“Just the same, hon, will you promise to get a shave tomorrow at the lunch break?”

“Certainly. Why not? Gimme another drink. I got a big day coming up tomorrow.”

John Yerkes Iselin was re-elected to his second six-year term on November 4, 1958, by the biggest plurality in the history of elections in his state. Two hundred and thirty-six fist fights went unreported the following evening in the pubs, cafés, bodegas, cantinas, trattorias, and sundry brasseries of western Europe between the glum American residents and the outraged, consternated natives of the larger cities.

Early one Monday morning in his office at The Daily Press (for he had taken to arriving at work at seven-thirty rather than at ten o’clock now that he was the department head, just as had Mr. Gaines before him) Raymond looked up and saw, with no little irritation at the interruption, the figure of Chunjin standing in the doorway. Raymond did not remember ever having seen him before. The man was slight and dark with alert, liquid eyes and a most intelligent expression; he stared, with wistful hopefulness mixed with ascending regard, but these subtleties did not transport Raymond to remembering the man.

“Yes?” he drawled in his calculatedly horrid way.

“I am Chunjin, Mr. Shaw, sir. I was interpreter attached to Cholly Company, Fifty-second Regiment—”

Raymond pointed his outstretched finger right at Chunjin’s nose. “You were interpreter for the patrol,” he said.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Shaw.”

Other men might have allowed their camaraderie to foam over in the warming glow of the good old days, but Raymond said, “What do you want?” Chunjin blinked.

“I mean to say, what are you doing here?” Raymond said, not backing away from his bluntness but attempting to cope with this apparent stupidity through clearer syntax.

“Your father did not say to you?”

“My father?”

“Senator Iselin? I write to—”

“Senator Iselin is not my father. Repeat. He is not my father. If you learn nothing else on your visit to this country memorize that fact.”

“I write to Senator Iselin. I tell him how I interpret your outfit. I tell him I want to come to America. He get me visa. Now I need job.”

“A job?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Shaw.”

“My dear fellow, we don’t use interpreters here. We all speak the same language.”

“I am tailor and mender. I am cook. I am driver of car. I am cleaner and scrubber. I fix anything. I take message. I sleep at house of my cousin and not eat much food. I ask for job with you because you are great man who save my life. I need for pay only ten dollars a week.”

“Ten dollars? For all that?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Shaw.”

“Well, look here, Chunjin. I couldn’t pay you only ten dollars a week.”

“Yes, sir. Only ten dollars a week.”

“I can use a valet. I would like having a cook, I think. A good cook, I mean. And I dislike washing dishes. I had been thinking about getting a car, but the parking thing sort of has me stopped. I go to Washington twice a week and there is no reason why I shouldn’t have the money the airlines are getting from this newspaper for those trips and I’d rather not fly that crowded corridor anyway. I would prefer it if you didn’t sleep in, as a matter of fact, but I’m sorry, ten dollars a week just isn’t enough money.” Raymond said that flatly, as though it were he who had applied for the job and was turning it down for good and sufficient reasons.

“I work for fifteen, sir.”

“How can you live on fifteen dollars a week in New York?”

“I live with the cousins, sir.”

“How much do the cousins earn?”

“I do not know, sir.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Chunjin, but it is out of the question.” Raymond, who had still not greeted his old wartime buddy, turned away to return to his work. From his expression he had dismissed the conversation, and he was anxious to return to the bureau reports and to some very helpful information his mother had managed to send along to him.

“Is not good for you to pay less, Mr. Shaw?”

Raymond turned slowly, forcing his attention back to the Korean and realizing impatiently that he had not made it clear that the meeting was over. “Perhaps I should have clarified my position in the matter, as follows,” Raymond said frostily. “It strikes me that there is something basically dishonest about an arrangement by which a man insists upon working for less money than he can possibly live on.”

“You think I steal, Mr. Shaw?”

Raymond flushed. “I had not considered any specific category of such theoretical dishonesty.”

“I live on two dollars a week in Mokpo. I think ten dollars many times better.”

“How long have you been here?”

Chunjin looked at his watch. “Two hours.”

“I mean, in New York.”

“Two hours.”

“All right. I will instruct the bank to pay you a salary of twenty-five dollars a week.”

“Thank you, Mr. Shaw, sir.”

“I will supply the uniforms.”

“Yes sir.”

Raymond leaned over the desk and wrote the bank’s address on a slip of paper, adding Mr. Rothenberg’s name. “Go to this address. My bank. Ask for this man. I’ll call him. He’ll give you the key to my place and some instructions for stocking food. He’ll tell you where to buy it. We don’t use money. Please have dinner ready to serve at seven-fifteen next Monday. I’ll be in Washington for the weekend, where I may be reached at the Willard Hotel. I am thinking in terms of roast veal—a boned rump of veal—with green beans, no potato—please, Chunjin, never serve me a potato—”

“No, sir, Mr. Shaw.”

“—some canned, not fresh, spinach; pan gravy, I think some stewed fruit, and two cups of hot black coffee.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Shaw. Just like in United States Army.”

“Jesus, I hope not,” Raymond said.

Eleven

ON APRIL 15, 1959, THE VERY SAME DAY ON which Chunjin got his job with Raymond on transfer from the Soviet Army, another military transfer occurred. Major Marco was placed on indefinite sick leave and detached from duty.

Marco had undergone two series of psychiatric treatments at Army hospitals. As the recurring nightmare had grown more vivid, the pathological fatigue had gotten more severe. No therapy had been successful. Marco had weighed two hundred and eight pounds when he had come into New York from Korea. At the time he went on indefinite sick leave he weighed in at one hundred and sixty-three and he looked a little nuts. Every nerve end in his body had grown a small ticklish mustache, and they sidled along under his skin like eager touts, screaming on tiptoe. He had the illusion that he could see and hear everything at once and had lost all of his ability to edit either sight or sound. Sound particularly detonated his reflexes. He tried desperately not to listen when people talked because an open A sound repeated several times within a sentence could make him weep uncontrollably. He didn’t know why, so he concentrated on remembering the cause, when he could, so that he would not listen so attentively, but it didn’t work. It was an A sound that must have been somewhat like a sound he had heard many, many years before, in utter peace and safety, which through its loss or through his indifference to it over the years could now cause him to weep bitterly. If he heard the sound occur once, he quickly hummed “La Seine,” to push the A sound off to the side. His hand tremors were pronounced when his arm was extended unsupported. Sometimes his teeth would chatter as though he had entered a chill. Once in a while, after four or five unrelieved nights of nightmare, he developed a bad facial tic, and it wasn’t pretty. Marco was being rubbed into sand by the grinding stones of two fealties. He was being slowly rubbed away by two faiths he lived by, far beyond his control; the first was his degree of holy reverence for the Medal of Honor, one of the most positive prejudices of his life because his life, principally, was the Army; and the second was the abnormal degree of his friendship for Raymond Shaw, which had been placed upon his mind, as coffee will leave a stain upon a fresh, snowy tablecloth, by the deepest psychological conditioning.