by Irwin Shaw
“Do not move,” Michael said slowly, bent over, speaking softly into the boy’s ear. “We’ll try to help you.”
The boy gently let himself down to the pavement. Then he slowly rolled over. He lay there, staring up through pain-torn eyes at Michael.
By now the Frenchmen were grouped around the wrecked car. The man with the Red Cross armband had two machine pistols. “Wonderful,” he was saying happily, “wonderful. These will be most welcome in Paris.” He came over to the wounded boy and briskly yanked the pistol out of the boy’s holster. “Good,” he said, “we have 38 caliber ammunition for this.”
The wounded boy stared dumbly up at the red cross on the Frenchman’s arm. “Doctor,” he said slowly, “Doctor. Help me.”
“Oh,” said the Frenchman gaily, touching the red cross, “it is just a disguise. Just for getting past your friends on the road. I am not a doctor. You will have to find someone else to help you, old man …” He took his treasures off to one side and began to inspect them minutely for damage.
“Don’t waste any time on the pig.” It was the voice of Mrs. Dumoulin, stony and cold. “Put him out of his misery.”
Michael stared disbelievingly at her. She was standing at the wounded boy’s head, her arms crossed on her chubby bosom, speaking, Michael could tell from their harsh faces, for the men and women grouped behind her.
“Now, wait a minute,” Michael said. “This man is our prisoner and we don’t shoot prisoners in our Army.”
“Doctor,” said the boy on the cobbles.
“Kill him,” said someone from behind Mrs. Dumoulin.
“If the American doesn’t want to waste ammunition,” another voice said, “I’ll do it with a stone.”
“What’s the matter with you people?” Michael shouted. “What are you, animals?” He spoke in French so that they could all understand, and it was very difficult to translate his anger and disgust in his high-school accent. He stared at Mrs. Dumoulin. Inconceivable, he thought, a plump little housewife, an Irish lady improbably in the middle of the Frenchmen’s war, violent for blood, outside the claims of pity. “He’s wounded, he can’t do you any harm,” Michael went on, furious at his slow searching for words. “What’s the sense in it?”
“Go,” Mrs. Dumoulin said coldly, “go look at Jacqueline over there. Go see Monsieur Alexandre, that’s the other one, lying there, with a bullet in his lung … Maybe you’ll understand a little better.”
“Three of them are dead,” Michael pleaded with Mrs. Dumoulin. “Isn’t that enough?”
“It is not enough!” The woman’s face was pale and furious, her dark, almost purple eyes set maniacally in her head. “Maybe it’s enough for you, young man. You haven’t lived here under them for four years! You haven’t seen your sons taken away and killed! Jacqueline was not your neighbor. You’re an American. It’s easy for you to be humane. It is not so easy for us!” She was screaming wildly by now, shaking her fists under Michael’s nose. “We are not Americans and we do not wish to be humane. We wish to kill him. Turn your back if you’re so soft. We’ll do it. You’ll keep your pretty little American conscience clean …”
“Doctor,” the boy on the pavement moaned.
“Please …” Michael said, appealing to the locked faces of the townspeople behind Mrs. Dumoulin, feeling guilty that he, a stranger, a stranger who loved them, loved their country, their courage, their suffering, dared to oppose them on a profound matter like this on the streets of their own town …“Please,” he said, feeling confusedly that perhaps she was right, perhaps it was his usual softness, his wavering, unheroic indecision that was making him argue like this. “It is impossible to take a wounded man’s life like this, no matter what …”
There was a shot behind him. Michael wheeled. Keane was standing above the German’s head, his finger on the trigger of his carbine, that sick, crooked smile on his face. The German was still now. All the townspeople stared quietly and with almost demure good manners at the two Americans.
“What the hell,” Keane said, grinning, “he was croaking anyway. Might as well please the lady.” Keane slung the carbine over his shoulder.
“Good,” said Mrs. Dumoulin flatly. “Good. Thank you very much.” She turned, and the little group behind her parted so that she could walk through it. Michael watched her, a small, plump, almost comic figure, marked by childbearing and laundering and endless hours in the kitchen, rolling solidly from side to side, as she crossed the gray square to the place where the ugly farm girl lay, her skirts up, now once and for all relieved of her ugliness and her labors.
One by one, the Frenchmen wandered off, politely leaving the two American soldiers alone over the body of the dead boy. Michael watched them carry the man with the bullet in his lungs into the hotel. Then he turned to Keane. Keane was bent over the dead boy, going through his pockets. Keane came up with a wallet. He opened the wallet and took out a folded card.
“His paybook,” Keane said. “His name is Joachim Ritter. He’s nineteen years old. He hasn’t been paid for three months.” Keane grinned at Michael. “Just like the American Army.” He groped inside the wallet and brought forth a photograph. “Joachim and his girl,” Keane extended the photograph. “Take a look. Juicy little piece of tail.”
Dumbly, Michael looked at the photograph. A thin, living boy in an amusement park peered out at him, and next to him a plump blonde girl with her young man’s military cap perched saucily on her short blonde hair. There was something scrawled in ink across the face of the photograph. It was in German.
“Forever in your arms, Elsa,” Keane said. “That’s what it says. In German. I’m going to send it back to my wife to hold for me. It will make an interesting souvenir.”
Michael’s hands trembled on the glossy bit of amusement-park paper. He nearly tore it up. He hated Keane, hated the thought of the long-faced, yellow-toothed man fingering happily over the picture later in the century, back in the United States, remembering this morning with pleasure. But he knew he had no right to tear up the photograph. As much as he hated the man, Michael realized, Keane had earned his souvenir. When Michael had faltered and fumbled, Keane had behaved like a soldier. Without hesitation or fear, he had mastered the emergency, brought the enemy down when everyone else around him had been frozen and surprised. As for the killing of the wounded boy, Michael thought wearily, Keane had probably done the correct thing. There was nothing much they could have done with the German, and they’d have had to leave him, and the townspeople would have brained him as soon as Michael left. Keane, in his sour, sadistic way, had acted out the will of the people whom they had, after all, come to Europe to serve. By the single shot, Keane had given the bereaved and threatened inhabitants of the town a sense that justice had been done, a sense that, on this morning at least, the injuries they had suffered for so long had been paid for in a fitting coin. I should be pleased, Michael thought bitterly, that Keane was along with us. I could never have done it, and it probably had to be done …
Michael started back toward where Stellevato was standing next to the jeep. He felt sick and weary. This is what we’re here for, he thought heavily, this is what it’s all been for, to kill Germans. I should be light-hearted, triumphant …
He did not feel triumphant. Inadequate, he thought bruisedly, Michael Whitacre, the inadequate man, the doubtful civilian, the non-killing soldier. The girls’ kisses on the road, the roses in the hedge, the free brandy had not been for him, because he could not earn it … Keane, who could grin as he put a bullet through a dying boy’s head at his feet, carefully folding away a foreign photograph in his wallet for a souvenir, was the man these Europeans had really celebrated on the sunny march from the coast … Keane was the victorious, adequate, liberating American, fit for this month of vengeance …
The man with the Red Cross armband came roaring past on his motorcycle. He waved gaily, because he had two new guns and a hundred rounds of ammunition to take to his friends behind the improvised barricades of Pa
ris. Michael did not turn to watch him as the bare legs, the absurd knickers, the stained bandage, bumped swiftly past the overturned car and disappeared in the direction of the 800 Germans, the mined crossroads, the capital of France.
“Holy man,” Stellevato said, his soft Italian voice still husky, “what a morning. You all right?”
“Fine,” Michael said flatly. “I’m just fine.”
“Nikki,” Keane said, “don’t you want to go over and take a look at the Krauts?”
“No,” Stellevato said. “Leave them to the undertakers.”
“You might pick up a nice souvenir,” Keane said, “to send home to your folks from France.”
“My folks don’t want any souvenirs,” Stellevato said. “The only souvenir they want from France is me.”
“Look at this.” Keane took out the photograph again and shoved it in front of Stellevato’s nose. “His name was Joachim Ritter.”
Stellevato slowly took the photograph and stared at it. “Poor girl,” Stellevato said softly. “Poor little blonde girl.”
Michael wanted to take Stellevato in his arms and embrace him.
Stellevato gave the photograph back to Keane. “I think we ought to go back to the Water Point,” Stellevato said, “and tell the boys there what happened. They must’ve heard the shooting and they’re probably scared out of their boots.”
Michael started to climb into the jeep. He stopped. There was a jeep coming slowly down the main street. He heard Keane throw a cartridge into the chamber of his carbine.
“Cut it out,” Michael said sharply. “It’s one of ours.”
The jeep drew slowly up beside them and Michael saw that it was Kramer and Morrison, who had been with Pavone three days before. The townspeople who were grouped on the steps of the hotel stared down at the new arrivals stonily.
“Hiya, Boys,” Morrison said. “Enjoying yourself?”
“It’s been great, Bo,” Keane said heartily.
“What happened there?” Kramer gestured incredulously toward the dead Germans and the overturned car. “A traffic accident?”
“I shot them,” Keane said loudly, grinning. “Perfect score for the day.”
“Is he kidding?” Kramer asked Michael.
“He’s not kidding,” Michael said. “They’re all his.”
“Jee-sus!” Kramer said, looking with new respect at Keane, who had been the butt of the organization ever since its arrival in Normandy. “Old big-mouth Keane … What do you know?”
“Civil Affairs,” Morrison said. “This is a hell of a thing for a Civil Affairs outfit to get mixed up in.”
“Where’s Pavone?” Michael asked. “Is he coming here this morning?”
Morrison and Kramer kept staring at the dead Germans. Like most of the outfit, they had seen no fighting in all the time they had been in France, and they were frankly impressed. “The plans’ve been changed,” Kramer said. “The task force ain’t coming through here. Pavone sent us to get you. He’s at a town called Rambouillet. It’s only an hour from here. Everybody’s waiting for a Frog division to lead the parade into Paris. We know the roads. Nikki, you follow us.”
Stellevato looked inquiringly at Michael. Michael felt numb, relieved a little that the necessity for making decisions was now out of his hands. “O.K., Nikki,” Michael said, “let’s get started.”
“This looks like a pretty hot little town,” Kramer said. “You think those Frogs’d knock up a meal for us?”
“I’m dying for a steak,” Morrison said. “With French fried potatoes.”
Suddenly the thought of remaining any longer in the town, under the cold measuring eyes of the townspeople, with the German dead sprawled in front of the épicerie, was intolerable to Michael. “Let’s get back to Pavone,” he said. “He may need us.”
“If there’s one thing that gets on my nerves, it’s PFC’s,” Morrison said. “Whitacre, your rank is too big for you.” But he turned the jeep around.
Stellevato turned their jeep and started to follow Morrison. Michael sat stiffly in the front seat. He avoided looking at the hotel steps where Mrs. Dumoulin was standing in front of her neighbors.
“Monsieur!” It was Mrs. Dumoulin’s voice, loud and commanding. “Monsieur!”
Michael sighed. “Hold it,” he told Stellevato.
Stellevato stopped the jeep and honked the horn at Morrison. Morrison stopped too.
Mrs. Dumoulin, followed by the others, came across from the hotel steps. She stood next to Michael, surrounded by the weary, work-worn farmers and merchants in their clumsy, frayed clothing.
“Monsieur,” Mrs. Dumoulin said, with her arms crossed again on her full, shapeless breast, her tattered sweater flapping a little in the wind around her broad hips, “do you intend to leave?”
“Yes, Madam,” Michael said quietly. “We have orders.”
“What about the 800 Germans?” Mrs. Dumoulin asked, her voice savagely controlled.
“I doubt that they will come back,” Michael said.
“You doubt that they will come back,” Mrs. Dumoulin mimicked him. “What if they don’t know about your doubts, Monsieur? What if they do come back?”
“I’m sorry, Madam,” Michael said wearily. “We have to go. And if they did come back, what good would five Americans be to you?”
“You are deserting us,” Mrs. Dumoulin said loudly. “They will come back and see the four dead ones over there and they will kill every man, woman and child in town. You can’t do that? You can’t behave like that! You must stay here and protect us!”
Michael looked wearily at the two jeeploads of soldiers—Stellevato, Keane, Morrison, Kramer, himself—stalled in the ugly little square. Keane was the only one who had ever fired a shot in anger, and he might be considered to have done his share for the day. Lord, Michael thought, turning regretfully back to Mrs. Dumoulin, who stood there like the fierce, prodding, squat incarnation of complex duty, Lord, what protection you would get against that phantom German battalion from these five warriors! “Madam,” Michael said, “it’s no good. There’s nothing we can do about it. We are not the American Army. We go where we are told and we do what we are ordered to do.” He stared past Mrs. Dumoulin at the anxious, accusing faces of the townspeople, trying to reach them with his good intentions, his pity, his helplessness. But there was no answering glow in the frightened faces of the men and women who were certain that they were being left to die that day in the ruins of their homes. “Forgive me, Madam,” Michael said, almost sobbing, “I can’t help …”
“You had no right to come,” Mrs. Dumoulin said, suddenly quiet, “unless you were prepared to stay. The tanks last night, you this morning. War or no war, Americans or no Americans, you have no right to treat human beings like this …”
“Nikki,” Michael said thickly, “let’s get out of here! Fast!”
“It is dirty,” Mrs. Dumoulin was saying, speaking for the racked men and women behind her as Stellevato drove the jeep away, “it is too dirty, it is not civilized …”
Michael could not hear the end of her sentence, and he did not look back as they drove swiftly out of town, following Kramer and Morrison, in the direction of Colonel Pavone.
There were champagne bottles all over the table, catching the light of the hundreds of candles which were the only illumination in the night club. The room was very crowded. Uniforms of a dozen nations mingled with gay print dresses, bare arms, high-piled gleaming hair. Everybody seemed to be talking at once. The liberation of Paris the day before and the parade that afternoon, with the attendant interesting sniping from the rooftops, had liberated an enormous flood of conversation, most of which had to be shouted loudly to be heard over the three-piece band in the corner, which was playing, very loudly, “Shuffle Off to Buffalo.”
Pavone was sitting across from Michael, smiling widely, a cigar in his mouth, his arm lightly around a bleached lady with long false eyelashes. Occasionally he waved his cigar in pleasant salute to Michael who was flanked by the
correspondent, Ahearn, the man who was making a study of fear for Collier’s, and a middle-aged, beautifully dressed pilot in the French Air Force.
There were two other American correspondents at the table, a little drunk. They were speaking gravely to each other in clipped, high-ranking tones.
“General,” the first correspondent said, “I have reached the river. What are my orders?”
“Cross that goddamn river.”
“I can’t, Sir. There are eight armored divisions on the other side.”
“You’re relieved. If you can’t cross that river, I’m going to find me somebody who can.”
“Where you from, Bud?” the first correspondent said.
“East St. Louis.”
“Shake.”
They shook hands.
“You’re relieved,” said the second correspondent.
They emptied their glasses and peered gravely at the dancers.
“Oh,” said the French pilot, who had completed three tours of duty with the RAF, and had arrived in Paris on some obscure liaison job with the 2nd French Armored Division, “oh, those were the days.” He was talking about 1928, in New York City, when he had visited America and had been attached to a brokerage firm in Wall Street, in a lordly and not very serious way. “I had an apartment on Park Avenue,” the pilot said, smiling fondly, “and every Thursday I gave a cocktail party for my men friends. There was only one rule. Each man had to bring a girl who had never been there before. My God,” the pilot said, “the hundreds of girls you got to know that way!” He shook his head in wonder at the beautiful days of his youth during the boom. “And, late at night, we would go to Harlem. Those dark girls and that music! The soul shivers, remembering!” He drank his ninth glass of champagne and beamed at Michael. “I knew. 135th Street better than I knew the Place Vendôme. After the war, I go back. Perhaps,” he said thoughtfully, “perhaps I will rent myself an apartment on 135th Street.”
A dark woman with a black lace shawl drifted over from another table and kissed the pilot. “My dear Lieutenant,” the dark lady said, “I am so happy to see a French officer.”