were dented in the middle. Ray stared at them, grimacing. Significant, female nipples. So many facts in the world, so much he didn’t know. Briefly, he thought of the Germans in the trench wilting down into their own blood, the people emptying out of the bodies. The prostitute came forward, seeing him stuck there, and kept coming until the weight of her was pressed against him, her breasts shaping like dough against his chest, her smell floating up and enclosing him. She reached down and undid his belt, opened him up and put her bare hand directly on the nerves of his penis. Ray shivered. He took hold of one of her breasts and tried to kiss her on the side of her forehead as she pulled at him, pulling him out from his centre, unravelling him. Then abruptly she stopped, walked over to the bed, pulled down her drawers and lay down. Ray looked at her, at the breasts spilling off her chest, then he glanced down between her parted legs but was frightened by the dark, split, complicated shape inside a messy tuft of black hair – it had an awful kind of leer to it – and he jerked his gaze away. He decided to close his eyes, to go by sensations. Carefully, he climbed on top of her with his pants round his knees and she touched him again, arranging him in position to push which he did and
found he could push still further and then his penis was inside her body, was covered with her, gripped all around. He pushed again, testing. It was fine. She didn’t seem to mind. This was it. This was doing it. He kept pushing and looked down at her face, staring at her dark eyes until he noticed that she was looking back at him. He saw her looking out from inside herself. For a moment they saw each other then Ray hid his face in the damp hair around her neck. He decided not to be ashamed and to try and screw her like a man, to go at it with vigour, but almost as soon as he started he was helpless and it was over. He lay on top of her twitching. She patted his back like he was a little boy. ‘Good Joe,’ she said. ‘Good soldier.’ She squirmed and he slid out and got to his feet, buckling his pants. As he collected himself, wiping the sweat from his face, and walked to the door, he could hear her splashing water up inside herself to wash him out. He glanced back to see her at it, her jaw set, concentrating, a woman at a task. It might’ve been laundry or scrubbing a stove.

After that, what was there to do but drink more? The boys found more wine and then a bottle of some kind of spirit. Ray drank and shouted until he was sick, leaning his forearms against a wall as he retched again and again, exhausting heaves that lifted one foot off the ground, a burning rope slowly hauled out of his guts and leaving him clean and empty, his face wet with saliva and tears.

7

Ray sat staring at the table top, sipping coffee with sugar, remembering snatches of the ghost train ride of the night before. He didn’t know what to make of it all. It was just more, more stuff, more of all of this. He’d fucked a girl; that was a fact. That had happened. Now he knew that at least he wouldn’t die a virgin.

Mail arrived. For Ray there was the moral prod of a parcel from home. Inside was a letter, a bit of an envelope with a Cuban stamp on it and a movie fan magazine called
Screenland
. The letter was really a short note written by his father entirely in capital letters. It didn’t have much to say. YOUR MA SHE’S WORRIED SICK AND MISERABLE EVERY NIGHT I TELL HER HER SONS A HERO SHE SHOULD BE PROUD. There was news about a dying uncle Luigi (still alive) and he explained about getting the stamp from a neighbour with a cousin in Cuba. Ray’s father was under the impression that Ray collected stamps. This wasn’t true. He had collected them, half-heartedly, for about six months when it seemed that everybody was. Ray’s father must have noticed at the time and this was now a thing he remembered about his son who was away fighting in the war. Ray looked closely at the stamp, its image formed from delicate lines of
ink finer than hairs. It showed a woman in flowing clothes holding a baby aloft in front of a double cross. ‘Republica de Cuba’ was printed across the bottom. Beneath the stamp was the carefully torn square of envelope. His father’s fingers had done that. The stamp had travelled the unimaginable distance from home. Ray felt the reality of that suddenly. Somehow, it was like the moment of seeing the prostitute inside her eyes looking out at him. He blushed, heat curdling in his face, and picked up the magazine.

Keep ’Em Smiling! Bob Hope Tells How
. Coyne read it aloud over his shoulder and commented, ‘Looks like Claire Trevor’s got some better ideas.’ The actress was pictured on the cover with her neat small breasts snugly defined by a winter jersey. Standing by a white fence with blue sky behind her, she smiled encouragingly at the reader. ‘And would you look at that,’ Coyne went on. ‘Gene Tierney’s Honeymoon Home! Scoop photos! Ain’t that a thrill. I didn’t know you were into these sissy mags, Marfione.’

‘I don’t read ’em.’

‘Evidence is stacking up the other way.’

‘I don’t. My folks know I like movies is all.’

‘Movies and sweet, sweet American titties.’

Later, George saw Ray with the magazine and said, ‘Planning your future.’

‘What?’

‘The movies. Last night we were talking and you were talking about movies. You had a whole theory going about how movies should look more like photos in newspapers. And that thing about the air. Remember?’

‘Drunk is what I was.’

‘Made sense to me. What else are you gonna do when you get back?’

‘Come on.’

‘I’m serious.’

Ray didn’t know what to say. Those words and ideas coming out of another person, coming out of George, made them seem real, seem possible. Ray’s scenarios, the boxer and the lovers unfolded afresh in his imagination, full of light and life.

8

Ray looked out through the back of the truck at the cold white rain, the road shining into mud and the snarling face of the truck behind. They were in foothills on an uncomfortable twisting drive. Either side there was forest, dark and inward, loud under the rain. Actually, through the gasoline and wet uniforms the world smelled good. The main thing was not to jump out of the truck, not to try and escape into the woods. Ray concentrated on not moving and allowing himself to be safely carried to his death. Thoughts kept coming to him, convulsions of his mind that showed bodies, explosions, Wosniak and Floyd ripped and dead, their eyes empty.

They shouldn’t have had that time off. It made it so much harder to go back to running and killing, to a world of possible annihilation from three hundred and sixty degrees at any split second in time. Strangely, one of the hardest things was pulling the trigger, to open fire. Ray had only ever had to do it at a distance, his bullets flicking forwards into so much empty space it seemed they could only land harmlessly. Not like Randall and Carlson who had fired point blank through hair, skin, bone and blood, men swaying and falling, no longer men. ‘Point Blank Range’ was maybe a good name for a movie. Ray would hesitate at such
a moment and maybe that is what would kill him, soon, up there in the mountains. He smiled to himself. Going up into the mountains to die.

That night, before the dawn attack, under a tarp drumming with the rain, George spoke seriously to Ray. They were standing together. Ray could tell from the way they were breathing and not saying anything that they were both thinking about the fighting to come and how things had been in the desert. He could tell because there wasn’t much else they could be thinking about. When he said slowly to himself, ‘Yep, yep,’ George answered, ‘Oh, yes, indeed.’

Ray went on. ‘Hell of a …’

‘Sure was.’

‘I’m pleased that part’s over.’

‘Oh, it’s over. Came and went.’

‘Came and fucking went. Boom.’

‘I’ve been thinking, though.’

‘Not sure you ought to be doing that,’ Ray said.

‘Things got awful clear for a while out there. Couldn’t help it, I suppose. I’m going to tell you, Ray.’

‘What?’

George pressed his palm against his forehead then looked at it. ‘It’s about the fighting.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m thinking if it’s a straight out question of you against another man.’

‘Yes?’

‘Then you shouldn’t do it. You should let yourself be killed. I mean me. I don’t want to kill the other guy.’

‘Holy crap, George. Don’t fucking say that. In a fucking war?’

‘You can shoot, I’m not saying that, only above them or to the side. Take them prisoner. But I don’t want to shoot the man. It’s not right. Like I said, it came clear.’

‘George, you son of a bitch, don’t say this. What do you think that does to your chances?’

‘Really? Ray, statistically what do you think it does to your chances, killing or not killing? Do you think it makes a blind bit of difference? And anyway, chances, fuck ’em. You can’t steer by chances.’

‘George, come on,’ Ray pleaded. ‘I think you should change your mind. We’ll be out there in a couple hours.’

‘Change it. Just throw a switch and change it. I can’t.’

‘Goddammit George, I don’t want you …’

‘I know, I know. But what are we gonna do?’

9

The gull lifted its wings, leaned into the wind and floated up from the harbour wall.

Will watched it adjust its angles and move, sliding away, rising up and backwards on a gust. With its pale, shallow eyes, its long yellow bill switching from side to side, it scanned the scene. Its breast feathers flickered as it hung there, thinking, then it planed down, raced low over the water, circled around and settled back on the wall, folding its grey wings away. It tilted its head back and called at nothing.

For Will it was painful to find himself so engrossed, registering this bird’s flight as an event in his day. Boredom this profound was painful. Standing there on guard for long hours of empty daylight made his chest tight, his hands feel weak.

The sea shifted quietly inside the square arms of the harbour wall, restless colour inside a shape. Changing clouds and birds.

The perimeters had to be secure. When cargo came in, as it did every so often, Will or one of the other Field Security men would give it the once over and then try to prevent any of it from being stolen. It was with this task that Will was coming to understand something of the large, rambling incompetence of the war effort. Frequently it was misdirected cargo that
arrived. He had checked in a shipload of desert fighting equipment that had arrived from a port in North Africa, sent away for no apparent reason from precisely the place where it would have been of use. Theft was impossible to stop. Moving equipment and supplies was evidently like carrying water in your cupped palms. Several times in one of the town’s dismal pubs, Will had been offered tinned foods that he had checked off earlier that day and which were addressed to foreign theatres of operation.

A kind of low comedy seemed to have taken hold of the town. Petty crime, overworked prostitutes, talkative invalids, suspect fishermen, vain girls. Some Americans were stationed there and the local women had been surfeited with attention. As far as Will could see it had made them all prone to overestimate their own charms, vulgarly capricious and avid for gifts. The girl who enlivened Will’s imagination was not to be found among them. She was dark, different, intelligent, aloof. Will pictured a sharp refinement to her beauty: aquiline, subtly expressive, almost like speech; it spoke to him. She would have little time for the common run of people but she would notice him, she would recognise him, his complexity and command. She would be passionate. Perhaps she was the daughter of a vicar or a medical man. She read into the night and walked along the coastline. She was nothing like the laughing dollies of the pubs, smelling of face powder and cigarettes and beer.