“No thank you, sir. I lost my taste for it.”
His own cigarette in hand, the captain looked at me suspiciously. “That’s unusual, under these conditions. There isn’t much to do at St. E’s but sit and smoke.”
“Oh, they found some floors for me to scrub, sir. That kept me busy.”
The doctors exchanged smiles, although one of them, a roundfaced man with thick glasses, asked, “Is it because you associate smoking with combat? Dr. Wilcox’s report indicates you didn’t begin smoking until you were on Guadalcanal.”
I looked to the captain, rather than the doctor who posed the question. “May I be frank, sir?”
He nodded.
“Suppose smoking does remind me of combat,” I said. “Suppose it does take me back to the Island.”
They looked at me with narrowed eyes.
“Then I’d be crazy to smoke, wouldn’t I? And put myself through all that.”
Only the captain smiled, but then he was a military man; he could understand.
“I don’t feel like a Marine, anymore,” I said. “I don’t feel like a civilian, either, but I’m willing to try to learn. I see no reason to dwell on what’s happened.”
The third doctor spoke for the first time. He had a small mouth, like a fish, and wire-rim glasses. He said, “You suffered amnesia, Mr. Heller. That, too, was an effort not to ‘dwell’ on your traumatic experiences.”
“I don’t want to forget what happened, or anyway I don’t want to ‘repress’ it, as Dr. Wilcox calls it. But I do want to get on with my life.”
Dr. Wilcox came to my defense, saying, “I think I’ve made it clear in my report that Private Heller quickly learned to regard his experience in its true perspective, as a thing of the past-something that no longer threatens his safety. I might add that it took only simple hypnosis, and no drug therapy or shock treatments, to achieve this effect.”
The captain waved a hand at Wilcox, as if to quiet him on subjects better spoken about when the patient wasn’t present.
But the doctor with the fish’s mouth and the wire glasses picked up on Wilcox’s little speech, taking offense, bristling openly, patient present or not: “I hope by that that you don’t mean to imply anything derogatory about the use of drugs or shock by others here at St. Elizabeth’s.”
“Not at all. Merely that some battle neuroses are relatively minor compared to chronic cases we might encounter from within the civilian population.”
“Gentlemen, please,” the captain said. He looked like he wished he had a gavel to pound. Instead he looked at me and said, “We are going to have to ask you some questions, at some length, before we can reach a decision.”
“Understood, sir. But before you begin, could you answer my question?”
“Private?”
“You said some special circumstances had come up, that made this early hearing necessary.”
The captain nodded. “A federal prosecutor in Chicago wants you to give testimony before a grand jury.”
“Oh.” I thought I knew what that was about.
But the captain didn’t realize that, and he shuffled through some papers, looking for the answer to a question I hadn’t asked. “It involves racketeers and the film industry, I believe. Yes, here it is. The defendants include Frank Nitti, Louis Campagna and others.”
“I see.”
“You seem strangely disinterested, Private. Do you remember the incident this involves?”
I couldn’t “repress” a smile. I said, “I don’t have amnesia anymore, sir. But you can get amnesia permanently testifying against Frank Nitti.”
For the first time the captain frowned; I’d overstepped my bounds-after all, I wasn’t discharged yet. I was still in the service.
“Does that mean you’re not interested in testifying?”
“Does it work that way? If I choose to testify, I’m sane and a civilian? And if I choose not to, I’m crazy and a Marine?”
The captain wasn’t at all pleased with me; but he only said, calmly, “There are no strings attached to this hearing. We were merely requested to move it up a few weeks, to give a federal prosecutor-in Chicago-the opportunity to speak with you. Nobody’s requiring you to do anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But I’m sure the government would appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“After all, it is one government. The same government prosecuting these gangsters is the one you chose to defend-enlisting, out of patriotic zeal.”
Out of a bottle is more like it, I thought, but was smart enough to “repress” that, too.
“At any rate, we’ve been asked to consider your case, and we do have a few more questions for you.”
The interview covered a lot of things-my memories and my feelings about what had happened on Guadalcanal. How and why I lied about my age enlisting. They even talked to me about the suicide of my father. One of them seemed to find it significant that I had carried the gun my father killed himself with as my personal weapon, thereafter. I explained that I had done that to make sure I never took killing too lightly, never used the thing too easily. But you killed in combat, didn’t you? Yes, I said, but I left that gun home.
Anyway, it covered lots of ground, including how my malaria hadn’t flared up since I first got here, and I didn’t lose my temper anymore or crack wise and the captain seemed to like me again by the end of the interview. I was dismissed. There were chairs just outside the conference room, where I could sit and wait for the verdict. I sat and looked at the speckled marble floor. Part of me wanted a smoke, but I didn’t give in.
“Hi.”
I looked up. It was that pretty little nurse from the fourth floor; I hadn’t seen her in weeks. She was a student nurse actually. Her name was Sara, and we’d struck up a friendship.
“Well, hello,” I said.
“Mind if I sit down?”
“I’d mind if you didn’t.”
She sat, smoothed out the white apron over the checked dress; her blouse was blue, her cap white. And her eyes were still light blue, freckles still trailed across a cute pugish nose. She had some legs; you can have Betty Grable.
“I heard you were getting your Board of Review today,” she said. “I just wanted to come down and wish you luck.”
“Too late for that. I already said my piece.”
“I wouldn’t worry. You’ve made remarkable progress. I don’t know of anybody ever getting a Board of Review after only a couple of months.”
“Uncle Sam has something else in mind for me, that’s all.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Just a federal grand jury they want me to testify to, for some stupid extortion racket that dates back before the war.”
Her tight little smile crinkled her chin. “It all seems so…unimportant, somehow, doesn’t it? What happened before the war.”
“Yeah. It all kind of pales, that life back there.”
“You’ll be going back to it.”
I shook my head. “It’s all changed. Haven’t you heard, lady? There’s a war on.”
“Nate. Are you sleeping better now?”
I put a smile on for her. “Oh, yeah. Sure. Fine. No problem.”
“You had some rough nights on the fourth floor.”
“I graduated to the floors below, remember? I’m the wonder boy, or I would be if I were younger.”
“You weren’t sleeping much at all. And when you did…”
When I did I had nightmares of combat and I woke up screaming, like Monawk.
“Not anymore,” I said. “Ah, you know, that Doc Wilcox is a whiz. He put my head back together, piece by piece. I feel great.”
“You have dark circles under your eyes.”
I was glad she wasn’t on the Board of Review.
“I’m fine, honestly. If I wasn’t sleeping, how could I be so bright and cheery today?”
“You get plenty of rest sitting around the dayroom. You seem able to catch naps, sitting there, not knowing you’re sleeping. But at night-”
At night, sleep refused to come, until I was so tired it and the nightmares sneaked up on me, like a Jap with a knife in the dark.