| Why don't you come on? he wondered desperatelyBy now his nerves were so taut that he would have welcomed an attack
He pressed his feet into the thick mud of the hole, and, still looking into the jungle, picked some mud off his boots with one hand and began to knead it like a piece of clayHe was unconscious of doing thisHis neck had begun to pain him from the tension with which he held himselfIt seemed to him that the hole was terribly open and that there was not enough protectionHe felt bitter that a man should have to stand guard in an open hole with only a machine gun before him
There was a frantic scuffling behind the first wall of jungle and Roth ground his jaws together to keep from uttering a soundThe noises were coming closer like men creeping up, moving a few feet and then halting, before approaching another few feetHe fumbled around the tripod of the machine gun to find a grenade, and then held it in his hand wondering where to throw itThe grenade seemed cheap replica chanel handbag extremely heavy, and he felt so weak that he doubted if he could hurl it more than ten yardsIn training he had been told the effective range of a grenade was thirty-five yards, and he was afraid now that he would be killed by his own grenadeHe replaced it beneath the machine gun, and just sat there
His fear had to ebb after a timeFor perhaps half an hour he had been waiting for the noises to develop into something, and when nothing occurred, his confidence began to come backHe did not reason that if there were Japs they might spend two hours in advancing fifty yards toward him; because he could not bear the suspense, a part of him assumed that they could not either, and he became convinced there was nothing in the jungle but some animals scurrying aboutHe lay back in the hole with his shirt against the damp rear wall, and began to relaxHis nerves calmed slowly, rousing to a pitch of fear again every time some sudden noise came out of the jungle, but still becoming black chanel quilted bag more and more composed like a receding tideAfter an hour had passed he grew sleepyHe thought of nothing, listened only to the profound pendant silence of the woodA mosquito began to sing about his ears and his neck, and he waited for it to bite him so that he could crush itIt made him think that there might be insects in the hole with him, and his body began to crawl, and for a few moments he was certain an ant was traveling down his backIt recalled to him the roaches that had infested the first apartment he had had when he was marriedHe remembered how he had reassured his wife, "There's nothing to worry about, ZeldaI can tell you from my studies that the roach is not too vicious a pest Zelda had got some idea that there must be bedbugs also, and no matter how many times he reassured her, "Zelda, roaches eat bedbugs," she would start up in bed, and grasp him with fear, "Herman, I know there's something biting me
"But I tell you that's impossible
"Don't tell me louis vuitton speedy 30 about your roaches," she would whisper angrily in the darkened bedroom"If roaches take care of bedbugs they have to get into the bed to do it, don't they?"
Roth felt a mingled pleasure and wistfulness in rememberingTheir life together had not been all that he had hopedThere were so many fights, and Zelda had a cruel tongue; he recalled how she had taunted him with his education and the fact that he could make no moneyIt had not been entirely her fault, he thought, but then it had not been his eitherIt was just that you didn't get everything you had hoped for when you were a kidHe wiped his hands on his fatigue trousers with a slow thorough motionZelda had been a good wife in some waysTheir quarrels had become as difficult for him to remember as her faceHe mused about her now, and in his mind she became another woman, many womenHe began to construct a lewd fantasy in his mind
Roth dreamt he was taking pornographic pictures of a model whom he had dressed as a chanel classic purse cowgirlShe was wearing a ten-gallon hat, and a leather fringe about an inch wide across her breasts, and a leather holster and cartridge belt slung at an angle across her hipsHe imagined now that he was telling her which way to pose and she was obeying with a tantalizing insoucianceHis groin began to ache, and he sat there, brooding, dreaming
After a time he became sleepy again, and tried to fight against itSome artillery was firing steadily a mile or two away, the sounds loud, then muffled, then loud againIt gave him a secure feelingHe hardly listened any longer to the jungleHis eyes kept closing, remaining shut for many seconds while he yawed away on the edge of slumberSeveral times he was about to fall asleep when a sudden noise in the jungle would rouse him with a startHe looked at the luminous dial of his watch and realized with dismay that he had still an hour of guardHe lay back, closed his eyes with the full intention of opening them in a few seconds, and fell tiffany heart lock necklace as |
| 