From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [377]
“Someday we will.”
“No. You never will. Because when that day comes you wont have any Armies, and there will be no more Wardens. You cant have the Wardens without the Fatsos, either.”
“You dont mind if I go on thinking we will?”
“No. You ought to think that. But what you want cant be achieved by killing off all the Fatsos. When you kill your enemy Fatso, you are also killing your friend Warden.”
“Maybe so. I still cant help what I got to do.”
“Okay,” Malloy said, and grinned. “And is this the end-product of all I’ve tried to teach you about passive resistance? You didnt understand it any more than Berry or Angelo did.”
“Passive resistance did them a lot of good, didnt it?” Prew said. “They both used it, and look where they are now.”
“Neither one of them used it,” Malloy said. “Their resistance was always active, not passive.”
“They didnt fight back.”
“They didnt have to. In their minds they fought back. They just didnt have access to clubs, that was all.”
“You can only expect so much of a man,” Prew said.
“Thats right,” Malloy said. “But listen. A guy named Spinoza wrote a sentence once. He said: Because a man loves God he must not expect God to love him in return. Theres a lot in that, in lots of ways. I dont use passive resistance for what I expect it will get me. I dont expect it to pay me back any more than it ever has. That isnt the point. If that was the point, I’d of given it up years ago as a flop.”
“I understand that,” Prew said, “and I was wrong. But I’m going to kill Fatso, just as sure as God made little green apples. I aint got no choice. Thats the only thing a fathog prick like him understands. Thats the only way.”
“Okay,” Malloy said. He shrugged and looked away, down the barrack. The lights had been out quite a while, and the others were already in their bunks. The two of them sat on their bunks facing each other talking, their expressions lit only by the glow of their cigaret ends. Prew had, by a common tacit consent, moved into Angelo’s bunk next to Malloy after the little guy went up to the hospital. Malloy kept on looking down the darkened aisle, as if debating something.
“All right,” he said finally, turning back. “Now I’ll tell you something. I hadnt meant to tell you. But maybe it’ll do me good; just like your telling me about Fatso done you good. Sometimes it helps to talk about something you’re going to do that you dont want to do. I’m going to bust out of here,” he said.
Prew felt a stillness that was not of the quiet night creep over him slowly. “What for?”
“I dont know if I can explain it,” Jack Malloy said. “You see, theres something wrong with me.”
“You mean you’re sick?”
“No, I’m not sick. This is something else. Something that has to do with what I told you about being born in the wrong time. Theres something lacking in me that keeps me from doing what I want to do. You see, I’m responsible for what happened to both Angelo and Berry, just as surely as if I had signed the Discharge and swung the club. Just as surely as I’m responsible for you killing Fatso.”
“Aw now, thats a lot of stuff, Jack.”
“No it isnt, its the truth.”
“I dont see why the hell you should feel that.”
“Because they were trying to follow what I had been trying to teach them,” Malloy said. “Whether you see it or not or believe it or not. The same thing has happened to me all my life. I’ve tried to teach people things I saw but they always take them wrong and use them wrong. Its because theres something lacking in me. I preach passive resistance and a new kind of God with a new kind of love that understands, but I dont practice it. At least not enough. Sometimes, I dont think I’ve ever loved anything in my life.
“If it hadnt been for me and my talk, neither Angelo nor Berry would have done what they did. Or got what they got. And if I stay here (I’ve got seven more months to do, this stretch) the same thing is going to happen to other guys. Its already happened to you. I say resist passively, but you all fight, because I feel fight, even if I say dont fight. I dont want it to happen to anybody else.”
“I dont think thats true at all,” Prew said helplessly, inadequate before the mental task of arguing back.
“Well, its true,” Malloy said. “And