356
PARTISAN REVIEW
I came upon her after she had routed her employees to a dozen
different tasks and was alone for a moment. She stood in the factory
yard, her hands on her hips, her
legs
spread apart, studying her
accomplishment. The gratification in that slight, controlled smile
would have sat well on General Patton.
I complimented her and she nodded without troubling to con–
sider me.
"Yes, Maggi-e, the generations applaud. How lucky you weren't
a man. The story of the war would have been written differently."
"The war is finished," she answered coldly.
"Yes. It's finished. And you pluck through the debris and find
manageable tools. And what would those proud burghers have thought
of your method, Maggie? They'd have approved that, too, I sup–
pose. It's after all a stroke of luck that you're a woman and can
even make an instrumentality of bed."
She shrugged. "You are a fool."
"Is that any way to talk to the conqueror?"
"You are no conqueror."
"Perhaps not, Maggie." I was annoyed that I had no power
to disturb this woman. "I suppose to be the conqueror you must
have the power to do harm. And I'm no killer."
"You are a talker," she said contemptuously.
"Doesn't Smitty ever talk? Doesn't he even mutter in his sleep?"
"Sleep." She shrugged again, not bothering to remove her hands
from her hips, merely a decisive shoulder wiggle.
"It
is very easy to
sleep. You people do not know how to be awake. For a little sleep,
you will lose your power. I do not sleep, Herr Doctor. I am wide
awake."
"But you can sing lullabies to murderers, can't you? Tell me,
Maggie, what will happen when the Russians come? Can they
be
civilized, too, by a little sleep?"
"I have the American. I am not concerned with the Russian."
There were adequate reasons for despising her. She had turned
the war on its ear. She had made it seem a base enterprise, to be
controlled by an easy manipulation of elemental desires. But I had
to respect her self-possession amid chaos.
And how about Smitty, who had lost his integrity as a mur–
derer? Is homicide so shaky an enterprise it fails at the first touch
