Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

The gift had its drawbacks. It made moving away from places he liked difficult for Munnie and packed all endings and farewells with emotion, because the old man who traveled within him was always saying, in his autumnal whisper, it will never be like that again.

But putting an end to this long summer, which had stretched into October, was going to be more painful than any other finish or departure that Munnie had known. These were the last days of the last real holiday of his life, Munnie felt. The trip to Europe had been a gift from his parents upon his graduation from college and now when he went back, there they would all be on the dock, the kind, welcoming, demanding faces, expecting him to get to work, asking him what he intended to do, offering him jobs and advice, settling him lovingly and implacably into the rut of being a grownup and responsible and tethered adult. From now on all holidays would be provisional, hurried interludes of gulped summertime between work and work. The last days of your youth, said the old man within. The boat docks in seven days.

Munnie turned and looked at his sleeping friend. Bert slept tranquilly, extended and composed under his blankets, his sunburned long thin nose geometrically straight in the air. This would change, too, Munnie thought. After the boat docked they would never be as close again. Never as close as on the rocks over the sea in Sicily or climbing through the sunny ruins at Paestum or chasing the two English girls through the Roman nightclubs. Never as close as the rainy afternoon in Florence when they talked, together, for the first time, to Martha. Never as close as on the long, winding journey, the three of them packed into the small open car, up the Ligurian coast toward the border, stopping whenever they felt like it for white wine or a swim at the little beach pavilions with all the small, brightly colored pennants whipping out in the hot Mediterranean afternoon. Never as close as the conspiratorial moment over the beers with the paratrooper in the bar of the casino at Juan-les-Pins, learning about the unbeatable system. Never as close as in the lavender, hilarious dawns, driving back to their hotel gloating over their winnings, with Martha dozing between them. Never as close as on the blazing afternoon at Barcelona, sitting high up on the sunny side, sweating and cheering and shading their eyes as the matador walked around the ring holding up the two bull’s ears, with the flowers and the wineskins sailing down around him. Never as close at Salamanca and Madrid and on the road through the straw-colored, hot, bare country up to France, drinking sweet, raw Spanish brandy and trying to remember how the music went that the gypsies danced to in the caves. Never so close, again, finally, as here in this small whitewashed Basque hotel room, with Bert still asleep, and Munnie standing at the window watching the old man disappear with his dog and his shotgun, and upstairs in the room above them, Martha, sleeping, as she always did, curled like a child, until they came in, as they always did, together, as though they didn’t trust themselves or each other to do it alone, to wake her and tell her what they planned to do for the day.

Munnie threw the curtains wide open and let the sun stream in. If there’s one boat that I have a right to miss in my life, he thought, it’s the one that’s sailing from Le Havre the day after tomorrow.

Munnie went over to Bert’s bed, stepping carefully over the clothes that were crumpled on the floor. He poked Bert’s bare shoulder with his finger. “Master,” he said, “rise and shine.” The rule was that whoever lost in tennis between them had to call the other Master for twenty-four hours. Bert had won the day before 6–3, 2–6, 7–5.

“It’s after ten.” Munnie poked him again.

Bert opened both eyes and stared coldly at the ceiling. “Do I have a hangover?” he asked.

“We only had one bottle of wine amongst us for dinner,” said Munnie, “and two beers after.”

“I do not have a hangover,” Bert said, as if the news depressed him. “But it’s raining outside.”

“It’s a bright, hot sunny morning,” Munnie said.

“Everybody always told me it rained all the time on the Basque coast,” said Bert, lying still, complaining.

“Everybody is a liar,” Munnie said. “Get the hell out of bed.”

Bert swung his legs slowly over the side of the bed and sat there, thin, bony and bare from the waist up, in his pajama pants that were too short for him and from which his big feet dangled loosely. “Do you know why American women live longer than American men, Fat Man?” he asked, squinting at Munnie in the sunlight.

“No.”

“Because they sleep in the morning. My ambition,” Bert said, lying back on the bed again, but with his legs still over the side, “is to live as long as the American Woman.”

Munnie lit a cigarette and tossed one to Bert, who managed to light it without lifting his head from the blanket. “I had an idea,” Munnie said, “while you were wasting the precious hours of your childhood sleeping.”

“Put it in the suggestion box.” Bert yawned and closed his eyes. “The management will give a buffalo-hide saddle to every employee who presents us with an idea that is put into practice by the …”

“Listen,” Munnie said eagerly. “I think we ought to miss that damned boat.”

Bert smoked in silence for a moment, narrowing his eyes and pointing his nose at the ceiling. “Some people,” he said, “are born boat-missers and train-missers and plane-missers. My mother, for example. She once saved herself from getting killed by ordering a second dessert at lunch. The plane left just as she got to the field and came down in flames thirty-five minutes later. Not a single survivor. It was ice cream, with crushed fresh strawberries …”

“Come on, Bert.” Sometimes Munnie got very impatient with Bert’s habit of going off on tangents while he was making up his mind. “I know all about your mother.”

“In the springtime,” Bert said, “she goes mad for strawberries. Tell me, Munnie, have you ever missed anything in your life?”

“No,” Munnie said.

“Do you think it’s wise,” Bert asked, “at this late stage, to fiddle with the patterns of a lifetime?”

Munnie went into the bathroom and filled a glass with water. When he came back into the bedroom, Bert was still lying on the bed, his legs dangling over the side, smoking. Munnie stood over him, then slowly tipped the glass over Bert’s bare brown chest. The water splashed a little and ran in thin trickles over Bert’s ribs onto the sheets.

“Ah,” Bert said, still smoking. “Refreshing.”

They both laughed and Bert sat up.

“All right, Fat Man,” Bert said. “I didn’t know you were serious.”

“My idea,” said Munnie, “is to stay here until the weather changes. It’s too sunny to go home.”

“What’ll we do about the tickets?”

“We’ll send a telegram to the boat people and tell them we’ll take passage later. They’ve got a waiting list a mile long. They’ll be delighted.”

Bert nodded judiciously. “What about Martha?” he asked. “Maybe she has to get to Paris today.”

“Martha doesn’t have to go anyplace. Anytime,” Munnie said. “You know that.”

Bert nodded again. “The luckiest girl in the world,” he said.

Outside the window there was the sound of the shotgun again. Bert turned his head, listening. There was a second report. “My,” Bert said, running his tongue over his teeth, “that was wonderful partridge last night.” He stood up, looking, in his flapping pajama pants, like a boy who would be a good prospect for the college crew if he could be induced to eat heavily for a year. He had been chubby until he went into the Army, but by the time he got out in May, he was long and stringy and his ribs showed. When she wanted to make fun of him, Martha told him he looked like an English poet in his bathing trunks. He went to the window and Munnie crossed over and stood beside him, looking out over the mountains and the sea and the sunlight.