The Caine Mutiny Page 3

  “Okay. Show her around, Princeton,” said Mr. Dennis, and vanished into his office. Willie Keith and May Wynn were alone among the fake palm fronds and coconuts.

  “Congratulations,” said Willie, extending his hand. The girl shook it briefly in a warm, firm little grasp.

  “Thanks. How the devil did I get it? I murdered the Mozart-”

  Willie threw himself at his galoshes. “Where would you like to eat?”

  “Eat! I’m going home for dinner, thank you. Aren’t you going to show me around?”

  “What’s there to show? Your dressing room is that one with the green curtain opposite the ladies’ room. It’s a hole, no window, no washbasin. We do shows at ten, twelve, and two. You’re supposed to be around at eight-thirty. That’s all there is to that.” He stood. “Do you like pizzas?”

  “Why do you want to take me to dinner? You don’t have to.”

  “Because,” said Willie, “at the moment, there is nothing else I care to do with my life.”

  May Wynn’s eyes widened in a look of wonder, mixed with the wariness of wild game. Willie took her firmly by an elbow. “Let’s go, huh?”

  “I’ll have to make a phone call,” said the girl, allowing herself to be hauled toward the door.

  Luigi’s was a bright small restaurant full of little tables in rows of booths. The warmth and the spicy smell were a pleasant change from the chill rainy twilight outside. May Wynn sat without removing her damp coat, in a booth near the sizzling open kitchen. Willie stared at her.

  “For crying out loud, take off that coat.”

  “I won’t. I’m cold.”

  “You lie. This is the hottest, stuffiest restaurant in New York.”

  May Wynn rose, almost as reluctantly as if she were being compelled to strip. “I’m beginning to think you’re very silly-Well,” she added, her face flushing, “stop looking at me like that-”

  Willie had the appearance of a startled stag-for good enough reason. May Wynn’s figure was glorious. She wore a purple silk dress with a narrow gray belt. She sat, all in confusion, trying not to laugh at Willie.

  “You have a figure,” said Willie, taking his seat in slow motion. “I thought you probably had elephant thighs, or no chest.”

  “Bitter experience,” said May Wynn. “I don’t like to get jobs or make friends on the strength of my figure. Things are expected of me that I can’t deliver.”

  “May Wynn,” said Willie thoughtfully. “I like the name.”

  “That’s good. It took me a long time to think of it.”

  “Isn’t that your name?”

  The girl shrugged. “Of course not. It’s too good.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, this is a queer conversation. Who are you to go probing at me like this?”

  “Sorry-”

  “I don’t mind telling you, though I usually don’t blab it. My name is Marie Minotti.”

  “Oh.” Willie looked at a waiter carrying a tray heaped with spaghetti. “Then you’re at home in here.”

  “Very much.”

  Willie’s reaction to the discovery that May Wynn had an Italian name was complicated, and quite important: a mixture of relief, pleasure, and disappointment. It struck away most of the girl’s mystery. A night-club singer who could carol a Mozart aria with understanding was a wonder, for in Willie’s world familiarity with opera was a mark of high breeding-unless you were an Italian. Then it became a mere racial quirk of a lower social group, and lost its cachet. Marie Minotti was someone Willie could cope with. She was pigeonholed after all as a mere night-club singer, if a very pretty one. The feeling that he was tumbling into a real relationship was an illusion. He knew perfectly well that he would never marry an Italian. They were mostly poor, untidy, vulgar, and Catholic. This did not at all imply that the fun was at an end. On the contrary, he could now more safely enjoy being with the girl, since nothing was going to come of it.

  May Wynn regarded him with narrowed eyes. “What are you thinking?”

  “The nicest possible things about you.”

  “Your name, no doubt, is really Willis Seward Keith?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And you come from a fine old family?”

  “Oldest and finest- My mother is a Seward, of the Mayflower Sewards. My father is something of a bar sinister, since the Keiths didn’t get over here until 1795.”

  “Ye gods. Missed the Revolution.”

  “By a mile. Mere immigrants. My grandfather has made up for it slightly by being the head of surgery at the Chase Hospital, supposedly the big wheel of that branch of medicine in the East.”

  “Well, Princeton,” said the girl with a light laugh, “obviously we can never hit it off. Talking about immigrants, my folks came over in 1920. My father runs a fruit store in the Bronx. My mother hardly speaks English.”

  The pizzas arrived on two large round tin platters: smoking hot flat cakes of dough covered with cheese and tomato sauce-and, in Willie’s dish, sprinkled on one side with chunks of anchovy. May Wynn picked up a triangular slice, folded it expertly with a flip of her fingers, and took a bite. “My mother’s pizza is better than this. As a matter of fact, I make about the best pizza in the world.”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “No, your mother wouldn’t like it.”

  “Great,” said Willie, “we understand each other. Allow me to tell you, then, that I’m falling in love with you.”

  The girl’s face suddenly clouded over. “Keep the blows above the belt, chum.”

  “No harm intended.”

  “How old are you?” May said.

  “Twenty-two. Why?”

  “You seem a lot younger.”

  “My baby face. I probably won’t be allowed into a voting booth till I’m seventy.”

  “No, it’s-it’s you. I think I like it.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I can’t vote.”

  “Are you engaged, May, or do you have a sweetheart, or anything?”

  “Ye gods!” exclaimed May, coughing.

  “Well?”

  “Let’s talk about books. You’re a Princeton man.”

  They did talk about books, between mouthfuls of wine and pizza. Willie started on current best sellers, with which May had a passable acquaintance, and worked back toward his eighteenth- and nineteenth-century favorites, whereupon the girl’s answers grew lamer.

  “Dickens,” said Willie fervidly, riding high on a crest of comparative literature, “if I had any strength of character I’d spend my life doing research and commentary on Dickens. He and Shakespeare will be left when English is dead as Latin. Do you know his works?”

  “All I’ve read is the Christmas Carol.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look, chum, I never got beyond high school. Things were tough at the fruit store when I graduated. There was a little matter of keeping myself in dresses and stockings-and the family in food, every now and then. I’ve worked in dime stores and orange-drink stands. I tackled Dickens a couple of times. He’s hard going after a day on your feet.”

  “You’ll love Dickens someday.”

  “I hope so. I think appreciating Dickens goes with ten thousand in the bank.”

  “I haven’t a dime in the bank.”

  “Your mama has. Same thing.”

  Willie leaned back luxuriously and lit a cigarette. He was at a seminar now. “It’s perfectly true that a love of fine art is a function of leisure, but that in no way vitiates the validity of the art. The ancient Greeks-”

  “Shall we go? I want to work over my numbers tonight, as long as I’ve got a job.”

  It was raining hard outside. Fluorescent signs, blue, green, red, cast blurry pools of color on the wet black street. May extended her gloved hand. “Good-by. Thanks for the pizza.”

  “Good-by? I’ll take you home in a cab.”

  “My boy, a cab to Honeywell Avenue in the Bronx would cost you five dollars.” />
  “I have five dollars.”

  “No, thanks. Subway for the likes of me.”

  “Well, let’s take a cab to the station.”

  “Cabs, cabs! Why did God give you feet? Walk me to Fiftieth.”

  Willie recalled some rhapsodies by George Meredith on walks in the rain, and fell in beside the singer. She took his arm. They strolled in silence, droplets hitting their faces and rolling off their clothes. The hand resting on his arm sent a soft glow through the rest of him. “There’s really something rather delicious about walking in the rain,” he remarked.

  May glanced at him sidelong. “You wouldn’t think so if you had to do it, Princeton.”

  “Oh, look,” said Willie, “stop playing the poor little match girl. Is this your first singing job?”

  “First in New York. I’ve only been singing for four months. Worked a lot of dives in New Jersey.”

  “How does Mozart go in a Jersey dive?”

  May shuddered. “Never tried it. Out there they think Stardust is a heavy classic, like a Bach mass.”

  “Who wrote those English words of yours? You?”

  “My agent, Marty Rubin.”

  “They’re terrible.”

  “Write me better ones.”

  “I will,” shouted Willie, as they crossed Broadway through a stalled jam of honking taxis and busses. “Tonight.”

  “I was kidding. I can’t pay you.”

  “You already have. I’ve never in my life enjoyed Mozart as I did this afternoon.”

  May slipped her hand away from his arm. “You don’t have to say such things. I really dislike smooth talk. I’ve been fed it by the yard.”

  “Every now and then,” Willie answered, “say, once in the course of a week, I’m honest.”

  May looked at his face. “I’m sorry.”

  They stopped at the kiosk. The shabby wrinkled newsman hawked imaginary victories in a hoarse voice, his headlines concealed under tarpaper. Crowds shouldered past them. “Thank you for dinner,” said May Wynn, “See you Monday.”

  “Not before? I could conceivably want to. What’s your phone number?”

  “I haven’t any phone.” Willie winced. May Wynn was really out of the lower depths. “There’s a candy store next door,” she went on, “where I can be reached in emergencies, but that’s all.”

  “Supposing an emergency arises? Give me the number of the store.”

  “Another time.” She smiled, the wariness of her look fading for a moment into coquettishness. “Can’t see you till Monday, anyway. Have to slave on my numbers. ‘By.”

  “I’m afraid I bored you with all my book talk,” said Willie, trying to fan a spark in the dying interview.

  “No, I’ve had fun.” She paused, and held out her hand. “It was an instructive afternoon.”

  She was swallowed up in the crowd before reaching the foot of the stairs. Willie walked away from the subway entrance with an absurd feeling of being newborn. The Roxy marquee, the black shafts of Radio City sprinkled with yellow lights, the restaurant signs, the groaning, darting taxicabs swam in an aura of wonder. He decided that New York was beautiful and mysterious, like Bagdad.

  At three o’clock the next morning, Willie’s mother opened her eyes in her dark bedroom, breaking out of a singularly vivid dream that she was at the opera. She listened a moment to echoes of the music that still rang in her mind, then sat up as she realized that she was hearing real music-Cherubino’s love song, floating across the hallway from Willie’s room. She got out of bed and put on a blue silk kimono. “Willie dear-records at this hour?”

  He sat in his shirt sleeves by his portable phonograph, a pad and pencil in his hand. He looked up guiltily, and snapped off the machine. “Sorry, Mother. Didn’t know it carried so.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Stealing a stretch of Mozart for a new number, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re wicked.” She studied her son and decided that his queer exalted look was the creative frenzy. “You usually fall into bed when you get home.”

  Willie stood, laying the pad upside down on the chair, and yawned. “This thing just crossed my mind. I’m tired. It’ll wait till morning.”

  “Would you like a glass of milk? Martina made a wonderful chocolate cake.”

  “Had a chunk in the kitchen. Sorry I woke you, Mother. Night.”

  “It’s a lovely piece to steal,” she said, accepting a kiss on the cheek.

  “None lovelier,” said Willie, closing the door on her.

  May Wynn’s job at the Club Tahiti lasted for three weeks. Her Mozart novelty was well received. Her performance became a little better each evening, simpler, more lucidly rendered, and less loaded with gestures. Her agent and coach, Marty Rubin, came several times each week to watch her. After her performance he would spend an hour or more talking to her at a table or in her dressing room. He was a short stout moon-faced man, perhaps thirty-five, with pale hair and very thick rimless eyeglasses. The exaggerated breadth of shoulder and fullness of trouser in his suits showed they were bought on Broadway, but the colors were quiet browns or grays. Willie spoke to him casually. He was quite sure Rubin was a Jew, but thought no less of him for that. Willie liked Jews as a group, for their warmth, humor, and alertness. This was true though his home was in a real-estate development where Jews could not buy.

  Except for these sessions with Rubin, May’s time between shows was monopolized by Willie. Usually they sat in the dressing room, smoking and talking-Willie, the educated authority, May half respectful and half satiric as the ignoramus. After a few evenings of this, Willie persuaded her to meet him by day. He took her to the Museum of Modern Art, but that was a failure. She stared in horror at the masterpieces of Dali, Chagall, and Tchelitchew, and burst out laughing. At the Metropolitan Museum they did better. She found an immediate deep pleasure in Renoir and El Greco. She made Willie take her there again. He was a good guide. “Ye gods,” she exclaimed once, as he sketched the career of Whistler for her, “do you really get all that stuff in four years of college?”

  “Not quite. Mother’s been taking me to museums since I was six. She’s a patron here.”

  “Oh.” The girl was a little disappointed.

  Willie soon obtained the telephone number of the Bronx candy store, and they continued seeing each other after May’s engagement at the club was finished. It was April. Their relationship advanced to include long walks in the blossoming new-green park, and dinners at expensive restaurants, and kisses in taxis, and sentimental presents like ivory cats and fuzzy black bears and a great many flowers. Willie wrote some bad sonnets, too, and May took them home, read them again and again, and shed warm tears over them. Nobody had ever written poetry to her before.

  Late in April Willie received a postcard from his draft board, inviting him for a physical examination. Upon the sounding of this tocsin he remembered the war, and forthwith went to a Navy officer-procurement station. He was accepted for the December class of the Reserve Midshipmen School. This put him beyond the clutches of the Army, and gave him a long reprieve from service.

  Mrs. Keith, however, took his enlistment as a tragedy. She was outraged at the fumblers in Washington who had permitted the war to drag on so long. She still believed that it would end before Willie put on a uniform but she had an occasional chill at heart to think that he might actually be taken away. Discreetly inquiring among influential friends, she found a peculiar stoniness everywhere to the idea of getting Willie some safe duty in the United States. So she determined to make his last free months beautiful. May Wynn was doing a pretty good job of that, but of course Mrs. Keith didn’t know it. She was unaware of the girl’s existence. She compelled Willie to quit his job, and carted him off, with the unresisting doctor, on a trip to Mexico. Willie, quite bored with sombreros, brilliant sunlight, and feathered serpents carved on decaying pyramids, spent all his money on surreptitious long-distance calls to the candy store. May invariably scolded him for his extravagance, b
ut the radiant tones in which she did so were quite enough consolation for Willie. When they returned in July Mrs. Keith with undimmed force dragged him to a “last wonderful summer” in Rhode Island. He managed half a dozen trips to New York on thin excuses; and lived for these excursions. In the fall May was booked by Marty Rubin for a tour of clubs in Chicago and St. Louis. She came back in November, in time for three happy weeks with Willie. He performed prodigies of invention, enough for the creation of a book of short stories, to explain his absences from home to his mother.

  He and May had never talked about marriage. He sometimes wondered why she didn’t mention the subject, but he was very glad that she was content to leave their relationship in the realm of wild kisses. His idea was that the sweetness would last to be enjoyed during the four months of midshipmen school; then he would go to sea, and that would be the convenient and painless end. He was quite pleased with himself for having worked the romance out for maximum fun and minimum entanglement. It indicated to him that he was a mature man of pleasure. He prided himself on not having attempted to sleep with May. The correct policy, he had decided, was to enjoy the sparkle and stimulation of the girl’s company without becoming involved in a mess. It was a wise enough policy; but he deserved less credit for it than he gave himself, because it was based on a cool subconscious estimate that he probably wouldn’t succeed if he tried.

  CHAPTER 3

  Midshipman Keith

  Willie Keith’s second day in the Navy came close to being his last in the service or on earth.

  Riding on the subway that morning to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in his blue apprentice seaman raincoat, he felt conspicuously military. The fact that he was going for a check on his pulse rate and lordosis did not spoil his enjoyment of the glances of stenographers and high-school girls. Willie was collecting the homage earned by men otherwise occupied in the Solomons. In peacetime it had not been his habit to envy sailors their costume, but now suddenly these bell-bottom trousers seemed as correct and dashing as beer jackets had been on the Princeton campus.

  Outside the gates of the Navy Yard Willie stopped, exposed his wrist to the raw cutting wind, and counted his pulse. It was tripping at eighty-six. He was enraged to think that his new naval aura might be stripped from him by a mere arithmetical failure of his body. He waited a few minutes, trying to relax, and took another count. Ninety-four. The marine sentinel at the gate was staring at him. Willie looked up and down the street and began walking toward a dingy drugstore at the corner, thinking, “I had a dozen physicals at college, and one at the receiving station several months ago. My pulse was always seventy-two. Now I’m worried. What the devil is an admiral’s pulse rate when he sees the enemy fleet-seventy-two? I’ve got to take something to cancel the worry. and give a normal result.”