446
GERALD
ROSEN
a rapid hammering or pounding began to sound on the small doer
to the colonel's bathroom. The colonel pursed his lips in exaspera–
tion, shaking his head from side to side. "What now?" he muttered.
The racket continued, the tempo of the banging increasing
steadily.
"Just a minute.... Just one cotton-pickin' minute," he said,
as he rose from his chair and went to open the door, still muttering
frustrations under his breath.
The open doorway revealed a small, tile-floored bathroom, and
in it, to my amazement, behind a tiny desk set between the sink and
the toilet, sat a dried-up old woman, still swinging the cane which
she had been using to pound against the door.
"Mother, how many times have I told you...." the colonel
began, but she interrupted him with a downward crack of her cane
against the top of her little desk. Then, without saying a word, she
lifted the cane and pointed it toward me.
The colonel followed the line of the shaft with his eye. He got
the point. "Oh, yes, lieutenant ... take a haircut, will you. That kind
of thing's OK if you play the violin, but in this man's army we like
to be able to separate the women from the men."
His mother's prune-wrinkled puss changed into the shape of a
tight, little smile.
Camera One
But my eyes are drawn toward the door. Toward the small
door which the colonel has pulled open.
It
has been completely
swung open so that it rests against the colonel's bookcase of Army
manuals. So that I can see its back side.
And through the top of the door, through the glass of which it
is composed, I can see the rows of manuals on the bookshelves. I
can see right through the top half of the door. And that's how his
mother was able to see me. The top half of the colonel's bathroom
door is a one-way mirror.
The colonel closes the door on his mother, straightens his tie and
white medical jacket while looking at his reflection in the mirror, and
returns to his desk, saying abstractedly, "Honestly, it's a wonder I
