Benjamin looked at him, close to tears.
«And another thing», continued Roscoe, «when visitors are in the house I want you to call me „Uncle“ – not „Roscoe,“
but „Uncle,“ do you understand? It looks absurd for a boy of fifteen to call me by my first name. Perhaps you'd better call me „Uncle“ all the time, so you'll get used to it[48]».
With an angry look at his father, Roscoe turned away…
Chapter 10
After this conversation Benjamin felt depressed, he walked upstairs and stared at himself in the mirror. He had not shaved for three months, but there was nothing on his face to shave. When he had first come home from Harvard, Roscoe had suggested that he should wear spectacles and false whiskers on his cheeks, and it had seemed for a moment that the grotesque comedy of his early years started to repeat. But whiskers made him feel both discomfort and shame. He burst into tears and Roscoe had to give it up.
Benjamin opened a book of boys' stories, The Boy Scouts in Bimini Bay, and began to read. But he found himself thinking about the war. America hadjoined the Allied forces,[49] and Benjamin wanted to join the army too, but, alas, sixteen was the minimum age, and he looked much younger. His true age, which was fifty-seven, was too old for the army.
There was a knock at his door, and the man handed him an official letter addressed to Mr. Benjamin Button. Benjamin opened it, and read the text with delight. It informed him that many reserve officers who had served in the Spanish- American War were called back into service with a higher position, so he got his position as brigadier-general in the United States army with orders to report immediately.
Benjamin jumped to his feet trembling with enthusiasm. This was what he had wanted. Ten minutes later he entered a large tailor's shop on Charles Street, and asked in his high boy's voice to be measured for a uniform.
«Want to play soldier, sonny?» demanded a clerk casually.
Benjamin was furious. «Look here! Never mind what I want!» he protested angrily. «My name's Button and I live on Mt. Vernon Place, so you know I'm good for it[50]».
«Well», admitted the clerk with hesitation, «if you're not, I guess your daddy is, all right».
Benjamin was measured, and a week later his uniform was ready. He had difficulty in getting the proper general's insignia because the dealer insisted that a nice badge would look just as well[51] and be much more fun to play with.
Saying nothing to Roscoe, he left the house one night and went by train to military camp, in South Carolina, where he was going to command a military brigade. On a hot April day he approached the entrance to the camp, paid the taxi driver who had brought him from the station, and turned to the guard.
«Get some one to carry my luggage!» he commanded.
The soldier looked at him with disbelief. «Say», he remarked, «where are you going with the general's stuff, sonny?»
Benjamin, veteran of the Spanish-American War, moved upon him with fire in his eye, but with, alas, a breaking boy's voice.
«Stand to attention!»[52] he commanded loudly; he paused to take breath – then suddenly he saw that the soldier stood straight and brought his rifle to the present[53]. Benjamin hid a smile of satisfaction, but when he glanced around his smile faded. He saw an impressive colonel who was approaching on horseback.
«Colonel!» called Benjamin sharply.
The colonel came up and looked down at him. «Whose little boy are you?» he demanded kindly.
«I'll soon show you whose little boy I am!» protested Benjamin in an angry voice. «Get down off that horse!»
The colonel burst into laughter.
«You want my horse, eh, general?»
«Here!» cried Benjamin in despair. «Read this». And he gave his official letter to the colonel. The colonel read it, he was astonished.
«Where did you get this?» he demanded, putting the document into his own pocket.
«I got it from the Government, as you'll soon find out!»
«You come along with me», said the colonel with a strange look. «We'll go up to headquarters commander and talk this over. Come along».
The colonel turned and began moving in the direction of headquarters. There was nothing for Benjamin to do but follow him – he tried to keep as much dignity as possible and promised himself to take revenge. But this revenge did not materialize. Two days later, however, his son Roscoe materialized from Baltimore, irritated and angry at a quick trip, and escorted the general in tears, without uniform, back to his home.
Chapter 11
In 1920 Roscoe Button's first child was born. While the family celebrated the event, however, no one thought they needed to mention, that the little boy, about ten years old who played around the house with lead soldiers, was the new baby's own grandfather.
No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, cheerful face seemed a little bit sad, but to Roscoe Button his presence was unpleasant and made him suffer. His generation did not consider such a state of things[54] «rational». It seemed to him that his father, in refusing to look sixty, did not behave like a true man of business or a «red-blooded he-man»[55] – these were Roscoe's usual words. Roscoe believed that a man of business should look young, but his father's desire to keep to it in such a curious and wrong manner was irrational. Roscoe was sure of it.
Five years later Roscoe's little boy grew old enough to play childish games with little Benjamin under the control of the same nurse. Roscoe took them both to kindergarten on the same day, and Benjamin found that playing with colored paper and making colored beautiful maps was the most fascinating game in the world. Once when he behaved badly and had to stand in the corner, he burst into tears – but for the most part these were happy hours in the cheerful room, when the sunlight was coming in the windows and he enjoyed feeling his teacher's kind hand on his head.
Roscoe's son went to school after a year, but Benjamin stayed on in the kindergarten. He was very happy. Sometimes when other children talked about what they would do when they grew up, a sad expression appeared on his little face as if he understood that those things would never happen to him.
The days passed on in a usual way. He went back a third year to the kindergarten, but he was too little now to understand what the bright colored papers were for. He cried because the other boys were bigger than he, and he was afraid of them. The teacher talked to him, but though he tried to understand he could not understand at all.
He was taken from the kindergarten. His nurse, Nana became the centre of his small world. On bright days they walked in the park; Nana pointed at a large gray monster and said «elephant», and Benjamin repeated it after her, and when he was going to bed that night he repeated it over and over again to her: «Elyphant, elyphant, elyphant». Sometimes Nana let him jump on the bed, and that was fun, because he enjoyed jumping.
He loved to take a big cane and go around the house, hitting chairs and tables with it and saying: «Fight, fight, fight». When there were people in the house the old ladies tried to speak childish language with him, which interested him, and the young ladies tried to kiss him, which he accepted with calm boredom. And when the long day