Polar Bear Blues Read online

  Polar Bear Blues

  That's what you get for being a lush. Exile. If you are lucky. Knowing that everything is entirely your own fault makes it no easier to be yourself. My name is Miles Kapusta, and I have a problem with my mouth. It's too big, and it's always open. Booze flows in, bullshit flows out. I get into trouble.

  Trouble in this case being Vladivostok. The end of the line. From any direction. . I rest my case. Guilty as charged.

  No one met me at the dock. It was snowing. I looked around, saw a line of T Model taxis parked in front of a bar. I went into the bar. Shotanabeer. The beer was Japanese, the shot was vodka. There was a phone. It was in Russian, so I just dialed 0. The Operator spoke English, more or less, she got me AEFS HQ, and a drink or two later, I was connected to the Signal Corps. I could have talked Russian, of course, but fuck them. This is my good attitude. I have worse. A bored sergeant said he would send a car. It took another hour, and it wasn't a car, it was a motorcycle with a side-hack. I froze, sleet pelting my face and civilian trench coat. It was April. Welcome to hell.

  Signal Corps HQ was slightly worse than hell, but at least the stove was working. I walked in. An overage, overweight captain took one look, asked me, "Are you going to be trouble?"

  "Not on purpose." I shrugged. "Sparks fly upward. Shit flows downstream."

  "They were right. A trouble-maker. Well, have I got a job for you? You send code?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's yes, sir."

  "Yes, sir." I was a civilian, but not stupid. This fat turd was my meal ticket, my only chance out of here. Suck it up, cabbage head.

  "You will go join Hodges' staff, where you can freeze to death or get your fat ass shot off. Or both. You and Hodges will get along fine, you are both a couple of pantywaist losers. Wait here." He didn't offer me a chair, but I edged closer to the coal stove, while he had a frazzled sergeant cut my orders, scribble a chit for travel. He clipped the papers together, handed them to the captain, who scaled them across the room to me. Only a few pages came lose. I groveled for them like the whipped cur I am.

  "Where and when…Sir?"

  "Read'm and weep, Kapusta, read'm and weep. Dismissed." He went back to his desk and his primary occupation, slurping down coffee and blintzes. Right. I didn't salute. He obviously never wanted to see me again, the feeling was mutual. I flipped though my orders. Some place called Dalny. Train station. I waved down a cab, got taken to the Main Station. It had been bombed by the Japs or the Reds or somebody, repaired with rough lumber. More than I could say about the street, it was dirt and rubble, patched with mud. I went in, found that my train was not scheduled to leave for four hours. It was headed south? Really? From here? Norse hell is a cold place, I remembered from comparative mythology. Corea? That’s worse than hell. Colder. Figured. I found a bar in the station. Prepared to have a drink. Or two. I met a swabbie captain in the bar, he had a worse attitude than I did. Do. “Call me Eppi.” he said, “Want a drink?”

  “You buying?”

  “Doubles.” I nodded thanks, he pointed one finger at his shot glass, held up two fingers twice.

  “Eppi? That short for something?” Making conversation.

  “Epstein. I’m a yid. You?”

  “I don’t know what I am. Outside of being fucked. Miles Kapusta. Signal Corps, it says here.” I tapped my papers.

  “That’s an unusual name, no offense.”

  “You are the first person in months that has not tried to give me offense. I was born in Ukraine in ’02. Odessa. Come the war, we ran for our lives, my dad and me. The Turks took all our money, our papers, the Society of Friends got us to New Haven. Some Immigration Officer decided that Kalchenko was too hard to say. He was half in the bag, decided to name us Kapusta, unless we gave him twenty bucks. Kapusta it is. I used to be Milo Timofiyovych Kalchenko.”

  “Miles. And your dad is Tim.” He nodded to himself. “I was born in New Haven.”

  “Home town boy. Yeah, somehow dad started calling me Miles. Miles. Close enough.” I drank.

  “So where are you headed, Miles?”

  “Dalny. Wherever that is.”

  “It used to be called Port Arthur. I’m headed there too. Marine salvage.”

  “No wonder you drink. And a Jew.”

  “Never rains but it pours.”

  “Shit flows downstream.” I observed. “My round.” I waved and paid, then asked, “Is there a lot of salvage there? I heard of Port Arthur, but not recently. Japanese?”

  “Sort of Russian, not that anybody gives a single runny shit. History lesson.” He kicked the duffle leaning up against the bar, didn’t need to open it. Maybe a book in there. “The Nipponese Empire under Admiral Togo attacked the Russian fleet in Port Arthur on Monday, February 8, 1904. Destroyers and torpedoes. They screwed around for a year or so, the Japs sunk ships to block the harbor, that didn’t work, both sides laid mines everywhere, a couple of mine layers managed to sink themselves…”

  “Russian.” I knew that without knowing anything about it.

  “Of course. Dolts. Admiral Makarov lost the battleship Petropavlovsk, lost 635 officers and men, and his own life.“ He drank for punctuation. “On 15 May, two Japanese battleships, the 12,320-ton Yashima and the 15,300-ton Hatsuse, sank in a Russian minefield off Port Arthur after they both struck at least two mines each, eliminating one-third of Japan's battleship force.”

  “A cluster-fuck.”

  “With bells on. And so it went. The Japs lost a gunboat and two more cruisers. Not much glory there. In the Battle of Tsushima Strait, Togo sank two thirds of the Russian Main Fleet, which had sailed around all of Africa to get there. Eighteen thousand miles. It was fought on May 27–28, 1905. The first battle won with the use of wireless telegraphy.”

  “I don’t remember. I was learning to walk then.”

  “I am older than you, then. Thirty nine. You look older. But anyway, the Russian fleet had been coming break the blockade, but the city surrendered in January. Good old Teddy Roosevelt worked out a peace treaty, the Russians got the city back. The Russians kept fortifying the city, the harbor, it was little more than a naval base and a rail head. Come the Big War, the Japanese attacked again…”

  “They never forget.”

  “They do not. Correct. Or forgive. Anyway, they attacked as soon as the Czar was executed…”

  “July 16, 1918,” I interrupted. Of course I had that date memorized. “My sixteenth birthday. We were living in New Haven. I was waiting to get drafted. My father was a tailor, but I wanted to be a writer.”

  “You are a writer?”

  “I write telegraph forms. I keep unit diaries. It is very challenging. I have a few novels back in the states in a trunk at my father’s apartment. One was actually published serially in ‘Top Notch Magazine.’ I was an official penny a word man. My finest hour.”

  “Perhaps I read it?”

  “The Leather-wing Bat?”

  “I’m not sure. I read a lot. I also have a book in print. One of my salvage jobs gained a little notoriety. The S-14?”

  “The submarine off of Block Island? I did read that. I am honored. Let me buy you a drink.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” He did. “I should say, I did have a book in print. It was suppressed. The brass did not like the idea that we are less than perfect, that we allow our invincible ships to sink.”

  “Indeed. Not surprised. Not surprised at all. I also am indiscrete.”

  “Which is why you are here?”

  “Exactly. I was turning a few dollars as a stringer to my local newspaper, and I might have stepped on a few toes. Somehow John E. Hoover and his Investigation Bureau became offended, and I was drafted into the Signal Corps as a civilian advisor, it says here.”

>   “Bit long in the tooth to be drafted, aren’t you?”

  “Twenty eight.” I scowled at my innocent drink. “I already did my bit. I was at Second Amiens, what the Froggies called the Fourth Battle of Picardy.”

  “Not that there were many French left at that point. Spring of ’20?”

  “And all the rest of the summer.”

  “Rough?”

  “That was an almost excessive amount of fun. I don’t really want to talk about it.” I looked at my watch. “Is it time for the train, yet?”

  “Around here? It will get here when it gets here. Russian efficiency and Chinese organization.”

  “That bad? We should get something to eat.”

  He looked at me dubiously. “Why on earth would we want to do that?”

  “So we can drink some more. Is there another reason?”

  “Miles, you are a sensible person. No wonder your life is hell. Let’s find us a few perogi, put a lining in our guts.”

  >>>>>>

  We did eat, I ate to excess, that’s the way I do everything, so they tell me. Mostly talk. I felt that Eppi was a different sort, more restrained normally, perhaps under more stress than he could handle. That was almost unimaginable, considering that he was a deep sea diver, a real nerves of steel type. That train of thought led to another, which in turn led me to buy a bottle, and sit out on the deserted platform in the cold where no one could hear us. “Okay, Lieutenant.” He looked at me over the neck of the bottle. “I don’t know you, you don’t know me, but I know something is badly wrong. You are too high-powered a man to be sucking down hooch like this.”

  “To you it’s what?” The first time I ever heard him sound Jewish.

  “Survival. In a word. What’s the situation in Dalny?”

  “Fucked. Also in a word. The Nips bombed the Russian Fleet with zeppelins, then bombarded the port with their dreadnaughts. The Russian sailors were in a state of mutiny. What the Nips didn’t sink, the Russian sailors scuttled. That’s Port Arthur. Dalny harbor is also full of sunken ships. I have to get that port operational again, nothing was going anyplace anyway, but that was not the point.”

  “So tell me what the point is?”

  “The point is the South Manchurian Railway. The Germans sort of own Peking, two hundred miles west. The Japanese and the British own Shanghai, what they call a Co-domination, that is four hundred miles south. The Nationalists are in Nanking, two hundred miles west of Shanghai. The Whites still supposedly own Vladivostok…”

  “I think I saw a few Russian soldiers. They were drunk.”

  “Correct. All we have here is what they call a Liaison Office.”

  “I was not impressed with them. Or them with me. Liaise this.” I made a rude gesture.

  Epstein continued. “And Uncle Sam’s happy warriors have been given Dalny. We need it to supply the South Manchurian Railway…”

  “Aforementioned. Why do we care?”

  “We, you and me, do not care. At all. But we have a quarter of a million troops strung out along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Doing fuck all, but there they are. Supposedly we are providing aid for the Whites, the Czech Legion, the Christian Warlords of China…”

  “Chiang Kai-shek, and his merry men. The world famous anti-Communist.”

  “Who was raised in Japan.”

  “Japan is supposed to be our ally.”

  “Japan is allied with England.”

  “England is our ally in the Great War against Germany.”

  “But the English king, George V is cousin to some very high-ranking German aristocrats.”

  “Of course. Victoria had lots of not very bright children, who all married well. Nicholas II was of her clan.”

  “But what people do not know, is that power is slipping, being pried, from the hands of Kaiser Bill, by a cabal of extreme right wing fanatics. Chancellor Goering is one of the fanatics. They have a brilliant rabble rouser, named Adolf Hitler, but he is just a tool. They want to kill all the Jews, they blame the Jews for the Endless War.”

  “You are not supposed to use that term. Saying that was what got me sent here. Well, that and a few other peccadilloes.”

  “So turn me in.” The look in his eyes was as chilling as cold steel wreckage at the bottom of one of his deep cold oceans. “IB operatives everywhere.”

  “Not an option. Go on.” This was just mad enough to make sense.

  “England is exhausted. Her upper class has been decimated several times over by sixteen years of war. Edward, the Prince of Wales, is very sympathetic to the German cause, some say he thinks them unbeatable. Her navy is still the strongest in the world, but the Commonwealth has been bled dry. There are no more troops.”

  “Just us gullible Colonials. ”

  “George V suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pleurisy. He has been sent on so-called recuperative private cruises in the Mediterranean; two years ago he fell seriously ill with septicemia and Eddie is keeping the store.”

  “None of this sounds good for the good guys, who are supposed to be us.”

  “ Correct. The Germans are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian, Tatar, or Chechen. Franco is feeding them South American volunteers through Spain. Lots of fresh bodies. They have all of Europe up to the Urals, all but the coast of France. Paris has been gone for years. What is left of France is an uninhabitable wasteland.”

  “I was there. The ground is so saturated with gas that you have to wear masks to dig trenches. Actually, the African sappers do. They still die like flies. That is, if the unexploded ordnance does not get them first.” I didn’t mention that everywhere you dig you throw up the rotting bones of the soldiers that went before you. Every time it rains, bone fragments poke up through the ruined soil. It rains all the time.

  “I know. I have heard that too.”

  “Heard, hell. I was there. I got a dose of gas, shell shock, they sent me home. But I’m all better now.” That was that sarcasm stuff.

  He continued. “So if Germany and England sign a peace, then where are we?” A leading question.

  “Where can we be? Behind the eight ball.”

  “Correct. Germany under Goering is up to the Caucasus, the Reds have been run out to Siberia and Mongolia, they are fighting Japanese and the Nationalists under Chiang out of Nanking. Ireland is in revolt, aided by Germany, America is broke, India is in revolt, England is on her last legs. If England signs a treaty, Germany can turn its strength against the Reds, join up with the Japanese along the rail lines and conquer the world. Easy.”

  “What do you suppose President Hoover will do in that case?” I asked.

  “He will do whatever Patton tells him to do.” That hit too close to the bone. The bottle was empty, the rails were humming, uniformed Railway employees appeared on the platform. Time to go. The thought struck; it was an election year back home. Two years to go before they could vote Hoover out. Fat chance of that. Such fun. I love fun, don’t you?

  >>>>>>>

  So much to think about, so little to look at… We came around the back side of Corea, over a mountain range or two, there had been battles, you could tell. But little ones. Little ones just litter the landscape with destroyed tanks and crashed zeppelins, burned buildings and raped cities. They don’t change the actual geology like real wars do. In France, you could tell there had been a town someplace because the endless mud was slightly rust-colored from the pulverized brick. Here? A few redoubts here and there, tangles of rusted wire among the fields and paddies. Nothing serious. What they call a War of Maneuver. And piss on it. I love to see crashed zeps, their aluminum frames crushed like bird rib cages into the soil. Goddamn immune bastards, dropping their bombs on the poor fucking infantry. Flyboys are no better, but they seem to be human, somehow, even monsters like Hermann Goering, Ace of Aces and Chancellor of the German Empire.

  People say I have a bad attitude. But what they see is my good attitude. I have several worse.

  Eppi proved he had drunk more than hi
s usual dose by falling fast asleep as soon as the train got rolling good. Good was probably less than fifty miles an hour, so it was going to be a long bumpy ride to Port Arthur. I was too edgy to sleep, the lights were too low to read once darkness fell, so I just worried. I’m good at that. The roadbed was rough, we got held up at switches, the conductor was noticeable only for his absence, and the crapper had no valve at the bottom and no flush water, so taking a shit was a drafty business. The bathroom was filled with deadheading trainmen headed toward Port Arthur, muttering and grousing in Russian. I pretended to not understand and got a couple earfuls of gloom and despair that would have gotten them drafted and sent to the front back in the States. I played dumb show, waved a few bucks and they magically found me a pint of vodka. It was yellow as piss, full of fusel oil, but it had booze in it. I did manage to pass out.

  If the train ride was horrible, Dalny was worse. If Vladivostok was the end of the world, this place was hanging on to the edge by its bleeding fingernails. A hellhole would have been a vast improvement. Both Eppi and I had to report into HQ, which was in downtown Dalny, what there was left of it. The train station had been an ornate Chinese-Russian hybrid of red and green brick, there was enough left of it to suggest an attempt at an outpost of Empire, but those days were long gone. There were USA guards at all the intersections, they were neat and awake, if noticeably unpolished. A line of babushkas on the street offered us blini and glasses of tea, which served to wash away some of the fog left by the bad vodka. We asked, HQ was a couple blocks away, closer to the harbor. The city had been pounded, but that was not uppermost in my mind. “So who is this Hodges character, and how did he piss off Patton so bad?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. I tried to look him up, the reference books all have one paragraph, and they are all the same paragraph. Flunked out of West Point, enlisted as a private in the Infantry, made it back up to Brigadier. Won the DSC in France. 1918.”

  “They don’t give those away in boxes of Cracker Jacks.”

  “True. He seems to not be a fire-eater, that’s all I can tell you.” Eppi did not look pleased.

  “The captain in Vladivostok called him a pantywaist.”