Rich Man, Poor Man

by Irwin Shaw

  He reread the letter, then read it in the English in which he had first written it. He had tried to make the English as much like French as possible. “Finally, I must tell you, Dear Madame, that when I see you by accident in the hallways of the school or walking along in your light-blue coat on the street, I have a deep longing to travel in the world you came from and wonderful visions of strolling arm in arm with you along the boulevards of Paris, which has just been liberated by the brave soldiers of your country and mine.”

  He read the French version again with satisfaction. There was no doubt about it. If you wanted to be elegant, French was the language for it. He liked the way Miss Lenaut pronounced his name, correctly, Jordahsh, making it soft and musical, not Jawdake, as some people said it, or Jordash.

  Then, regretfully, he tore both letters into small pieces. He knew he was never going to send Miss Lenaut any letters. He had already written her six letters and torn them up because she would think he was crazy and would probably tell the principal. And he certainly didn’t want his father or mother or Gretchen or Tom to find any love letters in any language in his room.

  Still, the satisfaction was there. Sitting in the bare little room above the bakery, with the Hudson flowing a few hundred yards away, writing the letters was like a promise to himself. One day he would make long voyages, one day he would sail the river and write in new languages to beautiful women of high character, and the letters would actually be mailed.

  He got up and looked at himself in the wavy little mirror above the battered oak dresser. He looked at himself often, searching his face for the man he wanted to be. He was very careful with his looks. His straight, black hair was always perfectly brushed; occasionally he plucked two or three bits of dark fuzz from the space between his eyebrows; he avoided candy so that he would have a minimum of pimples; he remembered to smile, not laugh aloud, and even that not frequently. He was very conservative with the colors he chose to wear and had worked on the way he walked, so that he never seemed hurried or exuberant, but walked in an easy gliding motion with his shoulders squared. He kept his nails filed and his sister gave him a manicure once a month and he kept out of fights because he didn’t want to have his face marred by a broken nose or his long, thin hands twisted by swollen knuckles. To keep in shape, there was the track team. For the pleasures of nature and solitude he fished, using a dry fly when somebody was watching, worms at other times.

  “Votre cavalier servant,” he said into the mirror. He wanted his face to look French when he spoke the language, the way Miss Lenaut’s face suddenly looked French when she addressed the class.

  He sat down at the little yellow oak table he used for a desk and pulled a piece of paper toward him. He tried to remember exactly what Miss Lenaut looked like. She was quite tall, with flat hips and full breasts always prominently propped up, and thin, straight legs. She wore high heels and ribbons and a great deal of lipstick. First he drew her with her clothes on, not achieving much of a likeness but getting the two curls in front of her ears and making the mouth convincingly prominent and dark. Then he tried to imagine what she might look like without any clothes. He drew her naked, sitting on a stool looking at herself in a hand-mirror. He stared at his handiwork. O, God, if ever! He tore up the naked drawing. He was ashamed of himself. He deserved to live over a bakery. If they ever found out downstairs what he thought and did upstairs …

  He began to undress for bed. He was in his socks, because he didn’t want his mother, who slept in the room below, to know that he was still awake. He had to get up at five o’clock every morning to deliver the bread in the cart attached to a bicycle and his mother kept after him for not getting enough sleep.

  Later on, when he was rich and successful, he would say, I got up at five o’clock in the morning, rain or shine, to deliver rolls to the Depot Hotel and the Ace Diner and Sinowski’s Bar and Grill. He wished his name wasn’t Rudolph.

  IV

  At the Casino Theater Errol Flynn was killing a lot of Japs. Thomas Jordache was sitting in the dark at the rear of the theater eating caramels from a package that he had taken from the slot machine in the lobby with a lead slug. He was expert at making lead slugs.

  “Slip me one, Buddy,” Claude said, making it sound tough, like a movie gangster asking for another clip of 45 cartridges for his rod. Claude Tinker had an uncle who was a priest and to overcome the damaging implications of the relationship he tried to sound tough at all times. Tom flipped a caramel in the air and Claude caught it and started chewing on it loudly. The boys were sitting low on their spines, their feet draped over the empty seats in front of them. They had sneaked in as usual, through a grating that they had pried loose last year. The grating protected a window in the men’s room in the cellar. Every once in a while, one or the other of them would come up into the auditorium with his fly open, to make it look for real.

  Tom was bored with the picture. He watched Errol Flynn dispose of a platoon of Japs with various weapons. “Phonus bolonus,” he said.

  “What language you speaking, Professor?” Claude said, playing their game.

  “That’s Latin,” Tom said, “for bullshit.”

  “What a command of tongues,” Claude said.

  “Look,” Tom said, “down there to the right. That GI with his girl.”

  A few rows in front of them a soldier and a girl were sitting, entwined. The theater was half-empty and there was nobody in the row they were in or in the rows behind them. Claude frowned. “He looks awful big,” Claude said. “Look at that neck on him.”

  “General,” Tom said, “we attack at dawn.”

  “You’ll wind up in the hospital,” Claude said.

  “Wanna bet?” Tom swung his legs back from the chair in front of him and stood up and started toward the aisle. He moved silently, his sneakered feet light on the worn carpet of the Casino floor. He always wore sneakers. You had to be sure-footed and ready to make the fast break at all times. He hunched his shoulders, bulky and easy under his sweater, and tucked in his gut, enjoying the hard, flat feeling under the tight belt. Ready for anything. He smiled in the darkness, the excitement beginning to get him, as it always did at these preliminary choosing moments.

  Claude followed him, uneasily. Claude was a lanky, thin-armed boy, with a long-nosed squirrely wedge of a face and loose, wet lips. He was nearsighted and wore glasses and that didn’t make him look any better. He was a manipulator and behind-the-scenes man and slid out of trouble like a corporation lawyer and conned teachers into giving him good marks although he almost never opened a school book. He wore dark suits and neckties and had a kind of literary stoop and shambled apologetically when he walked and looked insignificant, humble, and placating. He was imaginative, his imagination concentrating on outrages against society. His father ran the bookkeeping department of the Boylan Brick and Tile Works and his mother, who had a degree from St. Anne’s College for Women, was the president of the draft board, and what with all that and the priest-uncle besides, and his harmless and slightly repulsive appearance, Claude maneuvered with impunity through his plot-filled world.

  The two boys moved down the empty row and sat directly behind the GI and his girl. The GI had his hand in the girl’s blouse and was methodically squeezing her breast. The GI hadn’t removed his overseas cap and it peaked down steeply over his forehead. The girl had her hand somewhere down in the shadows between the soldier’s legs. Both the. GI and the girl were watching the picture intently. Neither of them paid any attention to the arrival of the boys.

  Tom sat behind the girl, who smelled good. She was liberally doused with a flowery perfume which mingled with the buttery, cowlike aroma from a bag of popcorn they had been eating. Claude sat behind the soldier. The soldier had a small head, but he was tall, with broad shoulders, and his cap obscured most of the screen from Claude, who had to squirm from side to side to glimpse the film.

  “Listen,” Claude whispered, “I tell you he’s too big. I bet he weighs one seventy, at leas
t.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tom whispered back. “Start in.” He spoke confidently, but he could feel little shivers of doubt in his fingertips and under his armpits. That hint of doubt, of fear, was familiar to him and it added to his expectation and the beauty of the final violence. “Go ahead,” he whispered harshly to Claude. “We ain’t got all night.”

  “You’re the boss,” Claude said. Then he leaned forward and tapped the soldier on the shoulder. “Pardon me, Sergeant,” he said. “I wonder if you’d be so kind as to remove your cap. It’s difficult for me to see the screen.”

  “I ain’t no sergeant,” the soldier said, without turning. He kept his cap on and continued watching the picture, squeezing the girl’s breast.

  The two boys sat quietly for more than a minute. They had practiced the tactic of provocation so often together that there was no need for signals. Then Tom leaned forward and tapped the soldier heavily on the shoulder. “My friend made a polite request,” he said. “You are interfering with his enjoyment of the picture. We will have to call the management if you don’t take your cap off.”

  The soldier swiveled a little in his seat, annoyedly. “There’s two hundred empty seats,” he said. “If your friend wants to see the picture let him sit someplace else.” He turned back to his two preoccupations, sex and art.

  “He’s on the way,” Tom whispered to Claude. “Keep him going.”

  Claude tapped the soldier on the shoulder again. “I suffer from a rare eye disease,” Claude said. “I can only see from this seat. Everywhere else it’s a blur. I can’t tell whether it’s Errol Flynn or Loretta Young up there.”

  “Go to an eye doctor,” the soldier said. The girl laughed at his wit. She sounded as though she had drunk some water the wrong way when she laughed. The soldier laughed, too, to show that he appreciated himself.

  “I don’t think it’s nice to laugh at people’s disabilities,” Tom said.

  “Especially with a war on,” Claude said, “with all those crippled heroes.”

  “What sort of an American are you?” Tom asked, his voice rising patriotically. “That’s the question I would like to ask, what sort of an American are you?”

  The girl turned. “Get lost, kids,” she said.

  “I want to remind you, sir,” Tom said, “that I hold you personally responsible for anything your lady friend says.”

  “Don’t pay them no mind, Angela,” the soldier said. He had a high, tenor voice.

  The boys sat in silence again for a moment.

  “Marine, tonight you die,” Tom said in a high falsetto, in his Japanese imitation. “Yankee dog, tonight I cut off your balls.”

  “Watch your goddamn language,” the soldier said, turning his head.

  “I bet he’s braver than Errol Flynn,” Tom said. “I bet he’s got a drawer full of medals back home but he’s too modest to wear them.”

  The soldier was getting angry now. “Why don’t you kids shut up? We came here to see a movie.”

  “We came to make love,” Tom said. He caressed Claude’s cheek elaborately. “Didn’t we, hotpants?”

  “Squeeze me harder, darrrling,” Claude said. “My nipples’re palpitating.”

  “I am in ecstasy,” Tom said. “Your skin is like a baby’s ass.”

  “Put your tongue in my ear, honey,” Claude said. “Ooooh—I’m coming.”

  “That’s enough,” the soldier said. Finally he had taken his hand out of the girl’s blouse. “Get the hell out of here.”

  He had spoken loudly and angrily and a few people were turning around up front and making shushing noises.

  “We paid good money for these seats,” Tom said, “and we’re not moving.”

  “We’ll see about that.” The soldier stood up. He was about six feet tall. “I’m going to get the usher.”

  “Don’t let the little bastards get your goat, Sidney,” the girl said. “Sit down.”

  “Sidney, remember I told you I hold you personally responsible for your lady friend’s language,” Tom said. “This is a last warning.”

  “Usher!” the soldier called across the auditorium, to where the lone attendant, dressed in frayed gold braid, was sitting in the last row, dozing under an exit light.

  “Ssh, sssh!” came from spots all over the theater.

  “He’s a real soldier,” Claude said. “He’s calling for reinforcements.”

  “Sit down, Sidney.” The girl tugged at the soldier’s sleeve. “They’re just snotty kids.”

  “Button your shirt, Angela,” Tom said. “Your titty’s showing.” He stood up, in case the soldier swung.

  “Sit down, please,” Claude said politely, as the usher came down the aisle toward them, “this is the best part of the picture and I don’t want to miss it.”

  “What’s going on here?” the usher asked. He was a big weary-looking man of about forty who worked in a furniture factory during the day.

  “Get these kids out of here,” the soldier said. “They’re using dirty language in front of this lady.”

  “All I said was, please take your hat off,” Claude said. “Am I right, Tom?”

  “That’s what he said, sir,” Tom said, sitting down again. “A simple polite request. He has a rare eye disease.”

  “What?” the usher asked, puzzled.

  “If you don’t throw them out,” the soldier said, “there’s going to be trouble.”

  “Why don’t you boys sit someplace else?” the usher said.

  “He explained,” Claude said. “I have a rare eye disease.”

  “This is a free country,” Tom said. “You pay your money and you sit where you want to sit. Who does he think he is—Adolf Hitler? Big shot. Just because he’s wearing a soldier suit. I bet he never got any nearer to the Japs than Kansas City, Missouri. Coming here, giving a bad example to the youth of the country, screwing girls in public. In uniform.”

  “If you don’t throw them out, I’m going to clout them,” the soldier said thickly. He was clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “You used bad language,” the usher said to Tom. “I heard it with my own ears. Not in this theater. Out you go.”

  By now most of the audience was booing. The usher leaned over and grabbed Tom by his sweater. By the feel of the big hand on him Tom knew there was no chance with the man. He stood up. “Come on, Claude,” he said. “All right, Mister,” he said to the usher. “We don’t want to cause any disturbance. Just give us our money back and we’ll leave.”

  “Fat chance,” the usher said.

  Tom sat down again. “I know my rights,” he said. Then very loudly, so that his voice rang through the entire auditorium over the sound of the gunfire from the screen, “Go ahead and hit me, you big brute.”

  The usher sighed. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’ll give you your money back. Just get the hell out of here.”

  The boys stood up. Tom smiled up at the soldier. “I warned you,” he said. “I’ll be waiting for you outside.”

  “Go get your ma to change your diapers,” the soldier said. He sat down heavily.

  In the lobby, the usher gave them each thirty-five cents out of his own pocket, making them sign receipts to show to the owner of the theater. Tom signed the name of his algebra teacher and Claude signed the name of the president of his father’s bank. “And I don’t want to see you ever trying to get in here again,” the usher said.

  “It’s a public place,” Claude said. “You try anything like that and my father’ll hear about it.

  “Who’s your father?” the usher said, disturbed.

  “You’ll find out,” Claude said menacingly. “In due time.”

  The boys stalked deliberately out of the lobby. On the street they clapped each other on the back and roared with laughter. It was early and the picture wouldn’t end for another half hour, so they went into the diner across the street and had a piece of pie and some coffee with the usher’s money. The radio was on behind the counter and a newscaster was talking about the
gains the American Army had made that day in Germany and about the possibility of the German high command falling back into a redoubt in the Bavarian Alps for a last stand.

  Tom listened with a grimace twisting his round baby face. The war bored him. He didn’t mind the fighting, it was the crap about sacrifice and ideals and our brave boys all the time that made him sick. It was a cinch they’d never get him in any army.

  “Hey, lady,” he said to the waitress, who was buffing her nails behind the counter, “can’t we have some music?” He got enough patriotism at home, from his sister and brother.

  The waitress looked up languidly. “Ain’t you boys interested in who’s winning the war?”

  “We’re Four F,” Tom said. “We have a rare eye disease.”

  “Oh, my rare eye disease,” Claude said, over his coffee. They burst into laughter again.

  They were standing in front of the Casino when the doors opened and the audience began to stream out. Tom had given Claude his wristwatch to hold so that it wouldn’t get broken. He stood absolutely still, purposely controlling himself, his hands hanging loosely at his sides, hoping that the soldier hadn’t left before the end of the picture. Claude was pacing up and down nervously, his face sweating and pale from excitement. “You’re sure now?” he kept saying. “You’re absolutely sure? He’s an awful big sonofabitch. I want you to be sure.”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” Tom said. “Just keep the crowd back so I have room to move. I don’t want him grappling me.” His eyes narrowed. “Here he comes.”

  The soldier and his girl came out onto the sidewalk. The soldier looked about twenty-two or twenty-three. He was a little pudgy, with a heavy, sullen face. His tunic bulged over a premature paunch, but he looked strong. He had no hash marks on his sleeve and no ribbons. He had his hand possessively on the girl’s arm, steering her through the stream of people. “I’m thirsty,” he was saying. “Let’s go get ourselves a coupla beers.” Tom went over to him and stood in front of him, barring his way.