Short Stories: Five Decades

by Irwin Shaw

  “There,” Gosden said, beaming. “That’s better. And don’t think, Mr. Weatherby, that I go around town just offering rounds of drink to everybody. In fact, I’m parsimonious, unpleasantly parsimonious, my wife used to say, it was the one thing she constantly held against me.” He held up his glass ceremoniously. His long narrow hand was shaking minutely, Weatherby noticed, and he wondered if Gosden was a drunkard. “To the cold, beautiful, lonesome glass buildings,” Gosden said, “of the city of New York.”

  They all drank. Giovanni knocked his tot down in one gulp and washed the glass and dried it without changing his expression.

  “I do love this place,” Gosden said, looking around him fondly at the dim lamps and the gluey paintings of the Ligurian coast that dotted the walls. “It has especial memories for me. I proposed marriage here on a winter night. To my wife,” he added hastily, as if afraid that Weatherby would suspect he had proposed marriage to somebody else’s wife here. “We never came here often enough after that.” He shook his head a little sadly. “I don’t know why. Perhaps because we lived on the other side of town.” He sipped at his drink and squinted at a painting of sea and mountains at the other end of the bar. “I always intended to take my wife to Nervi. To see the Temple,” he said obscurely. “The Golden Bough. As the French would say, Hélas, we did not make the voyage. Foolishly, I thought there would always be time, some other year. And, of course, being parsimonious, the expense always seemed out of proportion …” He shrugged and once more took up his clairvoyant position, holding the glass up with his two hands and peering into it. “Tell me, Mr. Weatherby,” he said in a flat, ordinary tone of voice, “have you ever killed a man?”

  “What?” Weatherby asked, not believing that he had heard correctly.

  “Have you ever killed a man?” Gosden for the third time made his little hissing near-laugh. “Actually, it’s a question that one might well ask quite frequently, on many different occasions. After all, there must be quite a few people loose in the city who at one time or another have killed a man—policemen on their rounds, rash automobilists, prizefighters, doctors and nurses, with the best will in the world, children with air rifles, bank robbers, thugs, soldiers of the great war …”

  Weatherby looked doubtfully at Giovanni. Giovanni didn’t say anything, but there was something in his face that showed Weatherby the barman wanted him to humor the other man.

  “Well,” Weatherby said, “I was in the war.…”

  “In the infantry, with a bayonet, perhaps,” Gosden said, in the new, curious, flat, noneffeminate voice.

  “I was in the artillery,” Weatherby said. “In a battery of 105s. I suppose you could say that …”

  “A dashing captain,” Gosden said, smiling, “peering through binoculars, calling down the fire of the great guns on the enemy headquarters.”

  “It wasn’t exactly like that,” Weatherby said. “I was nineteen years old and I was a private and I was one of the loaders. Most of the time I spent digging.”

  “Still,” Gosden persisted, “you could say that you contributed, that by your efforts men had been killed.”

  “Well,” Weatherby said, “we fired off a lot of rounds. Somewhere along the line we probably hit something.”

  “I used to be a passionate hunter,” Gosden said. “When I was a boy. I was brought up in the South. Alabama, to be exact, although I’m proud to say one would never know it from my accent. I once shot a lynx.” He sipped thoughtfully at his drink. “It finally became distasteful to me to take the lives of animals. Although I had no feeling about birds. There is something inimical, prehuman about birds, don’t you think, Mr. Weatherby?”

  “I haven’t really given it much thought,” Weatherby said, sure now the man was drunk and wondering how soon, with decency, he could get out of there and whether he could go without buying Gosden a round.

  “There must be a moment of the utmost exaltation when you take a human life,” Gosden said, “followed by a wave of the most abject, ineradicable shame. For example, during the war, among your soldier friends, the question must have arisen.…”

  “I’m afraid,” Weatherby said, “that in most cases they didn’t feel as much as you would like them to have felt.”

  “How about you?” Gosden said. “Even in your humble position as loader, as you put it, as a cog in the machinery—how did you feel, how do you feel now?”

  Weatherby hesitated, on the verge of being angry with the man. “Now,” he said, “I regret it. While it was happening, I merely wanted to survive.”

  “Have you given any thought to the institution of capital punishment, Mr. Weatherby?” Gosden spoke without looking in Weatherby’s direction, but staring at his own dim reflection above the bottles in the mirror above the bar. “Are you pro or con the taking of life by the State? Have you ever made an effort to have it abolished?”

  “I signed a petition once, in college, I think.”

  “When we are young,” Gosden said, speaking to his wavery reflection in the mirror, “we are more conscious of the value of life. I, myself, once walked in a procession protesting the hanging of several young colored boys. I was not in the South, then. I had already moved up North. Still, I walked in the procession. In France, under the guillotine, the theory is that death is instantaneous, although an instant is a variable quantity, as it were. And there is some speculation that the severed head as it rolls into the basket is still capable of feeling and thinking some moments after the act is completed.”

  “Now, Mr. Gosden,” Giovanni said soothingly, “I don’t think it helps to talk like this, does it, now?”

  “I’m sorry, Giovanni,” Gosden said, smiling brightly. “I should be ashamed of myself. In a charming bar like this, with a man of sensibility and talent like Mr. Weatherby. Please forgive me. And now, if you’ll pardon me, there’s a telephone call I have to make.” He got off his stool and walked jauntily, his shoulders thrown back in his narrow dark suit, toward the other end of the deserted restaurant and went through the little door that led to the washrooms and the telephone booth.

  “My Lord,” Weatherby said. “What’s that all about?”

  “Don’t you know who he is?” Giovanni said, in a low voice, keeping his eyes on the rear of the restaurant.

  “Only what he just told me,” Weatherby said. “Why? Are people supposed to know who he is?”

  “His name was in all the papers, two, three years ago,” Giovanni said. “His wife was raped and murdered. Somewhere on the East Side. He came home for dinner and found the body.”

  “Good God,” said Weatherby softly, with pity.

  “They picked up the guy who did it the next day,” Giovanni said. “It was a carpenter or a plumber or something like that. A foreigner from Europe, with a wife and three kids in Queens somewhere. No criminal sheet, no complaints on him previous. He had a job to do in the building and he rang the wrong doorbell and there she was in her bathrobe or something.”

  “What did they do to him?” Weatherby asked.

  “Murder in the first degree,” Giovanni said. “They’re electrocuting him up the river tonight. That’s what he’s calling about now. To find out if it’s over or not. Usually, they do it around eleven, eleven-thirty, I think.”

  Weatherby looked at his watch. It was nearly eleven-fifteen. “Oh, the poor man,” he said. If he had been forced to say whether he meant Gosden or the doomed murderer, it would have been almost impossible for him to give a clear answer. “Gosden, Gosden …” he said. “I must have been out of town when it happened.”

  “It made a big splash,” Giovanni said. “For a coupla days.”

  “Does he come in here and talk like this often?” Weatherby asked.

  “This is the first time I heard him say a word about it,” Giovanni said. “Usually, he comes in here once, twice a month, has one drink at the bar, polite and quiet, and eats by himself in back, early, reading a book. You’d never think anything ever happened to him. Tonight’s special, I guess.
He came in around eight o’clock and he didn’t eat anything, just sat up there at the bar, drinking slow all night.”

  “That’s why you’re still open,” Weatherby said.

  “That’s why I’m still open. You can’t turn a man out on a night like this.”

  “No,” Weatherby said. Once more he looked at the door to the telephone booth. He would have liked to leave. He didn’t want to hear what the man would have to say when he came out of the telephone booth. He wanted to leave quickly and be sure to be in his apartment when his wife came home. But he knew he couldn’t run out now, no matter how tempting the idea was.

  “This is the first time I heard he asked his wife to marry him here,” Giovanni said. “I suppose that’s why …”. He left the thought unfinished.

  “What was she like?” Weatherby asked. “The wife?”

  “A nice, pretty little quiet type of woman,” Giovanni said. “You wouldn’t notice her much.”

  The door at the rear of the restaurant opened and Gosden came striding lightly toward the bar. Weatherby watched him, but he didn’t see the man look either left or right at any particular table that might have held special memories for him. As he sprang up onto his stool and smiled his quick, apologetic smile, there was no hint on his face of what he had heard over the telephone. “Well,” Gosden said briskly, “here we are again.”

  “Let me offer a round,” Weatherby said, raising his finger for Giovanni.

  “That is kind, Mr. Weatherby,” said Gosden. “Very kind indeed.”

  They watched Giovanni pour the drinks.

  “While I was waiting for the connection,” Gosden said, “I remembered an amusing story. About how some people are lucky and some people are unlucky. It’s a fishing story. It’s quite clean. I never seem to be able to remember risqué stories, no matter how funny they are. I don’t know why. My wife used to say that I was a prude and perhaps she was right. I do hope I get the story right. Let me see—” He hesitated and squinted at his reflection in the mirror. “It’s about two brothers who decide to go fishing for a week in a lake in the mountains.… Perhaps you’ve heard it, Mr. Weatherby?”

  “No,” Weatherby said.

  “Please don’t be polite just for my sake,” Gosden said. “I would hate to think that I was boring you.”

  “No,” Weatherby said, “I really haven’t heard it.”

  “It’s quite an old story, I’m sure, I must have heard it years ago when I still went to parties and nightclubs and places like that. Well, the two brothers go to the lake and they rent a boat and they go out on the water and no sooner do they put down their lines than one brother has a bite and pulls up the hugest fish. He puts down his line again and once again immediately he pulls up another huge fish. And again and again all day long. And all day long the other brother sits in the boat and never gets the tiniest nibble on his hook. And the next day it is the same. And the day after that, and the day after that. The brother who is catching nothing gets gloomier and gloomier and angrier and angrier with the brother who is catching all the fish. Finally, the brother who is catching all the fish, wanting to keep peace in the family, as it were, tells the other brother that he will stay on shore the next day and let the one who hasn’t caught anything have the lake for himself that day. So the next day, bright and early, the unlucky brother goes out by himself with his rod and his line and his most succulent bait and puts his line overboard and waits. For a long time nothing happens. Then there is a splash nearby and a huge fish, the hugest fish of all, jumps out of the water and says, ‘Say, Bud, isn’t your brother coming out today?’” Gosden looked anxiously over at Weatherby to see what his reaction was. Weatherby made himself pretend to chuckle.

  “I do hope I got it right,” Gosden said. “It seems to me to have a somewhat deeper meaning than most such anecdotes. About luck and destiny and things like that, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, it does,” Weatherby said.

  “People usually prefer off-color stories, I notice,” Gosden said, “but as I said, I don’t seem to be able to remember them.” He drank delicately from his glass. “I suppose Giovanni told you something about me while I was telephoning,” he said. Once more his voice had taken on its other tone, flat, almost dead, not effeminate.

  Weatherby glanced at Giovanni and Giovanni nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Yes,” Weatherby said. “A little.”

  “My wife was a virgin when I married her,” Gosden said. “But we had the most passionate and complete relationship right from the beginning. She was one of those rare women who are made simply for marriage, for wifehood, and nothing else. No one could suspect the glory of her beauty or the depths of her feeling merely from looking at her or talking to her. On the surface, she seemed the shyest and least assertive of women, didn’t she, Giovanni?”

  “Yes, Mr. Gosden,” Giovanni said.

  “In all the world there were only two men who could have known. Myself and …” He stopped. His face twitched. “At eleven-o-eight,” he said, “they pulled the switch. The man is dead. I was constantly telling her to leave the chain on the door, but she was thoughtless and she trusted all the world. The city is full of wild beasts, it is ridiculous to say that we are civilized. She screamed. Various people in the building heard her scream, but in the city one pays little attention to the noises that emanate from a neighbor’s apartment. Later on, a lady downstairs said that she thought perhaps my wife and I were having an argument, although we never fought in all the years we were married, and another neighbor thought it was a program on a television set, and she was thinking of complaining to the management of the building because she had a headache that morning and was trying to sleep.” Gosden tucked his feet under the barstool rung in an almost girlish position and held his glass up again before his eyes with his two hands. “It is good of you to listen to me like this, Mr. Weatherby,” he said. “People have been avoiding me in the last three years, old customers hurry past my shop without looking in, old friends are out when I call. I depend upon strangers for trade and conversation these days. At Christmas, I sent a hundred-dollar bill anonymously, in a plain envelope, through the mails to the woman in Queens. It was on impulse, I didn’t reason it out, the holiday season perhaps.… I contemplated asking for an invitation to the … the ceremony at Ossining tonight, I thought quite seriously about it, I suppose it could have been arranged. Then, finally, I thought it wouldn’t really do any good, would it. And I came here, instead, to drink with Giovanni.” He smiled across the bar at Giovanni. “Italians,” he said, “are likely to have gentle and understanding souls. And now, I really must go home. I sleep poorly and on principle I’m opposed to drugs.” He got out his wallet and put down some bills.

  “Wait a few minutes,” Giovanni said, “until I lock up and I’ll walk you home and open your door for you.”

  “Ah,” Gosden said, “that would be kind of you, Giovanni. It is the most difficult moment. Opening the door. I am terribly alone. After that, I’m sure I’ll be absolutely all right.”

  Weatherby got off the stool and said to Giovanni, “Put it on the bill, please.” He was released now. “Good night,” he said to Giovanni. “Good night, Mr. Gosden.” He wanted to say more, to proffer some word of consolation or hope, but he knew nothing he could say would be of any help.

  “Good night,” Gosden said, in his bright, breathy voice now. “It’s been a pleasure renewing our acquaintanceship, even so briefly. And please present my respects to your wife.”

  Weatherby went out of the door onto the street, leaving Giovanni locking the liquor bottles away and Gosden silently and slowly drinking, perched neat and straight-backed on the barstool.

  The street was dark and Weatherby hurried up it toward his doorway, making himself keep from running. He used the stairway, because the elevator was too slow. He opened the metal door of his apartment and saw that there was a light on in the bedroom.

  “Is that you, darling?” He heard his wife’s drowsy voice from the bedroom
.

  “I’ll be right in,” Weatherby said. “I’m locking up.” He pushed the extra bolt that most of the time they neglected to use and carefully walked, without haste, as on any night, across the carpet of the darkened living room.

  Dorothy was in bed, with the lamp beside her lit and a magazine that she had been reading fallen to the floor beside her. She smiled up at him sleepily. “You have a lazy wife,” she said, as he began to undress.

  “I thought you were going to the movies,” he said.

  “I went. But I kept falling asleep,” she said. “So I came home.”

  “Do you want anything? A glass of milk. Some crackers?”

  “Sleep,” she said. She rolled over on her back, the covers up to her throat, her hair loose on the pillow. He put on his pyjamas, turned off the light, and got into bed beside her and she lifted her head to put it on his shoulder.

  “Whiskey,” she said drowsily. “Why do people have such a prejudice against it? Smells delicious. Did you work hard, darling?”

  “Not too bad,” he said, with the freshness of her hair against his face.

  “Yum,” she said, and went to sleep.

  He lay awake for a while, holding her gently, listening to the muffled sounds from the street below. God deliver us from accident, he thought, and make us understand the true nature of the noises arising from the city around us.

  The Indian in Depth

  of Night

  The city lay around Central Park in a deep hush, the four-o’clock-in-the-morning sky mild with stars and a frail, softly rising mist. Now and then a car went secretly by, with a sigh of tires and wind and a sudden small flare of headlights. The birds were still, and the trolley cars and buses; the taxicabs waited silently at scattered corners; the drunks were lying by this time in the doorways; the bums bedded for the night, the lights of the tall choked buildings out, save for a window here and there lit in lust or illness. There was no wind, and the smell of earth, heavy and surprising in the concrete city, rose with the mist.