“He smells ripe,” said Van Horne, pinching his nostrils as he joined Thomas on the areola.
“If not rotten,” said the priest, watching Miriam cram a bloody fillet into the ciborium.
“You know, I probably believe in Him more strongly right now than I ever did when He was alive.” The captain dropped his hand, letting his nostrils spring open. “It’s an absolute miracle, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what it is.” Fanning himself with his Panama hat, Thomas turned toward the communicants.
“Either that, or His body got caught on the crest of the Canary Current, entered the North Atlantic Drift…”
“Ite,” Thomas announced in a strong, clear voice.
“…and then came ’round full circle.”
“Missa est.”
“So what do you think, Father? A miracle, or the North Atlantic Drift?”
“I think it’s all the same thing,” said the dazed, exhausted, satiated priest.
FEAST
WILD APPLAUSE AND delirious cheers greeted Bob Hope as, dressed in baggy green combat fatigues and a white golfing cap, he stepped onto the stage of the Midnight Sun Canteen. The spotlight caught his famous and complex nose, limning its beloved contours.
“I’m sure havin’ a swell time here on Jan Mayen Island,” the comedian began, waving to his audience: a hundred and thirty-two Navy pilots and gunners — most of them wearing chocolate brown bomber jackets with black fur collars — plus two hundred and ten sailors in white bucket hats and blue neckerchiefs. “You all know what Jan Mayen is.” He tapped the floor mike, producing an amplified thock. “Shangri-La with icicles!”
Appreciative howls. Delighted guffaws.
Oliver, sitting alone, did not laugh. He polished off his second Frydenlund beer of the evening, burped, and slumped down farther in his chair. Some terrible tragedy, he was sure, had overtaken Cassandra and the Valparaíso. Typhoon, maelstrom, tsunami — or maybe the force was human, for surely there were institutions other than the Central Park West Enlightenment League that wished to get God’s carcass out of the way, institutions that wouldn’t hesitate to sink a supertanker or two in the process.
Albert Flume and his partner ambled up to Oliver’s table. “May we join you?”
“Sure.”
“Another beer?” asked Sidney Pembroke, pointing to the pair of empty bottles.
“Yeah, why not?”
“Last night I slept in the barracks along with the boys,” said Bob Hope. Hands in pockets, he hunched toward the mike. “You know what barracks are. That’s two thousand cots separated by individual crap games.”
A Hope classic. The pilots, gunners, and sailors nearly fell out of their chairs.
“Alby, we done good,” said Pembroke.
“Definitely one of our better productions,” said Flume. “Hey, girl-o’-my-dreams!” he called toward a pretty, honey-blonde hostess as, hips swaying, she carried a plate of ham sandwiches across the room. “Bring our friend Oliver here a Frydenlund!”
The impresarios’ pride was in fact justified. In a mere three days they’d managed to turn the Sundog Saloon into a forties USO club. Except for the availability of beer, the Midnight Sun Canteen was entirely authentic, right down to the fluted public-address speakers on the girders, the SERVICEMEN ONLY sign above the front door, and the LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS and NIMITZ HAS NO LIMITS posters on the walls. At first Vladimir Panshin had resisted the transformation, figuring his usual clientele would be irate, but then he realized that for every Ibsen City scientist who stayed away at least two Reenactment Society members would take his place.
The refurbishing had cost Oliver nearly eighty-five thousand dollars, most of it going to the carpenters and electricians they’d ferried over from Trondheim, but that sum was nothing compared to the sizable percentage of his bank account Pembroke and Flume had consumed in procuring the talent. The New York office of Actors Equity had sent two dozen ingenues and chorus girls, all of them more than willing to put on cocktail aprons and flirt with a bunch of middle-aged schizophrenics who thought they were fighting World War Two. From the William Morris Agency had come Sonny Orbach and His Harmonicoots, sixteen septuagenarian musicians who, when sufficiently plastered on Frydenlund, became a veritable reincarnation of Glenn Miller’s band. But the impresarios’ real coup was tracking down the amazingly gifted and chronically obscure Kovitsky Brothers: Myron, Arnold, and Jake, aka the Great American Nostalgia Machine — borscht-circuit mimics whose repertoire extended beyond such obvious choices as Bob Hope and Al Jolson into the rarefied world of female impersonation. Myron did a first-rate Kate Smith, Arnold a credible Marlene Dietrich, Jake a passable Ethel Merman and a positively uncanny Frances Langford. Fusing their falsettos in tight, three-part harmony, the Kovitsky Brothers could make you swear you were hearing the Andrews Sisters singing “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me).”
Oliver looked at his watch. Five P.M. Damn. Commander Wade McClusky’s portrayer should have reported in well over an hour ago.
“You know, I recently figured out that all General Tojo wants is peace,” said Hope. “A piece of China, a piece of Australia, a piece of the Philippines…”
By his own account, Wade McClusky was a crackerjack target spotter. While still an ensign, he’d become known as the man who could pick out a camouflaged aircraft factory from three miles up, though Oliver was unclear on whether it was the real McClusky, the real McClusky’s portrayer, or the real McClusky’s portrayer’s fictionalized version of the real McClusky who boasted this talent. In any event, ten hours earlier the stalwart leader of Air Group Six had taken personal charge of the reconnaisance operation, assuming command of the PBY flying boat code-named “Strawberry Eight.” An auspicious development, Oliver felt. So why wasn’t McClusky back yet? Was the Valparaíso armed with Bofors guns after all? Had Van Horne shot Strawberry Eight out of the sky?
Hope motioned for the gorgeous and curvaceous Dorothy Lamour — Myron Kovitsky in wig, makeup, evening gown, and latex breasts — to join him on stage. Smiling, blowing kisses, Lamour slithered across the canteen, accompanied by choruses of wolf whistles.
“Just wanted you boys to see what you’re fighting for.” Another Hope classic. “Yesterday, Crosby and I were—”
“Attention, everyone! Attention!” A breathless voice broke from the loudspeakers, popping and fizzing like a draught of Moxie encountering an ice cube. “This is Admiral Spruance on Enterprise! Great news, men! Barely four hours ago, sixteen army B-25s took off from the carrier Hornet under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle and dropped over fifty demolition bombs on the industrial heart of Tokyo!”
Whoops and applause resounded through the Midnight Sun Canteen.
“The extent of the damage is not known,” Spruance’s portrayer continued, “but President Roosevelt is calling the Doolittle raid ‘a major blow to enemy morale’!”
The war reenactors stomped their feet. Bewildered but eager to please, the hostesses set down their sandwich trays and cheered.
“That is all, men!”
When the tumult died away, the spotlight pivoted toward the northeast corner, just as Sonny Orbach and His Harmonicoots, in full evening attire, launched into a spirited imitation of Glenn Miller’s “Pistol Packin’ Mama.” Leaping up, the Midnight Sun Canteen’s patrons began jitterbugging — with each other, with their hostesses, and, in the case of one fantastically lucky tail gunner, with Dorothy Lamour herself.
At the next table over, a perky redheaded hostess was busy earning her salary, sharing a Coca-Cola with a chunky sailor in his early forties.
“…not supposed to ask where you’re going,” the hostess was saying as Oliver tuned in their conversation.
“That’s right,” the sailor replied. “The Japs have spies everywhere.”
“But I can ask where you’re from.”
“Georgia, ma’am. Little town called Peach Landing.”