Ray Bradbury - We’ll Always Have Paris

RAY BRADBURY

We’ll Always Have Paris

With love to my lifetime friend,

Donald Harkins , who is buried in Paris

Introduction: Watching and Writing Introduction: Watching and Writing The stories in this collection were created by two people: The me who watches and the me who writes. Both of these creatures inside myself have lived under one sign, which has hung over my typewriter for seventy years: Don’t think, do . I haven’t thought about any of these stories; they are explosions or impulses. Sometimes they are big explosions of ideas that cannot be resisted, sometimes small impulses coaxed to grow. My favorite here is ‘Massinello Pietro’ because it happened to me many years ago, when I was in my early twenties and lived in and out of a tenement in downtown L.A. Massinello Pietro became a friend of mine whom I tried to protect from the police and help when he was brought into court. The short story that was inspired by this friendship is, in many ways, basically true and I simply had to write it. The other stories, one by one, came to me throughout my life – from a very young age through my middle and later years. Every one of them has been a passion. Every story here was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me. I watch : I get an idea, fall in love with it, and try not to think too much about it. I then write : I let the story pour forth onto the paper as soon as possible. So here you are with the works of the two people living inside my skin. Some may surprise you. And that is good. Many of them surprised me when they came to me and asked to be born. I hope you enjoy them. Don’t think about them too much. Just try to love them as I love them. Be my guest. Ray Bradbury AUGUST 2008

Massinello Pietro

The Visit

The Twilight Greens

The Murder

When the Bough Breaks

We’ll Always Have Paris

Ma Perkins Comes to Stay

Doubles

Pater Caninus

Arrival and Departure

Last Laughs

Pietà Summer

Fly Away Home

Un-pillow Talk

Come Away with Me

Apple-core Baltimore

The Reincarnate

Remembrance, Ohio

If Paths Must Cross Again

Miss Appletree and I

A Literary Encounter

America

About the Author

By Ray Bradbury

Copyright

About the Publisher

The stories in this collection were created by two people: The me who watches and the me who writes.

Both of these creatures inside myself have lived under one sign, which has hung over my typewriter for seventy years: Don’t think, do .

I haven’t thought about any of these stories; they are explosions or impulses. Sometimes they are big explosions of ideas that cannot be resisted, sometimes small impulses coaxed to grow.

My favorite here is ‘Massinello Pietro’ because it happened to me many years ago, when I was in my early twenties and lived in and out of a tenement in downtown L.A. Massinello Pietro became a friend of mine whom I tried to protect from the police and help when he was brought into court. The short story that was inspired by this friendship is, in many ways, basically true and I simply had to write it.

The other stories, one by one, came to me throughout my life – from a very young age through my middle and later years. Every one of them has been a passion. Every story here was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me. I watch : I get an idea, fall in love with it, and try not to think too much about it. I then write : I let the story pour forth onto the paper as soon as possible.

So here you are with the works of the two people living inside my skin. Some may surprise you. And that is good. Many of them surprised me when they came to me and asked to be born. I hope you enjoy them. Don’t think about them too much. Just try to love them as I love them.

Be my guest.

Ray Bradbury AUGUST 2008

He fed the canaries and the geese and the dogs and the cats. Then he cranked up the rusty phonograph and sang to the hissing ‘Tales from the Vienna Woods’:

Life goes up, life goes down ,

But please smile, do not sigh, do not frown!

Dancing, he heard the car stop before his little shop. He saw the man in the gray hat glance up and down the storefront and knew the man was reading the sign which in large, uneven blue letters declared THE MANGER. EVERYTHING FREE! LOVE AND CHARITY FOR ALL!

The man stepped halfway through the open door and stopped. ‘Mr Massinello Pietro?’

Pietro nodded vigorously, smiling. ‘Come in. Do you want to arrest me? Do you want to throw me in jail?’

The man read from his notes. ‘Better known as Alfred Flonn?’ He eyed the silver bells on Pietro’s shirtsleeves.

‘That’s me!’ Pietro’s eye flashed.

The man was uncomfortable. He looked around a room crammed full of rustling birdcages and packing crates. Geese rushed in through the back door, stared at him angrily, and rushed back out. Four parrots blinked lazily on their high perches. Two Indian lovebirds cooed softly. Three dachshunds capered around Pietro’s feet, waiting for him to put down just one hand to pet them. On one shoulder he carried a banana-beaked mynah bird, on the other a zebra finch.

‘Sit down!’ sang Pietro. ‘I was just having a little music; that’s the way to start the day!’ He cranked the portable phonograph swiftly and reset the needle.

‘I know, I know.’ The man laughed, trying to be tolerant. ‘My name’s Tiffany, from the D.A.’s office. We got a lot of complaints.’ He waved around the cluttered shop. ‘Public health. All these ducks, raccoons, white mice. Wrong zone, wrong neighborhood. You’ll have to clean it up.’

‘ Six people have told me that.’ Pietro counted them proudly on his fingers. ‘Two judges, three policemen, and the district attorney himself!’

‘You were warned a month ago you had thirty days to stop this nuisance or go to jail,’ said Tiffany, over the music. ‘We’ve been patient.’

‘I,’ said Pietro, ‘have been the patient one. I have waited for the world to stop being silly. I have waited for it to stop wars. I have waited for politicians to be honest. I have waited – la la la – for real estate men to be good citizens. But while I wait, I dance!’ He demonstrated.

‘But look at this place!’ protested Tiffany.

‘Isn’t it wonderful? Do you see my shrine for the Virgin Mary?’ Pietro pointed. ‘And here, on the wall, a framed letter from the archbishop’s secretary himself, saying what good I’ve done for the poor! Once, I was rich, I had property, a hotel. A man took it all away, my wife with it, oh, twenty years ago. Do you know what I did? I invested what little I had left in dogs, geese, mice, parrots, who do not change their minds, who are always friends forever and forever. I bought my phonograph, which never is sad, which never stops singing!’

‘That’s another thing,’ said Tiffany, wincing. ‘The neighborhood says at four in the morning, um, you and the phonograph …’

‘Music is better than soap and water!’

Tiffany shut his eyes and recited the speech he knew so well. ‘If you don’t have these rabbits, the monkey, the parakeets, everything, out by sundown, it’s the Black Maria for you.’

Mr Pietro nodded with each word, smiling, alert. ‘What have I done? Have I murdered a man? Have I kicked a child? Have I stolen a watch? Have I foreclosed a mortgage? Have I bombed a city? Have I fired a gun? Have I told a lie? Have I cheated a customer? Have I turned from the Good Lord? Have I taken a bribe? Have I peddled dope? Do I sell innocent women?’