The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education Read online

  “Give us a cadence, Mullaney,” shouted our ringer.

  “I wanna be an Airborne Ranger!” I boomed with what little air remained in my lungs.

  The crowd drowned out the crew’s response. Adrenaline kept our arms and legs moving mechanically, thrusting us past banks thronged with onlookers. As we pulled even with the Lincoln boathouse, our oars churned the water, moving us faster and faster. Passing the boathouse at full throttle, I looked up at my father standing on the roof and pumping his fist in the air. I shouted the cadence again, louder, but we no longer had the strength in our quaking legs to keep the pace or the rhythm. The boat lunged in darting spurts, and our blades chopped the water out of tune. Momentum carried us downstream, past the boathouses. My father’s fist blurred in the crowd and disappeared.

  “To half-slide, on three-two-one,” yelled the cox. Our speed bled as our strokes shortened through the water. “And quarter-slide, on three-two-one. Easy there.”

  Our oars lay flat like spoons on the surface of the river, and we drifted with the current. I leaned over my oar and steadied my heaving chest. We splashed water on one another, victorious but spent. Water dripped off our oars and back into the river. In the distance, a faint roar rose from the crowd as another boat swept past its prey. I dipped my hand in the river, letting the cool water slip through my open fingers. We slowed to a halt, and I caught my breath.

  13

  Oxford Standard Time

  They wandered at random, choosing the narrower ways and coming suddenly on colleges and long old walls. Nothing seemed modern now. The past had them by the throat.

  JOHN GALSWORTHY, The End of the Chapter

  OXFORD IS ONE OF THE MOST ROMANTIC PLACES ON the planet. After passing through on a trip to London, William Wordsworth exclaimed the power of Oxford’s domes and towers to overcome “the soberness of reason.” Two hundred years later the modern world had barely intruded on Oxford’s magical spell. It looked best on cloudy days, with students scattered underneath umbrellas. The misty rain that never disappeared for long gave Oxford the look of a faded black-and-white postcard. Its giant portals conspired with antique lanterns and marbled walls to give it an aspect of timelessness. The shops lining its streets were in on the ruse, sporting names that beckoned to a different era: Ede and Ravenscroft, Duckers, Shephard and Woodward, Walters on the Turl. Bicycles rattling on cobblestones provided the rhythm and whistling birds the melody. Walking along the river, watching students float by on wobbly wooden punts wearing straw hats and toasting champagne flutes, I found it easy to forget the world rushing past Oxford’s eddy.

  Rowing helped open the doors to English dating culture, a topic of more interest to me than the African colonial history I was ostensibly studying. Joining my teammates on “crew dates” with ladies’ boats taught me valuable lingo I would have been lost without. If I spotted an attractive woman, I should call her “fit.” For reasons unknown to me, a woman on the other extreme was a “minger.” Whether fit or minger, most women wore skirts little wider than tea towels, and the colder the weather, the farther the skirts receded north above the knees.

  Matters of intergender recreation were another mystery. “Snogging,” for instance, had nothing to do with the flu. It was the equivalent of teenagers “making out.” “Shagging” occurred several beers later. Having a “rubber” was scant precaution; in England, that was a pencil eraser. A British woman had spoken with our class before we left for England. She made it clear that the British approached sex with much less reservation than Americans.

  “Are there differences in the dating cultures?” I asked.

  “Oh, you’ll have no problem.” She winked. “English women love American men.”

  “That wasn’t quite what I was getting at.”

  “Do you mean, should you kiss a girl on the first date?”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Yes.” She smiled.

  I scribbled along in my notebook as she continued. OK to kiss on 1st date.

  “Britain is a ‘post-Christian’ society. You won’t find the same American concept of guilt.”

  After eight years of monastic celibacy at nearly all-male institutions and a lifetime of Catholic guilt, I was more intimidated than encouraged. Once I had arrived at Oxford and gone prowling with Matt and Hayden, it became clear my Yankee accent worked no wonders with British women. I began to wonder why Nagl had called Oxford a “target-rich environment.” “Take my advice,” he had said. “Find a wife.”

  I TOOK HIS ADVICE seriously and focused like a laser-aiming device. I attended “stoplight” parties in bright green, signaling my availability, with no luck. I chased undergraduate rowers who made fun of my accent and hit on American graduate students who knew better than to get involved with an overzealous soldier. So much for “you’ll have no problem.” A couple of weeks after arriving, I attended our college’s semiannual house party. Hayden had by this time plied me with several drinks.

  “This is good. What is it?” I asked.

  “A lemon drop.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “About a cup of sugar and two of vodka.”

  “Really? Can’t taste the vodka at all.”

  “That’s the point.” Hayden grinned.

  Inebriated and completely uninhibited, I found Meena, the Indian fashion disaster I had met my first day at Lincoln, in the corner of the room. British pop music shook the walls and the beer in my cup. With the other hand I reached across and touched the crystal pendant hanging around Meena’s neck.

  “I like your necklace.” Without realizing it, the rest of a bad pickup line tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Do you have a man?”

  Do you have a man? Did I just say that? I tottered and reached for a lamp to stabilize.

  Meena arched her eyes. “No, my parents gave it to me,” she replied before walking off and leaving me with the lamp.

  TWO MONTHS LATER I was at another party at Freud’s, the church-turned-nightclub, with Matt and Hayden. I was smart enough this time to pass on the third round of Brandy Alexanders. As I scanned the crowd, I saw Meena sitting with a group of Lincoln grad students.

  “Guys, I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Hayden finger-snapped his assent. Matt bobbled his head with the drumbeat.

  I slid in next to Meena. She was wearing a slinky dress that marked a distinct upgrade from the oversized sweaters she normally wore.

  “Hey.”

  “Aren’t you going to compliment my necklace?”

  “About that . . .”

  “Forget it. You were drunk.”

  Meena turned her head abruptly. An Indian in a tux and thick-rimmed glasses had tapped her shoulder from behind.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied coolly, “that’s okay.”

  “No, really. I’d like to buy you a drink.”

  “I’m fine. Thanks.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute then.”

  As soon as he departed for the bar, Meena turned back toward me.

  “Do you want to dance?”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Meena led me to the dance floor. I attempted in vain to close the middle school distance between our hips. As I looked past Meena at the bar, the Indian emerged from the crowd holding two cocktail glasses. He soon discovered us on the dance floor and made a beeline toward us. He wouldn’t, would he?

  He would.

  “Can I get your phone number?” he asked Meena as we continued dancing.

  “No,” Meena replied, rotating away from him.

  “You know, you should really get to know me. I’m the most interesting man you’ll meet in Oxford.” He tried to slip her a business card, turned, and walked out the door. By the time the door shut, the song had ended.

  “Want to dance again?” I asked.

  “No, that’s all right. Thanks.”

  Meena walked off toward the door, her hi
ps swaying slightly with each long stride.

  THE NEXT DAY I played Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” on repeat in my room. The Norwegian stared me down in the kitchen and then left the flat, slamming the door behind him. Alone and incapable of scholastic concentration, I plotted what I would later refer to as my “wooing offensive.” Unfortunately, the school term was at its end and I left a few days later for seven weeks of travel, so it wasn’t until I returned to Oxford in late January that I carried out my plan. I left emails and notes in Meena’s pigeonhole nearly every day. I asked her to the movies, invited her on walks, and even offered to cook her dinner. Each time I struck out. One night I ran into Meena as she was walking back from Lincoln with Jan, the German scientist who had become her protective male housemate.

  “Are you going to the Super Bowl party?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Are you?”

  “I think so. Do you want to grab a drink beforehand at the Turf?”

  “Sure.”

  “That sounds like a good idea. I’ll come, too,” said Jan, swathed in black and wearing rectangular glasses. That doesn’t sound like a good idea, I thought.

  The three of us had an awkward drink at the Turf Tavern—the pub where Bill Clinton hadn’t inhaled—watched over by Jan and an extant section of Oxford’s fourteenth-century city wall. Fortunately, Jan stayed behind when Meena and I departed for the party. We walked through Magdalen College’s old cloister and up a narrow stairwell to the MCR. I knocked, and an American friend opened the door.

  “Are you guys together?” he asked.

  “No,” said Meena, slicing my hopes with the blunt edge of a knife. I walked home by myself.

  Finally, I resorted to covert ops. I learned that the Oxford Union was arranging a trip to Paris for Valentine’s Day. Dozens were likely to go. The price was right, and I had nothing on my schedule. I sent Meena an email asking for her number. I need to talk to you, I said. When she called, she started by asking if something was wrong. Clearly, I hadn’t learned subtlety at Ranger School. I proceeded to ask her, as nonchalantly as I could, whether she was interested in a student trip to the Louvre. I was going, I said, and Brandon, the mathematical contrarian, was going as well.

  “Where do I get a ticket?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m a member of the Union. I’ll pick it up.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t sure whether she got that I was asking her on a Valentine’s date to Paris. “It sounds interesting. Let me think about it.”

  She took a couple of weeks to get back to me, enough time to indicate what parachutists call “a soft landing.” I was surprised and elated when she finally agreed. She would insist later that she had no idea the trip had coincided with the most romantic holiday of the year. “It was just a cheap way to see Paris.”

  BRANDON HAD NEVER BEEN to Paris, and he was eager to see everything in the twenty-four hours we had on the ground. We tried. Notre Dame, the Champs-Elysées, the Arc de Triomphe, and Les Invalides. This was not a tour for the weak or fainthearted. We spent two hours in the Louvre, enough time to sprint from the Venus de Milo to Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa and then to the Mona Lisa. Meena was nearly as inscrutable as Da Vinci’s subject. Was she smiling? Was she impressed with the art notes I had cribbed the week before (“This is the sfumato technique”)? The last time I was in the Louvre, at the end of my Normandy visit, I had been a lot more focused on the art. On this visit my focus was on Meena.

  A cold winter light hung in the brisk February air as we walked past carts selling paperbacks along the banks of the Seine. Brisk gusts shook tiny whitecaps from the gray water. We made our way slowly to the Latin Quarter, stopping every hundred yards for a photograph. Brandon played his role well, manipulating our photo poses so that I got my arm around Meena as often as possible. It took us two hours to find a restaurant suitably authentic for Brandon’s tastes. White tablecloths draped a half-dozen cozy tables inside a small café. We warmed up with crocks of onion soup, the bubbling Gruyère cheese melting over the fresh croutons. Our garçon brought out the first bottle of Côte de Rhône, and we clinked our glasses.

  “To Paris,” offered Brandon.

  “To Paris.”

  Brandon and I shared a chateaubriand steak larger than a textbook, but Meena, a vegetarian, munched a salad that looked much less appetizing.

  “Why didn’t you order something else?” I asked.

  “Everything has meat in it.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” I said. Damn.

  The garçon twisted open a second bottle of wine and refilled our glasses. Meena, having polished off the salad, made steady progress through the bread basket.

  “Dessert, monsieur?” asked the garçon. “Mousse au chocolat? Crème brulée?” We wagged our heads no.

  “Peut-être un digestif? Un whiskey ou un calvados?” My ears perked at the calvados, a strong liquor I had tasted first in Normandy. It was a wicked combination of apple and fire.

  “Pour trois!” I smiled and hoped Meena wouldn’t mind my ordering for her and Brandon.

  Five glasses later we were the only ones left in the restaurant. Brandon and I chatted in bad French with the staff, and Meena looked as if she was about to keel over from exhaustion.

  “Allons-y!” I said, and the three of us walked outside and through the Quarter like contestants in a three-legged race. We had been walking for thirty minutes when Meena stopped and patted down her ski jacket.

  “Oh, no,” she exclaimed.

  “What?”

  “I left my camera behind. I need to get it.”

  “I have no idea how to get back to that restaurant,” said Brandon. Meena turned to look at me.

  “I do,” I said. “Follow me.”

  Ranger School had at least prepared me for this. I could maneuver in almost any setting now without getting lost—even drunk. We returned to the restaurant, had another round of calvados on the house, and claimed Meena’s camera. The next morning the three of us walked to Montmartre and climbed the stairs to Sacré Coeur basilica. A choir practiced in the background, and I took a seat in a pew to pray, hoping that I had won some points with Meena by saving her camera. I sat next to her on the long bus ride back to Oxford, and we talked the entire time, about our families, our disappointments, our ambitions. I didn’t want the conversation to end. When I said good night to her at Lincoln, I did what T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock couldn’t—I “squeezed the universe into a ball” and I kissed her. Meena kissed back, short and sweet.

  MEENA DISAPPEARED FOR TWO weeks. I eventually pinned her down to a dinner date. Remembering our dinner in Paris, I thought strategically. Pizza would be perfect. Even I could enjoy a well-made vegetarian pizza. We picked up our conversation as if there had never been a pause. When I returned to my room that night, I wrote in my journal: “I have the lingering thought that I just might be dating a future spouse (long shot).”

  After the mushroom pizza, we started seeing each other daily, one of the benefits of Oxford’s loose rhythm. In the middle of the day we would buy groceries at Sainsbury’s and head to the river for a picnic and a long walk around the meadow. On one rainy afternoon she joined me for tea in my flat. While I was in the kitchen boiling water, I heard Meena burst out laughing from my room. I poked my head around the door, where Meena stood reading a spreadsheet posting on the back of my door.

  “What’s this?” Meena asked.

  “Nothing, really.”

  “Number of push-ups completed? Number of study hours?”

  “Well, you see . . .”

  “You’re crazy. Tum pagal ho,” she repeated in Hindi, laughing. Her whole body shook when she laughed, like a volcano erupting.

  “How can someone so goofy be this intense?” Meena asked, pointing to exhibit A. Next to it was further indictment: my list of countries to visit and skills to acquire. I was glad she didn’t read far enough to see “Find a wife” on my list of things to do, a few entries after learning how to throw a boomerang and tie a bow tie.

 
; Since I had no vegetarian recipes in my arsenal, she coached me through several burned iterations of Indian cooking. Every dish began by popping mustard seeds and sautéing dry lentils and hot red chilies. I hadn’t expected to like curried cauliflower or radish sambar, but I did. For dessert she made rice pudding with almonds. It was even better than Ranger pudding. I was in charge of coffee. Earlier, I had bought an old-fashioned grinder with a hand crank. I ground just enough fresh beans for two cups and set to work on the bourbon whipped cream recipe that Susi had given me at West Point. I whipped and whipped and whipped some more. As my right arm got tired, I shifted the whisk to my left hand. More whipping. Crests of amber cream started to form, and my whisk beat on. Then, complete collapse. My overzealous whipping had been too much. As the crested cream reversed into liquid, Meena bent over laughing. I smiled meekly and poured the cream into the coffee.