Mavis Gallant - The Cost of Living - Early and Uncollected Stories

He put the paper package on the table. It was the size of a pound of coffee. They looked at it and she understood. She was older than she had ever been, even picking Jim up in a café. There it is: money. It makes no difference to them. It is life and death for me. “What is it, Jim?” she said carefully, pressing her hands together. “What is it for? Is it for politics?” She remembered the two men in the café and the girl with the thick innocent throat. “Is it about politics? Is it for the Algerians? Was it in the kitchen a long time?” Slowly, carefully, she said, “What wouldn’t you do for other people! Jim never spends anything. He needs a reason, and I’m not a reason. Ahmed, is it yours?”

“It isn’t mine,” said Ahmed.

“Why didn’t you tell me it was here, Jim? Don’t you trust me?”

“You can see we trust you,” said Jim.

“We’re telling you now.”

“You didn’t tell me you had it here because you thought I’d spend it,” she said. She looked at the paper as if it were a stuffed object — a dead animal.

“I never thought of it as money,” said Jim. “That’s the truth.”

“It’s anything except the truth,” she said, her hands tight. “But it doesn’t matter. There’s never a moment money isn’t money. You’d like me to say ‘It isn’t money,’ but I won’t. If I’d known, I’d have spent it. Wouldn’t I just! Oh, wouldn’t I!”

“It wasn’t money,” said Jim, as if it had stopped existing. “It was something I was keeping for other people.” Collected for a reason, a cause. And hidden.

None of them touched it. Ahmed looked sleepy. This was a married scene in a winter room; the bachelor friend is exposed to this from time to time. He must never take sides.

“You both think you’re so clever,” said the girl. “You haven’t even enough sense to draw the curtains.” While they were still listening, she said, “It’s not my fault if you don’t like me. Both of you. I can’t help it if you wish I was something else. Why don’t you take better care of me?”

1962

WHEN THEY need technical advice in films about the Occupation, they often send for Willi. There are other Germans in Paris with memories of the war, but they are uninterested or too busy. The students are too young. They don’t know any of the marching songs. To tell the truth, these young people cannot be depended on to sing and march; they don’t take to it seriously. Willi, whose job it is to drill them for the film, loses his patience. They like the acting, and seeing the movie stars, and clowning around in uniform, but they don’t give their best.

“When I think I was ready to die for you !” Willi says.

Willi is short and thick and very fair. His eyes are cornflower blue. The lashes are stubby and nearly invisible. When he has been in the sun all day trying to work a squad of silly kids into some sort of organized endeavor, the whites of his eyes go red and his face looks as if he had dipped it in wine. Actually he never touches wine. Another thing he dislikes is cigarettes. He is unhappy when he sees a young girl smoking.

In the old days, he says — he must mean in his puberty — health was glory and he was taught something decent about girls.

Willi was a prisoner of war in France until the end of 1948. He dreamed of home, but when he got there one of his sisters had an American boyfriend and the whole family were happy as seals around a rich new brother-in-law, a builder in Stuttgart. Willi thought, The French had us four years but didn’t learn a word of German, and if one of them could stick a knife in our back he did. He doesn’t like the French better than he does the Germans; he just despises them less. Back home was the ever-richer brother-in-law. Willi couldn’t fit in, and presently he came to Paris. He must be in his middle thirties but looks twenty-five. He looks his age when he is puzzled, or doesn’t understand what took place, or has lost control of a situation — has given someone else the upper hand.

The film business is occasional, but an economic pillar. He is paid fairly well for what he does. He sometimes meets a girl and hopes something will come of it — he is still looking for that — but he has never been sure he had the right girl.

When Willi was released from prison camp, and after he became disgusted with home, he thought he might join the Legion. He is glad he didn’t now. Willi’s friend Ernst did join; he was sick of being a prisoner and it was the only way out. They often talk about those days and what went on. Their decorations had been torn from them by enemy soldiers with private collections, but Ernst and Willi made each other decorations saying “Mother” and “Home Soon” and that kind of thing. Ernst was in the Legion in Indo-China and Algeria. He has had a troubling life; although he is a good soldier, he has all his life been part of a defeated army. The Legion was a total waste; they didn’t teach him a trade. Also, they are slow about his pension. Ernst is in Paris waiting for the pension. It begins to look as if he might wait forever. Every time he goes to the pensions office, they tell him a document is missing from his file. When he comes back with the document, they say he has come on the wrong day. Ernst is going to be in trouble if the pension doesn’t come through very soon; he has no residence permit in France. He hasn’t been given one, because he has no income, no fixed domicile, and no trade. The wars are over; Ernst can go home. He doesn’t want to go home. If he leaves France, he is sure he will never see the shadow of a pension. Everything depends on his turning up at the pensions office on the right day with every document assembled in the file.

The last time Willi worked on a film he got a small part for Ernst. It wasn’t easy, because Ernst is brown-haired and slight. He is not a German military figure. Willi got the job for Ernst by saying he had been a German officer, which isn’t true. He was too young — about sixteen when he was taken prisoner in 1944. In the film, Ernst plays an S.S. man who has to arrest a Jewish couple on the street outside their own house. This is what the scene is like: The husband, dressed like a modest middle-aged professor in a movie, and his wife, dressed as a humble professor’s wife, are stopped by the two S.S. men (one of them Ernst) as they arrive at their door, arm in arm, one late-summer afternoon. The husband carries a folded newspaper and a loaf of bread.

Ernst has been told to push the professor, while the other S.S. man (a chemistry student) is to hold the woman by the elbow.

Ernst mutters to the actor, “I’m sorry,” and gives him a push.

“Explain it to him in German,” says the director to Willi.

“Don’t apologize,” says Willi quietly. “He doesn’t mind being pushed. He expects it.”

“If he expects it…” But Ernst says “I’m sorry” again.

If he fails a third time, they certainly won’t use Ernst in the picture. It would be a pity, because Ernst is trying, and he does need the money. Willi understands: Ernst has too much respect for the professor. Ernst wouldn’t hurt a fly. Somebody must have hurt a fly once, or they wouldn’t keep on making these movies. But it wasn’t Willi or Ernst.

“Give him a good push,” says Willi, laughing suddenly, “and you’ll get your pension tomorrow.”

Ernst gives the professor such a push that the poor man falls against his wife. “The bread!” she cries, but it is too late: the bread has fallen on the dirty pavement. She and the professor bend down to pick it up. She keeps her arm around him. She puts the bread inside the folded newspaper and takes the parcel gently from the man. Ernst and the chemistry student have nothing more to do. The couple walk off between the two S.S. men as if they had always known this was how one afternoon would end.