Nine Stories

by Jerome David Salinger

  Like many a really good artist, M. Yoshoto taught drawing not a whit better than it’s taught by a so‑so artist who has a nice flair for teaching. With his practical overlay work—that is to say, his tracing‑paper drawings imposed over the student’s drawings—along with his written comments on the backs of the drawings—he was quite able to show a reasonably talented student how to draw a recognizable pig in a recognizable sty, or even a picturesque pig in a picturesque sty. But he couldn’t for the life of him show anyone how to draw a beautiful pig in a beautiful sty (which, of course, was the one little technical bit his better students most greedily wanted sent to them through the mail). It was not, need I add, that he was consciously or unconsciously being frugal of his talent, or deliberately unprodigal of it, but that it simply wasn’t his to give away.

  For me, there was no real element of surprise in this ruthless truth, and so it didn’t waylay me. But it had a certain cumulative effect, considering where I was sitting, and by the time lunch hour rolled around, I had to be very careful not to smudge my translations with the sweaty heels of my hands. As if to make things still more oppressive, M. Yoshoto’s handwriting was just barely legible. At any rate, when it came time for lunch, I declined to join the Yoshotos. I said I had to go to the post office. Then I almost ran down the stairs to the street and began to walk very rapidly, with no direction at all, through a maze of strange, underprivileged‑looking streets. When I came to a lunch bar, I went inside and bolted four «Coney Island Red‑Hots» and three muddy cups of coffee.

  On the way back to Les Amis Des Vieux Maitres, I began to wonder, first in a familiar, faint‑hearted way that I more or less knew from experience how to handle, then in an absolute panic, if there had been anything personal in M. Yoshoto’s having used me exclusively as a translator all morning. Had old Fu Manchu known from the beginning that I was wearing, among other misleading attachments and effects, a nineteen‑yearold boy’s moustache? The possibility was almost unendurable to consider. It also tended to eat slowly away at my sense of justice. Here I was—a man who had won three first‑prizes, a very close friend of Picasso’s (which I actually was beginning to think I was)—being used as a translator. The punishment didn’t begin to fit the crime. For one thing, my moustache, however sparse, was all mine; it hadn’t been put on with spirit gum. I felt it reassuringly with my fingers as I hurried back to school. But the more I thought about the whole affair, the faster I walked, till finally I was almost trotting, as if any minute I half‑expected to be stoned from all directions. Though I’d taken only forty minutes or so for lunch, both the Yoshotos were at their desks and at work when I got back. They didn’t look up or give any sign that they’d heard me come in. Perspiring and out of breath, I went over and sat down at my desk. I sat rigidly still for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, running all kinds of brand‑new little Picasso anecdotes through my head, just in case M. Yoshoto suddenly got up and came over to unmask me. And, suddenly, he did get up and come over. I stood up to meet him—head on, if necessary—with a fresh little Picasso story, but, to my horror, by the time he reached me I was minus the plot. I chose the moment to express my admiration for the goose‑in‑flight picture hanging over Mme. Yoshoto. I praised it lavishly at some length. I said I knew a man in Paris—a very wealthy paralytic, I said—who would pay M. Yoshoto any price at all for the picture. I said I could get in touch with him immediately if M. Yoshoto was interested. Luckily, however, M. Yoshoto said the picture belonged to his cousin, who was away visiting relatives in Japan. Then, before I could express my regret, he asked me—addressing me as M. DaumierSmith—if I would kindly correct a few lessons. He went over to his desk and returned with three enormous, bulging envelopes, and placed them on my desk. Then, while I stood dazed and incessantly nodding and feeling my jacket where my drawing pencils had been repocketed, M. Yoshoto explained to me the school’s method of instruction (or, rather, its nonexistent method of instruction). After he’d returned to his own desk, it took me several minutes to pull myself together.

  All three students assigned to me were English‑language students. The first was a twenty‑three‑year‑old Toronto housewife, who said her professional name was Bambi Kramer, and advised the school to address her mail accordingly. All new students at Les Amis Des Vieux Maitres were requested to fill out questionnaire forms and to enclose photographs of themselves. Miss Kramer had enclosed a glossy, eight by ten print of herself wearing an anklet, a strapless bathing suit, and a white‑duck sailor’s cap. On her questionnaire form she stated that her favorite artists were Rembrandt and Walt Disney. She said she only hoped that she could some day emulate them. Her sample drawings were clipped, rather subordinately, to her photograph. All of them were arresting. One of them was unforgettable. The unforgettable one was done in florid wash colors, with a caption that read: «Forgive Them Their Trespasses.» It showed three small boys fishing in an odd‑looking body of water, one of their jackets draped over a «No Fishing!» sign. The tallest boy, in the foreground of the picture, appeared to have rickets in one leg and elephantiasis in the other—an effect, it was clear, that Miss Kramer had deliberately used to show that the boy was standing with his feet slightly apart.

  My second student was a fifty‑six‑year‑old «society photographer» from Windsor, Ontario, named R. Howard Ridgefield, who said that his wife had been after him for years to branch over into the painting racket. His favorite artists were Rembrandt, Sargent, and «Titan,” but he added, advisedly, that he himself didn’t care to draw along those lines. He said he was mostly interested in the satiric rather than the arty side of painting. To support this credo, he submitted a goodly number of original drawings and oil paintings. One of his pictures—the one I think of as his major picture—has been as recallable to me, over the years, as, say, the lyrics of «Sweet Sue» or «Let Me Call You Sweetheart.» It satirized the familiar, everyday tragedy of a chaste young girl, with belowshoulder‑length blond hair and udder‑size breasts, being criminally assaulted in church, in the very shadow of the altar, by her minister. Both subjects’ clothes were graphically in disarray. Actually, I was much less struck by the satiric implications of the picture than I was by the quality of workmanship that had gone into it. If I hadn’t known they were living hundreds of miles apart, I might have sworn Ridgefield had had some purely technical help from Bambi Kramer.

  Except under pretty rare circumstances, in any crisis, when I was nineteen, my funny bone invariably had the distinction of being the very first part of my body to assume partial or complete paralysis. Ridgefield and Miss Kramer did many things to me, but they didn’t come at all close to amusing me. Three or four times while I was going through their envelopes, I was tempted to get up and make a formal protest to M.

  Yoshoto. But I had no clear idea just what sort of form my protest might take. I think I was afraid I might get over to his desk only to report, shrilly: «My mother’s dead, and I have to live with her charming husband, and nobody in New York speaks French, and there aren’t any chairs in your son’s room. How do you expect me to teach these two crazy people how to draw?» In the end, being long self‑trained in taking despair sitting down, I managed very easily to keep my seat. I opened my third student’s envelope.

  My third student was a nun of the order of Sisters of St. Joseph, named Sister Irma, who taught «cooking and drawing» at a convent elementary school just outside Toronto.

  And I haven’t any good ideas concerning where to start to describe the contents of her envelope. I might just first mention that, in place of a photograph of herself, Sister Irma had enclosed, without explanation, a snapshot of her convent. It occurs to me, too, that she left blank the line in her questionnaire where the student’s age was to be filled in.

  Otherwise, her questionnaire was filled out as perhaps no questionnaire in this world deserves to be filled out. She had been born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, where her father had been a «checker for Ford automobiles.» Her academic education consiste
d of one year of high school. She had had no formal instruction in drawing. She said the only reason she was teaching it was that Sister somebody had passed on and Father Zimmermann (a name that particularly caught my eye, because it was the name of the dentist who had pulled out eight of my teeth)-Father Zimmermann had picked her to fill in. She said she had «34 kittys in my cooking class and 18 kittys in my drawing class.»

  Her hobbies were loving her Lord and the Word of her Lord and «collecting leaves but only when they are laying right on the ground.» Her favorite painter was Douglas Bunting. (A name, I don’t mind saying, I’ve tracked down to many a blind alley, over the years.) She said her kittys always liked to «draw people when they are running and that is the one thing I am terrible at.» She said she would work very hard to learn to draw better, and hoped we would not be very impatient with her.

  There were, in all, only six samples of her work enclosed in the envelope. (All of her work was unsigned—a minor enough fact, but at the time, a disproportionately refreshing one. Bambi Kramer’s and Ridgefield’s pictures had all been either signed or—and it somehow seemed even more irritating—initialled.) After thirteen years, I not only distinctly remember all six of Sister Irma’s samples, but four of them I sometimes think I remember a trifle too distinctly for my own peace of mind. Her best picture was done in water colors, on brown paper. (Brown paper, especially wrapping paper, is very pleasant, very cosy to paint on. Many an experienced artist has used it when he wasn’t up to anything grand or grandiose.) The picture, despite its confining size (it was about ten by twelve inches), was a highly detailed depiction of Christ being carried to the sepulchre in Joseph of Arimathea’s garden. In the far right foreground, two men who seemed to be Joseph’s servants were rather awkwardly doing the carrying. Joseph of Arimathea followed directly behind them—bearing himself, under the circumstances, perhaps a trifle too erectly. At a respectably subordinate distance behind Joseph came the women of Galilee, mixed in with a motley, perhaps gate‑crashing crowd of mourners, spectators, children, and no less than three frisky, impious mongrels. For me, the major figure in the picture was a woman in the left foreground, facing the viewer. With her right hand raised overhead, she was frantically signalling to someone—her child, perhaps, or her husband, or possibly the viewer—to drop everything and hurry over. Two of the women, in the front rank of the crowd, wore halos. Without a Bible handy, I could only make a rough guess at their identity. But I immediately spotted Mary Magdalene. At any rate, I was positive I had spotted her. She was in the middle foreground, walking apparently self‑detached from the crowd, her arms down at her sides. She wore no part of her grief, so to speak, on her sleeve—in fact, there were no outward signs at all of her late, enviable connections with the Deceased. Her face, like all the other faces in the picture, had been done in a cheap‑priced, ready‑made flesh‑tint. It was painfully clear that Sister Irma herself had found the color unsatisfactory and had tried her unadvised, noble best to tone it down somehow. There were no other serious flaws in the picture. None, that is, worthy of anything but cavilling mention. It was, in any conclusive sense, an artist’s picture, steeped in high, high, organized talent and God knows how many hours of hard work.

  One of my first reactions, of course, was to run with Sister Irma’s envelope over to M.

  Yoshoto. But, once again, I kept my seat. I didn’t care to risk having Sister Irma taken away from me. At length, I just closed her envelope with care and placed it to one side of my desk, with the exciting plan to work on it that night, in my own time. Then, with far more tolerance than I’d thought I had in me, almost with good will, I spent the rest of the afternoon doing overlay corrections on some male and female nudes (sans sex organs) that R. Howard Ridgefield had genteely and obscenely drawn.

  Toward dinner time, I opened three buttons of my shirt and stashed away Sister Irma’s envelope where neither thieves, nor, just to play safe, the Yoshotos, could break in.

  A tacit but iron‑bound procedure covered all evening meals at Les Amis Des Vieux MaRres. Mme. Yoshoto got up from her desk promptly at five‑thirty and went upstairs to prepare dinner, and Mr. Yoshoto and I followed—fell into single file, as it were—at six sharp. There were no side trips, however essential or hygienic. That evening, however, with Sister Irma’s envelope warm against my chest, I had never felt more relaxed. In fact, all through dinner, I couldn’t have been more outgoing. I gave away a lulu of a Picasso story that had just reached me, one that I might have put aside for a rainy day.

  M. Yoshoto scarcely lowered his Japanese newspaper to listen to it, but Mme. Yoshoto seemed responsive, or, at least, not unresponsive. In any case, when I was finished with it, she spoke to me for the first time since she had asked me that morning if I would like an egg. She asked me if I were sure I wouldn’t like a chair in my room. I said quickly, «Non, non‑merci, madame.» I said that the way the floor cushions were set right up against the wall, it gave me a good chance to practice keeping my back straight. I stood up to show her how sway‑backed I was.

  After dinner, while the Yoshotos were discussing, in Japanese, some perhaps provocative topic, I asked to be excused from the table. M. Yoshoto looked at me as if he weren’t quite sure how I’d got into his kitchen in the first place, but nodded, and I walked quickly down the hall to my room. When I had turned on the overhead light and closed the door behind me, I took my drawing pencils out of my pocket, then took off my jacket, unbuttoned my shirt, and sat down on a floor cushion with Sister Irma’s envelope in my hands. Till past four in the morning, with everything I needed spread out before me on the floor, I attended to what I thought were Sister Irma’s immediate, artistic wants.

  The first thing I did was to make some ten or twelve pencil sketches. Rather than go downstairs to the instructors’ room for drawing paper, I drew the sketches on my personal notepaper, using both sides of the sheet. When that was done, I wrote a long, almost an endless, letter.

  I’ve been as saving as an exceptionally neurotic magpie all my life, and I still have the next‑to‑the‑last draft of the letter I wrote to Sister Irma that June night in 1939. I could reproduce all of it here verbatim, but it isn’t necessary. I used the bulk of the letter, and I mean bulk, to suggest where and how, in her major picture, she’d run into a little trouble, especially with her colors. I listed a few artist’s supplies that I thought she couldn’t do without, and included approximate costs. I asked her who Douglas Bunting was. I asked where I could see some of his work. I asked her (and I knew what a long shot it was) if she had ever seen any reproductions of paintings by Antonello da Messina. I asked her to please tell me how old she was, and assured her, at great length, that the information, if given, wouldn’t go beyond myself. I said the only reason that I was asking was that the information would help me to instruct her more efficiently. Virtually in the same breath, I asked if she were allowed to have visitors at her convent.

  The last few lines (or cubic feet) of my letter should, I think, be reproduced here—syntax, punctuation, and all.

  … Incidentally, if you have a command of the French language, I hope you will let me know as I am able to express myself very precisely in that language, having spent the greater part of my youth chiefly in Paris, France.

  Since you are quite obviously concerned about drawing running figures, in order to convey the technique to your pupils at the Convent, I am enclosing a few sketches I have drawn myself that may be of use. You will see that I have drawn them rather rapidly and they are by no means perfect or even quite commendable, but I believe they will show you the rudiments about which you have expressed interest. Unfortunately the director of the school does not have any system in the method of teaching here, I am very much afraid. I am delighted that you are already so well advanced, but I have no idea what he expects me to do with my other students who are very retarded and chiefly stupid, in my opinion.

  Unfortunately, I am an agnostic; however, I am quite an admirer of St. Francis of Assisi from a
distance, it goes without saying. I wonder if perhaps you are thoroughly acquainted with what he (St. Francis of Assisi) said when they were about to cauterise one of his eyeballs with a red‑hot, burning iron? He said as follows: «Brother Fire, God made you beautiful and strong and useful; I pray you be courteous to me.» You paint slightly the way he spoke, in many pleasant ways, in my opinion. Incidentally, may I ask if the young lady in the foreground in the blue outfit is Mary Magdalene? I mean in the picture we have been discussing, of course. If she is not, I have been sadly deluding myself. However, this is no novelty.

  I hope you will consider me entirely at your disposal as long as you are a student at Les Amis Des Vieux Maitres. Frankly, I think you are greatly talented and would not even be slightly startled if you developed into a genius before many years have gone by.

  I would not falsely encourage you in this matter. That is one reason why I asked you if the young lady in the foreground in the blue outfit was Mary Magdalene, because if it was, you were using your incipient genius somewhat more than your religious inclinations, I am afraid. However, this is nothing to fear, in my opinion.

  With sincere hope that you are enjoying completely perfect health, I am, Very respectfully yours, (signed) JEAN DE DAUMIER‑SMITH Staff Instructor Les Amis Des Vieux Maltres P. S. I have nearly forgotten that students are supposed to submit envelopes every second Monday to the school. For your first assignment will you kindly make some outdoor sketches for me? Do them very freely and do not strain. I am unaware, of course, how much time they give you for your personal drawing at your Convent and hope you will advise me. Also I beg you to buy those necessary supplies I took the liberty of advocating, as I would like you to begin using oils as soon as possible. If you will pardon my saying so, I believe you are too passionate to paint just in watercolors and never in oils indefinitely. I say that quite impersonally and do not mean to be obnoxious; actually, it is intended as a compliment. Also please send me all of your old former work that you have on hand, as I am eager to see it. The days will be insufferable for me till your next envelope arrives, it goes without saying.