Work Text:
Early February, 1944
It was on a bright, coldish, cloudless winter morning that Lieutenant Colonel Korn drove to the outskirts of the base to welcome the new group commander. The plane from the mainland took its time arriving, so, rather than circle around, Korn parked his jeep on a low rocky promontory that overlooked the runway and, behind it, the choppy sea. The sea and the sky seemed the same dull blue, and all the brush was dyed a winter-bleak khaki, save some purplish sage on the bluffs. Korn knew he blurred right into the backdrop in his dingy tan uniform: harmless, by all appearances. A bland nonentity. It brought him a great deal of satisfaction to see a person’s gaze slide right over him fluidly as it would over an unscenic feature of the landscape, and it was with savory anticipation of being overlooked that he watched the plane from Elba descend, land and deposit the man who would replace Nevers. Cathcart. Korn gave a wave when he appeared in the open cabin door. He had decided on driving out himself because it would show the new commander how thoughtful he was, how helpful, how eager to please and how hands-on.
Even from a distance it was clear that this Cathcart was enormous; he seemed to have to fold in half to make it out of the cabin, and he dwarfed the two valets who came down the stairs after him with his luggage and pointed him toward Korn on the overlook. Korn got a better picture of the colonel as the party approached. He had expected milder weather, by the way he had draped his long beige overcoat across his shoulders like a cape. No, Korn decided, if it had been an error in forecasting he would have stopped to pull the coat on, and he didn’t, even as it threatened to slip off of him on every third step he took. It was a purely aesthetic choice. Promising.
Cathcart’s predecessor, Nevers, had been near-elderly and egalitarian, a former flight engineer who had always tried to connect with the men, often by flying with them, which had been his downfall. Of course, Korn hadn’t killed Nevers. Sure, he had made sure the old man’s name was signed onto riskier missions, like the pass over Arezzo that had finally done him in, but it wasn’t as if Korn had planned on that in any meaningful way. That wasn’t his style. And he didn’t feel guilty; the way Korn saw it he had done Nevers a favor, really, by putting him out of his misery. Nevers had shown no sign of aspiring to a higher station, so what could he have had to live for? He had been a dead end, under whom Korn had found no hope for advancement, under whom Korn had been ill-utilized and little-known around the base. Under whom he had festered in obscurity. Although Korn had admired the colonel’s ability to keep morale up, his lack of initiative meant he and Korn could never have been very close.
Cathcart reached Korn’s jeep on the outcropping and gave a nod. “Chuck,” was the first thing he said, extending a hand with a dispassionate bluffness.
Korn took it, charmed by the artifice of this opening. He’d started with a first name because he was trying for tough, for battle-hardened, by making like he was beyond formalities. Korn could work with that. “Henry,” he replied in kind. “Blackie, if you like.”
Chuck struggled with his billowing coat, trapped by his own vague introduction: he had failed to learn Korn’s name and station, and didn’t know how to proceed without them. “Well,” he said.
“Your new deputy commander, Chuck, and air executive officer of the group,” Korn said, taking pity on him. “Korn is my name.”
“Right, I saw it in the rolls. Korn with a K, what the hell kind of a name is that?” Cathcart asked, suspicious.
“Oh, Kornish.” The lieutenant colonel cultivated a certain obscurity. “Hop in, Chuck,” he said, seeing that Cathcart’s small entourage had finally caught up with him.
“My chauffeur can drive,” Cathcart offered, with a magnanimous air, and Korn was happy to join him in the back seat while one of the two harried attendants took the wheel.
“Well, why don’t you tell me about yourself, Colonel? Why don’t I call you ‘Colonel’ after all? I can see that you’re a professional man,” Korn said, laying it on thick.
Cathcart nodded. He was so pale that the bridge of his nose was already starting to color. Korn marveled. Wherever did they find him?
“Well,” he began. “Well, I was stationed in Telergma with the 18th Group in ’42, but after we took Pantelleria I was transferred up to France, and I was there all last year with the 18th until we re-joined the Twenty-Seventh Air Force.” His voice had dropped an octave into what was apparently a well-practiced monologue.
“Funny, I was in Telergma, too,” Korn said. “With the 225th Group, and I pitched in with Pantelleria before I came up here last summer.” In Telergma, Korn’s main responsibility had been the drafting and distribution of false intelligence in the form of pamphlets designed to sap the enemy’s will. These had been celebrated for their ability to completely upend a reader’s worldview, leaving him a wreck by the time he reached the final page. The trick was to turn him on his head continually, until he had no idea which way was up, until he second-guessed every second thought he had.
“Any reason you left your last post?” Cathcart asked in an offhand manner, trying to scare him.
“They didn’t like my ideas for the names of operations,” Korn answered honestly.
Cathcart frowned. He was younger than Korn had expected, and better looking; he looked like Hollywood’s idea of a war hero, like a perfect matinee idol. That was when he kept still. When he moved, he seemed to flicker jerkily from pose to pose, faltering between each like a figure from a damaged roll of film. His mannerisms seemed lifted off of someone else. Then he seemed overinvested in Korn’s responses, too, he seemed to hang on each word Korn said even while striving to intimidate him. Each of these impressions was very subtle, barely even noticeable, but Korn, a very observant person, found the combined effect very powerful. He considered this objectively. Was it a net positive or negative, Cathcart’s appeal to him? Would it be a hindrance? He hadn’t accounted for it in advance. He observed that Cathcart wore no wedding ring, and was taken aback by the internal enthusiasm with which he received this fact. Absurd, to give it any thought at all.
They reached the top of a sparsely vegetated rise, from which they had a view of the whole base. “Welcome to Pianosa, Colonel,” Korn said. “I think you’ll find it very hospitable.”
When Korn had first gotten the news that Nevers had died, he had understood in an instant that he was going to be promoted to full colonel and group commander. He had been completely secure in that knowledge. He had spent the whole of the funeral waiting for General Dreedle to move up behind him and inform him at a whisper of his new position, but instead Dreedle had informed him that Wing was importing a ready-made colonel from the Eighteenth Bombardment Group.
Korn had been, to put it mildly, broken up by it.
But after he had calmed down, he’d decided to take the development in stride. He had known that Wing couldn’t possibly fail to afford him the same opportunity twice, so he had known that he would ascend to his rightful station just as soon as he eliminated this new replacement. He would finally have mastery over all of Pianosa, over all the little lives playing out there. He would eliminate the last scraps of logic to the system of rewards and punishment that governed those lives. He would make sure no one got what he deserved. About the military efficiency of the unit, or course, he couldn’t care less. But as a full colonel, the only people he’d have to answer to would be a strait of ocean away.
There were a couple of different ways Korn thought he might rid himself of Cathcart. He could work earnestly to promote the new colonel to general, for at Wing, with a wider sphere of concern, he’d be out of Korn’s figurative hair. He could adopt a more proactive version of the approach he had taken with Nevers; he hadn’t gotten the chance to try poisoning. Pianosa was bad luck, his superiors would conclude. Korn’s favorite pet idea, however, was sabotage, was leading the new commander backward into rash decisions that would get him demoted or court-martialed. It would be so gratifying to humiliate Nevers’s successor, for there was something unsatisfying about the fact that Nevers had died with all his dignity intact, a hero, buried with his medals. Well, figuratively. Korn would prefer that the replacement didn’t get off so easy. But he was equally prepared to try promotion, demotion, murder, or some combination of the three just so long as he would be able to work from the center of a spider’s web, pulling minute filaments of fate. He was happiest as a marionettist. The fine details of the plan, anyway, would be decided by Cathcart’s temperament. Cathcart would choose for him, in a manner of speaking.
They rounded a corner and started slowly down the narrow goatpath carved into the side of the basin that held the base. “Say, Korn,” Cathcart said. “How many missions are your men flying?”
“Your men now, sir. Twenty-five has been the standard in this group.”
Cathcart blinked against the sun. “It was more in Telergma. It’s more on the mainland. It’s forty. So.”
“So, Colonel?” Korn asked, as if he didn’t follow.
“So if Wing was looking at all the groups and comparing, Korn, they would say you’ve been doing the bare minimum,” he said imperiously.
Any doubts Korn had were assuaged. He didn’t put much faith in the divine, as a rule, but he knew, just by the look in Cathcart’s pale eyes, that the stars had aligned for him this time. They’d sent him someone with ambition. “It’s your call, sir,” he said, smiling.
“It’s my call, Korn, but I think we should take them up to thirty, to start, as soon as we can. I wouldn’t want my men accused of being soft.”
“No, you certainly wouldn’t,” Korn said, elated. “And I happen to know General Dreedle will be pleased to hear it.”
“Oh?” Cathcart said.
“He’s been hoping that someone would take care of that bridge on the Po, down in Ferrara. We might volunteer for it.”
The colonel’s cheeks flushed. His breath quickened. “I’d like that,” he said quietly, with rapt anticipation of the glory he would win. Korn wanted to help him.
April 8th, 1944
It was during the debacle of Ferrara, on the sixth day, when that bridge was still standing undamaged after nine missions, that Cathcart had first seemed to break down in Korn’s presence and had first said aloud that he wanted to be a general. And although Cathcart might have used the phrases before in conversation, it was during the siege of Ferrara that Korn had first taken note of his system of black eyes and cap-feathers. It couldn’t have been more convenient: Cathcart had come to him with a built-in set of incentives and disincentives. Between that and the state the colonel had worked himself into over the bridge, the attention he’d required—well, he and Korn had fallen into a pattern pretty soon after.
Korn could get up early when he had to, and although it was a Saturday he had felt the need to rise with the sun and sit down at his desk at the earliest possible convenience—easy enough, Korn’s desk being only feet from his cot. Unlike Cathcart, who had inherited a spacious office and a bedroom too, Korn did both his sleeping and his scheming in a single ill-lit, ill-ventilated shoebox of a room, like a monk’s cell. He had some affection for it. It was adjacent to Cathcart’s quarters, for one thing, making it very easy for Korn to snoop through Cathcart’s things and catch up on the colonel’s memos to himself, whenever he wanted to frighten him by seeming to read his mind, by seeming to intuit his deepest desires. They were all spelled out in his memorandum pad in his cramped, finicky hand.
Korn preferred his typewriter, a Remington. The fact that the same company manufactured the handguns carried by a few men on base, Appleby and Havermeyer at least, brought Korn a great deal of joy. He found joy in little things, like the sun from the window on his forearm as he sat before the Remington, the anticipation of dipping into the string bag of Smyrna figs beside it on the desk, and the feel of the new paper he threaded into the typewriter’s carriage. He typed:
Colonel,
I’m concerned about
He hesitated.
a confidential intelligence briefing I’ve received. Requires your attention urgently.
This seemed overinvolved, as a flimsy pretense for seducing Cathcart. Was that really his game? If it was, Korn failed to see this scenario offering any opportunities. No, Cathcart needed a hint of what was to come and simultaneously he needed an excuse that would assure him it wasn’t anything shameful. He required just the right hand. Korn tried again.
Colonel,
I can’t help but notice you’ve started taking dinner in your office. Mind if I join you tonight? I’m eager to see Milo’s special dishes that the others don’t know about. Are the rumors true? Are you getting terrapin Maryland?
No, there was something palpably seedy in that, some unintentionally transmitted lust. Finding himself unable to propose an assignation in language that wouldn’t preempt one, Korn, impulsively, came clean:
Colonel,
I meant to be the asp in your bedchamber. And nothing more. Something has gone wrong.
After that last period, he withdrew from the keyboard and slumped back in his chair. He hadn’t intended to start on a confession. But so long as Cathcart was never going to read it, what would be the harm in seeing it through?
I thought it would be easy, Colonel, easier than even Nevers. Of course I saw very early that I couldn’t use the same method, because you would never join your men aboard their planes. You’re an inveterate coward—which I admire in you, of course. I’m just amazed, that you haven’t flown more than a single mission; I guess you got airborne once and decided it wasn’t for you. Frankly, Colonel, I like to picture you on that plane. The way you must have shaken. I’m sure you cried, and tried to hide it.
But, more to the point, I’m afraid raising the missions to thirty hasn’t gotten you anywhere either. Wing doesn’t seem to care one way or the other, just as they didn’t care when we gave Hungry Joe that medal for cracking up his plane accidentally, or when we tried the same trick with that Yossarian, after Ferarra. They didn’t care when I very carelessly embezzled the funds necessary for your farmhouse in the hills, even though, I confess, I went to the trouble of leaving a whole trail of clues pointing to you. They didn’t care when I sent that photostat of your letter of total support for Captain Black’s absurd Loyalty Oath policy. They didn’t care when you promoted Major Major to squadron commander with absolutely no justification.
As for the poisoning, well, that should be the easiest of all. There’s precedent for it, now, with Corporal Snark lacing the sweet potatoes with laundry soap. And there’s the fact that I gave you a taste of bourbon from my desk once, for your nerves, and now I practically spoonfeed it to you. But I can never bring myself to add in a pinch of anything.
Korn read this back to himself and then tore the sheet from the Remington savagely, crumpled it up, and laid it to rest in the wastebasket at his feet. He tried a different tack:
Colonel,
Your chess game is abysmal. It was entertaining for a while to find ways to lose to you, but since I taught you to castle you’ve castled in every match. My winning isn’t an option, of course, because you would start to distrust me. So allow me to tell you that you expend too many turns at the top of each game freeing your rooks. And you never see my bishops coming. It’s grown monotonous.
Oh, I don’t mean it, Colonel. You know I could never really tire of you.
Korn withdrew again but didn’t crumple this page, feeling a little sentimental fondness for it. He left it in the typewriter as he stood and made the short trip to the far end of the room to look out his single window at the rising sun. It was the day before Easter. The services on Sunday would be conducted by a chaplain from the mainland, because their own group’s chaplain was an Anabaptist and apparently his sect didn’t partake of the Movable Feast. Korn hated that chaplain. Anyway, it had been Korn’s idea, weeks before, that Colonel Cathcart should take an evening of rest and repose in his hill house on the pretense of holding an orgy made all the more illicit by its taking place on Holy Saturday. Of course Cathcart was holding no such thing. Korn had instituted Cathcart’s schedule of visits to the farmhouse in order to get a periodic respite from him; it had been easy enough to convince him that the hypothetical orgies were integral to his mystique.
So Cathcart would be gone, and it seemed likely that in his absence a real orgy might break out on the base, by how excitable the men had been the night before at the officers’ club. A certain seasonal feeling had descended upon Pianosa, and it wasn’t at all pious. Korn was sure that in Rome it was a grave, stately ceremony, but out here in the country they had all turned pagan in a way, surrounded on all sides by frank, fertile, unsentimental nature. The brush was turning green, and under it the warm soil was stirring with restless ground bees and other blind things in burrows.
I hope in the spirit of Easter you can pardon me, Colonel, for plotting your demise. Jesus was the first sucker, you know, so you’re in good company. Haven’t you always wanted friends in high places?
With these obvious gags out of his system, Korn tilted again at a convincing excuse for a private meeting. But solemnity was difficult.
Colonel,
I find your attention to uniform maintenance unsatisfactory.
Well, that was rich, coming from him. He realized that he had no idea what he would do even if he did manage somehow to get Cathcart alone. Korn felt the need of a gimmick, of one of his own remedies, because without a remedy his task seemed impossible. He abandoned it for the moment and lapsed into parody.
Allow me to shave the trouble spots on your chin, Colonel. Let me iron your uniforms, and polish your medals where they hang on your chest. The pleasure would be all mine.
If I had to pin down a birthdate for this hang-up, I’d say it was the first time I saw you in the briefing room, snapping at Danby. You wanted to know who the hell let the enlisted men in. How little they meant to you, and how little he meant if he wasn’t doing anything for you. You know, Colonel, I knew you wanted to be a general long before you told me. I learned to recognize the look of people like you, of people with aspirations, long before the war. I’ve been to a beauty pageant and picked the career girls out of the lineup, and that morning you might as well have been wearing your bathing suit and paper sash. Why, Miss New York State, how comely your corn-fed shoulders, this bald, bespectacled gentleman judge must remark. Yes, I knew by the look of you. I’ve seen a prize cow receiving her purple ribbon.
...I disgust myself, sometimes, Colonel. This perversion is a curse.
Korn recalled how Cathcart had treated him in the first few days of his tenure, how he’d condescended. How, for a time, he had tried to reference his own past successes in every conversation they’d had.
“And what did you do before the war, Korn?” was the sort of note he would typically end on. He needed a flattering point of comparison, Korn came to understand.
“Law,” Korn answered, when asked this specific question.
“Law?” Cathcart repeated, prickling a little, threatened.
“Nothing too lofty. Property law, mostly, just helping oil companies buy the land out from under poor ignorant hicks. It was easy to find the oil, any idiot could’ve. All the company had to do was follow around this family of Creeks from Enid.”
“What?”
“They picked me up because I could speak French, and that’s what the hicks speak down in Louisiana.”
But this failed to reaffirm Cathcart’s faith in his own superiority. He narrowed his eyes. “Ever play any sports, Korn?” he asked, looking for an arena in which he could win.
Korn would give him one. “No. Never very athletic.”
“Well, we can’t all be,” Cathcart said, instantly placated. “Me, I would’ve been an All-American if I hadn’t decided to focus on my studies. At Harvard.”
“What position did you play, Colonel?” Korn asked. Something about making small talk with Cathcart, the more banal the better, always delighted him. It was like playing House, somehow.
“Wide receiver,” Cathcart informed him.
“Wide receiver,” Korn repeated tonelessly, in disbelief.
“Yeah, for a while,” Cathcart said. “But then they started me as a tight end.”
“Of course.”
But, as the old chestnut goes, which team did you play for? I have a pretty good idea now, but then I wasn’t sure. Innuendo sailed clean over your head, and your own attempts at blue humor were invariably pale and sickly. Oh, by the way, Colonel, the tomato analogy that I assured you was urbane? I lied. Sorry. Well, yes, so that you’d make a fool of yourself trying it out on someone else, sure. But also because it seemed you so wanted me to laugh.
When Cathcart was in the throes of one of his paroxysms of insecurity, he was prone to admissions that seemed as involuntary as the spasmic utterances of a Greek oracle high on oleander leaves. Korn was treated to his first of these admissions on the sixth day of the siege of Ferrara, when he asked Cathcart whether he wanted them to send the men out for the Po bridge again. Cathcart truly hadn’t known whether he wanted to. He kept sending them out for that bridge, he said, and they kept missing it. He couldn’t understand it. Maybe they were no good at all, the men he’d been given. Maybe they’d been given him because someone thought he deserved them. Maybe someone was right.
“Oh, no, Colonel,” Korn had cooed sympathetically. Cathcart’s head had been bowed and his hands tented over the back of his own neck as if he anticipated bombs from above. Korn pulled a chair up to the opposite side of the desk and reached out to pat his elbow.
“I don’t know how I’ll make general at this rate,” Cathcart said, despondent. “I don’t know how I even made colonel.”
“They only made me a lieutenant colonel because of my name, you know,” Korn told him.
“What?”
“Because they thought it would be funny. Colonel Korn.”
Cathcart blinked. “What do you mean, funny? It’s an honest American name, isn’t it?”
“Oh, reasonably honest,” Korn said, but Cathcart was already back on the topic of his own indecision.
“I didn’t even vote in the last election,” he confessed, choking back a sob.
“No?” Korn asked.
“No! I never have.” He could never decide between any two candidates, Korn learned, so he just didn’t vote. Naturally he told people that he voted for the winner, after all was decided.
“Why, that’s nothing to be ashamed of, Colonel,” Korn assured him. “That’s just hedging your bets. Me, I was a Republican when Hoover was in, and then as soon as Roosevelt hired me—story for another time—I was a Democrat. C’est bon, c’est bon.”
“That’s French,” Cathcart observed, peeking over his hirsute forearms now.
“Very good, Colonel, very astute. Know what it means?” Cathcart hesitated, so Korn continued. “‘Hunky dory,’ roughly. Prenez courage, Colonel. Now, why don’t we send them to Ferrara again after all, and see if we can’t get that bridge. I have a good feeling. I know the weather’s going to be nice.”
There was a diagram like a dichotomous key that Korn developed after a few instances like this and came to follow, always, when consoling the colonel. Express sympathies. Did that work? If not then sympathize further. Indulge him. Make sure he knows he was in the right, entirely, and then clown a little. Propose a toast and retrieve the bourbon. The faster Korn could successfully comfort Cathcart, the faster Cathcart would come to associate him, subconsciously, with comfort. In his hour of need he’d ring his desk buzzer, Pavlov’s bell, already anticipating Korn’s arrival. And then, when his trust in Korn was complete—
Korn had remembered on his way out the door, after being dismissed, that it was Pavlov who had rung the bell and the dog that had drooled in response. He had tripped on the threshold and nearly fallen.
I feel—only figuratively, of course, Colonel—I feel Nevers’s ghost breathing down my neck. “Why haven’t you killed him, too?” he asks me. He’s very presumptuous, this figurative ghost, very rude. I didn’t kill him, per se, and as for you, well, this is how it was going to go: once you trusted me, I’d tell you to do it, and then I’d tell them I told you not to do it.
But why haven’t I killed you? Well, the thing is, Colonel, I find you funny. My eyes roll so hard my eyelashes flutter. I’ll let you stumble and falter, sure, but I always feed you your line, standing a pace behind you in formation. I always save you. So long as your success depends on my being there, I am happy to help you succeed. See, I was bored before you arrived, and I’m not bored anymore. I walk around the base smiling and frighten the enlisted men.
And the pantomime of romance is nice, at my age, me who never expected to find any kind of match. I do feel ancient out here, compared to all these kids, so thank you for sharing in that with me—that’s only compared to all these kids, you understand, Colonel, please don’t take any offense. It’s nice, the spring air is nice, I’ve enjoyed listening to you go on about the Easter issue of the Saturday Evening Post, about whether it would improve morale any if Milo dyed Sunday’s hardboiled eggs Easter colors.
His arm began to shake, but he resolved to finish his thought.
I like humoring you, Colonel. I like giving you back massages and reassuring you, doing your grunt work, cleaning up your messes. Taking orders and giving them, subtly enough that you don’t pick up. There are days when I feel married and retired out here with you, in our high tower over the ocean. Other days I feel absurdly young.
Even when Korn wasn’t physically tending to Cathcart’s needs, he was preoccupied with him. In idle moments he found himself stringing together what he knew of Cathcart’s pre-war life, all the fragments of it he had gotten in conversation. Tracing Cathcart’s life backwards, Korn saw polished mahogany, monograms, knee-high wool stockings. And dewy fields of cattle, for the Cathcarts had been noble yeoman farmers since they had worn shiny buckles on their hats and shoes. Rich, Cathcart was rich. Not so rich as the Nately boy in their group, but rich enough that even before Harvard there had been a procession of boarding schools intended to prepare him for Harvard, by making sure he knew he was better than the rest—and that he would always seek reassurance of this in authority, which he trusted implicitly. By making sure he would implode without that reassurance. Before boarding school there had been a stately white Colonial home in a sun-dappled country town in southern New York, his father the mayor and his older brother a flying ace.
A lot to live up to, eh, Colonel. Yes, I can see your psyche taking shape.
It seemed likely to Korn that Cathcart was drawn to the gingham-tablecloth, fruited-plains Americana of the Saturday Evening Post because he felt at home in it, because he might as well have been painted by Norman Rockwell. By a nightmare Norman Rockwell.
Maybe you want to live it over again. Maybe you want the non-demonic version this time.
Korn paused to pop a dried fig into his mouth. Smyrna figs were sweet because a thousand male wasps had been born and died inside each of them. Each wasp had hatched and with a fatal altruism had freed a female of his species, chewing her out of her gall before he crawled deeper inside the fig to expire. Korn found this perversely romantic in the abstract—it was the main reason he liked figs—but he tried not to think too hard about it while eating, because he had a weak stomach. Ironic, incongruous with the rest of the impression he gave. He was aware.
Remind me to tell you an interesting fact about figs the next time we dine together, Colonel.
He put more thought into the impression he gave than one might assume, more than Cathcart assumed, he was sure. His manner and his grooming, of course, ensured that nobody looked at him long enough to come away with more than the superficials. Homely, of middle age, middle height and indeterminate extraction. Funny German surname, ach du. No regional accent. Then his complexion was ambiguous enough that he had been able to decide for himself which squadron he was placed in. “Swarthy” was what he was called, usually. Light enough to forestall real scrutiny, but Korn had kept his head shaved even before he’d started balding. So long as he remained relatively beardless he could remain in Cathcart’s world, passe blanc, one of the boys, he could continue allowing Cathcart to checkmate him on his fold-out chessboard with its set of Napoleonic figurines, Cathcart’s, indefinitely. Or at least for the foreseeable future, and that was all Korn asked.
Curl lip here to convey note of self-contempt. How low you’ve brought me.
Well, that was almost all Korn asked. When imagining Cathcart’s past, he couldn’t help inserting himself where he hadn’t been, but, after all, might have been: as Cathcart’s school chum, say, or, upon reconsideration of their respective ages, as his professor. As the recruiting officer who had enlisted him. It felt right somehow, to skulk through Cathcart’s memories, because, against all reason, he had a feeling that he had met Cathcart somewhere before the first time he had met Cathcart out on the bluffs the previous February. In some remote, submerged and perhaps even entirely spiritual epoch, he thought, then shook his head to banish the idea.
I don’t mean to condescend, Colonel, except that I do, of course. But that isn’t so wrong, is it? To patronize means to dote upon, you know, and you don’t seem to mind my doting. You do seem to mind my Gallicisms, my witticisms, my allusions, and I resent that. I wish you’d think of me as a kindly tutor, Young Master Charles. You know, I’ve had younger men, so I don’t know why it excites me that you’re eight years my junior. Maybe it’s just because it’s such a big deal to you that you outrank me. Very thoughtful of you, to breathe new life into a taboo, for a man who thought he was beyond them. I find myself whistling “Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl.” You were 21 when I was nearly 30, 13 when I was 21. Good morning, Colonel.
Is it love, what I feel for you? I couldn’t say. It certainly isn’t pure. The day anything about my person may be described as pure is the day the worms can have me. But I’m devoted, Colonel. Earnestly devoted. I don’t know how I let this happen.
Then, on a whim, Korn fished in the row of books on his desk for a volume of French poetry. He cradled it in one hand and copied down a stanza from it on the Remington with the other, grinning wickedly, enchanted with his own worldliness.
If I may substitute you in for a sixteenth century poet:
D’autres sont fols de leur marotte; moi, je le suis de mon Cathcart.
That’s what we call a slant rhyme, Colonel. You know, it might work better in English, if I take a few liberties with translation:
The mess hall boy has always wanted a mart, but me, I’m kept busy by my dear [etc.]
Korn appraised this, then tried another form:
Too prolix? How about an acrostic, then, Colonel, because I believe I know that your tastes tend toward the pithy and heavily structured.
Credit to the group
Able
Tasteful
Hardworking
Courageous
Ass, nice piece of. Pardonnez ma langue.
Really, though, Colonel, I wish you would show a little appreciation of the season, like the others. Loosen up, will you? Hasn’t the change in weather renewed any old appetites of yours? There’s been so much going on, what with Milo’s business picking up and the business with the loyalty oaths. Hasn’t the talk of casaba melons and Polish sausages excited you any? How about all the Communists and Henry Fondas running around? You can’t tell me you’re unmoved by the patriotic music we’ve been treated to, all these fine renditions of the Star-Spangled Banner in the fear-choked voices of the terrified privates that our idiot Black marched out onto the skeet range to stand before a firing squad of their peers. I know I’m moved. I know I’m excited. I feel we’re building to something.
The items above that last A were lies. I’m afraid this poem was something of a Trojan horse. Forgive me my duplicitous ways.
Cathcart had been cagey since the beginning of the month, avoiding his deputy whenever possible and addressing him stiffly, often from behind hastily unfolded maps, when he couldn’t circumvent him entirely. Korn suspected that the colonel had recognized something deviant in the backrubs he’d been receiving, despite all his masseuse’s assurances that these were an old Kornish custom. One of Dreedle’s underlings had shown the group a short informational film about the lavender menace, and now, it seemed, Cathcart was seeing it everywhere. Maybe in his new state of enlightenment he’d finally been able to catch one of the cracks about the two colonels that were popular now with those who answered to them. Korn was thrilled whenever he could add a crack to his collection, and punish the man who had made it in some odious Byzantine way.
That was the situation, anyway, and just the night before Korn had begun his career in poetry, he had gotten an even better picture of Cathcart’s mental landscape. They had attended a dinner and dance at the officers’ club—it was almost certainly sacrilege to hold a fête on Good Friday, a fast day, but Milo had insisted. General Peckem had sent over a six-piece string jazz band to entertain, but no U.S.O. hostesses or Italian girls; Korn knew Peckem to be another of the homosexuals the informational film had warned the group about, and this, a stag ball, seemed to be his way of striking back against Dreedle for the screening. If Peckem had spent a little more time on Pianosa, of course, he would’ve known that he had already won this particular battle, that the men in Cathcart’s group required no encouragement in this respect. Korn had a lot of fun keeping up to date on which of them had paired off with which, and on the dramas that inevitably resulted from these matches. He was happily engaged in this pastime, watching from the bar as dance attendees trickled into the officers’ club—noting who arrived together, who looked dishevelled and who looked like he’d done the dishevelling—when suddenly Cathcart materialized from one of the yellow clouds of cigarette smoke that always filled the low-ceilinged, oppressively hot and congested club.
“Korn?” the colonel said. “I need you for something.”
So he was needed. “What is it?” Korn asked, tearing himself away from the almost obscene spectacle that their own Captain Yossarian and his friend Dunbar were making of themselves. Spring. He noticed that Cathcart had a sprig of white oleander tucked into his lapel.
Cathcart caught him eyeing it. “From Milo,” he explained, almost bashful.
Korn couldn’t resist. “Poisonous, you know.”
“What?”
“Oleander, Colonel. Poisonous. A hallucinogen. The Greek oracles...never mind. What is it?”
“Well, I’m supposed to talk to a superior officer.” He scowled, already regretting bringing whatever it was up. “But I’m the most superior officer on base.”
“What are you talking about, Colonel?”
They were interrupted by the string band, which opened its set with a faux-Parisian jazz number that was more lukewarm than hot. The problem was the violin, or rather the rotten rat bastard pimp of a snotnose playing it, Wintergreen from Wing. Korn hadn’t known that Wintergreen could play the violin and wasn’t any more convinced now. Cathcart broke out into a sweat at the sight of Peckem’s desk clerk, not because of his playing or because he recognized him, but simply, Korn understood, because of the way Wintergreen looked in his overlarge suit, with his hair flattened down to one side with grease and a cigar stub hanging out of the side of his mouth, spilling ashes over his instrument. Korn knew that to Cathcart he looked like a bad omen.
I’m not being entirely fair to the band; their bassist was very good, as I recall. The way he spun that big unwieldy instrument around, well. I picked up some tips for handling certain large persons who like to faint in public.
Then the band’s singer launched into her first song, and Korn realized that she was in drag and that Peckem’s plan of attack evidently didn’t end with an absence of women.
“Oh,” Cathcart said, relieved. “So it’s a comedy show. Like the guys with bowls of fruit on their heads.”
“You mean the Carmen Mirandas, Colonel.” It wasn’t at all like that. This singer was doing it straight, elegant, which Korn appreciated, being old enough to remember Julian Eltinge fondly. Although—Korn wasn’t proud of it, but the last time they’d had a Carmen Miranda type, he had selected a sloe-eyed chorus girl from the line, met her backstage with some awful half-squashed roadside flowers and invited her back up to Nevers’s office, the late colonel having been away on a mission at the time. It was something to do, he’d thought. All the appeal had been in getting one over on Nevers, but it had been necessary to have someone else there. Otherwise it was just Korn sitting on Nevers’s desk alone. Korn had acted a less-than-gracious host, anyway, when his guest had revealed that he was interested only in the possibility of being transferred from combat to a full-time position in a traveling theatre company; he had assumed that Korn had an in with Peckem and could make this happen. Not so. Korn had thrown him out on his three-inch heel.
“Show me the ring and I’ll jump right through,” sang the chanteuse from Special Services. Then she came to the song’s bridge, an instrumental break, and asked her microphone, breathily, where the group commander might be. Korn heard Cathcart inhale as Wintergreen leant over and whispered into her ear, his cigar stub bobbing.
“Korn,” Cathcart hissed urgently. “I thought this was gonna be a big joke. Is it a joke or isn’t it?”
“You’ll just have to see if anyone laughs,” Korn said. He should have known that there was comedy written into the singer’s contract. A dance with the colonel and a laugh for the rest of the men was the price of her dignity, of that elegance.
See, self-regard puts them on edge, Colonel, so, to make them comfortable, to take them off the scent and preempt any real suspicion, you have to learn to make a joke of it. A nickname, for instance, can serve a person very well. Some levity. Curl lip here.
She was off the stage and in front of Cathcart now, miming military carriage and saluting playfully. Cathcart sent his chair skittering off behind him as he stood and saluted in turn, on instinct, and the subdued titter that this provoked in the audience caused his face to freeze in a mask of horrified rage. The singer held out her arms, expecting to dance, but he was paralyzed. “Be a sport,” Korn heard her whisper as she yanked his hand to her waist. Korn was sure she had a much easier time with every other group commander she danced with, because anyone who wasn’t Cathcart would understand that the joke wasn’t on him—and Korn’s heart went out to her, it really did, but he felt a twinge of undue jealousy anyway. Be a sport. He had never once demanded sportsmanship from Cathcart, and wouldn’t want Cathcart to start playing fair now.
What, and all my hard work for nothing? I didn’t want you hurt, Colonel, by anyone but me.
So Korn made up his mind to cut in, peeled from the wall and rapped on Cathcart’s shoulder with the back of his hand.
“Screw,” he said, in a tone never before employed with the word.
But the men watching didn’t catch any of the tenderness. They got their laugh, at this surprise coup, and Cathcart had plenty of time to escape as Korn grabbed Julian Eltinge by the waist and danced her back to the stage, to delighted jeers, wagging his eyebrows with stage-lasciviousness and generally acting the part of the old lecher, to make sure all the attention was on him.
I was very chaste, though, Colonel, honest. I’m disgustingly loyal, after all.
He bid Eltinge adieu by kissing the back of her hand, simpering for the benefit of the crowd. But just as easily he sloughed off the camp and straightened, rounding on them.
“Why don’t you boys follow my example and enjoy the music,” he snarled. “Unless you’d rather enjoy K.P. tomorrow?”
That’s the other thing that helps, I’ve found: power, the acquisition and leverage of. But you know this. Don’t you.
The consensus was no, so they all returned tamely to their tables or to dancing with one another. When the singer returned to her microphone she didn’t bother with the final verse, just cued the band to start the next song. And Cathcart had made good on his chance to disappear, Korn noted, so he stepped outside and started toward the Group Headquarters building, hoping to find Cathcart there or somewhere along the way. The Easter revelers stumbling around in twos and threes made Korn’s job harder by obstructing his line of sight, but it was easy to see that Cathcart wasn’t among them. He was always easy to pick from a crowd. Korn caught a whiff of cigarette smoke, trotting past the officers’ mess, but found he could distinguish it from the specific scent of Cathcart’s cigarettes, Lucky Strikes. He knew Cathcart had taken up smoking only after being shipped overseas, only after noting that the generals he admired smoked. He probably smoked more than any of them now, at a pack a day. Korn kept track.
The nicotine, I suppose, but followers of a certain Austrian might diagnose you with an acute oral fixation. I’ve seen you clamp down so hard on the nib of your cigarette holder that you have to massage your jaw afterward. A very interesting display.
It was Marlboros first—ivory-tipped, Mild as May, “cigarette of successful men and lovely women”—but he switched his brand frequently, according to whichever had the most convincing advertisements in the Saturday Evening Post. Cathcart’s attachment to the Saturday Evening Post was intimate and disquieting. When Korn was snooping around his office, he’d find back issues of the Post dogeared such that they opened, unsurprisingly, to profiles of Army big shots. Eisenhower, of course. Patton. Omar Bradley. Interestingly, Korn could tell from the relative wear on different pages, he’d left that big writeup on Devers alone. He’d avoided Eaker and Collins, too, all of the young handsome ones; yes, it figured that Cathcart was too jealous of men his own age and younger to enjoy their articles. But he certainly seemed to enjoy the leathery, careworn faces and shiny bald pates of his more aged superiors.
Korn stopped in his tracks so abruptly that he almost tripped again. Those dainty ankles of his.
Well, I can tell you everything came together for me very neatly, at that point. Why you pulled me aside in the officers’ club, how you had been behaving all April, and your insistence on being left alone with your Saturday Evening Posts, when you never like to be alone otherwise. Maybe you think that once you’re flattened down into screentones in the Post you’ll be able to gambol through the pages with your hoary, myopic dream dates. But you know, Colonel, I wonder if you might not be more interested in the company of a man with at least one dimension on all the rest. I haven’t missed the way you melt the minute you’re alone with me, despite my rank. I wonder if General Bradley hasn’t been serving as a substitute for someone who’s been inaccessible—until now, that is. I’ll have you, Colonel, you and your room and your office with its yellow light that stays on late into the night.
I did consider whether it wasn’t just your room that I wanted. If only.
After this revelation, and after regaining his balance, Korn had continued past the medical tent, through the open-air movie theater and the skeet range, and finally through the group’s motor pool, between jeeps that looked eerily skeletal in the moonlight. He found Cathcart at the top of the wooden stairs that ran up to the back door of the Group Headquarters building. There were huge oleander shrubs on either side of the stairs, and big moths the color of Cathcart’s dress uniform flapped from the oleanders to the electric light above the door, around the colonel’s head, and back down to the flowers that glowed a brilliant white under the moon, perfuming the still, velvety night air. Cathcart had an unlit cigarette in his teeth and was in the process of patting himself down for a lighter, desperately, first the breast pockets and then the hip.
Korn, who didn’t smoke, had bought a cheap lighter for these occasions when Cathcart was without one. Cathcart had never once commented on it. “Light, Colonel?” Korn offered now, from the bottom of the stairs.
Cathcart jumped. “Oh, it’s only you, Korn.” He lowered his shaking hands to his sides, but didn’t relax any. “Dark out here. A light, sure.”
Korn stepped into the buttery glow of the incandescent bulb, leaning up and in to reach the colonel’s Lucky Strike. Because Cathcart had forgotten his cigarette holder they were even closer than usual, Korn cupping his hand around the lighter’s flame out of habit even though the night was warm and windless. Cathcart stooped for him and held still, eyes averted, but drew away quickly as soon as the cigarette was lit. He took a few short puffs on it before exhaling through his nose, violently.
“Colonel, what you started to say earlier,” Korn started to say. “What is it you were supposed to tell a superior officer?”
Cathcart inflated his chest, a familiar bit of posturing. “Oh, don’t worry, Korn. All I was trying to tell you was that I took the initiative to read a pamphlet on the subject, so now I know that these urges I’m experiencing are natural in the fighting man.”
“Ah,” Korn said. There was no need to ask what subject he meant.
“Well, not natural, but only situational,” the colonel continued, flushing intensely, kicking himself internally as Korn knew he always did when compelled to share something sensitive with his confidant. “Brought on by environmental factors, by our living conditions. The close proximity and so on. So don’t think it means anything.”
“You live alone, Colonel,” Korn prodded, gently. “You have your own room.”
Cathcart’s brave front crumpled, and when he spoke his voice was low and tremulous. “I read a pamphlet, Korn.”
“‘Mike and Mac,’ Colonel?” Korn was familiar with it, as a former pamphleteer himself. Its author should have been commended for his skill in demoralization.
“That’s ‘Mac and Mike.’ ‘The Story of Mac and Mike.’” He sniffed, near tears. “I found it very informative.”
“I know, Colonel. I know. Shhh,” Korn whispered, easing into his typical protocol for Cathcart-soothing. He squeezed Cathcart’s hand and Cathcart didn’t protest, so Korn held fast to it. With his other hand he stroked the hair of Cathcart’s forearm. Any acknowledgment of the nature of Mac and Mike’s doomed affair would send him running, so Korn was limited to physical comfort.
“Korn?”
“Sir?”
Now Cathcart was staring off beyond the forest, where the Easter revelers were shooting off their flare guns in a makeshift fireworks display, lighting the low clouds violet and green. “Korn, have you ever been in a situation which you felt you’d been in...never mind.” He blew a stream of smoke toward a moth that had gotten too close. “Of course you haven’t. Never mind.”
So Cathcart had a paramnesia also. “Did you remember something, Colonel? What was it?”
“Nothing. How do you know I remembered something?”
“You know déjà vu is just a momentary, infinitesimal lag in the operation of two coactive sensory nerve centers.”
“Of course I know that, Korn,” he snapped, tossing his head. He gazed out over the jeeps, the scrub, the ocean, and the moon hanging over it, seeming to grope through the night sky for a topic of conversation. “But what’s the...I suppose you’ve got some big smart guy speech about what the moon’s made of, too?”
A smile spread over Korn’s face. This was Cathcart’s roundabout way of thanking him for interceding in the club; knowingly or unknowingly, he was giving Korn a chance to flaunt his knowledge. And maybe he was looking for comfort in exposition, in drily-delivered fact. In Korn’s voice drily delivering it. “The moon?” Korn asked him guilelessly. “Why should I know, Colonel?”
Cathcart rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, didn’t your Greeks have anything to say about it?”
He remembered Korn’s Greeks. “Well. Well, they thought it was made of fire, as I recall. That was the prevailing wisdom.”
“Ha,” Cathcart said shakily. “Idiots. No wonder they went extinct.”
“Socrates ventured that it was rock, but of course they killed him for it.”
“Socrates?” Cathcart repeated, looking for a coded message in the name.
“They found him guilty of impiety and sentenced him to drink hemlock. From their perspective it was only reasonable, of course. It was the state religion, so he was going against his country, raising such a big stink about it.”
Cathcart took all of this in. “Fine, Korn, but what does that have to do with anything?”
Korn blinked. “I don’t know.”
“Well, what the hell is it now? The moon? What do we think it is now?”
“The light parts are one kind of rock, and the dark parts another,” he was able to say with confidence, having picked up a little geology from the oilmen.
“Onyx and ivory?” Cathcart suggested.
“Might be,” Korn said. “Might well be.”
Cathcart sniffed again. “Thank you, Korn.”
Korn didn’t let go of his hand. He looked down at the pale oleander flowers, moons in miniature, and then back to the real thing. “Shall I fetch it for you, Colonel?”
Cathcart was silent and still for a moment, then wrested his hand away. “That’s an old joke, Korn.” He took a final pull on his cigarette and flicked the butt off the landing, out of their pool of yellow light. Then he turned and retreated into the building.
Now, it wasn’t a joke, exactly.
It was a desperate, improvised proposition, and it hadn’t worked, and Korn at his typewriter the next day still hadn’t hit on the combination of words that would do the job. That would give both of them what they wanted. Colonel Nevers laughed from his corner at the variety of scheming his former deputy had been reduced to.
You do know exactly how to make yourself miserable. When did it start, I wonder? When did you start getting black eyes? Before you had a name for them, even, I’m sure. But I’ll bet I’m the first to study you long enough to notice them, the first to give enough of a damn. I’m afraid I’m not going to make it any easier for you, except by being available, always, to provide what little comfort I can. Only a buzz away. Colonel Nevers never used that buzzer, not once.
I’m sure you’ve been up for hours, going over every possible interpretation of what happened last night, wondering who’s on your side. Well, allow me to assure you that I am, against my better judgment. That poem from earlier, the first one—of course you haven’t seen either of them, but I’m not really talking to you. Thought exercise, Colonel. Anyway, c’etait un blason. A lesson on literature; Herr Doktor Korn indicates word on chalkboard with his pointer. From blazon, “to emblazon.” Les blasons were paeans of blame or praise, and I realize now that I’ve written quite a few of them this morning. I meant to blame you. I came to bury you, Colonel, not to praise you. But I’ve found that I’m loyal, well and truly, for the first time in my life. See me hoist your flag.
Korn stood and stretched, after writing this, having been seated for hours. The angle of the sun through his one window informed him that it was almost noon. He looked back down at the page and tore it out of the typewriter. Not today, he thought, feeling a dull, unidentifiable ache in his side. Likely never. If he were more given to dramatics, he might have decided that he felt like crawling up into a fig and dying.
He was about to decamp to the officers’ mess when his door opened a crack, seemingly of its own accord. Then one of Cathcart’s eyes appeared in the crack.
“Korn?” he whispered.
Korn had to laugh. “Heard of knocking, Colonel?”
“Yeah,” Cathcart said gravely, and opened the door a little further, enough to stick his head in and look around at the balls of crumpled paper that littered the floor. “You should pick up in here, Korn.”
“I should,” Korn agreed. He could tell by the set of Cathcart’s chin that he was inches from giving in and begging Korn to take responsibility somehow, to address the sensitive information Cathcart had shared with him the night before. Korn wanted nothing more than to take responsibility on the spot, but his depraved bravado on paper was of no help in the moment. “Well, what can I do for you?” he asked, aiming for nonchalance though this surprise visit had set his pulse racing.
“Nothing. Just thought I’d remind you that I’m heading out for the farm now, but I’ll be back in time for Easter services tomorrow. Around noon?”
“That’s right. Have a good time, now,” Korn said, winking as if the colonel really was off to an orgy.
Cathcart grimaced at the thought of another night in the farmhouse. Korn knew he hated it because of the way the word farmhouse appeared in his memo pad, as dark as pen ink and shaky. Often his pencil lead broke under the pressure, leaving a little smudge. “Yeah,” he said unenthusiastically.
“If any of the locals tell you ‘Buona Pasqua,’ Colonel, that’s just their backward way of saying Happy Easter,” Korn advised him.
“Fine, Korn, but there’s something else,” Cathcart said tentatively.
“Hm?”
“Well, don’t you think it’s time we raised the missions again? Jump them up to thirty-five and really show them, after how they all…” He trailed off. “Last night. Do you understand, Korn?”
Korn understood: they had laughed at him, so he wanted them dead. He wanted a sacrifice for Easter; it was the simplest, purest, most beautiful request a person could make. “That’s a fine idea, Colonel,” Korn purred. “We have to show them that there are consequences for behavior like that.”
“After all, we have to show them there are consequences for behavior like that!” Cathcart said with the zeal of sudden inspiration. “For lewd behavior. For making it dirty.”
“For soiling something completely pure,” Korn added, inspired also.
“On a Christian holiday! It’s just the principle of it. We can’t let them think they can get away with that kind of insinuation, about a perfectly wholesome piece of entertainment. About General Peckem, really. And, I mean, it’s an institution, isn’t it?”
“Couldn’t agree more, Colonel.”
Cathcart smiled his matinee idol smile, glad to have Korn’s favor. “Give them something to do with their time, too, the missions. Something to...funnel their...energies...into.”
Korn knew Cathcart well enough to know this was as close to a solicitation as he would come. But he was still too jumpy to be approached. He would spook. Korn knew he had been correct in thinking Cathcart needed it in writing after all, that he needed the legitimacy of a form. So he got an envelope out of his drawer. “I’ll have Danby make the announcement this afternoon. Anything else?”
“No.” Cathcart remained in the door. “Have a nice break.”
“I’m not taking one, Colonel,” Korn said without looking up. “You’re the only one going away.”
Cathcart coughed. “Well, try to get some work done. Don’t forget the missions.”
“I won’t,” Korn assured him, before he retreated finally and closed the door. “And Buona Pasqua, Colonel.”
“Eh,” Korn heard him grunt from the hallway.
The only time Cathcart prayed was at the altar of the T-chart; his only real religion had gods called Dreedle and Peckem. But if the story of the Resurrection didn’t reassure him any, Korn felt he could offer a little succor in the form of a sign. If Cathcart couldn’t help looking for a secret meaning behind every arbitrary concatenation of unrelated events, why, then, Korn would give him a secret meaning, by God. A loophole, an excuse. It didn’t need to be believable, it just needed to be on paper. It was almost no trick at all, and it came more easily to Korn than any other remedy he had ever devised. He had only to crack his knuckles and fire it off, seal it in the envelope he had already addressed to Cathcart, and take it out into the hallway to find Milo, Milo who would wedge it against the windshield of the colonel’s jeep before he departed.
You know, I hope you haven’t been too eaten up about last night. I think I can safely say that General Peckem’s choice of entertainment was meant to send a message to you, Colonel, a message that he’d like to enjoy and appreciate you at your full value. It’s an honor, of course. General Peckem recognizes that you and he belong to the same distinguished group as Plato, Nietzsche, Montaigne, Theodore Roosevelt, the Marquis de Sade and Warren G. Harding—and yours truly, Colonel, for the record. It’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. But I’m afraid it means you’d better get some practice in before his next visit. Lucky for you, I’ve worked out a little deal. Call it a try before you buy deal. I think you’ll find the terms are very generous. If you’d like to discuss them, just give a honk on your horn, and I’ll be over.
I’ll give you a little time to yourself first, of course, to prepare, he added, because he wanted Cathcart as edgy as possible when he arrived. Cathcart would be that much more receptive, if he’d puzzled over the meaning of the word prepare for an hour.
And, Colonel? Don’t worry about what the others will think. If you accept this deal, you’ll be doing exactly what they already assume you’re doing at the farmhouse. And I’ll have to tell you a theory I have about jokes, how they can put a mind at ease.
Yours,
H.K.
After handing it off, though, Korn felt compelled to pull out a new piece of paper and start typing again, this time without the excuse of writing to Cathcart. He found himself addressing Cathcart anyway, because after all it was the request he’d made that demanded another blazon.
You asked to raise the missions again, and now I have no doubt that you’ll keep asking. And we’ll keep raising them, Colonel, knowing that Wing doesn’t care one way or the other. It’s nice to have something to hope for, isn’t it. It’s nice to aspire. And who knows? Maybe you will make it into the Post. Maybe you’ll make general. I’ll be rooting for you, within the context of this little game of House we’ll keep playing. One’s objective in a game is a real objective, Colonel. I do want it for you.
But I’m afraid I’m not being very altruistic at all in deciding to keep you. It’s pure self-indulgence. I could never give up the look on your face when you ask me if we ought to “jump them up.” I’ve seen it twice now and I’ll do everything in my power to see it as many more times as possible. I want to see every variation on it, for each reason you feel the need to raise them; so far because you believe in your men, that was thirty, and because you despise them, thirty-five. I want to see what other excuses you’ll find for sending them out to their deaths. And I want to see how far you’ll go, whether your conscience will rear up and compel you to protest at any point. Something tells me it won’t. ‘I don’t give a damn about the men or the airplane,’ you said after Ferrara. You also said nobody was indispensable, and I want to prove you wrong in that.
He heard Cathcart’s jeep’s horn from the parking lot, and smiled.
Of course, I’m interested to see how it turns out for the rest of them, too. I don’t think they’ll revolt. I think they’ll march obediently onward toward their ends as all their dignity is stripped away, if we sustain an illusion of normalcy. Happy blue sky for a backdrop, happy letters home, three square meals. The normal course of affairs. A role model, someone to look up to, that’s you, my tyrant. What a show it will be, and what a moral the audience will come away with. All I’ve ever wanted is to serve them that moral, that ending, that curtain call, and we’ll have box seats for it, Colonel, for all of it, you and I in our best eveningwear. Here, a white boutonnière. Oh, and I see you’ve brought your opera glasses.
See the lights dim.
Just as soon as he had handed the duty of the end-of-week executive report for Wing over to Captain Black—who hated preparing said report but would resent Korn more if he pawned the task off on Major Major—Korn was in a jeep flying over the green macchia of Pianosa’s hinterland. The smell from the covered basket in the back seat, roast chicken and fresh bread he had extorted from Corporal Snark, caught up with him only when he stopped to let a herd of sheep cross the road. And then he was flying again, along the winding road that climbed up into the hills at the very center of the island, clusters of blue gentian flowers and pink campions flashing past him. There was a row of cyprusses he passed before turning into the long unpaved drive up to Cathcart’s home-away-from-Headquarters. To Cathcart’s bed. And the missions would keep mounting behind them, body after body piled in a tower. In the only monument either of them could ever hope for.
Late June, 1944
Two months later, Korn remembered Pantelleria. It was an island even smaller than Pianosa, but Korn couldn’t really compare the two objectively, only having seen the former after it had been razed to the ground in Operation Corkscrew. Good name, Korn had thought jealously. He had attended a flag raising on a low, scorched hill with a few other officers, giddy conquerors all of them, the whole Mediterranean laid out before them like a cornucopia. When the flag was up, they had descended upon the village in search of alcohol and found a rack of wine that had survived the bombardment, so the group of them had gathered to stand around in a half-levelled courtyard and drink it.
The first bottle they unearthed had made its way to a tall, broad major, who cradled it awkwardly, at a loss as to how he should open it without, ironically, a corkscrew. Korn, amused, met his gaze from across the courtyard and, discreetly, trying to help, mimed smashing the neck of the bottle. The major’s eyes—a very pale blue—lit up, and he grabbed the bottle by its neck and brought it down enthusiastically over the top of the low stone courtyard wall, shattering it and wasting the entirety of the wine. The major stared dumbly at the disembodied glass flute in his fist for a moment and then looked back up at Korn with a betrayed expression. There was a moment of silence, one guffaw from another officer, and then a gale of laughter from the group. The major had looked prepared to lay into Korn before he took in the silver oak leaf cluster on Korn’s collar and realized that he was outranked.
Korn had grinned and saluted jauntily with two fingers. “Care to christen that wall, Major?” he had called. More laughter, in which the humiliated major’s reply was drowned. Lost to the ages.
It had been only a year, not even a year yet, but Cathcart then had been a little thinner and, Korn would venture, less grey, though it seemed improbable. Only a year. This unearthed memory strengthened Korn’s completely illogical feeling that Cathcart had always been with him, that if either of them looked back through his memories he would find the other lurking in some corner, waiting. The christening was what had made its way into Korn’s dream, and what Cathcart had remembered when laughed at on Easter, but now that Korn knew that, the rest of the episode replayed for him as he started to wake up.
After drinking their fill, the flag-raisers had piled back into their cars for the trip back to the runway. Korn had been waiting for his commander at that time in the passenger seat of his jeep, the motor running while a few other officers vied for seats in the back. The sun had been setting, the dry brush around them glowing red as the light caught it. Major Cathcart had jogged up to him, affecting penitence. “Sir, before you leave,” he had said, “I just wanted to apologize for my behavior earlier. Is there anything I can do for you, to make up for it? Anything I can get you, anything at all?”
Korn had chuckled. Knowing that he would be speeding away in a moment and would never see the major again, he had dispensed with cordiality just as he had with the chorus girl, with the same words: “Won’t work on me, pal. I have everything I need.” Then the officer in the driver’s seat had stepped on the gas, with timing that was absolutely perfect. Korn had held his hat in place as they roared away, leaving Cathcart behind in a plume of ash—which rose with Korn through the shadowy half-world of half-sleep, solidifying into strands of candyfloss, into marionette strings, and finally into the white bedsheets that his legs and Cathcart’s were tangled in. The two of them were in bed in Cathcart’s room. It was the middle of the night. Korn was awake because Cathcart was poking him in the back.
“Korn,” he hissed, poking again. Something has occurred to him also. “Have you been undermining me?”
“How’s that, Colonel?” Korn said sweetly, turning over to face him.
“Well, that intelligence about Peckem, about what he wanted me for.” Korn could tell it pained him to say this aloud. “That didn’t turn out to be true, did it, Korn.”
“I don’t know how you got it into your head,” Korn said, and watched Cathcart’s face crumple. He wasn’t being cruel, when he talked Cathcart into believing that certain missteps he’d taken on Korn’s advice had been his ideas in the first place. He was simply making the colonel understand that his faithful assistant would stick by him no matter what errors of judgment he made.
“You were the one who told me we should practice, weren’t you?” Cathcart kept on bravely.
“Oh, I distinctly remember you begging me,” Korn said, snickering. “Thank goodness you didn’t bring it up with him.”
“Goddammit, Korn.”
“You never know, Colonel, maybe he’ll come around to the idea sometime, and you’ll be glad you got some experience under your belt.”
“Well, what about when you convinced me to promote that Major Major? Now I can’t promote him again and I can’t bust him down to captain either. It’s like you trapped me,” Cathcart said, in one of his moments of deep insight. “And that’s…”
“That’s not the kind of thing a loyal ally does?” Korn finished for him.
Cathcart squinted at him. He had sweat straight through the front of his undershirt. It occurred to Korn that he might have woken from a nightmare in which Korn had played the role of bogeyman. “Korn. Are you...are you evil?” he asked, wincing.
Korn snorted, at how long it had taken him to arrive at this understanding. As in the Jeep, on Pantelleria, he was inclined toward honesty. “And how,” he said, batting his eyelashes.
Cathcart flushed instantly. “Shut up! ‘And how!’” he hissed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Korn displayed the whites of his eyes. “If you were to examine my soul, Chuck, I suspect you’d find it as black and oleaginous as an oil slick.”
Unexpectedly, Cathcart let out a breath and relaxed. “You always have to be such a wise guy,” he whispered.
“What?” was the only thing Korn got out before Cathcart gathered him up to his damp chest. Korn, who didn’t like to be touched without warning, responded to this gesture of affection by thrashing like a cat in his arms. It was no use. The arms were very strong. Korn gave up, letting himself go slack.
“You know you almost actually scared me for a second,” Cathcart murmured, squeezing him.
Korn was offended by this, by Cathcart’s refusal to see him for what he was, but he decided against arguing it further.
“I do like to kid you along a little,” he sighed.