Short Stories: Five Decades

by Irwin Shaw

  “I took it for my religious editor,” Carroll said, pouring himself some more wine.

  Anna picked up the photograph. “That girl,” she said. “If I am man I would never look at white women.” She handed the photograph to the young Englishman, who studied it for a long time.

  “In China,” he said, “I understand there are no more beggars.” Then he blushed, as though he had said something dirty and put the picture down quickly.

  Eldred Harrison tilted his head, birdlike, to peer at the photograph. “The new art of America,” he said. “Graffiti. Wall-to-wall communication.” He smiled deprecatingly at his joke.

  Carroll put the picture back into his pocket.

  “I didn’t see a woman for two and a half years,” Harrison said, starting on his steak.

  Paris, Rosemary thought, the capital of dazzling conversation. Flaubert and his friends. She began to try to think of excuses for leaving before the dessert. The young Englishman poured her some more wine, almost filling the deep glass. “Thank you,” she said. He turned his head away, uncomfortable. He had a beautiful long English nose, blond eyelashes, drawn-in pink cheeks, and full-girlish lips. Alice in Wonderland in his pocket during the barrage, Rosemary remembered vaguely, from a summer revival of Journey’s End. All this talk of war. She wondered what he’d do if she quietly said, Does anybody here know of a reliable abortionist?

  “We had a large group of Gurkhas in the camp, maybe two hundred,” Harrison said, slicing his steak. We are in the Far East for the night, Rosemary thought. “Wonderful chaps. Enormous soldiers. The Japs kept working on them to come over to their side. Brothers-in-color, exploited by the white imperialists, that sort of thing. Gave them extra rations, cigarettes. The Gurkhas would carefully divide the rations with all the other prisoners. As for the cigarettes.…” Harrison shook his head in wonderment, twenty-five years later. “They’d accept the cigarettes, without a word. Then, as one man, they’d tear them deliberately to bits. Right in front of the guards. The guards would laugh and next day they’d give them more cigarettes and the same thing would happen. It went on like that for more than six months. Inhuman discipline. Marvelous troops, they were. In all that mud and dust, with people dropping dead all around them.” Harrison sipped at his wine. All this seemed to be aiding his appetite, distant deprivation edging today’s pleasure. “Finally,” he said, “their colonel called them together and said it had to stop, it was degrading that the Japs could still think they could buy Gurkhas. He said a gesture was needed, a convincing gesture. The next day a Jap had to be killed—publicly. They were on work details and were issued shovels. He wanted one man to sharpen the rim of a shovel and when the work details were formed up next morning brain the nearest guard.” Harrison finished his steak and pushed the plate an inch away from him, reflecting on Asia. “The colonel asked for a volunteer. Every man stepped forward in one moment, as if it were a parade. The colonel didn’t hesitate. He picked the man directly in front of him. The man worked on sharpening his shovel all night with a big stone. And in the morning, in the sunlight, he moved over to the guard who was assigning the details and brained him. He himself was shot immediately, of course, and fifty others were beheaded. But the Japs stopped handing out cigarettes to Gurkhas.”

  “I’m glad I was too young for that war,” Carroll said.

  “Excuse me,” Rosemary said, standing. “I’ll be right back.” The ladies’ room was upstairs and she climbed the steps carefully, holding onto the banister, trying not to weave. In the ladies’ room she put cold water on her eyelids, small remedy against all that whiskey and all that wine and fifty beheaded soldiers. She put on some lipstick, moving her hand very precisely. Her face in the mirror was surprisingly fresh, a nice American lady tourist enjoying a night out in Paris with some of the people you’re likely to pick up in a place like Paris. If there had been another door and she could have slipped out unnoticed, she would have gone home.

  “Armstead,” she said, “Brian Armstead.” That was the name of the interior decorator they had found dead in Livorno. He had done Yoga exercises every day, she remembered, and once when she had met him on the beach at Southampton she had noticed that he had a firm brown delicate body with shapely legs and small sunburned feet with polished toenails.

  The lights had been turned off outside the ladies’ room and the landing was in darkness. Rosemary made her way cautiously toward the glow coming up the stairwell from the restaurant below. She stepped back with a little cry when she felt a hand touch her wrist.

  “Mrs. Maclain,” a man’s voice whispered. “Don’t be frightened. I wanted to talk to you alone.” It was the young Englishman. He spoke rapidly, nervously. “I saw you were disturbed.”

  “Not really,” she said. She wished she could remember his name. Robert? Ralph? No. She was having trouble with names tonight. “I’ve been around ex-soldiers before.”

  “He shouldn’t really talk like that,” the young man said (Rodney, that was it, Rodney). “Eldred. It’s because you’re Americans. You and the photographer. He’s obsessed with what you’re doing in Vietnam, his rooms’re cluttered with the most dreadful photographs, he collects them. That’s how he got so friendly with Carroll. He’s a most peaceful man, Eldred, and he can’t bear the thought. But he’s too polite to argue with you openly, he’s very fond of Americans, so he keeps on about all those other horrors he went through. It’s his way of saying, Please stop, no more horror, please.”

  “Vietnam?” Rosemary said stupidly. She felt foolish talking about things like this in the dark outside the ladies’ room with a nervous breathy young man who seemed frightened of her. “I’m not doing anything in Vietnam.”

  “Of course not,” Rodney said hurriedly. “It’s just that—well, being American, you see.… He really is an extraordinary man, Eldred, it’s really worthwhile to get to know him and understand him, you see.”

  Fags, she thought cruelly. Is that it? But then Rodney said, “May I see you home safely, Mrs. Maclain? That is, whenever you’re ready to go home, of course.”

  “I’m not that drunk,” Rosemary said with dignity.

  “Of course not,” Rodney said. “I do apologize if that’s the impression I … I think you’re a splendidly beautiful woman, Mrs. Maclain.”

  He wouldn’t have been able to say that if the light were on and she could see his face. Splendidly. Right out of Trollope.

  “That’s very kind of you, Rodney,” she said. Neither a yes nor a no. “Now I think we’d better get back to our table.”

  “Of course,” Rodney said. He took her arm and guided her toward the stairwell. His hand was trembling. English education, she thought.

  “There was this sergeant we called Brother Three-Iron,” Harrison was saying as they came to the table. He stood up as Rosemary sat down. Carroll made a symbolic American move in his chair, theoretically rising. “He was tall for a Jap,” Harrison went on, seating himself, “with bulging arms and shoulders and a cigarette dangling all the time from his lips. We called him Brother Three-Iron because he had got himself a golf club somewhere and was never seen without it. When he was displeased, which was often, he beat our people with it. Brother Three-Iron.” Harrison spoke fondly, as if the Japanese sergeant and he had many warm memories to share between them. “He was displeased with me more than anyone else in the camp, it seemed, although he had killed several men with the club from time to time. But more or less impersonally. In the rounds of his duty, as it were. But with me, it was a … a particular impatience with my existence. When he saw me he would smile and say, ‘Are you still alive?’ He spoke some English, in that peculiar harmless way Japanese speak the language. I think he must have overhead something I said about him before I knew he could understand. Perhaps I smiled once inadvertently. I lost count of the number of times he beat me senseless. But he was always careful not to finish me off. I believe he was waiting for me to kill myself. That would have satisfied him. It helped keep me alive, the thought of not satisfy
ing him. But if the war had lasted another month or two I doubt that I would have lasted. One last bottle of wine, wouldn’t you say?” Harrison gestured toward the only waiter left in the empty restaurant.

  “Policemen,” Anna said. “They are the same everywhere.” She pronounced it “ahverywhere.” She seemed younger than earlier in the evening, much younger. Her eyes were like the eyes of the child in the photograph.

  “What happened to the sonofabitch?” Carroll asked. He was slumped in his chair, his chin resting on his chest in ruffles of dark wool from the turtleneck collar, his own bust in thin bronze. “Do you know?”

  “I know,” Harrison said offhandedly. “But it’s of no importance. Mrs. Maclain, you must be terribly bored with these sorry reminiscences. I must really have had one too many to drink. I’m sure you didn’t come to Paris to hear about a war that took place so far away, when you were just a little girl learning how to read. If Bert hears about this evening he’ll be furious with me.”

  If you knew what I came to Paris for, brother, Rosemary thought. She was conscious of Rodney looking at her almost imploringly. “I would like to know what happened,” she said.

  She could hear Rodney exhale. Relief, she thought. I have passed a test.

  “The Japanese have an admirable stoicism about death,” Harrison said, pouring the last bottle of wine. His voice was light-timbred, unemphatic. “When the war was over teams came in from our Army to try to round up war criminals. There was a section among the guards that was composed of people very much like the German SS. They were the systematic torturers and interrogators and exterminators. There were about twenty of them still in the camp and when the British team came to their quarters they were all lined up at attention in their best uniforms. Before anybody could say a word to them, they went down on their knees and bowed their heads and their commanding officer said, in passable English, to the British major in charge of the party, ‘Sir, we are war criminals. Kindly execute us immediately.’” Harrison shook his head, almost amused, almost admiring.

  “Did you ever see the sergeant again?” Carroll asked.

  “Brother Three-Iron? Oh, yes. Only a few days after the camp was liberated. When they let me out of hospital, I was down to ninety-eight pounds. I weighed a hundred and sixty at the beginning of the war. I was a young man then. I was called to the Camp Commandant’s office. The major in charge of the war-crimes team was there. Ellsworth, his name was. A sturdy no-nonsense type. He’d been sent out from North Africa when they closed up shop there. Seen all kinds of fighting. I never saw him smile. Brother Three-Iron was standing in front of his desk. And behind Ellsworth’s desk there was the golf club.”

  Rosemary began to feel very warm. She could sense the sweat breaking out on her throat.

  “Brother Three-Iron looked the same as usual. Except that there was no cigarette hanging from his lip. It made a different man of him. It deprived him of authority. After our first glance we didn’t look at each other. He gave no sign of recognition and I … well, to tell the truth, and I can’t really understand it, I felt slightly … embarrassed. After all those years, the situation seemed … well, irregular. Wrong. One falls into patterns of behavior and when they are suddenly upset.…” Harrison shrugged. “Ellsworth didn’t waste any words. ‘I’ve heard about this fellow,’ he said, ‘and the way he went for you with that club.’ He picked up the club and laid it on his desk, right in front of Brother Three-Iron. Brother Three-Iron looked at it once and something went on behind his eyes, though I couldn’t say even to this day what it was. ‘Well,” Ellsworth said, ‘the club’s yours now.’ He pushed it a little way toward me. ‘He’s yours.’ But I didn’t pick it up. ‘What’re you waiting for, man?’ Ellsworth said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir,’ I said. I was telling the truth. I actually didn’t. Then Ellsworth began to curse. I’ve never seen a man so angry. ‘Ah, get out of my sight. There’re too many like you. You went under. If I had my way you’d never get back to Britain. You’ll always be prisoners. You’ve got the balls of prisoners.’ Forgive me, Mrs. Maclain.” Harrison turned apologetically toward Rosemary. “I’ve never told this part of the story before and my memory has remained uncensored.”

  “What finally happened?” Rosemary asked, disregarding the apology.

  “I got out of Ellsworth’s sight. Never saw him again, either. Luckily for me. His contempt was unendurable. I imagine Brother Three-Iron was eventually executed.” He looked at his watch. “It is getting late.” He waved for the bill.

  Carroll hunched forward on the wine-stained tablecloth. “I wish I could be sure that I would have acted the same way as you did,” he said to Harrison.

  “Really?” Harrison sounded mildly surprised. “I keep wondering if Ellsworth wasn’t right. I might be an entirely different man today.” He made a failure’s gesture.

  “I wouldn’t want you to be different man,” Anna said softly.

  Harrison patted her hand on the table. “You’re a dear young girl, my Anna,” he said. “Oh, perhaps it didn’t really matter. In the state I was in it would have taken me weeks to kill him.” Harrison paid the check and they stood up. “May I suggest a nightcap? I told some friends I’d meet them in St.-Germain-des-Près.”

  “I have to go back to the office,” Carroll said. “They promised the blowups’d be in before midnight.”

  “It’s late for me,” Rosemary said. “I have a big day tomorrow.”

  The lights went out in the restaurant as they closed the door behind them. There was a wind blowing and the street was dark.

  “Well, then,” Harrison said, “we’ll take Mrs. Maclain home.”

  “There’s no need,” Rosemary said.

  “I’ve offered to accompany Mrs. Maclain, Eldred,” Rodney said. His voice was tentative.

  “Ah, then,” said Harrison, “you’re in safe hands.” He kissed Rosemary’s hand. He had been in France for years. “I have enjoyed this evening. Mrs. Maclain, I hope I may call you again. I must write to Bert and thank him.”

  They said their good nights. Rosemary said she wanted to walk a bit, to clear her head, and Carroll and Harrison and Anna got into a taxi together, since Carroll’s office was on Harrison’s way. The taxi dieseled down the dark street into silence. Rosemary allowed Rodney to take her arm and they walked toward the Champs-Elysées without talking.

  The cold air hit Rosemary hard and there was an elliptical spin that started at the base of her neck and widened to include the city of Paris. She leaned harder on Rodney’s arm.

  “I say,” he began, “I think a taxi might …”

  “Sssh,” she said. She stopped and kissed him in the last ten yards of darkness before the lights of the boulevard. To create a fixed point. To keep the spin within reasonable limits. His mouth tasted like fresh grapes. He trembled as he kissed her. His face was very warm in the cold spring night wind.

  She pulled away, without haste. “Sssh,” she said again, although he hadn’t said anything.

  They walked up the Champs-Elysées. People were coming out of a movie theater. On a giant poster above the entrance, a gigantic girl in a nightgown pointed a pistol the size of a cannon at a thirty-foot-tall man in a dinner jacket. Whores cruised slowly in pairs in sports cars, searching trade. If she were a man, she would try that. At least once. The flesh of Paris spinning against the flesh of Paris. Man and Woman, created He them. At this moment, in the whirling, secret beds of the city, how many were clasped, the world forgot …? Harrison, prisoners’ balls, forgetting Asia on the warm young chubby body of the girl from the Warsaw jail? Carroll, with one of those superb fashion models he photographed when he wasn’t taking pictures of wars? God was here, but He left early, propped against the mantelpiece, to oversee the exercise?

  Jean-Jacques, with his hard, expert body, entwined in legitimate abandon with the wide-eyed wife who didn’t like to ski, in the great lit matrimonial off the Avenue Foch, and a girl in Strasbourg in reserve and another for the weekend of spring skii
ng, before he stopped off in Zurich to find an obliging psychiatrist?

  The various uses and manifestations of the flesh. To caress, to mangle, to behead, to kill with a karate stroke on a city street, to prepare out of cloth a derisive simulacrum of the instrument of sex in a Polish prison. To cherish and despise. To protect and destroy. To clamor in the womb to become flesh. (A boy does what he has to do, Love.) To lie like Armstead, dead in the Livorno alley, with the polished toenails and shapely Yoga brown legs. To turn into Bert, with a Greek sailor in besieged Athens, the window open and a view of the Parthenon. Or floating face-down in the oily waters of the harbor of Piraeus. The grapy young kiss of the young Englishman.

  Two stout, decorously dressed middle-aged men came out of the café. They were discussing interest rates. Tomorrow would they cross swords gingerly in a garden and claim blood’s honor while the photographers clicked away?

  A man with a turban passed them. A Gurkha with a shovel, honing it down to a knife edge to avenge the insult of the cigarettes. Violence, costumed, pursues us. Rosemary shivered.

  “You’re cold,” Rodney said and they got into a taxi. She huddled against him, as close as she could get. She unbuttoned his shirt and put her hand on his chest. The skin was soft and hairless; the flesh, unscarred, had never known the harshness of uniforms, the death of prisons. Gentle, that fair English skin, gentle the soft hands.

  “I don’t want to be alone tonight,” she whispered in the dark taxi.

  Gentle the uncertain, unfamiliar, undemanding kiss. The winy desires of the Paris night, the torment of the past, the imperious clamor of tomorrow, were made cozy, manageable. Even if she hadn’t remembered his name it would have been all right.