Milo sighed silently

Milo disliked Major Jay Jarvis from first laying eyes upon him. The man was
short, skinny and pasty-white, save for his petulant, liver-colored lips, a
multitude of facial pimples and muddy-brown eyes. He was of early middle years,
balding and had chewed his nails to the quick, and his class-A uniform hung on
his bony figure like a sack. His hands never stayed still for an instant, always
playing with one of the profusion of stiletto-sharp pencils, a cold pipe which
had strewn ashes from end to end of the GI desk, a stack of manuals and
pamphlets, a higher stack of assorted papers and personnel files, the knot of
his tie or the soggy handkerchief with which he dabbed at a dripping beak of a
nose.

When Milo had been coldly ushered into the office by the armed second lieutenant
and buck sergeant who had escorted him here from B Company, the door had been
closed梐nd locked梑ehind him, leaving him to salute and report to this strange
officer.

The major looked up at him, but would not look him in the eyes. "Sprechen Sie
DeutschP" he demanded in an atrocious accent.

"]a, Herr Major. Ich spreche Deutsch," he replied aloud, adding, to himself,
"And one hell of a lot better than you do, you sourpussed bastard."

"You speak it well, too," said the officer grudgingly. "As well as a native, I'd
say. Moray, you're being considered for a commission, but we need to know more
about you, more than this"梙e flicked a personnel file

104

nooen fiaujris

with the nailless fingers of one soft hand?so-called 201 file of yours gives
us. Where did you learn your German, Moray?"

Milo sighed silently. Here it starts again after all this time. "Sir, I don't
know how or when or where I learned any of the languages I speak. I have been an
amnesiac since the mid-thirties. My very earliest memory is of waking up in a
hospital in Chicago, having been found clubbed down and robbed in an alley."