A DISTANT VICTORY
mountain peaks, Cinquas Pintas, which rose from the distant side
of the bay, become purple and somber with the massing rain clouds
while I ate in silence.
An
oppressiveness gathered in the murky saffron
gloom of the late afternoon. The natives believed it would surely rain
whenever Cinquas Pintas was obscured by clouds, and already they
were assuming that opaque vagueness of Oriental prints, peaks merg–
ing from neither sky nor sea nor land. A muffled, rumbling thunder
broke longingly over our unreal land.
It
will
rain, I thought with relief, and perhaps I can be quiet
tonight and feel apart enough from everything to write letters. I
hurried from the mess hall to the treatment room, anxious to occupy
one of the tables before the card players settled at them for their
nightly games.
I though of Ida, Ida Miller, who taught in the primary school
of my small, upstate home town. I suppose Ida was not what you
would say "going with me," but we had grown fond of each other.
We first met because we were both interested in the activities of
the local historical society, one of my most enduring hobbies. There
were times when I thought she and I were the only ones with a
passion for the work of the society. I wrote most of the few pamphlets
that we prepared during the year before I was called into the service.
I had been reminded of my work when I visited the unkept and
jungle choked graveyard beyond our Luzon village. The graveyard
was called the Pantheistic Cemetery, and a nearly obliterated sign
over its gate told me, "Those Who Do Not Honour the Dead Will
Not Respect the Living." Over the past five years before the war,
it must be, Ida had made numerous trips with me to visit the older
homes or families around our county. Sometimes, on Sundays, she
would visit my home and have dinner and an afternoon of cards with
my mother and me. During the war she regularly made up parcels
of tinned foods, newspaper clippings, candy, and the brochures
printed by the state historical society to send me overseas. She rarely
wrote. Thinking of her and the intangibility of the situation, I had
a desire to laugh shamefully at myself, but I began the letter, writing
in a small, neat script:
Dear Ida,
The last time I wrote I was on duty on the destroyer, and now I
have been transferred to shore where life is different but more com-
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