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As if reading her mind, Herkemeier says, “Revenge is a dangerous quest, Rainy.”
He leaves, downcast and worried. But his mood doesn’t concern Rainy, because she knows she has convinced him.
He’ll help me. He’ll help me kill Nazis.
“Hah!” she cries, exultant now. A Silver Star? That will help her get the tough assignments. It will help her get close to them, within range of them. It will make it possible, with Herkemeier’s help, to hurt them.
Rainy cocks an eye at Pip. “You think I’ve gone round the bend, don’t you, Pip? Well . . . Well, maybe I have. But you know what, old Pip my friend? I feel a hell of a lot better.”
37
FRANGIE MARR, RAINY SCHULTERMAN, RIO RICHLIN—RINGWOULD, KENT, UK
The ceremony is to take place in Dover proper, but given that Dover has been bombed repeatedly—though not recently—plus the fact that there is scarcely a spare bedroom to be found in a town overrun with GIs, Frangie, Rainy, and Rio are housed in a pub’s rented rooms, in the tiny village of Ringwould, just northeast of Dover and south of Deal.
It is the land of the famous white cliffs. The army driver who picks them up at the airfield drives along the shore for a while so they can admire the cliffs—which are indeed snowy white except where creeping foliage has added splashes of green.
Their room—just one room—has two single beds and a chair. Staring at the room, it is Frangie who is most uncomfortable. Her first thought is that she should volunteer to sleep in the chair. She is, after all, a Negro, and neither of the white girls with her is likely to want to share a bed.
But she can practically hear Harder in her ear telling her that she’s acting like a second-class citizen. British hotels are not segregated—which is not to say that the English aren’t racists, but their treatment of blacks tends to be condescending and insulting without quite reaching the levels of open hatred Frangie would have expected in the South, and, if Harder’s right, much of the north, back home.
Rio solves the problem. “I got the floor.”
“The floor?” Frangie protests. “What do you mean?”
Rio shrugs. “I’ve been sleeping in mud. Cold mud. A nice, clean floor is pure luxury.”
“Still cold, though,” Frangie says. “I can see my breath in here.”
“Yeah,” Rio says. “But there’s a fireplace.” Wood and kindling have been piled in the fireplace, and Rio drops to her knees and sets about lighting it with her
Zippo. “There you go.”
“Did you open the flue?” Frangie asks, as smoke begins to fill the small room.
“The what?”
Frangie reaches past her to an iron knob set in the wall that opens the flue. Smoke swirls then is sucked up the chimney.
“We’re here for tonight and tomorrow night,” Frangie says. “I’ll take the floor tomorrow night.”
Frangie and Rio are easy together, having a long acquaintance. Rainy is also slightly known to both of them from Tunisia, but this Rainy is somehow different than the determined, confident young intelligence sergeant they’d known back then. This Rainy is polite but quiet. And more than quiet—distant, as if nothing is quite real to her, as if she’s sleepwalking.
They toss their bags onto the floor, and Rio excuses herself to the bathroom down the hall.
Rainy sits on the edge of one bed and belatedly says, “I could take the floor.”
“We could draw lots,” Frangie suggests, wishing the whole matter settled. It is beyond strange to be spending a night in a white pub with two white women. It feels transgressive and maybe a little bold. It also feels very insecure—either of these two could tell her to get out, to find somewhere else to stay, to go sleep in the park, if they chose to.
Harder has lectured her on the internalization of anti-Negro feeling. She had daydreamed through most of that, like most of his lectures, but bits and pieces of what he’s said have stuck. She can’t deny that she’s doing just what he said: unconsciously collaborating in our own oppression. But at the same time, there’s a question of fairness—she knows little of what Rainy has endured, but suffering is all over the Jewish girl’s face. Her eyes, which Frangie recalls being alert with a questing intelligence, are still intense, but now there’s something hard in them as well. Something very hard that frightens Frangie a little. In any event, Rainy Schulterman looks like she needs a decent bed and a good sleep.
As for Rio Richlin? The freckle-faced farm girl Frangie first met back in basic training is still there, somewhere beneath the leathery hide of the tough soldier she’s become. And she’s seen Rio since then, so the change seems less sudden. Frangie’s not even put off by the fact that even now, with the three of them in fresh-pressed class-A uniforms, Rio has her curved knife strapped to her thigh.
Rio has changed, but Rainy is almost a different person.
Something happened to that girl.
Rio returns from the bathroom and grins. “It flushes,” she says with great satisfaction. “Civilization.”
