Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

A cross was burned on the Baranov lawn on a rainy evening, but even so, wind-blown sparks ignited a privy on a neighbor’s property and reduced it to the ground. Irate, the neighbor fired a shotgun at the Baranovs’ Siamese cat, nicking it twice in the rear.

The local Chamber of Commerce petitioned the Baranovs to move away, as they were giving the town a bad name, just at a time when they were trying to attract a plumbing factory to set up business there.

A Communist civil-liberties group held a mass meeting to raise funds for Baranov, who denounced them. They, in turn, denounced the Baranovs and demanded that they be deported to Russia.

The Treasury Department, attracted by the commotion, went over Baranov’s last five income-tax returns and disallowed several items and sent in a bill for an additional eight hundred and twenty dollars. The Baranovs’ citizenship papers were carefully scanned and it was revealed that Mrs. Baranov had lied about her age.

At a radio forum on the subject “What Should We Do with the Green Nude?” Baranov’s name was hissed by the audience every time it was mentioned and the next day the postmaster in a small Massachusetts town announced that a mural of cranberry pickers and fishermen that Baranov had painted for the post-office in the days of the WPA would be torn down.

Anna Baranov, due to the unwelcome publicity given her, was deprived by her editor first of the Department of Political Interpretation, then of Medicine for Women, then of Books and Fashion, and finally, of Child Care, after which she was allowed to resign.

Baranov moved through all this in a dull haze, dreading more than anything else the long hours of mounting rhetoric which were loosed on him by his wife between midnight and eight each morning. Occasionally, huddled for disguise into the turned-up collar of his overcoat, he would go to the gallery where the disputed painting still hung, and would stare mournfully and puzzledly at it. When, one day, the director of the gallery took him aside, and told him, not unkindly, that in response to certain pressures, the authorities had decided to disband the show and not send it to Europe after all, he wept.

That night, he was sitting alone, slumped in a wooden chair in the middle of his cold studio. The blinds were drawn because of the habit the small boys of the neighborhood had developed of hurling rocks through the windows at any moving shadows they saw within. In Baranov’s hand he held a small world atlas, opened to a map of the Caribbean and Central America, but he did not look at it.

The door opened and Suvarnin came in. He sat down without a word.

Finally, Baranov spoke, without looking at his friend. “I was at the gallery today,” he said, his voice low and troubled. “I looked at the painting for a long time. Maybe it’s my imagination,” he said, “but I thought I noticed something.”

“Yes?”

“Suddenly,” Baranov said, “the painting reminded me of someone. I thought and thought who it could be. Just now I remembered. Suvarnin,” he twisted anxiously in his chair to face the critic, “Suvarnin, have you ever noticed that there was any resemblance there to my wife, Anna?”

Suvarnin said nothing for a while. He closed his movie-destroyed eyes thoughtfully and rubbed his nose. “No,” he said, finally.

“Not the slightest.”

Baranov smiled wanly. “Oh, what a relief,” he said. “It would be a terrible shock to her.” He spread the book on his knees and stared down at the small red and blue countries of the warm middle Atlantic. “Suvarnin,” he said, “have you ever been to the Caribbean?”

“No,” said Suvarnin.

“What sort of fruit,” Baranov asked, peering at the map, “do you think a man could find to paint in Costa Rica?”

Suvarnin sighed and stood up. “I will go pack my things,” he said heavily, and went out, leaving Baranov alone in the cold studio, staring at his brightly colored, repetitious map.

C ahill let himself into the silent house, softly closing the door behind him. He hung up his hat and coat, noticing the pleasant, frail smell of damp and night that came up from the cloth. Then he saw the note on the telephone table. It was scrawled in the maid’s grave, childish handwriting, which always amused him a little when he saw it. “Mr. Reeves called,” the message read. “He must talk to you. Very important, he says.”

Cahill started to take up the phone under the mirror. Then he glanced at his watch. It was past one. Too late, he decided; it will have to wait till morning. He looked at himself in the dim glass, noting with satisfaction that his face was still thin and rather young-looking and that his eyes, despite the three drinks after the meeting that night, were not bloodshot. With dissatisfaction, he noted also that the gray was gaining over the black at his temples and that the lines under his eyes were now permament. He sighed with agreeable melancholy, thinking gently: Older, older …

He put out the light and started upstairs. He was a large, bulky man, but he moved gracefully up the carpeted steps of his home. He touched the smooth wood of the banister, smelling the mixed but orderly aromas of living that the house breathed into the still darkness—the lemony fragrance of furniture polish, the autumnal dust of chrysanthemums from the living room, the hint of his wife’s perfume, lingering here after the day’s comings and goings.

He walked past the adjoining doors behind which slept his son and his daughter. He thought of the dark-haired, seventeen-year-old girl lying neatly in the quilted bed, the almost womanly mouth relaxed back into childishness by sleep. He brushed the door with his fingertips sentimentally. As he passed his son’s door, he could hear a low, dreamy mumble, then, more clearly, Charlie’s voice calling, “Intercept! Intercept!” Then the voice stopped. Cahill grinned, reflecting on what vigorous, simple dreams of green fields and sunny afternoons visited the sleep of his fifteen-year-old son. Cahill, the miser, he thought, quietly going past the closed doors, counting his treasures at midnight.

He went into the bathroom and undressed there, so as not to wake his wife. After he had put on his pajamas and slippers, he stood for a moment in front of the medicine chest, debating whether or not to take the sedative for his stomach that Dr. Manners had prescribed for him on Tuesday. He patted his stomach thoughtfully. It bulged a little, as it had been doing for seven or eight years now, but it felt relaxed and healthy. The hell with it, he thought. I am going to break the tyranny of the Pill.

Unmedicined, he put out the bathroom light and padded into the bedroom. He sat carefully on the edge of his bed and silently took off his slippers, moving with domestic caution, watching his wife, in the next bed. She did not stir. A little moonlight filtered in through the curtained windows and softly outlined the head against the pillows. She slept steadily, not moving even when Cahill inadvertently knocked against the base of the lamp on the bed table, making a resonant metallic noise. She looked young, pretty, defenseless in the obscure light, although Cahill noticed, with a grimace, that she had her hair up in curlers, leaving only a small bang loose in front as a sop to marital attractions. A woman must be awfully certain of her husband, he thought, to appear in bed night after night in those grim ringlets. He grinned to himself as he got under the covers, amused at his strong feelings on the subject.

As the warmth of the blankets slowly filled in around him, he stretched, enjoying the softness of the bed, his muscles luxuriously delivering him over to the long weariness of the day. The curtains, folded in moonlight, rustled gently at the windows. A fragile, tenuous sense of peace settled drowsily upon him. His son and his daughter slept youthfully and securely beyond the bedroom wall. His first class the next morning was not until ten o’clock. His wife confidently clamped her hair in ludicrous curls, knowing nothing could disturb her marriage. At the meeting, he had spoken quite well, and Professor Edwards, who was the head of the department, had come over afterward and approved of it. In the next morning’s second class, Philosophy 12, there were three of the brightest young people in the college—two boys and a girl, and the girl was rather pretty, too—and they had all made it plain that they admired him enormously, and were constantly quoting him in the classes of other instructors. Cahill moved softly under the covers as the pleasant, half-formed images of contentment drifted across his brain. Tomorrow, he thought, will be clear and warmer—that’s what the paper says. I’ll wear my new brown tweed suit.