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Day of the Conqueror
by Niven Busch
Chapter One
On a plane you couldn't smell the land as you approached it from the sea, as travelers by ship are sometimes able to — but if the continent of North America had ever had a smell, it should have one today, Mark thought, looking down at the darkened section of fog belt under which somewhere the land began; if victory had a smell it should come rolling out of that fog sweeter and bigger than anything the wind ever blew from a spice island.
With the loss of altitude it had grown warmer in the cabin. He pushed his blanket down, got out of it, and rolled it up. He sat up and rubbed his hands over his face to get the sleep out of it, although he'd hardly slept: he had not wanted to miss the news. Peace would be a little late this year, but the tension of the last three days had to work off somehow; if the word didn't come today it would be tomorrow. In Manila, driving to the airport in the rain, he had seen a boatswain's mate in tropicals — a laughing, hooting group of men, watching him from the sidewalk — rolling in a mud puddle; as the navy station wagon passed he hoisted himself up.
"You seagoing bastards! I ain't going to sea no more. . . ."
His air of defiance, combined with drunkenness and misery, with mud and water streaming from his uniform and battle decorations, had made a peculiar impression, as had the anger in his face as he squatted in the mud, yelling after the car.
". . . No more. . . . "
The celebrations might be stopped at any minute. B-29's were raiding Honshu again. Maybe it was another Jap trick? When the Domei flash on Friday had alerted everybody, surrender seemed immediate; then had come a letdown. In the quadrangle in front of CINCPAC headquarters in Guam a mob of men in uniform was milling round. It had no pattern of behavior. Some of its members were drunk, some sober, some jubilant, some mean, some just standing there waiting. Mark had a drink of whiskey in the Officers' Club. He was glad to get back on the plane, to listen to the broadcasters telling how the people were behaving on LaSalle Street, Euclid Avenue, the Embarcadero, and Times Square.
Everybody knew about the war. Name any type of operation, naval or military, and no matter where you were you could find men and women who had experience of it. Such knowledge had been dearly bought but it was common enough, and particularly available now that its usefulness had become, or was about to become, obsolete.
The peace was another matter. What was its nature? How would it manifest itself? What were the secrets of its function, the principles of its composition, and the signs and characteristics by which it might be understood?
Nobody knew. There were no authorities, except self-appointed ones, because an authority must have a text and the peace offered none. It was multiform and variable: it might be a silence, a miracle, a debauch, a symphony, or the firing of salutes. It might be the tolling of the Liberty Bell, a music of strength and sweetness crashing through the centuries, or it might be the corrupted body of a man's hope left stinking in a conference room after the delegates had finished and gone home. For a great number of the people on earth the war had imposed a general order of conditions measured in terms of sacrifice and aspiration, but the peace meant something different for each person.
"I hope to God Halsey rides that white horse through the streets. I hope he hitches Hirohito to the saddle and . . ."
"Hell, Bull Halsey can't ride a horse."
"I sure hope he does, though."
"They won't let him."
It was hard to come out of the fog caused by the false surrender flash to read about the Third Fleet shelling Tokyo, while the stall continued and the dove-of peace lumbered heavily between Asia and Berne. The enemy's reply was accepted, was not accepted. Yes you'll save fruit and you'll have more delicious jams and jellies if you do use Flash Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet flash soldiers of the Red Army give your efforts no respite. The President would make a statement, would not make a statement. He was up. He was eating. In conference. He had gone to bed. We can assume, we can't assume. The Tokyo reply was on its way.
The killing went on and the hope of a people waiting was lived out beside radios where the voices of announcers who had gone sleepless for three nights jabbered wearily and stumbled over the words of the reports they read.
In the damp August heat, between its oceans, the country waited. It wasn't now, the moment when you started yelling or fell on your knees or stood all alone, forty thousand feet up without an oxygen mask, turning your face with a stupid grin from one side to the other. Mark, listening to the broadcasts, pictured the crowds going through cities with which he was familiar, dark and uncelebrant, fettered and fateful and mysterious, past the blazing stores, bars, theaters, and hotels; they settled into attentive knots, listening to the loudspeakers of the newsreel theaters or radio shops or watching the immense electric letters of the newspaper bulletins. Through these crowds circulation trucks would be winding their way to street corners where their cargoes of newspapers, tied with twine in heavy bales, were ripped open and sold in a few minutes, glanced at, and then dropped on the sidewalk and in the gutters where they were quickly trampled to pieces.
The Russians made gains toward Harbin. "The Valley of Decision" with Greer Garson was in the first-run theaters. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker mourned for Major Bong. The Santa Rosa, the Sea Porpoise, the Ernestine Coranda, the Gideon Wells, and the Zebulin Pike docked in Manhattan from Europe and the men on board pelted a girl reporter with candy bars, cigarettes and coins as she walked along the dock holding up a newspaper with the headline
Tokyo Yells Uncle
Life boiled at a violent pitch. The dead walked in the street with the living.
What was peace? It must be something you only understood years afterward, little by little. It was a private event. It would come silently, and what it meant to him personally Mark did not yet understand.
SERVICE MESSAGE FROM TOKYO TO SUPERVISOR GENEVA: RE YOUR SERVICE MESSAGE. OUR REPLY MESSAGE NOT YET ON HAND. WE SUPPOSE THIS MESSAGE WILL BE COMING THIS MORNING.
Supervisor Tokyo
Some of his fellow passengers, wakened by the alteration in flight, were getting off the floor; each man went through a series of subdued contortions, working the kinks out of his body. Mark stretched one leg into a cleared space before him; he pounded his thigh to restore circulation. He thought about a cup of coffee which was not available, then about a cigarette, which was; he rummaged with two fingers in his left shirt pocket — a large hand, shaped and proportioned in keeping with the rest of his body, which was lean, wide, and long. He was a tall man — even in his slouching posture, his head was nearer the roof of the cabin than the other heads around him. A woman would have guessed his age better than a man, who would have guessed him too old; he was in his middle thirties, and looked little more although his hair was salted with gray. In the uncertain light, from a slight distance, his face, in spite of its fatigue, was handsome with the stylized tragic quality of certain actors' faces; seen close, some of the handsomeness vanished and the face then seemed to be a collection of cartilaginous or bony bulges and hollows — a ridge above each eye, knobs for cheekbones, a big nose. Hunched in the little seat he took no notice of his traveling companions, or they of him. On an outbound flight the men in the plane would have got to know each other in a short time; they would have traded data about themselves, made friends quickly and intently, partly to make the time pass and partly in case they were thrown together later on, but on this trip there had been no effort at comradeship and little at conversation.
They were tired, they were going home; thoughts, hopes, worries, repeated innumerable times, able to be shared by nobody except the secret ones whom they concerned, reached into the sealed cabin of the plane from the land which it was approaching, making divisions there which locked each man away from his fellow.
Six hours have gone by since they had heard a news broadcast: the pilot was talking to the control tower. Cautiously the plane wormed down through the fog; it straightened, there was a slight jar as it hit the runway, two more as it settled. Now the soil of the United States or to be more exact the concrete face of Runway #3, Hamilton Field, was holding it up. Mark took a sniff of the gray air. This was it; he was home. He got his flight bag from the luggage pile next to the open hatch and walked stiffly over to headquarters pickup cars. There were two cars, one going to San Francisco, and one to Oakland; he got in the one that was going to San Francisco, sitting in the front seat next the enlisted man who was driving. The back seats filled quickly and they had to take another man in front; Mark moved over to make room for a lieutenant commander smoking a pipe. Before the car had started the commander went to sleep, holding the pipe in his hand; when it fell Mark picked it up and put it in its owner's pocket.
"Did you want PRO headquarters, sir?"
Mark considered. As a formality he should go down and check in — tell them he'd had a nice ride, and didn't want to go anywhere for the next thousand years. To hell with it. He had more important things to do.
"No thanks. Just let me out at the Blakeston."
Mark was in uniform, but the "C" for Correspondent on his shoulder tag, designating him as a civilian, put the driver at ease. For an interval he drove skillfully through the speedway traffic.
"I read a lot of your stuff, Mr. Gregory."
"That so?"
"Those Iwo Jima pieces — they sure made battles real to me. I guess they did to a lot of people." Mark made some conventional remark of appreciation. "No, I mean it," the driver said anxiously. "It was great stuff. I sure wished I knew how to write. I'd of had plenty to write about last night." "I heard some of it on the air."
"They were going crazy in this town," the driver said. "They broke half the windows on Market Street. They'll break the rest of them tonight. If it's the end, I don't blame them. Do you figure it's another Jap trick?"
"Not this time."
"I sure hope it's the end. I had my brother over there. I was lucky myself — they found out I drove a bus before, so here I am driving a pickup for the duration. Well, Mr. Gregory, it's been a pleasure knowing you."
Under the soiled granite buttresses of the Blakeston he jumped down to get Mark's bag out of the boot.
"Operator, I'm calling Sutter 4-4211."
"You may dial that number, sir."
"I've been dialing, but they don't answer. Would you test the line? I think it might be out of order."
"I will try it for you, sir. Will you give me the number again, please?"
"Never mind."
The nickel fell tinnily into the return slot; Mark scooped it up, yielding the phone booth to a matron who had been regarding him through the glass with a wordless reproach. He looked around the lobby for a place to sit but there was none; he had made up his mind not to call again for twenty minutes.
Ten past nine. In spite of the early hour the bar, which had just opened for the day, was nearly full. Mark set his flight bag against the wall, hung his jacket on a peg above it. He put his cap under his belt and climbed onto a bar stool, surprised by the ignoble, puffy look of his face in the big mirror. Even his hair looked lousy, and taking out a pocket comb he tried to fix it up.
It wasn't as if he didn't have a key. It would still fit. Even after twentysix months it would fit all right; he reflected with some satisfaction that he hadn't lost the key or even had it off his person, except for brief intervals, in all that time, on the various ships, and through the landings, the campaigns, and the trip home. A key was important, a link with the substance of remote moments.
The chances were Corinne had gone out for a few minutes to some store or the beauty parlor. He tried to remember the name of that place on Vallejo that she'd patronized but it wouldn't come and he gave up quickly so as not to jam his memory. Corinne was economical in little ways that contrasted oddly with her often fabulous extravagance in larger matters: she took pleasure in paying two or three dollars less for whatever over-all job she had every couple or three days on her hair and nails and face.
Madame Jean's? No, that wasn't it. Besides, if she was there she would be home so soon it made no sense to call up.
Maybe she had never got his wire.
Of course, one way to come home was to get the hell up there and open the door and walk in. Which was exactly what he'd do, of course.
HOME TUESDAY BY PLANE TIME UNCERTAIN WILL PHONE ON ARRIVAL ALL MY LOVE.
He'd put it that way so she wouldn't think she had to go way out to Hamilton Field and hang around waiting. He had a good priority and wouldn't be bumped, but still, the trans-Pacific flights weren't too regular. Who do you think you're kidding, he said to himself savagely, you didn't give her a chance to be there, because you didn't want the feeling you'd get if you looked for her and you didn't find her.
"Scotch and soda."
Mark tasted the night of travel in his mouth, watching the bartender dump the jigger, plus an infinitesimal dividend, over the two ice cubes. That "phone on arrival" had been a little stupid. It almost looked as if he was afraid to show up without warning — which, of course, was not true. Corinne loved him; in spite of everything there was a solid bond between them, all he had in the world, really. It would have been smarter just to say he would show up but as long as he'd said phone he might as well do it.
The bartender's pale fingers deftly notched the tab and dropped it deferentially beside his glass.
Mark noticed, with some surprise, that the bar was a pleasant place: he liked the dim lights, in such contrast to the sunshine in the streets and in the hotel lobby beyond, and he liked the circular booths along the walls and the smooth jive music from the Electrovox.
Bars like this were a good idea. It was sensible to have a place where you could drink in the morning without feeling like a lush.
A young pfc. came in with a short ruddy staff sergeant. They were a much-decorated pair of gentlemen, both wearing Pacific theatre ribbons, pin-headed with numerous battle stars, and topped with a Presidential citation. The sergeant had the five stars on a blue background which meant the Medal of Honor; the pfc. had the Purple Heart.
"A beer and a Doctor Pepper."
"What do you mean, a Doctor Pepper?" the sergeant said.
He pointed a finger at the bartender.
"Bourbon, soda chaser."
The young pfc. looked at the bartender, shook his head and the bartender leaving the question to be decided without him, moved away.
"Be a good guy, Brick," the pfc. said. He was a fragile-looking young man with a pale, regular-featured face and light blue eyes; the eyes were more sunken than was fitting in a man of his age, which was about twentyfive. The sergeant was rugged and frog-voiced, like a movie caricature of a World War I sergeant; he had a broken tooth in front, and small, wild, restless eyes. When he spoke harshly he would often smile, and at these times he looked far less formidable than his friend, the pfc. — though it was hard to tell why.
"Goddamit, it's VJ-Day. I guess I get to have a drink on VJ-Day."
"It's not VJ-Day yet," the pfc. said. "Besides, the stuff's no good for you."
"You heard my orders," the sergeant said to the bartender.
"Okay, okay," the young pfc. said "One straight bourbon, one beer."
The sergeant addressed the bartender.
"Put the bottle on the bar."
"Here we go," the pfc. said disgustedly.
His cameo-sharp profile was turned to Mark, who gave no indication of having heard him, but an elderly, distinguished man standing behind the sergeant nodded sympathetically. This man wore a black Homburg hat and a dark overcoat with some foreign prewar decoration in the buttonhole. Around his left sleeve was an old-fashioned mourning band of black satin. He stood there with his blotched, birdlike face, indented by a single eyeglass like a daub of paint, held to one side, shedding his impeccable courtesy upon the arguing soldiers without, however, seeming aware of their argument; he stood a yard or so from the bar, leaning on a caneumbrella as if to indicate by his posture and remoteness that he was not present as a customer, but for conversational purposes.
"Any news yet, Terry?"
There was a slight touch of foreignness in his accent — but this was less noticeable than the subtlety of inflection which made the brief question intimate and flattering, yet infinitely impersonal.
"No, sir," the bartender said. "Not yet. Nothing official, but they're expecting it any minute. Two more of them Jap generals committed harry-carry."
"Let's hope it comes soon," the man in the Homburg hat said, looking round the bar as if addressing everybody present. He seemed to expect no reply, but, rotating on his umbrella, pointed himself toward the lobby and walked away.
"It's here, I know it's here," a dark-haired woman sitting at the end of the bar said with conviction. "They just haven't told us yet."
The zeal in her smooth, throaty voice seemed to demand some reply, and all along the bar heads nodded in agreement. An apprentice seaman standing behind the woman and admiring the shape of her buttocks on the bar stool kept on nodding long after everyone else had stopped.
"The people have a right to know," the woman said fiercely. She raised her glass as if drinking a toast, though whether she was drinking to the coming peace or her own image in the bar mirror it was hard to say. She tapped on the bar for another drink. Several new customers had come in and the bartender began rapidly putting ice cubes in a row of glasses. The sergeant with the bourbon bottle poured two drinks in quick succession and let the third sit.
"Don't let anybody tell you it's over," he said addressing the dark-haired woman. "When it commenced they said it was a phony war, didn't they? Well, I'm telling you this is a phony peace."
"Take it easy, Brick," the blond private said.
"Oh, but you're wrong, you're so wrong," the dark-haired woman said. She looked angrily at the sergeant.
"I know something about this," she insisted. "I know it and I feel it. It's here . . ."
"Pardon me, madame," said the sergeant. "You didn't hear no announcement did you?"
"No," the woman said. "But it will come." Her face was slightly flushed, her eyes dim with an almost religious fervor. "The peace is here and will last forever."
The sergeant said, "They're going to keep on fighting. This ain't no time to stop. What do you think of that?"
"I wouldn't want to tell you what I think of it," the woman said. "I don't want to be rude to you."
"Listen to that, will you?" the pfc. said to no one in particular. He turned his thin face to the woman and with his habitual bored and weary air said negligently, "Don't pay no heed to him. He's crazy as a goat."
There was a crack of fist against flesh. The sergeant had smacked his fist against his companion's shoulder with his full force. He grinned at him happily. "Keep your nose out of this.
" The pfc. brought the toe of his shoe sideways against the sergeant's shin. "Be yourself, Brick. People are watching."
The dark-haired woman had not flinched at this murderous horseplay. "I don't care how much of a hero he is. I respect his uniform, don't get me wrong," she said. "But this is something else."
The sergeant said, "I just want to put you wise, that's all. This war ain't never going to be over, so don't believe what you hear. Them newspapers are paid off. They kid the public. I been out there, and I know what I'm talking about."
"I don't care where you've been," the woman said. "I know and I'm not religious either."
"What's religion got to do with it?" the sergeant inquired.
The woman looked at him scornfully, then compressed her lips into a tight line, refusing to divulge her information. Frustrated, the sergeant turned to the bartender.
"You wait and see," he said. "They'll be fighting over there for many a year to come."
Mark went back to his phone booth. He dropped in his nickel and dialed the number, waiting through the short electric hush that followed the dialing while the circuit gathered power to ring, and at last ringing while his thoughts, a thousand times more rapid, more mechanically perfect than the instrument he was using, supplied him with a television picture of the apartment where the ringing could be heard — where Corinne, perhaps in the shower, the dress closet, the living room, would hurry to answer, or just reach out an arm from bed. But the ringing hardened into a toneless and lunatic repetition like a phonograph record which has stuck. He hung up, recovered his nickel, and sat in the booth thinking —
The Sans Gene! That was the name of the beauty parlor, provided of course that she hadn't switched to one of the other beauty parlors of which she had been a customer at one time or another, or which other women he knew had patronized, before he and Corinne had been married — establishments of which he had known the telephone numbers and which, suddenly in need of a rendezvous, or jealous of the whereabouts of some woman with whom he had been having an affair, he had called from time to time, always delighted when the receptionist who answered had connected him with the right booth and, after a click or two, a warm, surprised voice — the particular voice he most desired at that moment — said, duplicating his own pleasure, "For heavens sake. How did you know I was here?"
"Sans-Gene."
"Mrs. Mark Gregory, please."
He listened to the hum of a drier and someone asking, "Who is it for?" The answer was not audible; a woman with a baritone voice picked up another extension and said, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Gregory isn't here. Is there any message?"
"No thanks, I know where to reach her."
He hung up.
They expected her later. Maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe she had misunderstood the telegram and expected him later. That would account both for her not being home and for her having a beauty parlor appointment. The sensible thing to do of course was to have another drink and go home himself, but once more he rejected this course. He crossed the lobby to one of the cashiers' desks, laying a fifty-cent piece on the marble slab under the grill.
The cashier wasn't looking at him, but past him, out into the lobby where, he noticed now, a disturbance of some kind was taking place. At first, because of the crowd, he couldn't see what it was, but everyone was looking, people waiting in the big old-fashioned rotunda and on the wall benches and settees rising to see, groups in the archways of the big ornamented pillars breaking off their conversations to stare and smile.
Somehow an intruder had got past the doorman whose duty it was to keep out the freakish and the undesirable, a man whose freakishness and undesirability were spectacular. He was of less than average height and slender build, having a head which seemed too large for his body; he wore no hat; his domelike forehead gave him an intellectual appearance which was borne out by the serious expression of his eyes. He was shabbily dressed in an old tweed suit across which was slung a canvas bag. He dodged sideways as one of the house detectives advanced toward him: he passed rapidly through the crowd in a pompous yet wary fashion, glancing sharply from side to side. He was a very busy man: as he scuttled along he made small rapid movements with his hands, as if performing some kind of conjuring trick (which, indeed, he was). Everywhere he went there appeared in his trail a shower of leaflets:
STALIN RUNS THE WHITE HOUSE THROW OUT THE REDS
Even if you were watching closely you couldn't be sure how he did it: miraculously he shoved his literature into coat pockets, dropped it on desks, chairs, and sofas — even into a woman's open handbag. In a remarkably short time he had got rid of several dozen throwaways, one of which fell at Mark's feet; he picked it up — a tightly folded square of newspaper stock on which was printed in big capitals:
DOWN WITH MOSES IN AMERICA
The house detective closed in from one direction, the doorman from the other. Each grabbed an arm; they lifted the tract distributor off his feet, hustling him across the splendid carpet, through the swinging door, into the street. The people in the lobby watched through the big windows to see what would happen next, but all the fight seemed to have gone out of the little guy. His eyes no longer flicked around; his shoulders were hunched, his head bent; with the manner of one schooled in catastrophes he waited with indifference for destruction, in whatever form it might assume. His meekness made ridiculous the belligerence of the burly men holding him; they felt this and it kept them from knowing what to do. The detective let go his arm, the doorman's lips could be seen moving as he bawled the little guy out. The detective suddenly seized him by the collar and spun him around; with a foot against the little guy's tail he started him on his way down the street. People in the lobby laughed and pointed through the window at the little guy who walked away, limping, but with great dignity; as he reached the corner he turned suddenly and thumbed his nose at the detective.
"Why don't you phone the cops?"
"Cops?" the detective asked. He had a broad, lined, placid face and mean eyes. "He won't come back," he said with assurance. "You can bet on that."
"Those types should be locked up for their own good, and everybody else's."
"He's just one of them nuts," the detective said idly. He picked up the leaflet which had fallen near the desk.
FREE CHRISTIAN AMERICA
"Why would he make trouble on a day like this?"
"Then why don't you keep him out?" the cashier said. "Maybe downtown it's all right, but in a class hotel. . . I'd say call the cops."
The detective turned away then whirled round and came back. "Let him go," he commanded sternly, as if the cashier still held the intruder prisoner, invisible somewhere in the grilled cage. "Or should flatfoots shove in here, making a mess?"
Mark started back toward the telephone booth, passing a bell captain who was busy removing one of the stickers from the bulletin board.
The apprentice seaman who had been admiring the dark-haired woman in the bar was standing behind the bell captain; he reached for that portion of the prophet's sticker which the bell captain had removed from the glass frame of the board, a gummed label torn across so that only one word remained — Moses.
"Let me have that, will you, friend?"
"What do you want, a souvenir?"
"I just got a use for it, is all."
By this time nearly all the stickers and throwaways had been gathered up and destroyed.
Mark decided not to worry about Corinne. He'd see her before long . . . Be with his son, too, Lorry — his wonderful son . . . In this hotel, the Blakeston, which he had entered simply because the limousine from the airport had stopped here, and it was a place to phone, he had long ago established tribal ties, staked out claims to well-being. Often in the old days he had kept luncheon and dinner dates in its various dining rooms, had brought Lorry to the big barber shop in the basement for his first haircut. It was not the newest or most fashionable hotel in town but it was a good hotel and it was a part of this city of conquerors, his own city, and part of home. He had come back from many dangers and from a great distance to this moment and this city and it suddenly seemed proper and gratifying that his home-coming should coincide with a day of general thanksgiving and rejoicing and prayer.
