Louis Shalako: Heaven Is Too Far Away, Chapter Fourteen. Louis Shalako.

Chapter Fourteen

Winnie as a Virgin

Winston Churchill, former First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, once wrote ‘There is nothing more exhilarating than being shot at and missed.’

He was in the Boer War. He was a correspondent for the popular press.

“That must have been while he was still a virgin.” According to Mick Dinwiddie, who I missed like hell sometimes.

Winnie as a virgin.

We weren’t exactly friends, but he was like a surrogate dad to so many guys on the squadron. You could ask him any question. Go to him with any problem. You could share your little triumphs and tragedies with him. Mick was sympathetic, hard on you, and sensible with the suggestions. Churchill’s support of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign forced his resignation from the Admiralty. His service as a battalion commander had somewhat rehabilitated him in some eyes. But then, in 1917 he joined Lloyd George’s coalition government. He held cabinet positions, being either Minister of Munitions, or Secretary for War. He was born into an aristocratic Victorian family, and in his lifetime he would witness Britain’s transformation from Empire to welfare state—I expect he would have hated nothing more virulently. Being who he was and all. I guess he did have it tough in some ways.

Mick was an absolutely fabulous guy on the ground. It was only when leading men in the air that he came up a little short. At the time, this was no uncommon failing.

I would have liked to talk to Mick right about then, about a lot of things. Mr. Churchill was wrong on several counts.

1.) Nothing beats a good piece of ass.

2.) Having been shot at, and missed, and having been shot at, and hit, I can tell you the latter is more exhilarating than the former. Mr. Churchill, when you were shot at, he wasn’t a very good marksman. You missed out on all the fun.

3.) There is nothing more exhilarating than getting them in your sights and letting them live. They deserve all the suffering they can get in life. Death is too easy for some.

More about that later.

I thought I was a virtuous person, I thought I knew what that meant. I thought I’d been tempted, more than once, but what are the lusty imaginings of a fourteen year-old boy?

He doesn’t even know what he wants.

Now I knew that I was weak.

She left a note.

‘I have to go to work this morning. Don’t worry, I will give a plausible excuse for being absent yesterday afternoon. Back at six. Hugs and kisses, and by the way, if you go out, please leave an address, or a number, with the maid…sleep all day if you want to, lover.’ — Betty

Well, I am on leave. It kind of scares me, but I was also desperate for any kind of a friend. I laid my head back on the pillow, uncertain as to what to do next. The clock was ticking on the bureau, in an otherwise very silent room. Then came a knock.

The maid brought some tea. I drank it down pretty quick, scalding hot as it was, and jumped out of bed. Time for a quickie bath and off to work. Whatever that means, when you’re not on any real duty. That Betty, she’s a really good woman, and I wouldn’t want her to think I’m a no-good lazy bum.

I was going to seek out an old friend from early days. If anyone knew about motors, he should. He took me to the family home for a weekend leave once at Christmas. These things slip one’s mind, in the intervening years.

The maid showed me to a room where the white telephone was kept. Nice touch.

I looked around idly as she pulled the directory out of a drawer.

This was an unbelievably nice, big, ornate apartment for a single girl who works at the library. This was intriguing, but I didn’t have time. Maybe the flat belonged to a friend.

But who?

Briefly considered asking the maid. As if sensing this, she wouldn’t make eye contact.

The maid excused herself politely in a neutral tone, and disappeared into a back hallway. The room was set up as a rather ornate office or den, and the phone sat there on a bloody huge walnut desk. That cost a thousand pounds, if I am not mistaken.

“Uh, oh…I think I’m in deep trouble. Deep trouble.”

It made getting out of there so much more attractive, though.

Leafing through the book, I found a number. In my experience it really doesn’t matter if you get the right one on the first try. People are naturally helpful. They don’t like to admit that there is something they don’t know. Challenge them, but nicely. Act a little stupid on the phone. I find this helps, sometimes. Stupid but nice, this is the key to success on the phone. I speak very slowly, and let them finish my sentences, especially when I don’t actually know the end of the sentence.

“I’m looking for a person, in the Naval Department…uh…”

And the impatient person on the end of the line says, “Bill Jones?”

And I say, “No, no, it’s someone in maps, and surveys…ah…”

“Scabby Solomon? Jerry Jackman? Dick Peckerhead? Et cetera, and so forth?”

I got a whole list of contacts by this method, and I could now call back and ask for them by name and department. Just like an old buddy.

Because I like people.

If they can’t answer your question, always ask if they can suggest someone else.

You would be surprised how often this gets results. Happy to pass the buck.

That’s not my department, never take that for an answer, (it is in fact the answer you want.)

Get them to tell you whose department it is…it’s a pretty simple question, right?

Especially when calling Whitehall. Big building, but it’s a small community. Even if they hate each other, they know who’s who and who’s busy doing what. They’re all empire builders of one sort or another, and therefore they must know each other’s business, in order to poach-and-sabotage successfully.

You could say they gossip. I would have to be careful.

It didn’t take long to get through to my buddy.

Lenny ‘Crash’ Zavitz was an old friend, a former auto mechanic—and a clerk at Whitehall. We would meet for lunch. And so I left the apartment to fill up an otherwise empty day. It was hours until she would be back.

What an interesting thought.

At least now I know what temptation really is. And some other funny feelings as well.

***

I had forgotton all about the mime incident. It happened so long ago. We were on leave in Paris, and we got drunk while touring a few of the seedier dives. Finally we’d had enough of roaring sing-songs, drunken faces and noise, noise, noise. Our legs were so wobbly that we kept falling down and knocking people over. At some point we realized, rather remorsefully, that it was a bad idea.

We stood on a cold and rainy street corner, Jimmy Slade and I, Lenny and Whitey. All of a sudden a cab arrived near us, about fifty feet away on the other side of the street.

“A mime, a bloody great poufter of a mime,” in Zavitz’s words, gets out.

We looked at him, he looked at us. And all of a sudden he goes into this little act, and he was bad. I mean, he was really bad. It wasn’t that late, maybe nine-thirty. We just stood there looking at him. No one even laughed, and he got a little pouty.

You know the kind of stuff. Climbing a ladder, walking into the wind, being inside of a glass box. No one even cracked a smile. He made a rude gesture and began to turn.

I didn’t like that little cocksucker’s attitude.

I pulled out Whitey’s pistol, a big, black .45 calibre Colt. I took it away from him earlier, when he was very drunk and I was still mature and responsible, i.e. only slightly inebriated. It was a problem throughout the evening, and I was starting to resent the damned thing, heavy and cold, rubbing me raw at the waistband. If I got caught with it against orders, I would have been in a whole heap of trouble.

That was why I took it away from Whitey in the first place. It literally fell out of his coat onto the floor of a bootlegger’s house. The man’s elderly mom and pop didn’t say a thing, not a thing, and I felt rather badly for them. It was Sunday, after all.

Not their fault if their son’s a stinker. So I scooped it up and kept it.

They had a look of appreciation when they saw that. At least that’s my interpretation.

Anyway, they were glad to see us go. There were bullets in it and everything. The fool paid ten dollars in some dive for a souvenir. You could probably get one for five back home, but people are stupid after all…

The seller probably needed drinking money.

Like an idiot, I drew the gun and popped off a couple of rounds at the street sign directly above the little bastard’s head. (The mime, not Whitey.) The sign came down, narrowly missing the mime’s noggin. Brick-chips flew out of the wall, and I popped off a couple more before Dick Whitehead and Lenny pulled my arm down and wrestled the gun from me. I was yelling like a stuck pig.

I mean, this guy was bad.

“Gonna kill him. Wanna kill him. Gimme my whiskey.”

This was a pet phrase we had at the time, peculiar to our own small group of lads.

Not that relevant, but it shows the kind of evening we had been having.

Lenny dropped it, all fumble-fingered, and I grabbed it again.

“Tee. Hee. Hee.” I giggled, lining up the sights on the mime’s buttocks as he ran.

The two of them were literally hanging off my arm, which ached considerably the next day. Finally Whitey got it away. The mime scampered off, up the stairs into this big building, where windows were opening, curtains were being pulled back, and all of a sudden the gun went off again.

The bullet went spanking off into space as it ricocheted from the pavement. I got the gun again and fired the last round at the building the mime had gone into. Even drunk as a skunk, ever the professional. Always counting my shots.

“Whitey. What the fuck you doing?” I asked reproachfully.

Finally the guys were dragging me away. We could hear whistles in the distance, a lot of them. I don’t know what curiously-silent kind of conversation they might have had, and of course the French are known for their facility in gesturing, but right about then, all the mimes in the world came boiling out the door in one mad pack and came racing after us. I guess mimes can count gunshots too. So they’re not deaf or anything. All hell was about to break loose when somebody we knew pulled up in a fire truck, ‘borrowed,’ from some Royal Army types somewhere.

“…‘op in, you crazy blighters.” A voice called from the door.

We were lucky not to get lynched. We were lucky to get away with that little episode.

The gendarmes never close the book on a case like that. I’m still wanted somewhere for that little incident.

“I’ll never forget the look on his face when you opened up on him.” Laughed Zavitz. “I just wanted to see if he could talk, or if he really was a deaf mute. That’s what you said.”

I smiled in fond memory. This is why I prefer not to look up old acquaintances. Thank God for them, but sometimes the conversation runs a little thin.

I’m not too good at making small talk.

Ordering yet another round of stiff drinks, he apologized for ‘only having a couple.’

“You see, I’m on the wagon now. I’m only drinking to cele-, celebrate an old friend’s g-good luck.” He told me.

Fuck. The bugger’s turned into a real lush, and he’s just used me as an excuse to go off the wagon. Melanie, that’s his wife, is going to hate me. He probably won’t stop now, not until he’s run out of cash and credit.

Fuck. Is it any wonder I felt like such a jerk sometimes? But he seemed so glad to see me. Maybe he doesn’t have any friends left. I gently tried to steer him back to the main topic, but he insisted on telling me about his dreams.

He dreams all the time, and he can never get a good night’s sleep. He sees dead friends, face down in the mud. He can’t see their faces, but he knows they’re friends. They’re drowning, but he has no arms and can’t help them. There is always a cloud of gas in his dream, rolling forever towards him and the wounded. Now there are hundreds of them.

Wounded men everywhere.

Lenny and I were together, that day.

He remembers it that way. It is curiously blank, for me, although I believe he was. He was in my platoon. It was blank back then and pretty much now as well.

Only the major facts stand out with any clarity.

All the little details are gone.

He wants to die, but can’t.

He wants to die, but he can't.

That is the cowardly way out.

“Have ‘nuther drink?” He mumbled in sadness.

“I have to get on my way. I want to buy a motor, some sporty little rig just to get me around. Something that doesn’t cost too much to run,” I explained fairly clearly.

“Got you some names and numbers.” He replied in a fuzzy tone.

“Not too many for sale.” He added more lucidly.

There’s a war on. I know. With no new machines coming out, the used ones were at a distinct premium these days.

I helped him to a cab, told him to go home.

“Have Melanie call the office and say you’re sick.” I told him firmly, and when he asked for a number where he could reach me, I had to lie.

“It’s all up in the air for me right now.” I explained.

“Keep in touch, once in a while, Will.” He said in sadness as I wrung his hand for the final time.

Then the cabbie took him away. Poor Zavitz. One of the walking wounded, and there seemed to be many of them.

Zavitz. His sacrifice was made. He would pay a price. No one would ever understand.

Not even me. But I could sympathize. I guess I had my own private little hell brewing inside.

END

Chapter One.