Collected Fiction

by Irwin Shaw

  The letters, negligently dropped on the floor or slipped under magazines on the tables, were from the farthest reaches of the new German Empire, and although written in the widest variety of literary styles, from delicate and lyric poems from young scholars on duty in Helsinski to stiff, pornographic memorials from aging professional military men serving under Rommel in the Western desert, they all bore the same burden of longing and gratitude. Each letter, too, bore promises … a bolt of green silk bought in Orleans, a ring found in a shop in Budapest, a locket with a sapphire stone picked up in Tripoli.… Eloise was mentioned in some of the letters, and other girls, sometimes half-humorously, sometimes with a wondering echo of past sensuality. Christian had come to recognize Eloise and the other girls as almost normal … or at least normal for Gretchen. She was beyond the bounds of ordinary behavior, put there by her extraordinary beauty, her appetite, her superhuman energy. It was true that in the morning she often took Benzedrine and other drugs to restore the violent flame of her energy which she squandered so light-heartedly. Also, sometimes in the morning she gave herself huge injections with a hypodermic needle of Vitamin B, which, she said, cured her immediately of hangovers.

  The amazing thing about her was that only three years before she had been a demure young schoolteacher in Baden, instructing ten-year-old children in geography and arithmetic. She had been shy, she told Christian. Hardenburg had been the first man she had ever slept with, and she had refused him until he married her. But when he brought her to Berlin, just before the beginning of the war, a woman photographer had seen her in a night club and had asked to take her picture for some posters she was doing for the Propaganda Ministry. The photographer had seduced her, in addition to making her face and figure quite famous as a model for a typical German girl, who, in the series of photographs, worked extra hours in munitions factories, attended party meetings regularly, gave to the Winter Fund, cleverly prepared attractive menus in the kitchen with ersatz foods. Since that time she had risen dizzily in the wartime Berlin social world. Hardenburg had been sent off to a regiment early in his wife’s career. Now that he had seen the situation at home, Christian understood better why Hardenburg was considered so valuable in Rennes and found it so difficult to get leave to return home. Gretchen was invited to all the important parties and had met Hitler twice and was on terms of intimacy with Rosenberg, although she assured Christian it did not include the final, or what was for Gretchen the semi-final one.

  Christian refused to make a judgment on Gretchen’s morality. From time to time, as he lay in his darkened room in the boarding house, waiting for the ring of the telephone below, he had reflected upon what his mother would call Gretchen’s mortal sin. Although he had left the church early, remnants of his mother’s bitter religious morality would occasionally rear up through the flood of the years in Christian’s mind, and at times like that he would find himself reflecting harshly on Gretchen’s activities. But he put those random, half-begun judgments from him. Gretchen was above ordinary morality, beyond it. A person of such vitality, such appetite, such raging energy, could not be fettered by the niggling considerations of what was, after all, a dying and outworn code. To judge Gretchen by the word of Jesus was to judge a bird by a snail, a tank captain by a village traffic regulation, a general by the civil laws against manslaughter.

  Hardenburg’s letters from Rennes were stiff, almost military documents, empty, windy, cold. Christian couldn’t help smiling as he read them, knowing that Hardenburg, if he survived the war, would be a forgotten and carelessly discarded article in Gretchen’s swirling past. For the future, Christian had plans that he only half-admitted to himself. Gretchen had told him one night, casually, between one drink and the next, that the war would be over in sixty days and that someone high in the Government, she wouldn’t tell Christian his name, had offered her a three-thousand-acre tract in Poland. There was a seventeenth-century stone mansion, untouched by war, on it, and seven hundred acres were under cultivation, even now.

  “How would you be,” she had asked, half-joking, lying back on the sofa, “at running an estate for a lady?”

  “Wonderful,” he had said.

  “You wouldn’t wear yourself out,” she had said, smiling, “with your agricultural duties?”

  “Guaranteed.” He had sat down beside her and put his hand under her head and caressed the firm, fair skin at the base of her neck.

  “We’ll see. We’ll see …” Gretchen had said. “We might do worse …”

  That would be it, Christian thought. A great wild estate, with the money rolling in, and Gretchen mistress of the old house … They wouldn’t marry, of course. Marrying Gretchen was an act of supererogation. A kind of private Prince Consort, with hand-made riding boots and twenty horses in the stables and the great and wealthy of the new Empire coming down from the capitals for the shooting …

  The luckiest moment of my life, Christian thought, when Hardenburg unlocked that desk and took the package of black lace out of it in the police barracks in Rennes. Christian hardly thought of Rennes any more. Gretchen had told him she had talked. to a Major General about his transfer and commission and it was in the works. Hardenburg was a miserable phantom of the past now, who might reappear for one delicious moment in the future to be dismissed with a curt murderous phrase. The luckiest day of my life, Christian thought, turning with a smile to the door, which had just been opened. Gretchen stood there in a golden dress, with a wrap of mink thrown easily over her shoulders. She was smiling and holding out her arms, saying, “Now, isn’t this a nice thing to find waiting for a girl when she gets home from her day’s work?”

  Christian went over and kicked the door shut and took her into his arms.

  Then, three days before his leave was due to expire, although he wasn’t worried, Gretchen had said it was all being fixed, the phone rang in the boarding house and he rushed down the stairs to answer it. It was her voice. He smiled as he said, “Hello, darling.”

  “Stop that.” Her voice was harsh, although she seemed to be talking in a whisper, “And don’t say my name over the phone.”

  “What?” he asked, dazedly.

  “I’m speaking from a phone in a café,” she said. “Don’t try to call me at home. And don’t come there.”

  “But you said, eight o’clock tonight.”

  “I know what I said. Not eight o’clock tonight. Or any night. That’s all. Stay away. Good-bye.”

  He heard the click as she hung up. He stared at the instrument on the wall, then put up the receiver slowly. He went to his room and lay down on the bed. Then he got up and put on his tunic and went out. Any place, he thought, but this room.

  He walked hazily through the streets, hopelessly going over in his mind Gretchen’s whispered, final conversation, and all the acts and words that might have led up to it. The night before had been, for them, an ordinary night. She had appeared at the apartment at one o’clock, quite drunk, in her controlled, nervous way, and they had drunk some more until about two, and then they had gone to bed together. It had been as good as it had ever been, and she had dropped off to sleep, lying beside him, and had kissed him brightly and affectionately at eleven in the morning, when she left for work, and said, “Tonight, let’s start earlier. Eight o’clock. Be here.”

  There was no hint in this. He stared at the blank faces of the buildings and the hurried, swarming faces of the people around him. The only thing to do was to wait for her outside her apartment house and ask her, point-blank.

  At seven o’clock that night he took up his station behind a tree across the street from the entrance to her apartment house. It was a damp night, with a drizzle. In half an hour he was soaked, but he paid little attention to it. A policeman came by for the third time at ten-thirty and looked inquisitively at him.

  “Waiting for a girl.” Christian managed a sheepish grin. “She’s trying to shake a parachute major.”

  The policeman grinned at him. “The war,” he said. “It makes every
thing difficult.” He shook his head commiseratingly and moved on.

  At two o’clock in the morning, one of the familiar official cars drove up and Gretchen and an officer got out. They talked for a moment on the sidewalk. Then they went in together and the car drove away.

  Christian looked up through the drizzle at the black-dark side of the building and tried to figure out which window was the one that belonged to Gretchen’s apartment, but it was impossible to tell in the blackness.

  At eight o’clock in the morning, the long car drove up again and the officer came out and got into it. Lieutenant Colonel, Christian noted automatically. It was still raining.

  He nearly crossed the street to the apartment house. No, he thought, that would ruin it. She’d be angry and throw me out and that would be the end of it.

  He stayed behind the tree, his eyes clammy with sleep, his uniform soaked, staring up at the window which was revealed now in the gray light.

  At eleven o’clock she came out. She had on short rubber boots and a belted light raincoat, with a cape attached, like a soldier’s camouflage equipment. She looked fresh, as always in the morning, and young and schoolgirlish in her rain outfit She started to walk briskly down the street.

  He caught up with her after she turned the corner.

  “Gretchen,” he said, touching her elbow.

  She wheeled nervously. “Get away from met” she said. She looked apprehensively around her and spoke in a whisper.

  “What’s the matter?” he said, pleadingly. “What have I done?”

  She began walking again, swiftly. He walked after her, keeping a little behind her.

  “Gretchen, darling”

  “Listen,” she said. “Get away. Keep away. Isn’t that clear?”

  “I’ve got to know,” he said. “What is it?”

  “I can’t be seen talking to you.” She stared straight ahead of her as she strode down the street. “That’s all. Now get out. You’ve had a nice leave, and it’ll be up in two days anyway; go back to France and forget this.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t. I’ve got to talk to you. Any place you say. Any time.”

  Two men came out of a store on the other side of the street and walked swiftly, parallel to them, in the same direction they were going.

  “All right,” Gretchen said. “My place. Tonight at eleven. Don’t use the front door. You can walk up the back stairs through the basement The entrance is on the other street. The kitchen door will be unlocked. I’ll be there.”

  “Yes,” said Christian. “Thank you. That’s wonderful.”

  “Now leave me alone,” she said. He stopped and watched her walk away, without looking back, in her bright, nervous walk, accentuated by the boots and the belted rubber coat He turned and went slowly back to his boarding house. He lay down on the bed without taking off his clothes and tried to sleep.

  At eleven o’clock that night, he climbed the dark back stairs. Gretchen was sitting at a table writing something. Her back was very straight in a green wool dress, and she didn’t even look around when Christian came into the room. Oh, God, he thought, it is the Lieutenant all over again. He walked lightly over behind her chair and kissed the top of her head, smelling the scented hair.

  Gretchen stopped writing and turned around in the chair. Her face was cool and serious.

  “You should have told me,” she said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You may have gotten me into a lot of trouble,” she said.

  Christian sat down heavily. “What did I do?”

  Gretchen stood up and began to walk up and down the room, the wool skirt swinging at her knees.

  “It wasn’t fair,” she said, “letting me go through all that.”

  “Go through what?” Christian asked loudly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t shout!” Gretchen snapped at him. “God knows who’s listening.”

  “I wish,” said Christian, keeping his voice low, “that you’d let me know what’s happening.”

  “Yesterday afternoon,” Gretchen said, standing in front of him, “the Gestapo sent a man to my office.”

  “Yes?”

  “They had been to see General Ulrich first,” Gretchen said significantly.

  Christian shook his head wearily. “Who in God’s name is General Ulrich?”

  “My friend,” said Gretchen, “my very good friend, who is probably in very hot water right now because of you.”

  “I never saw General Ulrich in all my life,” Christian said.

  “Keep your voice low.” Gretchen paced over to the sideboard and poured herself four fingers of brandy. She did not offer Christian a drink. “I’m a fool to have let you come here at all.”

  “What has General Ulrich got to do with me?” Christian demanded.

  “General Ulrich,” Gretchen said deliberately, after taking a large swallow of the brandy, “is the man who tried to put through your application for a direct commission and a transfer to the General Staff.”

  “Well?”

  “The Gestapo told him yesterday, that you were a suspected Communist,” Gretchen said, “and they wanted to know what his connection with you was and why he was so interested in you.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Christian demanded. “I’m not a Communist. I was a member of the Nazi Party in Austria in 1937.”

  “They knew all that,” said Gretchen. “They also knew that you had been a member of the Austrian Communist Party from 1932 to 1936. They also knew that you made trouble for a Regional Commissioner named Schwartz right after the Anschluss. They also knew that you had an affair with an American girl who had been living with a Jewish socialist in Vienna in 1937.”

  Christian sank wearily back into the chair. The Gestapo, he thought, how meticulous and inaccurate they could be.

  “You’re under observation in your Company,” Gretchen said. “They get a report on you every month.” She grinned sourly. “It may please you to know that my husband reports that you are a completely able and loyal soldier and strongly recommends you for officers’ school.”

  “I must remember to thank him,” Christian said flatly, “when I see him.”

  “Of course,” said Gretchen, “you can never become an officer. They won’t even send you to fight against the Russians. If your unit is shifted to that front, you will be transferred.”

  What a winding, hopeless trap, Christian thought, what an impossible, boring catastrophe.

  “That’s it,” Gretchen said. “Naturally, when they found out that a woman who worked for the Propaganda Ministry, who was friendly, officially and otherwise, with many high-ranking military and official personnel …”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Christian said irritably, standing up, “stop sounding like a police magistrate!”

  “You understand my position …” It was the first time Christian had heard a defensive tone in Gretchen’s voice. “People’ve been shipped off to concentration camps for less. You must understand my position, darling.”

  “I understand your position,” Christian said loudly, “and I understand the Gestapo’s position, and I understand General Ulrich’s position, and they all bore me to death!” He strode over to her and towered over her, raging, “Do you think I’m a Communist?”

  “That’s beside the point, darling,” Gretchen said carefully. “The Gestapo thinks you may be. That’s the important thing. Or at least, that you may not be quite … quite reliable. Don’t blame me, please …” She came over to him and her voice was soft and pleading. “It would be different if I was an ordinary girl, in an ordinary unimportant job … I could see you whenever I pleased, I could go any place with you … But this way, it’s really dangerous. You don’t know. You haven’t been back in Germany for so long, you have no idea of the way people suddenly disappear. For nothing. For less than this. Honestly. Please … don’t look so angry …”

  Christian sighed and sat down. It would take a little time to get accustom
ed to this. Suddenly he felt he was not at home any longer; he was a foreigner treading clumsily in a strange, dangerous country, where every word had a double meaning, every act a dubious consequence. He thought of the three thousand acres in Poland, the stables, the hunting week-ends. He smiled sourly. He’d be lucky if they let him go back to teach skiing.

  “Don’t look like that,” Gretchen said. “So … so despairing.”

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I’ll sing a song.”

  “Don’t be harsh with me,” she said humbly. “What can I do about it?”

  “Can’t you go to them? Can’t you tell them? You know me, you could prove …”

  She shook her head. “I can’t prove anything.”

  “I’ll go to them. I’ll go to General Ulrich.”

  “None of that!” Her voice was sharp. “You’ll ruin me. They told me not to tell you anything about it. Just to stop seeing you. They’ll make it worse for you, and God knows what they’ll do to me! Promise me you won’t say anything about it to anyone.”

  She looked so frightened, and, after all, it wasn’t her doing. “I promise,” he said slowly. He stood up and looked around the room that had become the real core of his life. “Well,” and he tried to grin, “I won’t say that it hasn’t been a nice leave.”

  “I’m so terribly sorry,” she whispered. She put her arms around him gently. “You don’t have to go … just yet …”