Collected Fiction

by Irwin Shaw

  “Hello,” Pharney said, shaking hands, smiling in the insolent, good-natured way that he had found impressed people into giving more money than they had intended for his clients. “How do you like it?” he asked, as though the war were a production he had himself supervised and of which he was very proud.

  “Best little old war,” Michael said, “I ever was in.”

  “How old’re you?” Pharney peered shrewdly at Michael.

  “Thirty-three.”

  “I can get you two stripes,” Pharney said, “in the Navy. Public Relations. Radio stuff. Want it?”

  “Christ,” said Cahoon, “does the Navy use agents, too?”

  “Friend of mine,” Pharney said, unoffended. “Full Captain. Well?” He turned back to Michael.

  “Not at the moment,” said Michael. “I’m not ready to go in for two or three months.”

  “In three months,” Pharney said, grinning across them at two glittering beauties in the next booth, “In three months you’ll be tending gardens in Yokahama.”

  “The truth is,” Michael said hesitantly, trying to make it sound unheroic, “I think I want to go in as a private in the Army.”

  “My perishing ass,” Pharney said, “what for?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Michael, feeling immodest and embarrassed. “I’ll tell you another time.”

  “Hamburger,” Pharney said cheerfully. “That’s all a private in the Army is. Grind him down fine and don’t mind if there’s a little fat in it. Have a good war.” He waved and was off, down the saluting line of booths.

  Cahoon stared gloomily at two comedians who were making their way along the bar, laughing loudly and shaking hands with all the drinkers. “This town,” he said, “I’d give the Japanese High Command five hundred dollars and two seats to the opening nights of all my plays if they’d bomb it tomorrow. Mike,” he said, without looking at Michael, “I’m going to say something very selfish.”

  “Go ahead,” Michael said.

  “Don’t go in till we get this play on. I’m too tired to get a show on by myself. And you’ve been in on it since the beginning. Sleeper’s a horrible jerk, but he’s got a good play there, and it ought to be done …”

  “Don’t worry,” Michael said softly, half afraid already that he was leaping at this honorable excuse in friendship’s name to remain aloof from the war for another season. “I’ll hang around.”

  “They’ll get along without you,” Cahoon said, “for a couple of months. We’ll win the war anyway.”

  He stopped talking. Sleeper was threading his way through the crowd toward their booth. Sleeper dressed like a forceful young writer, dark-blue work shirt and a tie that was off to one side. He was a handsome, heavy-set, arrogant man, who had written two inflammatory plays about the working class several years before. He sat down without shaking hands.

  “Christ,” he growled, “why do we have to meet in this Chanel douche bag?”

  “Your secretary,” Cahoon said, mildly, “made the date.”

  “My secretary,” Sleeper said, “has two ambitions. She wants to lay a Hungarian producer at Universal and she wants to make a gentleman out of me. She’s the kind of girl who’s always saying she doesn’t like your shirts. Know that kind?”

  “I don’t like your shirts, either,” said Cahoon. “You make two thousand dollars a week, you don’t have to wear things like that.”

  “Double Scotch,” Sleeper said to the waiter. “Well,” he said loudly, “Uncle Sam has finally backed his tail into the service of humanity.”

  “Did you rewrite Scene Two yet?” Cahoon asked.

  “For Christ’s sake, Cahoon!” Sleeper said. “Do you think a man can work at a time like this?”

  “Just thought I’d ask,” said Cahoon.

  “Blood,” said Sleeper, sounding, Michael thought, like a character in one of his plays. “Blood on the palm trees, blood on the radio, blood on the decks, and he asks about the second scene! Wake up, Cahoon. A cosmic moment. Thunder in the bowels of the earth. The human race is twisting, tortured and bleeding in its uneasy sleep.”

  “Save it,” said Cahoon, “for the trial scene.”

  “Cut it.” Sleeper glowered heavily under his heavy, handsome eyebrows. “Cut those brittle, Broadway jokes. That.time’s passed, Cahoon, passed forever. The first bomb yesterday dropped right in the middle of the last wisecrack. Where’s the Ham?” He looked around him restlessly, tapping the table in front of him.

  “Hoyt said he’d be a little late,” Michael said. “He’ll be here.”

  “I’ve got to get back to the studio,” said Sleeper. “Freddie asked me to come in this afternoon. The studio’s thinking of making a picture about Honolulu to awaken the American people.”

  “What’re you going to do?” Cahoon asked. “Are you going to have time to finish the play?”

  “Of course I am,” said Sleeper. “I told you I would, didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” said Cahoon. “That was before the war started. I thought you might go in.…”

  Sleeper snorted. “To do what? Guard a viaduct in Kansas City?” He took a long sip of the Scotch the waiter placed before him. “The artist doesn’t belong in uniform. The function of the artist is to keep alive the flame of culture, to explain what the war is about, to lift the spirits of the men who are grappling with death. Anything else,” he said, “is sentimentality. In Russia they don’t take the artist. Write, they say, play, paint, compose. A country in its right mind doesn’t put its national treasures in the front line. What would you think if the French had put the Mona Lisa and Cezanne’s self-portrait in the Maginot Line? You’d think they were crazy, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Michael said, because Sleeper was glaring at him.

  “Well,” Sleeper shouted, “why the hell should they put a new Cezanne, a living Da Vinci there? Christ, even the Germans keep their artists at home! God, I get so weary of this argument!” He finished his Scotch and looked furiously around him. “I can’t stand a tardy Ham,” Sleeper said. “I’m going to order my lunch.”

  “Pharney,” said Cahoon, smiling slightly, “can get you two stripes in the Navy.”

  “Screw Pharney,” said Sleeper. “Flesh-peddling provocateur. Ham and eggs,” he said to the waiter, “and asparagus with Hollandaise sauce. And a double Scotch.”

  Hoyt came in while Sleeper was ordering and made his way quickly to their table, shaking hands with only five people in his passage.

  “Sorry, old man,” Hoyt said as he slipped onto the green leather bench behind the table. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Why the hell,” Sleeper asked pugnaciously, “can’t you get any place on time? Wouldn’t your public like it?”

  “Confusing day at the studio, old man,” Hoyt said. “Couldn’t break away.” He had a clipped British accent which had never varied in the seven years he had been in the United States. He had taken out American citizenship papers when the war began in 1939, but otherwise he seemed exactly the same handsome, talented young toff, via Pall Mall out of the Bristol slums, who had got off the boat in 1934. He looked distracted and nervous and ordered a very light lunch. He did not order a drink because he had a tiring afternoon ahead of him. He was playing an RAF Squadron Leader and there was a complicated scene in a burning plane over the Channel, with process shots and difficult closeups.

  Lunch was a tense affair. Hoyt had promised to re-read the play over the week-end and give Cahoon his final decision about whether he would appear in it. He was a good actor and just right for the part, and if he didn’t play it, it would be a difficult job to find another man. Sleeper kept drinking double Scotches gloomily and Cahoon poked drably at his food.

  Michael saw Laura at a table across the room with two other women, and nodded coolly at her. It was the first time he’d seen her since the divorce. That eighty bucks a week, he thought, won’t go far if she pays for her own lunch in this place. He was angry at her for being improvident and then was annoyed at himself for wor
rying about it. She looked very pretty and it was hard to remember that he was angry at her and also hard to remember that he had ever loved her. Another face, he thought, that will pull vaguely and sadly at the heart when glimpsed by accident at one end of the country or another.

  “I’ve re-read the play, Cahoon,” Hoyt said, a little hurriedly, “and I must say I think it’s just beautiful.”

  “Good.” Cahoon started to smile broadly.

  “… But,” Hoyt broke in a little breathlessly, “I’m afraid I can’t do it.”

  Cahoon stopped smiling and Sleeper said, “Oh, Christ.”

  “What’s the matter?” Cahoon asked.

  “At the moment …” Hoyt smiled apologetically. “With the war and all. Change of plans, old man. Truth is, if I went into a play, I’m afraid the bloody draft board’d clap its paws on me. Out here …” He took a mouthful of salad. “Out here, it’s a somewhat different case. Studio says they’ll get me deferred. The word is from Washington that movies’ll be considered in the national interest. Necessary personnel, y’ know … Don’t know about the stage. Wouldn’t like to take a chance. You understand my position …”

  “Sure,” said Cahoon flatly. “Sure.”

  “Christ,” said Sleeper. He stood up. “Got to go back to Burbank,” he said. “In the national interest.”

  He walked out heavily and bit unsteadily.

  Hoyt looked after him nervously. “Never liked that chap,” he said. “Not a gentleman.” He chewed tensely on his salad.

  Rollie Vaughn appeared at the table, red-faced and beaming, with a glass of brandy in his hand. He was English, too, older than Hoyt, and was playing a Wing Commander in Hoyt’s picture. But he was not on call for the afternoon and could safely drink.

  “Greatest day in England’s history,” he said happily, beaming at Hoyt. “The days of defeat are over. Days of victory ahead. To Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” He lifted his glass and the others politely lifted theirs, and Michael was afraid that Rollie was going to heave the glass into the fireplace, now that he was in the RAF at Paramount. “To America!” Rollie said, lifting his glass again. What he’s really drinking to, Michael thought unpleasantly, is the Japanese Navy, for getting us in. Still, you couldn’t blame an Englishman …

  “We will fight them on the beaches,” said Rollie loudly, “we will fight them on the hills.” He sat down. “We will fight them in the streets … No more Cretes, no more Norways … No more getting pushed out of any place.”

  “I wouldn’t talk like that, old man,” Hoyt said. “I had a private conversation not long ago. Chap in the Admiralty. You’d be surprised at the name if I could tell it to you. He explained to me about Crete.”

  “What did he say about Crete?” Rollie stared at Hoyt, a slight belligerence showing in his eyes.

  “All according to the over-all plan, old man,” said Hoyt. “Inflict losses and pull out. Cleverest thing in the world. Let them have Crete. Who needs Crete?”

  Rollie stood up majestically. “I’m not going to sit here,” he said harshly, a wild light in his eye, “and hear the British Armed Forces insulted by a runaway Englishman.”

  “Now, now,” Cahoon said soothingly. “Sit down.”

  “What did I say, old boy?” Hoyt asked nervously.

  “British blood spilled to the last ounce,” Rollie banged the table. “Desperate, bloody stand to save the land of an ally. Englishmen dying by the thousand … and he says it was planned that way! ‘Let them have Crete!’ I’ve been watching you for some time, Hoyt, and I’ve tried to be fair in my mind, but I’m afraid I’ve finally got to believe what people’re saying about you.”

  “Now, old man,” Hoyt was very red in the face and his voice was high and rattled. “I think you’re the victim of a terrible misunderstanding.”

  “If you were in England,” Rollie said, bitingly, “you’d sing a different tune. They’d have you up before the law before you’d have a chance to get out more than ten words. Spreading despondency and alarm. Criminal offense, you know, in time of war.”

  “Really,” Hoyt said weakly, “Rollie, old man …”

  “I’d like to know who’s paying you for this,” Rollie stuck his chin out challengingly close to Hoyt’s face. “I really would like to know. Don’t think this is going to die in this restaurant. Every Englishman in this town is going to hear about it, never fear! Let them have Crete, eh?” He slammed his glass down on the table and stalked back to the bar.

  Hoyt wiped his sweating face with his handkerchief and looked painfully around him to see how many people had heard the tirade. “Lord,” he said, “you don’t know how difficult it is to be an Englishman these days. Insane, neurotic cliques, you don’t dare open your mouth …” He got up. “I hope you’ll excuse me,” he said, “but I really must get back to the studio.”

  “Of course,” Cahoon said.

  “Terribly sorry about the play,” said Hoyt. “But you see how it is.”

  “Yes,” said Cahoon.

  “Cherrio,” said Hoyt.

  “Cherrio,” said Cahoon, with a straight face.

  He and Michael watched the elegant, 7500-dollar-a-week back retreating past the bar, retreating past the defender of Crete, retreating to the Paramount Studios, to the prop plane afire that afternoon against the processed clouds ten miles off the Hollywood-Dover coast.

  Cahoon sighed. “If I didn’t have ulcers when I came in here,” he said, “I’d have them now.” He called for the check.

  Then Michael saw Laura walking toward their table. Michael looked down at his plate with great interest, but Laura stopped in front of him.

  “Invite me to sit down,” she said.

  Michael looked coldly up at her, but Cahoon smiled and said, “Hello, Laura, won’t you join us?” and she sat down facing Michael.

  “I’m going anyway,” Cahoon said before Michael could protest. He stood up, after signing the check. “See you tonight, Mike,” he said, and wandered slowly off toward the door. Michael watched him go.

  “You might be more pleasant,” Laura said. “Even if we’re divorced we can be friendly.”

  Michael stared at the Sergeant who was drinking at the bar. The Sergeant had watched Laura walk across the room and was looking at her now, frankly and hungrily.

  “I don’t approve of friendly divorces,” Michael said. “If you have to get a divorce it should be a mean, unfriendly divorce.”

  Laura’s eyelids quivered. Oh, God, Michael thought, she still cries.

  “I just came over to warn you,” Laura said, her voice trembling.

  “Warn me about what?” Michael asked, puzzled.

  “Not to do anything rash. About the war, I mean.”

  “I won’t do anything rash.”

  “I think,” said Laura softly, “you might offer me a drink.”

  “Waiter,” said Michael, “two Scotch and soda.”

  “I heard you were in town,” Laura said.

  “Did you?” Michael stared at the Sergeant, who had not taken his eyes off Laura since she sat down.

  “I was hoping you’d call me,” she said.

  Women, Michael thought, their emotions were like trapeze artists falling into nets. Miss the rung, fall through the air, then bounce up as high and spry as ever.

  “I was busy,” Michael said. “How are things with you?”

  “Not bad,” Laura said. “They’re testing me for a part at Fox.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” Laura said.

  The Sergeant swung around fully at the bar so that he wouldn’t have to crane his neck to see Laura. She did look very pretty, with a severe black dress and a tiny hat on the back of her head, and Michael didn’t blame the Sergeant for looking. The uniform accentuated the expression of loss and loneliness and dumb desire on his face. Here he is, Michael thought, adrift in the war, maybe on the verge of being sent to die on some jungle island that nobody ever heard of, or to rot there month after month and year after year in the d
ry, womanless clutch of the Army, and he probably doesn’t know a girl between here and Dubuque, and he sees a civilian, not much older than he, sitting in this fancy place with a beautiful girl … Probably behind that lost, staring expression there are visions of me unconcernedly drinking with one pretty girl after another in the rich bars of his native land, in bed with them, between the crisp civilized sheets, while he sweats and weeps and dies so far away …

  Michael had an insane notion that he wanted to go up to the Sergeant and say to him, “Look here, I know what you’re thinking. You’re absolutely wrong. I’m not going to be with that girl tonight or any other night. If it was up to me, I’d send her out with you tonight, I swear I would.” But he couldn’t do that. He could just sit there and feel guilty, as though he had been given a prize that someone else had earned. Sitting beside his lovely ex-wife, he knew that this was still another thing to sour his days; that every time he entered a restaurant with a girl and there was a soldier unescorted, he would feel guilty; and that every time he touched a woman with tenderness and longing, he would feel that she had been bought with someone else’s blood.

  “Michael,” Laura said softly, looking with a little smile over her drink, “what are you doing tonight? Late?”

  Michael took his eyes away from the Sergeant. “Working,” he said. “Are you through with your drink? I have to go.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN bearable without the wind. Christian moved heavily under his blanket, tasting the sand on his cracked lips. The wind picked the sand off the flinty, rolling ridges and hurled it in malicious bursts at you, into your eyes, your throat, your lungs.

  Christian sat up slowly, keeping his blanket around him. It was just getting light and the pitiless cold of night still gripped the desert face. His jaws were quivering with the cold and he moved about, stiffly, still sitting, to get warm.