From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [410]
He did not particularly believe what the newspapers said (excluding the sports page and the comics). What they said did not even interest him; it consumed two hours every morning. It put off his enjoyment of the radio-bar and the record-player and the porch over Palolo Valley for as long as he could make the newspapers last.
The enjoyment of the radio-bar and the record-player and the rest of the furnishings had thinned with the knowledge that he was not going to leave them. He did not enjoy having his own key any more because he never left the house so he could use it. Except at sunset, the porch over Palolo Valley showed exactly the same view all day long, everyday, including Sundays, even when he was drunk. All he had left was the newspapers.
Both girls would always still be asleep when he got up, and he would make his own coffee and breakfast and then go into a huddle with the papers on the breakfast-nook table in the midst of the crumbs. Usually, he could make them last until the girls got up at noon, if he worked the crossword. Then he would have coffee with them again. With the Sunday papers, which lasted until three or four in the afternoon, he felt like a veritable rich man.
The newspapers did not say anything at all about the construction of the beach position emplacements after maneuvers ended. So he did not know about that until he finally went down to see Rose and Charlie Chan at the Blue Chancre. But the newspapers did give him an idea.
He went on a reading jag. It was the second real reading jag in his life. The first had been when he was laid up in the hospital at Myer getting over the clap that the rich girl had given him. They had had a good, though small, library at the Myer hospital and he had read his way through almost all of it with a dictionary at his elbow mainly because there hadnt been anything else in the GU ward to do. Reading, he found, was like with pain, or a delicate appetite; you minced your way around the outside tasting this dish and that and getting more and more irritable. And nothing suited you, until you had made up your mind to promise yourself you would read every word on every page. Once you got yourself started and into it you werent irritable any more and it was kind of fun, in a way.
He did that with every book in Georgette’s Book of the Month Club collection, even the bad ones that did not sound true to life, at least not as he had become acquainted with life. But he was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt since obviously he had not known every kind of life (like, the life of the rich, say) any anyway, if you just shut off part of your mind from asking acerbic questions about this and that and limited yourself to just the words you read in through your eyes, you could almost believe all of them, even the worst ones. Besides, it was a good way to pass the time. Much better than newspapers. And it did not give you a hangover.
He read night and day like that for over two weeks. If the girls got up at noon, or came home from work at 2 AM, they would find him curled up in a book with the dictionary and a drink at his elbow. He had found that three or four drinks made many of them much more believable. He would be so engrossed that the girls never got more than a grunt for an answer.
Alma didnt like it. She would try to talk to him and when he would only grunt and go on reading she would usually end up by going off and sitting in silence on the other side of the room. Sometimes she would play records loudly. Alma very rarely played records.
Georgette didn’t seem to care much one way or the other although sometimes, in certain moods, she would seem interested in finding out what was in some of the books and ask him questions about the ones with the more intriguing covers. Then they would sit and talk and he would tell her the stories of them, while Alma would sit in silence on the other side of the room or play her records loudly.
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