The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [143]
He had made furious efforts for a time, launched that attack, had kept the troops patrolling constantly, but deep inside himself, unadmitted, he was becoming frightened. A new attack on which he had had Major Dalleson and the G-3 staff working for days had been called off several times already. Always there had been good superficial reasons -- a large shipment of supplies was due from a few Liberty ships in a day or two, or else he felt it tnore advisable to capture first some minor features of land which might seriously impede the attack. But actually he was afraid; failure now would be fatal. He had expended too much on that first attack, and if this one foundered, weeks and possibly months would accrue before a third major drive could be initiated. By that time he would be replaced.
His mind had become dangerously lassitudinous, and his body had been troubled for some time by a painful diarrhea. In an effort to scour his ailment he had had officers' mess suffer the most rigid inspections, but despite the new standards of cleanliness his diarrhea continued. It was acutely difficult now to conceal his annoyance with the most insignificant details, and it was affecting everything about him. Hot wet days sloughed past, and the officers in headquarters snapped at each other, had petty quarrels and cursed the unremitting heat and rain. Nothing seemed to move in all the cramped choked spaces of the jungle, and it developed an attitude in which no one expected anything to move. The division was going subtly and inevitably to pot, and he felt powerless to alter it.
Hearn suffered the results in all their immediacy. Without the disturbing and fascinating intimacy the General had granted him in his first weeks as an aide, the job had become reduced quickly to its onerous humiliating routine. A change had come about in their relationship, quietly achieved, but its end product left him in a formal and obviously subordinate status. The General no longer confided in him, no longer lectured him, and the duties of his job, which had been treated between them until now as a tacit joke, had become demanding and loathsome. As the campaign floundered along day after day, the General became stricter about the discipline in his headquarters, and Hearn suffered the brunt of it. Each morning Cummings made a point of inspecting his tent, and almost every time he delivered a criticism of the way Hearn had supervised the orderly. It was always a quiet rebuke, uttered slyly, with a sidewise glance at Hearn, but it was disturbing and finally harassing.
And there were other tasks, silly pointless ones which assumed a galling character after they had continued long enough. One time, almost two weeks after they had had their last long conversation on the night of the chess game, the General had stared at him blankly for a few seconds, and then had said, "Hearn, I think I'd like to have some fresh flowers in my tent each morning."
"Fresh flowers, sir?"
And the General had given his mocking grin. "Yes, it seems to me there're enough of them in the jungle. Suppose you just tell Clellan to collect a few each morning. Good God, man, it's a simple enough affair."
Simple enough, but it added a further tension between Clellan and himself, which Hearn detested. Despite himself, he paid greater attention to the way Clellan made up the General's tent each morning, and it became a humiliating duel between them. To his own surprise, Hearn discovered that the General was making him vulnerable; he was beginning to care that the tent was made up correctly. Each morning now he approached the General's tent with distaste, figuratively squared his shoulders, and then went in to continue his feud with Clellan.
Clellan had started it. A tall slim Southerner with a complete and insolent poise, a facility for never questioning himself, he had resented any of Hearn's suggestions from the very beginning. Hearn had ignored him at first, amused a little by the proprietary concern with which Clellan regarded his work, but Hearn knew by now that he was contributing a little to the feud himself.