Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Do you want to dance?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “I despise dancing.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Constance said. “Let’s take a walk.”

They went to their rooms to get some warm clothes, and Pritchard was waiting for her outside the hotel door when she came down in her snow boots and the beaver coat her father had given her the year before. Pritchard was leaning against a pillar on the front porch and she stared at him for a moment before he turned around, and she was surprised to see how tired and suddenly old he seemed when he was unaware that he was being watched.

They walked down the main street, with the sounds of the band diminishing behind them. It was a clear night, and the stars shone above the mountains, electrically blue. At the top of the highest hill, at the end of the téléphérique , a single light glittered from the hut there, where you could warm yourself before the descent, and buy spiced hot wine and biscuits.

They walked down to the bottom of the street and crossed over onto the path alongside the dark skating rink. The ice reflected the stars dimly and there was the noise of water from the brook that ran along one side of the rink and scarcely ever froze.

They stopped at a small, snow-covered bridge, and Pritchard lit a cigarette. The lights of the town were distant now and the trees stood around them in black silence. Pritchard put his head back, with the smoke escaping slowly from between his lips, and gestured up toward the light on top of the mountain.

“What a life,” he said. “Those two people up there. Night after winter night alone on top of the hills, waiting for the world to arrive each morning.” He took another puff of the cigarette. “They’re not married, you know,” he said. “Only the Swiss would think of putting two people who weren’t married on top of a hill like that. He’s an old man and she’s a religious fanatic and they hate each other, but neither of them will give the other the satisfaction of taking another job.” He chuckled as they both looked at the bright pinpoint above them. “Last year there was a blizzard and the téléphérique didn’t run for a week and the power lines were down and they had to stay up there for six days and nights, breaking up chairs for firewood, living off chocolate and tins of soup, and not talking to each other.” He stared reflectively at the faraway high light. “It will do as a symbol this year for this pretty continent,” he said softly.

Suddenly Constance knew what she had to say. “Alan”—she moved squarely in front of him—“I don’t want you to go.”

Pritchard flicked at his cigarette. “Six days and six nights,” he said. “For their hardness of heart.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I’ve been here for a long time,” he said. “I’ve had the best of the snow.”

“I want you to marry me,” Constance said.

Pritchard looked at her. She could see he was trying to smile. “That’s the wonderful thing about being twenty years old,” he said. “You can say things like that.”

“I said I want you to marry me.”

He tossed away his cigarette. It glowed on the snow. He took a step toward her and kissed her. She could taste the fumed grape of the brandy faint on his lips. He held her for a moment, then stepped back and buttoned her coat, like a nurse being careful with a little girl. “The things that can happen to a man,” he said. He shook his head slowly.

“Alan,” Constance said.

“I take it all back,” Pritchard said. “You’re not at all like the girls who advertise soap and beer.”

“Please,” she said. “Don’t make it hard.”

“What do you know about me?” He knocked the snow off the bridge railing and leaned against it, brushing the snow off his hands with a dry sound. “Haven’t you ever been warned about the young men you’re liable to meet in Europe?”

“Don’t confuse me,” she said. “Please.”

“What about the chap in the leather frame?”

Constance took a deep breath. She could feel the cold tingling in her lungs. “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s not here.”

Pritchard chuckled, but it sounded sad. “Lost,” he said. “Lost by an ocean.”

“It’s not only the ocean,” she said.

They walked in silence again, listening to the sound of their boots on the frozen path. The moon was coming up between the peaks and reflecting milkily off the snow.

“You ought to know one bit of information,” Pritchard said in a low voice, looking down at the long shadow the moon cast on the path ahead of him. “I’ve been married.”

“Oh,” Constance said. She was very careful to walk in the footprints of the others who had tamped the path down before her.

“Not gravely married,” Pritchard said, looking up. “We were divorced two years ago. Does that make a difference to you?”

“Your business,” Constance said.

“I must visit America someday,” Pritchard said, chuckling. “They are breeding a new type.”

“What else?” Constance asked.

“The next thing is unattractive,” Pritchard said. “I don’t have a pound. I haven’t worked since the war. I’ve been living off what was left of my mother’s jewelry. There wasn’t much and I sold the last brooch in Zurich last week. That’s why I have to go back, even if there were no other reasons. You can see,” he said, grinning painfully, “you’ve picked the prize of the litter.”

“What else?” Constance asked.

“Do you still want to hear more?”

“Yes.”

“I would never live in America,” Pritchard said. “I’m a weary, poverty-stricken, grounded old R.A.F. type, and I’m committed to another place. Come on.” He took her elbow brusquely, as though he didn’t want to talk any more. “It’s late. We’d better get to the hotel.”

Constance hung back. “You’re not telling me everything,” she said.

“Isn’t that enough?”

“No.”

“All right,” he said. “I couldn’t go with you to America if I wanted to.”

“Why not?”

“Because they wouldn’t let me in.”

“Why not?” Constance asked, puzzled.

“Because I am host to the worm,” Pritchard said.

“What’re you talking about?”

“Swiss for delicate,” he said harshly. “They kicked D. H. Lawrence out of New Mexico and made him die along the Riviera for it. You can’t blame them. They have enough diseases of their own. Now let’s go back to the hotel.”

“But you seem so healthy. You ski—”

“Everybody dies here in the best of health,” Pritchard said. “It goes up and down with me. I almost get cured, then the next year”—he shrugged and chuckled soundlessly—“the next year I get almost uncured. The doctors hold their heads when they see me going up in the lift. Go home,” he said. “I’m not for you. I’m oppressed. And you’re not oppressed. It is the final miscegenation. Now shall we go back to the hotel?”

Constance nodded. They walked slowly. The town on the hill ahead of them was almost completely dark now, but they could hear the music of the dance band, thin and distant in the clear night air.

“I don’t care,” Constance said as they came to the first buildings. “I don’t care about anything.”

“When I was twenty—” Pritchard said. “When I was twenty I once said the same thing.”

“First, we’ll be practical,” Constance said. “You’ll need money to stay here. I’ll give it to you tomorrow.”

“I can’t take your money.”

“It’s not mine,” Constance said. “It’s my father’s.”

“England is forever in your debt,” Pritchard said. He was trying to smile. “Be careful of me.”