From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [473]
“Then you can go over to the PX,” Karen said gently, but firmly. “If you dont want to fix yourself something here. I’ll tell you something,” she said from the door. “If you wont let the coffee boil in the pot, but just let it barely start to come to a boil, it wont be so bitter.”
“I’ll use the Silex,” Holmes said.
“All right,” Karen said solicitously. “I’ll see you later on then.”
She went on out the back door and down and out from under the big old trees into the summer-bright sunlight on Waianae Avenue. It was really a remarkably lovely day, and its lazy summery loveliness tingled all through her. She walked on along Waianae Avenue. Schofield Barracks was really a very lovely Post. There were anti-aircraft guns set up on the ball diamonds in sandbagged emplacements, and there was a lot of raw dirt around from the bomb shelters they were digging. But even all that was lovely. Everything was lovely. Everything was so lovely, in fact, that Karen felt with the right amount of balance and proportion and the proper timing of everything from now on, the proper savoring of every morsel, and no greediness, she actually believed she might keep it that way almost indefinitely.
Last night, when Milt came, she had been reading about Stendhal’s philosophy of happiness. It was not a moral philosophy; it was a very materialistic philosophy. Many people probably would not approve of it. Its only purpose was to deduce and plan ahead of time rationally, how to make life completely interesting and fully happy. The good thing about that Stendhal, he understood the very important place that misery and tragedy played in the making of a full happiness. She had never thought of that, any more than she had never thought of a philosophy constructed for the sole purpose of making life happy.
She felt she would never love another man. But if love was over, life need not be.
Suddenly, walking along Waianae Avenue, she began to cry, over the lovely anti-aircraft guns and the beautiful piles of raw dirt.
Major Holmes, staff G-3 of the —rd Brigade, sat on heavily at his kitchen table after his wife had gone out through his back door. Then he got up heavily and went to his refrigerator and got out the cold meat and fixed himself two sandwiches with mustard. He drank milk, instead of coffee.
He stacked up the dishes, and put the stuff away in the refrigerator, and brushed off the table. He washed and dried the dishes in the sink, and put them away. He emptied the overfull ashtray and washed and dried it. Then, when there was nothing left to do, he sat down at the table and smoked a cigaret.
The cigaret did not taste any better than the sandwiches and cold milk. Major Holmes detested cold milk; and he could not cook. He wished he had not given the maid the day off. As soon as Karen and the boy left for home, he could start eating at the Bachelor Officers’ Mess. That was only a couple of weeks off, only until January 6th.
He mashed the cigaret out in the clean ashtray before it was half finished and got up from his table and bolted out through his back door, away from his house. He was back to the safety of his office long before his son came home for his lunch.
Chapter 56
ON JANUARY 6TH Milt Warden was in town on pass. Maylon Stark went with him.
It was the first day that passes were issued to the troops of the Hawaiian Department since the Saturday night before Pearl Harbor, and at ten o’clock, in the morning a well-primed yowling horde of wild men from all around the 90-mile perimeter descended upon Honolulu like spokes descending upon a wheel hub and began to line up outside the bars and whorehouses until even the lines got entangled and men heading for the New Congress Hotel suddenly found themselves inside Wu Fat’s Restaurant four doors up the street ordering drinks. It stayed just about like that all day long until the curfew. It, and the two days following, were a sort of red letter day. Not a bartender in town will forget them. Neither will many of the madams who were there then. Even a few of the respectable people still remember it.
The pass order stated explicitly that no m