The Young Lions

"It's just that I'm so fond of wars," said Peggy flatly. "Crazy about wars." She laughed. "It would be awful if people were having a war and someone I knew wasn't being shot in it."

Michael sighed. He felt weary now, and helpless, but he couldn't help realizing that he wouldn't have liked it if Peggy was one of those patriotic women who jumped happily into the idea of the war, as into the arrangement for a wedding.

"What do you want, Peggy?" he said, thinking of the Army waiting implacably for him at six-thirty the next morning, thinking of the other armies on both sides of the world waiting to kill him. "What do you want from me?"

"Nothing," said Peggy. "You've given me two precious years of your time. What more could a girl want? Now go off and let them blow you up. I'll hang a gold star outside the ladies' room of the Stork Club."

The waiter was standing over them. "Anything else?" he asked, smiling with an Italian fondness for prosperous lovers who ate expensive lunches.

"Brandy for me," said Michael. "Peggy?"

"Nothing thanks," Peggy said. "I'm perfectly happy."

The waiter backed off. If he hadn't caught the boat at Naples, in 1920, Michael thought, he'd probably be in Libya today, rather than on 56th Street.

"Do you want to know what I want to do this afternoon?" Peggy asked harshly.

"Yes."

"I want to go some place and get married." She stared across the small, wine-stained table at him, angry and challenging. The girl at the next table, a full blonde in a red dress, was saying to the beaming white-haired man she was lunching with, "You must introduce me to your wife some day, Mr Cawpowder. I'm sure she's absolutely charming."

"Did you hear me?" Peggy demanded.

"I heard you."

The waiter came over to the table and put the small glass down. "Only three more bottles left," he said. "It is impossible to get any brandy these days."

Michael glanced up at the waiter. Unreasonably, he disliked the dark, friendly, stupid face. "I'll bet," he said, "they have no trouble getting it in Rome."

The waiter's face quivered, and Michael could almost hear him saying unhappily to himself, "Ah, here is another one who is blaming me for Mussolini. This war, oh, this sickness of a war."

"Yes, Sir," the waiter said, smiling, "it is possible that you are right." He backed away, trying to disclaim, by the tortured small movements of his hands and the sorrowful upper lip, that he had any responsibility for the Italian Army, the Italian Fleet, the Italian Air Force.

"Well?" Peggy said loudly.

Michael sipped his brandy slowly, in silence.

"O.K.," said Peggy. "I catch on."

"I just don't see the sense," Michael said, "of getting married now."

"You're absolutely right," Peggy said. "It's just that I'm tired of seeing single men get killed."

"Peggy." Michael covered her hand softly with his. "This isn't at all like you."

"Perhaps it is," said Peggy. "Perhaps all the other times weren't like me. Don't think," she said coldly, "you're going to come back in five years with all your medals and find me waiting for you, with a welcoming smile on my face."

"O.K.," Michael said wearily. "Let's not talk about it."

"I'm going to talk about it," Peggy said.

"O.K.," said Michael. "Talk about it."

He could see her fighting back tears as her face dissolved and softened. "I was going to be very gay," she said, her voice trembling. "Going to war? Let's have a drink… I would've managed, too, but that damned sailor… The trouble is, I'm going to forget you. There was another man, in Austria, and I thought I'd remember him till the day I died. He was probably a better man than you, too, braver and more gentle, and a cousin of his wrote to me last year from Switzerland that they'd killed him in Vie

"Stop it," Michael whispered, "please, Peggy, stop it."

But Peggy went on, the mist of tears barely held back in the deep remembering eyes. "I'm silly," she said. "I'd probably have forgotten him even if we had been married, and I'd probably forget you, if you stayed away long enough. Probably just a superstition on my part. I guess I feel if you're married and it's there, all settled and official, to come home to, you'll come home. Ridiculous… His name was Joseph. He had no home, nothing. So, naturally, they killed him." She stood up abruptly. "Wait for me outside," she said. "I'll be right down."

She fled out of the small, dark room with the little bar near the window and the old-fashioned maps of the wine sections of France hung around the smoky walls. Michael left some money on the table for the bill, and a big tip to try to make up to the Italian waiter for being rude to him, and walked slowly out into the street.

He stood in front of the restaurant, thoughtfully smoking a cigarette. No, he thought finally, no. She's wrong. I'm not going to carry that burden, too, or let her carry it, either. If she was going to forget him, that was merely another price you paid for the war, another form of casualty. It was not entered on the profit-and-loss balances of men killed and wounded and treasure destroyed, but it was just as surely a casualty. It was hopeless and crippling to try to fight it.

Peggy came out. Her hair shone in the sun as though she had combed it violently upstairs, and her face was composed and smiling.

"Forgive me," she said, touching his arm. "I'm just as surprised by it as you are."

"That's all right," Michael said. "I'm no prize today myself."

"I didn't mean a word of what I said. You believe that, don't you?"

"Of course," said Michael.

"Some other time," Peggy said, "I'll tell you about the man in Vie

"Sure," said Michael politely. "I'd love to hear it."

"And now," Peggy looked up the street and waved to a taxicab that was slowly coming down from Lexington Avenue, "I think I'd better go back to work for the rest of the afternoon. Don't you?"

"There's no need…"

Peggy smiled at him. "I think it's a good idea," she said.

"Then tonight, we'll meet as though we never had lunch today at all. I'd prefer it that way. You can find plenty of things to do this afternoon, can't you?"

"Of course," Michael said.

"Have a good time, darling." She kissed him lightly. "And wear your grey suit tonight." She got into the cab without looking back and the car drove off. Michael watched it turn the corner and then he walked slowly west on the shady side of the street.

He had put off thinking about Peggy, half consciously, half unconsciously. There were so many other things to think about. The war made a miser out of a man, he saved all his emotions for it. But that was no excuse, either. He still wanted to postpone thinking about her. He knew himself too well to imagine that for two, three, four years he could remain faithful to a photograph, a letter a month, a memory… And he didn't want to make any claims on her. They were two sensible, forthright, candid people, and here was a problem that millions of people all around them were facing one way or another, and they couldn't handle it any better than the youngest, the most naive, the most illiterate backwoodsman come down from his hills to pick up a rifle, leaving his Cora Sue behind him… He knew that they wouldn't talk about it any more, either that night or any night before the end of the war, but he knew that in the nights of memory and recapitulation ahead of him, on continents he had never travelled before, he would suffer as he thought of this early summer afternoon and a voice would cry within him, "Why didn't you do it? Why not? Why not?"