From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [379]
Prew did not answer. It would have sounded stupid and inane to say he did not think there was anything wrong with Malloy.
“You dont know me at all,” Jack Malloy said. His voice had suddenly taken on the contorted abortive tone of a confessional. “You got a romantic picture of me too, just like all the rest. I’ve never loved anything enough in my life. Thats whats wrong.”
“What about the Wobblies? What about America?”
“The Wobblies are gone. Have been for a long time. But I dont think I even loved the Wobblies enough because if I had, I’d of been able to do something.
“And America isnt a thing. America is an idea. An idea that everybody has a different definition of. I can love ideas, as long as they’re my own, but ideas arent things. I’m the kind of a guy who dont like to get too close to any individual, to see his faults; if I do, it shuts off the love I feel; then I get angry and hate myself for it afterwards; and if I have to stay close to the guy, or the thing, I eventually get to hate him, or it, too. You see, the same things wrong with me thats wrong with everybody else. I preach against it with them, but its true of me, too. Even though I can prove logically that its not.”
“I dont believe that,” Prew said. “Thats not true. You’re just tearing yourself down.”
“Dont like to discover the feet of clay, do you?” Jack Malloy smiled painfully. “If you went with me, you’d discover it soon enough. Because its true. Believe me, its true. But you’re different. You love the Army. Really love it. Are a part of it, and belong in it. I’ve never loved anything enough to belong in it. The things I’ve loved have always been too phantasmal, too immaterial, too idealistic. I suffer from the same disease I try to diagnose, the same disease thats destroying the world.
“Thats the thing that has always dogged my steps haunting me,” he said abortively, for all the world like a good Irish Catholic confessing his customary Saturday night infidelity. “The thing thats always followed and tripped me up, the thing I’ve always been looking for, still am looking for, and never will find, and know I never will find. I’d give whatever place in heaven I’ve got coming to have been able to love something as much as you love the Army.
“Dont leave it,” he said. “Dont ever leave it. When a man has found something he really loves, he must always hang onto it, no matter what happens, whether it loves him or not. And,” he said with an almost religious fervor, “if it finally kills him, he should be grateful to it, for having just had the chance. Because thats the whole secret.”
Prew did not say anything. He still did not believe him. But how could he argue against a brain like Malloy.
“‘Because a man loves God,’” Jack Malloy said, his voice coming back up to normal again, “‘he must not expect God to love him in return.’ At least not according to his limited definition of love.”
Prew still did not say anything. He did not know what there was for him to say.
“I wont say good-by to you,” Malloy said, his voice entirely normal now, “because I wont know just when I’m going out. I’ll have to wait till the time comes up right. Then I’ll recognize it. Thats the only way to work a thing like that. So just forget all about it, and expect to see me till you dont.”
“It seems like,” Prew said contortedly, “it seems like life is made up of saying hello to people we dont like and good-by to people we do.”
“Thats horse shit,” Jack Malloy said. “Sentimental horse shit. Dont ever let me hear you say a thing like that again. You just happen to be going through a period of the good-bys. Every man has them to go through at different times. Now shut up with that crap. And lets hit the sack.”
“Okay,” Prew said contritely. He squashed out his cigaret in the can and slipped under the blankets. He lay in the bunk in the si