The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [223]
Goldstein also found the work acceptable, took the same pleasure in the sure motions of his limbs, but his satisfaction was not so pure. It was cloyed with a prejudice Goldstein had against manual labor. That's the only kind of job I ever find, he told himself wistfully. He had sold newspapers, worked in a warehouse, become a welder, and it had always bothered him that he had never had an occupation where he could keep his hands clean. The prejudice was very deep, brewed out of all the memories and maxims of his childhood. He wavered between warmth and disdain at working well with Ridges. It's all right for Ridges, Goldstein told himself, he's a farmer, but I'd like something better. He had a mild self-pity at his fate. If I could have had an education, culture, I could have done something better with myself.
He was still fretting when they were relieved by the next team. He trudged back along the trail to where he had left his rifle and pack and settled down into his melancholy. Ach, so many things I could have done. Apparently without cause, a deep and limitless sorrow welled in his chest. He pitied himself, but his pity grew larger, swelled to include everybody in his compassion. Ai! it's hard, it's hard, he thought. He could not have said why he made this statement; it seemed a truth he had absorbed in his bones.
The mood did not surprise Goldstein; he was accustomed to it, enjoyed it. He would be cheerful for days, liking everyone, pleased with whatever task was assigned, and then suddenly, almost inexplicably, for the causes already seemed minor, he would wallow in a self-induced gloom.
Now he bathed himself in despondency. Oh, what does it all mean? What are we born for, why do we work? You're born and then you die, is that all there is to it? He shook his head. Look at the Levine family. They had such a promising son, he had a scholarship to Columbia, and then he got killed in an automobile accident. Why? What for? They worked so hard to let him go to school. He had known the Levine family only casually but he felt like weeping. Why should it be? Other sorrows possessed him, minor ones, major ones, in a suite of random undisciplined waves. He remembered when his family was very poor and his mother had lost a pair of gloves which she treasured. Ai! he sighed again. It's a hard business. He had drawn apart from the platoon, from the patrol ahead. Even Croft, what will he get out of it all? You're born and then you die. The knowledge somehow made him feel superior. He shook his head once more.
Minetta was sitting beside him. "What's the matter with you?" he asked sharply, his sympathy guarded for Goldstein had been Ridges's partner.
"Oh, I don't know." Goldstein sighed, "I was just thinking."
Minetta nodded. "Yeah." He stared down the corridor they had hewn out of the jungle. It extended in a reasonably straight line for almost a hundred yards before bending around a tree, and all along it the men in the platoon were sprawled on the ground or sitting on their packs. Behind him he could hear the steady chopping and macing of the machetes. The sound depressed him, and he shifted his position, feeling the dampness of the earth against his buttocks. "That's all you can ever do in the Army, sit and think," Minetta said.
Goldstein shrugged. "Sometimes it's not so good. I'm the type of man it's better for me when I don't think so much."
"Yeah, the same for me." Minetta realized Goldstein had forgotten how poorly he and Roth had worked, and it made Minetta like him. He ain't one of these other guys holdin' a grudge. That made Minetta think of his argument with Croft. The anger that had sustained him in his quarrel was gone and he could think only of the consequences. "That sonofabitch Croft," he said. To avoid facing them, he was generating his indignation again.
"Croft!" Goldstein said with loathing. He looked about warily for a moment. "I thought when we got that lieutenant, things would be different, you know he seemed like a nice fellow." Goldstein realized suddenly how much hope he had fabricated because Croft was no longer in command.