From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [352]
“Perhaps that is what you meant by living in the present? That we will just do it when you want to, which apparently is all the time, and let the Officer part and the marriage part, which depends on it, take care of themselves? Or better yet, take themselves off somewhere and conveniently die? Perhaps that is what you meant?”
“I did it, I mean I dint do it, because I dint want anything to come in and disrupt those afternoons, which doing extension course lessons surely would have,” Warden said strangledly and subduedly. “Thats why I did it.”
“And why was it you didnt tell me, instead of lying to me?”
“Because I knew goddam well you would’ve reacted just like you did. Thats why.”
“But if you had been honest, maybe I wouldnt have. Did you ever think of that?”
“You would have,” Warden said.
“And so now,” Karen, who had had him coming and going either way he answered, said triumphantly, “so now you have already reached the place of the husband who only tells the little woman whatever percentage of the truth he feels she ought to know. And without even having the virtue of being the husband yet. Dont you think that is a little previous? not to say presumptuous?”
“No more presumptuous than you reading me off like the heavy-handed better half,” Warden exploded violently into flame under the lash, like a piece of paper under a very accurately focused magnifying glass.
“Well, you may not have to put up with it very much longer,” Karen threatened crisply.
“And you wont have to put up with the masculine foibles.”
“And so they got married and lived unhappily ever after,” Karen smiled.
“Thats it,” Warden said. He grinned back crookedly, feeling the woman-generated guilt spreading all through him like the slow groping tentacles of a fungus.
“Dont look so goddamned guilty,” Karen said distastefully.
“Who the hell looks guilty?”
“Well, at least you wont have the excuse of our lovely afternoons anymore,” she said cruelly, “to keep you from putting in your application.”
“And I’ll put the son of a bitch in, too, dont think I wont,” he said, stung again. How they could do it, on and on, one after the other, each a new climax of sharpness, it was unbelievable, even for a superior race.
Karen was not willing to let him off that easy.
“Well, you had better. Because I can always find out from Dana whether you have or not, and if you havent you’re liable not to see me very soon again.”
“I’ll put it in, baby,” he said furiously, “dont worry. But its not because I’m afraid of you finding out I didn’t.”
“I dont know whats happened to you,” Karen said, less classically, going down under the crust a little. “You were honest once. That was the thing that first caught me about you. You were honest, and if you thought it by god you said it, and to hell with the consequences. I admired that. You were harsh and strong and unwavering like—” she halted, searching for an adequate comparison, “—like a GI blanket on a cold night. But you’ve lost it. I was looking for something when you came along, something proud, and I thought I’d found it. I thought you were it.
“Well, it appears I’m still looking for it. It seems you have developed into being only a reasonable facsimile. Perhaps I’m a perfectionist, but I dont seem to care much for reasonable facsimiles.
“I’ve made a pompous ass out of Dana, and now it seems I’m making a pompous ass out of you. You werent like that when I met you. Apparently thats what I always do to men. I touch them and they all start to crumble.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing myself,” Warden said. “And I dont like the way it feels either. You were tough and solid as a rock at first, and as proud as a lion. And now you’ve developed into a goddam whining crybaby that I cant tell the truth to, because you cant take it. That first day there at the house—” he said.
“I’ve always said,” he said, “that I was looking for a woman who was resilient enough that I could go up to her and ask her to sleep with me and she would say yes, or say no, and let it go at that. Without all this simpering female euphemism. But if she had the sensitivity I wanted, she wouldnt say no, she’d say yes, because she would be able to see the other sensitivity there reaching out to her. —
“That first day there at the house—” he said inex