He choked up even more a second later when he spied Colonel Korn’s tubby monochrome figure trotting up the curved, wide, yellow stone staircase toward him in lackadaisical haste from the great dilapidated lobby below with its lofty walls of cracked dark marble and circular floor of cracked grimy tile.
The chaplain was even more frightened of Colonel Korn than he was of Colonel Cathcart.
The swarthy, middle-aged lieutenant colonel with the rimless, icy glasses and faceted, bald, domelike pate that he was always touching sensitively with the tips of his splayed fingers disliked the chaplain and was impolite to him frequently.
He kept the chaplain in a constant state of terror with his curt, derisive tongue and his knowing, cynical eyes that the chaplain was never brave enough to meet for more than an accidental second.
Inevitably, the chaplain’s attention, as he cowered meekly before him, focused on Colonel Korn’s midriff, where the shirttails bunching up from inside his sagging belt and ballooning down over his waist gave him an appearance of slovenly girth and made him seem inches shorter than his middle height.
Colonel Korn was an untidy disdainful man with an oily skin and deep, hard lines running almost straight down from his nose between his crepuscular jowls and his square, clefted chin.
His face was dour, and he glanced at the chaplain without recognition as the two drew close on the staircase and prepared to pass.
‘Hiya, Father,’ he said tonelessly without looking at the chaplain.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Good morning, sir,’ the chaplain replied, discerning wisely that Colonel Korn expected nothing more in the way of a response.
Colonel Korn was proceeding up the stairs without slackening his pace, and the chaplain resisted the temptation to remind him again that he was not a Catholic but an Anabaptist, and that it was therefore neither necessary nor correct to address him as Father.
He was almost certain now that Colonel Korn remembered and that calling him Father with a look of such bland innocence was just another one of Colonel Korn’s methods of taunting him because he was only an Anabaptist.
Colonel Korn halted without warning when he was almost by and came whirling back down upon the chaplain with a glare of infuriated suspicion.
The chaplain was petrified.
‘What are you doing with that plum tomato, Chaplain?’ Colonel Korn demanded roughly.
The chaplain looked down his arm with surprise at the plum tomato Colonel Cathcart had invited him to take.
‘I got it in Colonel Cathcart’s office, sir,’ he managed to reply.
‘Does the colonel know you took it?’
‘Yes, sir.
He gave it to me.’
‘Oh, in that case I guess it’s okay,’ Colonel Korn said, mollified.
He smiled without warmth, jabbing the crumpled folds of his shirt back down inside his trousers with his thumbs.
His eyes glinted keenly with a private and satisfying mischief.
‘What did Colonel Cathcart want to see you about, Father?’ he asked suddenly.
The chaplain was tongue-tied with indecision for a moment.
‘I don’t think I ought—’
‘Saying prayers to the editors of The Saturday Evening Post?’
The chaplain almost smiled.
‘Yes, sir.’
Colonel Korn was enchanted with his own intuition. He laughed disparagingly. ‘You know, I was afraid he’d begin thinking about something so ridiculous as soon as he saw this week’s Saturday Evening Post.
I hope you succeeded in showing him what an atrocious idea it is.’
‘He has decided against it, sir.’
‘That’s good.
I’m glad you convinced him that the editors of The Saturday Evening Post were not likely to run that same story twice just to give some publicity to some obscure colonel.
How are things in the wilderness, Father?
Are you able to manage out there?’
‘Yes, sir.
Everything is working out.’ ‘That’s good.
I’m happy to hear you have nothing to complain about.
Let us know if you need anything to make you comfortable.
We all want you to have a good time out there.’
‘Thank you, sir.
I will.’
Noise of a growing stir rose from the lobby below.
It was almost lunchtime, and the earliest arrivals were drifting into the headquarters mess halls, the enlisted men and officers separating into different dining halls on facing sides of the archaic rotunda.
Colonel Korn stopped smiling.
‘You had lunch with us here just a day or so ago, didn’t you, Father?’ he asked meaningfully.
‘Yes, sir. The day before yesterday.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Colonel Korn said, and paused to let his point sink in.
‘Well, take it easy, Father.