There’s a long long trail awinding… Over there! Over there!
In the subway their eyes pop as they spell out APOCALYPSE, typhus, cholera, shrapnel, insurrection, death in fire, death in water, death in hunger, death in mud.
Oh it’s a long way to Madymosell from Armenteers, over there! The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming. Down Fifth Avenue the bands blare for the Liberty Loan drive, for the Red Cross drive. Hospital ships sneak up the harbor and unload furtively at night in old docks in Jersey. Up Fifth Avenue the flags of the seventeen nations are flaring curling in the shrill hungry wind.
O the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree And green grows the grass in God’s country.
The great flags flap and tug at their lashings on the creaking goldknobbed poles up Fifth Avenue.
Captain James Merivale D.S.C. lay with his eyes closed while the barber’s padded fingers gently stroked his chin. The lather tickled his nostrils; he could smell bay rum, hear the drone of an electric vibrator, the snipping of scissors.
‘A little face massage sir, get rid of a few of those blackheads sir,’ burred the barber in his ear. The barber was bald and had a round blue chin.
‘All right,’ drawled Merivale, ‘go as far as you like. This is the first decent shave I’ve had since war was declared.’
‘Just in from overseas, Captain?’
‘Yare… been making the world safe for democracy.’
The barber smothered his words under a hot towel. ‘A little lilac water Captain?’
‘No dont put any of your damn lotions on me, just a little witchhazel or something antiseptic.’
The blond manicure girl had faintly beaded lashes; she looked up at him bewitchingly, her rosebud lips parted. ‘I guess you’ve just landed Captain… My you’ve got a good tan.’ He gave up his hand to her on the little white table. ‘It’s a long time Captain since anybody took care of these hands.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘Look how the cuticle’s grown.’
‘We were too busy for anything like that. I’m a free man since eight o’clock that’s all.’
‘Oh it must have been terr… ible.’
‘Oh it was a great little war while it lasted.’
‘I’ll say it was… And now you’re all through Captain?’
‘Of course I keep my commission in the reserve corps.’
She gave his hand a last playful tap and he got to his feet.
He put tips into the soft palm of the barber and the hard palm of the colored boy who handed him his hat, and walked slowly up the white marble steps. On the landing was a mirror. Captain James Merivale stopped to look at Captain James Merivale. He was a tall straightfeatured young man with a slight heaviness under the chin. He wore a neatfitting whipcord uniform picked out by the insignia of the Rainbow Division, well furnished with ribbons and servicestripes. The light of the mirror was reflected silvery on either calf of his puttees. He cleared his throat as he looked himself up and down. A young man in civilian clothes came up behind him.
‘Hello James, all cleaned up?’
‘You betcher… Say isnt it a damn fool rule not letting us wear Sam Browne belts? Spoils the whole uniform…’
‘They can take all their Sam Browne’s belts and hang them on the Commanding General’s fanny for all I care… I’m a civilian.’
‘You’re still an officer in the reserve corps, dont forget that.’
‘They can take their reserve corps and shove it ten thousand miles up the creek. Let’s go have a drink.’
‘I’ve got to go up and see the folks.’ They had come out on Fortysecond Street. ‘Well so long James, I’m going to get so drunk… Just imagine being free.’ ‘So long Jerry, dont do anything I wouldnt do.’
Merivale walked west along Fortysecond. There were still flags out, drooping from windows, waggling lazily from poles in the September breeze. He looked in the shops as he walked along; flowers, women’s stockings, candy, shirts and neckties, dresses, colored draperies through glinting plateglass, beyond a stream of faces, men’s razorscraped faces, girls’ faces with rouged lips and powdered noses. It made him feel flushed and excited. He fidgeted when he got in the subway. ‘Look at the stripes that one has… He’s a D.S.C.,’ he heard a girl say to another. He got out at Seventysecond and walked with his chest stuck out down the too familiar brownstone street towards the river.
‘How do you do, Captain Merivale,’ said the elevator man.
‘Well, are you out James?’ cried his mother running into his arms.
He nodded and kissed her. She looked pale and wilted in her black dress. Maisie, also in black, came rustling tall and rosy-cheeked behind her. ‘It’s wonderful to find you both looking so well.’
‘Of course we are… as well as could be expected. My dear we’ve had a terrible time… You’re the head of the family now, James.’
‘Poor daddy… to go off like that.’
‘That was something you missed… Thousands of people died of it in New York alone.’
He hugged Maisie with one arm and his mother with the other. Nobody spoke.
‘Well,’ said Merivale walking into the living room, ‘it was a great war while it lasted.’ His mother and sister followed on his heels. He sat down in the leather chair and stretched out his polished legs. ‘You dont know how wonderful it is to get home.’
Mrs Merivale drew up her chair close to his. ‘Now dear you just tell us all about it.’
In the dark of the stoop in front of the tenement door, he reaches for her and drags her to him. ‘Dont Bouy, dont; dont be rough.’ His arms tighten like knotted cords round her back; her knees are trembling. His mouth is groping for her mouth along one cheekbone, down the side of her nose. She cant breathe with his lips probing her lips. ‘Oh I cant stand it.’ He holds her away from him. She is staggering panting against the wall held up by his big hands.
‘Nutten to worry about,’ he whispers gently.
‘I’ve got to go, it’s late… I have to get up at six.’
‘Well what time do you think I get up?’
‘It’s mommer who might catch me…’
‘Tell her to go to hell.’
‘I will some day… worse’n that… if she dont quit pickin on me.’ She takes hold of his stubbly cheeks and kisses him quickly on the mouth and has broken away from him and run up the four flights of grimy stairs.
The door is still on the latch. She strips off her dancing pumps and walks carefully through the kitchenette on aching feet. From the next room comes the wheezy doublebarreled snoring of her uncle and aunt. Somebody loves me, I wonder who… The tune is all through her body, in the throb of her feet, in the tingling place on her back where he held her tight dancing with her. Anna you’ve got to forget it or you wont sleep. Anna you got to forget. Dishes on the tables set for breakfast jingle tingle hideously when she bumps against it.
‘That you Anna?’ comes a sleepy querulous voice from her mother’s bed.
‘Went to get a drink o water mommer.’ The old woman lets the breath out in a groan through her teeth, the bedsprings creak as she turns over. Asleep all the time.
Somebody loves me, I wonder who. She slips off her party dress and gets into her nightgown. Then she tiptoes to the closet to hang up the dress and at last slides between the covers little by little so the slats wont creak. I wonder who. Shuffle shuffle, bright lights, pink blobbing faces, grabbing arms, tense thighs, bouncing feet. I wonder who. Shuffle, droning saxophone tease, shuffle in time to the drum, trombone, clarinet. Feet, thighs, cheek to cheek, Somebody loves me… Shuffle shuffle. I wonder who.