Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“I came down from the embassy earlier than I expected,” the consul said, when my husband had seated himself, “because I had to tell you this myself. You’re suspended, John, as of close of business this day.”

My husband has told me, speaking of that moment, that he experienced a curious sense of relief. Subconsciously and without apparent reason, for almost two years, he had been living in expectation of hearing just those words. Now that they had been finally said, it was almost as though a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Certainty, even of so disastrous a nature, was, for a flicker in time, more comfortable to bear than continuing doubt.

“Repeat that, please,” my husband said.

“You’re suspended,” the consul said, “and I advise you to resign immediately.”

“I’m permitted to resign?” my husband asked.

“Yes,” said the consul. “Friends of yours have been working for you behind the scenes and they’ve managed that.”

“What’s the complaint against me?” my husband asked. Curiously enough, despite his premonitions of the last two years, he had, up until that moment, no inkling of what the complaint would be.

“It’s a morals charge. John,” the consul said. “And if you fight it, that much is bound to get out and you know what people will think.”

“They’ll think that I’ve been kicked out for homosexuality,” my husband said.

“Well, not the people who really know you,” said the consul. “But everyone else …”

“And if I fight it and win?”

“That’s not possible, John,” the consul said. “They’ve had people after you and they know all about the lady who tried to commit suicide. They have statements from the doctor, from the porter at the lady’s apartment, from somebody at the embassy who went out and did some detective work on his own and then tipped them off.”

“Who was that?” my husband asked.

“I can’t say,” the consul said, “and you’ll never find out.”

“But it happened more than five years ago,” my husband said.

“That makes no difference,” said the consul. “It happened.”

“If I resign suddenly, like this,” my husband said, “the people who don’t think it’s because of homosexuality will think it’s because I’m a security risk—or disloyal.”

“I told you,” the consul said, “that everybody concerned has agreed to keep it as quiet as possible.”

“Still,” my husband said, “these things always leak a little.”

“A little,” the consul admitted. “Perhaps the best thing would be for you to leave as quietly as possible and go to some place where you’re not known for a year or so and let it blow over.”

“What if I were to go to all the people I’ve worked for in the Service,” my husband said, “and got statements from them about the value of my work for those periods while I was with them—that is, a defense of my record to balance against this one extracurricular offense—”

“There are no extracurricular offenses any more,” the consul said.

“Still,” my husband persisted. “What if I got the statements—some of them from people very high in the government by now—”

“It wouldn’t do any good,” the consul said.

“Even so,” my husband said, “perhaps I’d like to try. Would you make such a statement for me?”

The consul hesitated for a moment. “No,” he said.

“Why not?” my husband asked.

“For several reasons,” the consul said. “Remember, you’re being treated leniently. You’re being permitted to resign and people have agreed to do their best to keep it quiet. If you oppose them, you’re bound to anger someone who’ll talk and you’ll find yourself all over the newspapers and dismissed summarily, to boot. Secondly, if I give you a statement, no matter how closely I keep it to a professional evaluation of your work in this consulate, I’ll seem to be encouraging you in your opposition and lining myself up on your side. Believe me, John,” the consul said, and according to my husband, he sounded sincere, “if I thought it would help you, I’d do it. But knowing that it would hurt you, it’s out of the question.”

My husband nodded, collected his things, and walked out of his office for the last time. He came home and told me what had happened. We cancelled the bridge party I had intended to give and discussed the matter the better part of the night. A good deal of the time we spent speculating on the identity of the person at the embassy who had taken it on himself to track down John’s story. We could fix on no one and to this day we have no hint as to who it might possibly have been.

In the morning John sent in his resignation and two weeks later we flew to America. We bought a car and set out West, looking for a small, quiet place, in which we could live cheaply and without neighbors. We had a lovely trip and we enjoyed the richness of the scenery and talking once more to Americans, after being so long abroad.

We found our little house, by luck. After five minutes of inspecting it and surveying the empty desert lying on all sides of it, we made our minds up and have not regretted the decision for a moment. I have rearranged the furniture to suit our tastes and had two large bookcases built for John’s books. The hurricane lamps I bought the day John worked for the last time serve us wonderfully for our dinners in the patio under the starry desert sky.

There was only one incident in all the time that made me feel that perhaps our plan for ourselves was not going to work out, and it was entirely due to my thoughtlessness that it happened at all. Several months ago, on one of my trips to town, I bought a fashion magazine which had in it an article, illustrated by photographs, entitled, with typical vulgarity, “Fashionable Americans Abroad.” There, pictured on a snowy terrace at St. Moritz, was the consul and his wife. They were both deeply tanned and smiling widely. They looked, I must confess, very handsome and young and lucky in their skiing clothes. Thinking, foolishly, that it would amuse my husband, I passed him the magazine, saying, “He still manages to get around, doesn’t he?”

My husband looked for a long time at the photograph and gave it back to me, finally, without a word. That night, he went for a long walk across the desert and did not come back until just before dawn, and when I saw him the next morning, his face looked old and ravaged, as though he had spent the night in bitter struggle. The peace and forgetfulness that I had thought we were achieving were all vanished from his face and for once, in my presence, his defenses were gone and all the violence of his pride, his endless ambition, his baffled jealousy, were plainly evident, all focussed and brought to an unbearably painful point in the smiling image of the man he had once admired and served so faithfully.

“Never do anything like that to me again,” he said, in the morning, and although we had not spoken a word to each other for nearly twelve hours, I knew what he meant.

But it is all over now, although it took the better part of three months, and during that time my husband said hardly a word to me, hardly even read—but spent the days staring across the desert and the nights staring into the fire, like a bankrupt going over his accounts again and again, running the losses through his head, in helpless, silent hysteria. But this morning I came in from town with a letter from Michael, who, alone among our old friends, continued to correspond with us. It was a short letter and my husband read it quickly, standing up, and without changing his expression. When he had finished he handed the letter to me.

“Read this,” he said.

“Dear Children,” the letter began, in Laborde’s hasty scrawl. “Just a note to keep you au courant . The weather’s beastly, the natives sullen, and the consulate is rocking. Goldilocks is out. Resigned suddenly, as of two days ago, with no explanation. Except that at every cocktail party and every bar where English is spoken, the guess is Kinsey. The first bit of poison leaked three days ago in a column in Washington. Goldilocks and bride, tear-stained, departed yesterday for an Alp, to ponder the irony of destiny. Burn this letter and keep a bed warm for me in the desert. Love …”