Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Well,” said Bert, “that’ll be too bad.”

Martha said nothing.

Munnie swallowed dryly. Later on, he thought, I won’t be able to bear remembering today, standing here, watching a man drown.

Then another picture flicked before his eyes. It was sharp and clear and there was nothing missing. It was of Bert and Martha and himself standing in front of a French policeman, seated at a desk, with his cap on, scratching away with a leaking fountain pen in a little black book.

“So,” the policeman was saying, “you wish to report a drowning?”

“Yes.”

“So—you saw this gentleman, some distance from the shore, waving at you, and then he disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“And the lady?”

“The last we saw of her she was still holding onto the boat, floating out to sea.”

“Ah. And—uh—what steps did you take, personally?”

“We … we came here and reported it.”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” More scratching in the book. A hand reaching out. “Your passports, please.” A quick riffling through the pages and one short, coldly smiling glance as the policeman tossed them on the desk. “Ah, Americans, all of you …”

The man out in the water went under again for a second.

Munnie tried to swallow, again. This time he couldn’t manage it.

“I’m going to go get him,” he said. But for a moment he didn’t move, as though, somehow, just saying it would fix everything, put the man on dry land, right the boat, stop the screams.

“It’s two hundred and fifty yards at least from the beach,” Bert said, very calmly. “And then two hundred and fifty yards back, or a little less, with a crazy Frenchman holding onto your neck.”

Munnie listened gratefully. “Yes,” he said. “At least.”

“You never swam five hundred yards in your life,” Bert said, sounding friendly and reasonable.

The man screamed again and now his voice was hoarse and terrified.

Munnie started walking swiftly along the wall, back to where there was a narrow flight of steps leading down to the little beach in front of the fort. He didn’t run because he didn’t want to be out of breath when he went into the water.

“Munnie!” he heard Bert call behind him. “Don’t be a damn fool!”

Even as he started down the steep flight of steps, slippery with moss, Munnie noticed that Martha hadn’t said anything. When he got down to the beach he trotted across it, at the water line, to get to the point nearest the man. He stopped, breathing heavily, and waved at the swimmer, encouraging him. Now, down at water level, it looked a good deal more than two hundred and fifty yards. He kicked off his shoes and tore off his shirt. The wind felt cold on his skin. He took off his pants, tossing them to one side on the sand, and stood there in his shorts. He hesitated. They were old shorts and they had torn at the crotch and he had mended them, clumsily, himself. He had a sudden picture of his body washed ashore and people noticing the shabby mending job and smiling a little. He unbuttoned the shorts, his fingers fumbling thickly at the buttons and let the shorts drop to the sand. As he walked deliberately into the water, he thought, She’s never seen me naked, I wonder what she thinks.

He scraped his toes on a rock and the pain made the tears come into his eyes. He kept walking until the water was up to his chest, then pushed off and began to swim. The water was cold and his skin felt tight and frozen almost at once. He tried not to swim too fast, so that he would have some strength left when he reached the drowning man. Whenever he looked up to see how far he’d gone it seemed to him that he had hardly moved at all, and it was hard to keep going in a straight line. Somehow he always seemed to be veering to his left, in the direction of the wall, and he had to keep correcting himself all the time. Once, he looked up at the wall, searching for Bert and Martha. He couldn’t see them and he had a moment of panic. What the hell have they done? he thought. They’ve left. He turned over on his back, losing precious seconds, and saw them on the beach, standing at the water’s edge, watching him. Of course, he thought.

He turned over and kept on swimming methodically toward the Frenchman. Whenever he picked his head out of the water, the Frenchman seemed to be screaming, and just as far away as ever. He decided not to look again for awhile. It was too discouraging.

Then his arms began to feel tired. It can’t be, he thought. I haven’t even gone fifty yards yet. Still, the muscles between his shoulders and his elbows seemed to be contracted, twisting his bones, and there was a deep ache of weariness in the back of his arms. His right hand began to cramp a little, too, and he let it flutter loosely through the water, which slowed him down, but he didn’t know what else to do about it. The cramp reminded him that he had eaten not very long before and had a lot of wine and grapes and cheese. As he swam, with the water a green blur in his eyes and the slow, steady push of it going past his ears, he remembered his mother, in all the summers of his boyhood, on the shores of the lake in New Hampshire, saying, “No swimming for at least two hours after meals.” Sitting on a little wooden chair, under a striped umbrella, watching the children play on the narrow, pebbly beach.

The back of his neck and the base of his skull started to ache now, and his thoughts wavered across his consciousness, disconnected and slippery. He had never liked swimming much, he remembered. He just went in to cool off and play around. Swimming had always seemed like a boring sport. The same old thing, over and over again, lift one arm, lift the other arm, kick, lift one arm, lift the other arm, kick, never really get anyplace. And he had never learned to keep the water out of his ears and sometimes he’d feel deaf for hours and the water wouldn’t come out until he’d gone to bed and slept on one side for a long time.

His arms began to feel numb and he rolled more and more, in an effort to get his shoulders into the job, and he seemed to be swimming lower in the water than he ever had before. There’s no sense in wasting time, he thought, making himself worry about something else besides his arms, I might as well figure out what to do once I get there. Laboriously, he tried to phrase what he would say to the man in French when he approached him. Monsieur, J’y suis. Doucement. Doucement . He would stay off from the man and try to calm him down before grabbing him. Dimly, he remembered having seen a demonstration of life-saving at a pool when he was fourteen years old. He hadn’t paid much attention, because the boy behind him had surreptitiously kept flicking at him with a wet towel. But there was something about letting yourself sink if the drowning man put his arms around your neck, then twisting and putting your hand under his chin and pushing back. He hadn’t believed it when he was fourteen years old and he didn’t believe it now. It was one of those things that looked good in practice, on dry land. Then there were all the stories about hitting people on the chin and knocking them out. More dry land. He had never knocked anybody out in his whole life. His mother hated fighting. Monsieur, soyez tranquille. Roulez sur votre dos, s ’il vous plaît . Then he’d go in and grab him by the hair and start towing him, sidestroke. If the man understood him. He had an awful lot of trouble getting Frenchmen to understand his accent, especially here in the Basque country. Martha had no trouble at all. They all said what a charming accent she had. Well, why not, after all that time at the Sorbonne? She should have come with him as an interpreter, if for nothing else. Tournez sur votre dos . That was better.

He swam heavily and slowly, his eyes beginning to smart from the salt water. When he lifted his head there were white and silver spots before his eyes and everything seemed to be blurred and he couldn’t really see anything much. He kept on swimming. After fifty strokes he decided he’d stop and tread water and look around. The idea of treading water now seemed like the greatest pleasure ever vouchsafed the human race.