The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [35]
The General. A trace of his resentment returned again. If not for the General he would be doing now what he should have done. An officer had some excuse only if he was in combat. As long as he remained here he would be dissatisfied with himself, contemptuous of the other officers, even more contemptuous than was normal for him. There was nothing in this headquarters, and yet everything, an odd satisfaction over and above the routine annoyances. Working with the General had its unique compensations.
Once again, resentment, and the other thing, awe perhaps. Hearn had never known anyone quite like the General, and he was partially convinced the General was a great man. It was not only his unquestioned brilliance; Hearn had known people whose minds were equal to General Cummings's. It was certainly not his intellect, which was amazingly spotty, marred by great gaps. What the General had was an almost unique ability to extend his thoughts into immediate and effective action, and this was an aptitude which might not be apparent for months even when one was working with him.
There were many contradictions in the General. He had essentially, Hearn believed, a complete indifference to the comforts of his own person, and yet he lived with at least the luxuries which were requisite for a general officer. On invasion day, after the General landed on the beach, he had been on a phone almost all day long, composing his battle tactics off the cuff, as it were, and for five, six, eight hours he had directed the opening phases of the campaign without taking a halt, indeed without referring once to a map, or pausing for a decision after his line officers had given him what information they possessed. It had been a remarkable performance. His concentration had been almost fantastic.
Once in the late afternoon of that first day, Hobart had come up to the General and asked, "Sir, where do you want to set up headquarters bivouac?"
And Cummings had snarled, "Anywhere, man, anywhere," in shocking contrast to the perfect manners with which he usually spoke to his officers. For that instant the façade had been peeled back, and a naked animal closeted with its bone had been exposed. It had drawn a left-handed admiration from Hearn; he would not have been surprised if the General had slept on a bed of spikes.
But two days later, when the first urgency of the campaign was over, the General had had his tent location moved twice, and had reprimanded Hobart gently for not having picked a more level site. There was really no end to the contradictions in him. His reputation in the South Pacific was established; before Hearn had come to the division he had heard nothing but praise for his techniques, a sizable tribute for those rear areas where gossip was the best diversion. Yet the General never believed this. Once or twice when their conversation had become very intimate, Cummings had muttered to him, "I have enemies, Robert, powerful enemies." The self-pity in his voice had been disgustingly apparent and quite in contrast to the clear cold sense with which he usually estimated men and events. He had been advertised in advance as the most sympathetic and genial officer in a division command, his charm was well known, but Hearn had discovered quite early that he was a tyrant, a tyrant with a velvet voice, it is true, but undeniably a tyrant.
He was also a frightful snob. Hearn, recognizing himself as a snob, could be sympathetic, although his own snobbery was of a different order; Hearn always classified people even if it took him five hundred types to achieve any kind of inclusiveness. The General's snobbery was of a simpler order. He knew every weakness and every vice of his staff officers, and yet a colonel was superior to a major regardless of their abilities. It made his friendship with Hearn even more inexplicable. The General had selected him as his aide after a half-hour interview when Hearn had come to the division, and slowly, progressively, the General had confided in him. That in itself was understandable; like all men of great vanity, the General was looking for an intellectual equal, or at least the facsimile of an intellectual equal to whom he could expound his nonmilitary theories, and Hearn was the only man on his staff who had the intellect to understand him. But today, just a half hour ago, the General had fished him out of what was about to explode into a dangerous situation. In the two weeks since they had landed he had been in the General's tent talking with him almost every night, and that sort of thing would get around very quickly in the tiny confines of this bivouac. The General had to be aware of it, had to know the resentments this would induce, the danger to morale. Yet against his self-interest, his prejudices, the General held on to him still and, even more, exerted himself in unfolding the undeniable fascination of his personality.