IN SHOCK
685
I was so numb that
if
we'd have gone beyond the barracks I
could only have pawed him.
I went to his bed. He was in khaki shorts, putting on khaki
socks. He was lean with ropy muscles.
"You pushed me."
"So what?"
"Fight me, Witty."
"Anytime. In the gym. With gloves."
If
I'd answered a challenge that way, they'd have put me down
as yellow. But in the case of Witty it was just a knight refusing to
credit a knave. They were pleased by my humiliation, no mistaking
that.
It
was evident in blank looks when I hunted for support.
I had a friend, Jason Diedrich, a clerk in Headquarters Com–
pany. We met in the music room of the post
usa.
He introduced me
to his crew, three Harvard boys, also with Headquarters. They
maintained a bookish world in their off-hours. I read
Nightwood
to
share their vocabulary. It was a book of loonies. A wise man crawled
in woman's clothing. Keening ladies embraced. A queer book, a
queer crowd, but I wasn't put off by that queerness. With everything
about to crack under that Carolina sun, the book only seemed a fore–
shadowing.
I went to Jason for relief. "My impulses aren't good," I told
him. "Why didn't I swing? I couldn't move. I stood there as if I
couldn't be insulted. By the time it gets through to me it's too late.
I'm numb."
"Get out of it, Arthur," Jason advised me. He spoke with
precision. He deliberated before he spoke. His voice was high-pitched.
He wore spectacles, a raw, lumpy face perched on a long throat. I
was impressed by his calm. I never found him short of advice. He
looked brand-new, only half-made, hair just beginning to sprout on
his chin and upper lip. Yet he claimed an ancient tradition. He had
a monkish faith in the liberal arts. His model was a Frere Lupus
Servatus who preserved Ovid despite a shortage of parchment for
more pious work. This monk faked allegiance to hoors in order to
save what he loved. And Jason, too, wanted to save what he loved.
He lapsed into protective shock during the working day, appearing
servile and unimportant. After hours he attended to the French
symbolist poets. He read Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Valery, Mallarme.
