Irwin Shaw: Rich Man, Poor Man

The cat lay close to the oven, staring at him. They had never bothered to give the cat a name. The cat was there to keep the mice and rats out of the flour. When Jordache had to address it, he said, ‘Cat.’ The cat probably thought its name was Cat. The cat watched him steadily all night, every night. She lived on one bowl of milk a day and all the mice and rats she could catch. The way the cat looked at him, Jordache was sure the cat wished she was ten times bigger than she was, as big as a tiger, so she could spring on him one night and have one real meal.

The oven was hot enough now and he limped over and put in the first tray of the night. He grimaced when he opened the oven door and the heat hit him.

Upstairs, in the narrow room he shared with his brother. Rudolph was looking up a word in an English-French dictionary. He had finished his homework. The word he was looking for was longing. He had already looked up hints and visions. He was writing a love letter in French to his French teacher, Miss Lenaut. He had read The Magic Mountain, and while most of the book had bored him, with the exception of the chapter about the seance, he had been impressed by the fact that the love scenes were in French and had painfully translated them for himself. To make love in French seemed to him to be distinguished. One sure thing, there was no other sixteen-year-old boy writing a love letter in French that night anywhere in the whole Hudson Valley.

‘Enfin’ - he wrote, in a carefully fashioned, almost printed script that he had developed over the last two years _ ‘enfin, je dois vous dire, chere Madame, quand fe vous voir par hasard dans les coluoirs de l’ecole ou se promenant dans votre manteau bleu-clair dans les rues, j’ai l’envie - that was the closest he could get to longing - ‘tres profond de voyager dans le monde d’ou vous etes sortie et des visions delicieuses de flaner avec vous a mes cotes sure les boulevards de Paris, qui vient d’etre libere par les braves soldats de votre pays et le mien. Votre cavalier servant, Rudolph Jordache (French 32b.)’ He reread the letter, then read it in the English in which he ad first written it. He had tried to make the English as much like French as possible. ‘Finally, I must tell you, Dear Madame, that when I see you by accident in the hallways of the school or walking along in your light-blue coat on the street, I have a eep longing to travel in the world you came from and wonder-si visions of strolling arm in arm with you along the boulevards Paris, which has just been liberated by the brave soldiers of your country and mine.’

He read the French version again with satisfaction. There was no doubt about it. If you wanted to be elegant, French was the language for it. He liked the way Miss Lenaut pronounced his name, correctly, Jordahsh, making it soft and musical, not Jawdake, as some people said it, or Jordash.

Then, regretfully, he tore both letters into small pieces. He knew he was never going to send Miss Lenaut any letter. He had already written her six letters and torn them up because she would think he was crazy and would probably tell the principal. And he certainly didn’t want his father of mother or Gretchen or Tom to find any love letters in any language in his room.

Still, the satisfaction was there. Sitting in the bare little room above the bakery, with the Hudson flowing a few hundred yards away, writing the letters was like a promise to himself. One day he would make long voyages, one day he would sail the river and write in new languages to beautiful women of high character, and the letters would actually be mailed.

He got up and looked at himself in the wavy little mirror above the battered oak dresser. He looked at himself often, searching his face for the man he wanted to be. He was very careful with his looks. His straight, black hair was always perfectly brushed; occasionally he plucked two or three bits of dark fuzz from the space between his eyebrows; he avoided candy so that he would have a minimum of pimples; he remembered to smile, not laugh aloud, and even that not frequently. He was very conservative with the colours he chose to wear and had worked on the way he walked, so that he never seemed hurried or exuberant, but walked in an easy gliding motion with his shoulders squared. He kept his nails filed and his sister gave him a manicure once a month and he kept out of fights because he didn’t want to have his face marred by a broken nose or his long, thin hands twisted by swollen knuckles. To keep in shape, there was the track team. For the pleasures of nature and solitude he fished, using a dry fly, when somebody was watching, worms at other times.

‘Votre cavalier servant,’ he said into the mirror. He wanted his face to look French when he spoke the language, the way Miss Lenaut’s face suddenly looked French when she addressed the class.

He sat down at the little yellow table he used for a desk and pulled a piece of paper towards him. He tried to remember exactly what Miss Lenaut looked like. She was quite tall, with flat hips and full breasts always prominently propped up, and thin straight legs. She wore high heels and ribbons and a great deal of lipstick. First he drew her with clothes on, not achieving much of a likeness but getting the two curls in front of her ears and making the mouth convincingly prominent and dark. Then he tried to imagine what she might look like without any

clothes. He drew her naked, sitting on a stool looking at herself in a hand-mirror. He stared at his handiwork. O, God, if ever! He tore up the naked drawing. He was ashamed of himself. He deserved to live over a bakery. If they ever found out downstairs what he thought and did upstairs …

He began to undress for bed. He was in his socks, because he didn’t want his mother, who slept in the room below, to know that he was still awake. He had to get up at five o’clock every morning to deliver the bread in the cart attached to a bicycle and his mother kept after him for not getting enough sleep.

Later on, when he was rich and successful, he would say, I got up at five o’clock in the morning, rain or shine, to deliver rolls to the Depot Hotel and the Ace Diner and Sinowski’s Bar and Grill. He wished his name wasn’t Rudolph.

At the Casino Theatre Errol Flynn was killing a lot of Japs. Thomas Jordache was sitting in the dark at the rear of the theatre eating caramels from a package that he had taken from the slot machine in the lobby with a lead slug. He was expert at making lead slugs.

‘Slip me one, Buddy,’ Claude said, making it sound tough, like a movie gangster asking for another clip of -45 cartridges for his rod. Claude Tinker had an uncle who was a priest and to overcome the damaging implications of the relationship he tried to sound tough at all times. Tom flipped a caramel in the air and Claude caught it and started chewing loudly. The boys were sitting low on their spines, their feet draped over the empty seats in front of them. They had sneaked in as usual, through a grating that they had pried loose last year. The grating protected a window in the men’s room in the cellar. Every once in a while, one or the other of them would come up into’ the auditorium with his fly open, to make it look for real.

Tom was bored with the picture. He watched Errol Flynn dispose of a platoon of Japs with various weapons. ‘Phonus bolonus,’ he said.

‘What language you speaking, Professor?’ Claude said, playing their game.

That’s Latin,’ Tom said, ‘for bullshit’

‘What a Command of tongues,’ Claude said.

‘Look,’ Tom said, ‘down there to the right. That GI with his girl.’

A few rows in front of them a soldier and a girl were sitting entwined. The theatre was half-empty and there was nobody in the row they were in or in the rows behind them. Claude frowned. ‘He looks awful big,’ Claude said. ‘Look at that neck on him.’ ‘General,’ Tom said, Ve attack at dawn.’ ‘You’ll wind up in the hospital,’ Claude said. ‘Wanna bet?’ Tom swung his legs back from the chair in front of him and stood up and started towards the aisle. He moved silently, his sneakered feet light on the worn carpet of the Casino floor. He always wore sneakers. You had to be surefooted and ready to make the fast break at all times. He hunched his shoulders, bulky and easy under his sweater, and tucked in his gut, enjoying the hard, flat feeling under the tight belt. Ready for anything. He smiled in the darkness, the excitement beginning to get him, as it always did at these preliminary choosing moments.