From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [401]
By way of proof, his mind said, let us take a case in point. Let us take a hypothetical young female aged 18 and a hypothetical young male aged 19, both you understand of the acceptedly superior type considered most likely to succeed (both in life and in love), such as, say, a football-hero-recipient-of-the-DAR-medal and a straight-A-girls’-college-prep-major-who-also-doubles-as-cheerleader.
If we take, his mind said, this hypothetical young couple, at the beginning of their—
“Oh, go fuck yourself!” Warden hollered.
He got the bottle out of the filing cabinet again and drank, this time not because it was thin, but in pure self-defense. If a man could just hang onto one illusion he could still love. The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.
Penetrated by a sudden cunning idea, he set the bottle up in plain sight on the corner of his desk, instead of putting it back in its hiding place. Then he leaned back in his chair still Then I was going to in the dirty, crumpled, prize $120 Brooks Bros, tropical suit and cocked his feet on the desk and grinned at the innocent bottle slyly. He locked his arms behind his head and settled back hopefully to wait for that Chicago stupid Jew lawyer son of a bitch Ross to come in. Maybe that was the ambulance chasing bastard that had been watering his whiskey.
The very least he can do is transfer me. Maybe he’ll even bust me, he thought hopefully, he busted Ole Ike, dint he?
Chapter 47
IF IT COULD ONLY all be like the luau had been, all the time, Warden thought with his feet cocked on the desk and his head cradled in his locked fingers. That was what it ought to be like. The luau had been on the eighth night. He had been desperate, even to suggest it. And she had been even more desperate to accept. Because this was a tourist luau in Waikiki and like as not they would run into somebody one or both of them knew. But they hadnt run into anyone. They had gone into town to the luau and each taken a new lover, and gotten the only real relief either one of them got from the other during the whole 10 days.
The fact that the new lover she took was named Warden, and the new lover he took was named Karen Holmes, that did not matter.
It was a tourist luau, not a real one, but after a few drinks it was practically just as good and you did not mind the fat white vacuum-cleaner faces watching, or the neatly pressed jackets and pants catching the light from the fire whitely. The tourists had all read Somerset Maugham, as preparation for their trip to the tropics, and went in for white linen suits and dresses. But you did not mind, not after a few drinks. Because everything else was there, just like in a real luau.
The long ditch with the fire dying down on the hot rocks and the black Kanaka kuke with skin catching red glints from the bonfire putting his layers of banana leaves in the kapuahi ditch to lay the food on, and then the music and hula dancing while the smells began to fan out from under the scorched banana leaves’ smell in the still breeze bringing a flood of water into the mouth—the pipi orna roastbeef, and the roasting puaa with a big ohia in his mouth and the pink scrubbed skin beginning to crisp brown (pig-skin and poi, pig-skin and poi), the heikaukau rock crab and welakaukau Hawaiian hot stew in the calabashes cooking. And in front of you the poi and kukui nuts and the i-a paakai salt fish, i-a uahi smoked fish, i-a maloo dried fish, i-a hou raw fish, fish fish fish (pig-skin and poi, pig-skin and poi), and the fruits, papaya, pineapple, malala, peels of raw cane—all this just to chew on while you waited for the real dinner (pig-skin and poi, pig-skin and poi) to get itself cooked. And all the time firelight flickering on naked bronze bodies as the greased muscles rippled under the koa trees in the hula.
The only luaus she had ever seen were the put-up jobs at Schofield for the officers. She had never seen the kane hula dancers whose masculine grace and swift agile angularity, savage and powerful, outshone and dimmed the hip-swinging wahine dancers as much as the ballet’s Spectre de la