Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

A private policeman turned the corner and stood and watched them. They moved to the next window.

“‘A suggestion to passengers to promote carefree travel,’” Paul read off a booklet. “Also, Hapag-Lloyd announces a twenty-per-cent reduction for all educators on sabbatical leave. They are ‘Masters in the Art of Travel,’ they say.”

“I used to want to go to see Germany,” Dora said. “I know a lot of Germans and they’re nice.”

“I’ll be there soon,” Paul said as they passed the private policeman.

“You’re going to visit it?”

“Uh huh. At the expense of the government. In a well-tailored khaki uniform. I’m going to see glamorous Europe, seat of culture, at last. From a bombing plane. To our left we have the Stork Club, seat of culture for East Fifty-third Street. Look at the pretty girls. A lot of them have breasts at the correct angle, too. See how nature mimics art. New York is a wonderful city.”

Dora didn’t say anything. She hung onto him tightly as they went down the street. They turned at the corner and walked down Madison Avenue. After a while they stopped at a shop that had phonographs and radios in the window. “That’s what I want.” Paul pointed at a machine. “A Capehart. It plays two symphonies at a time. You just lie on your back and out come Brahms and Beethoven and Prokofieff. That’s the way life should be. Lie on your back and be surrounded by great music, automatically.”

Dora looked at the phonograph, all mahogany and doors and machinery. “Do you really think there’s going to be a war?” she said.

“Sure. They’re warming up the pitchers now. They’re waiting to see if the other side has right-handed or left-handed batters before they nominate their starting pitchers.”

They continued walking downtown.

“But it’s in Europe,” Dora said. “Do you think we’ll get into it?”

“Sure. Read the papers.” He glanced at the window they were passing. “Look at those nice tables. Informal luncheons on your terrace. Metal and glass for outdoor feeding. That would be nice, eating out on a terrace off those wonderful colored plates, rich food with green salads. With a view of mountains and a lake, and inside, the phonograph.”

“That sounds good,” Dora said quietly.

“I could get an extra speaker,” Paul said, “and wire it out to the terrace, so we could listen as we ate. I like Mozart with dinner.” He laughed and drew her to a bookstore window.

“I always get sad,” Dora said, “when I look in a bookshop window and see all the books I’m never going to have time to read.”

Paul kissed her. “What did you think the first time you saw me?” he asked.

“What did you think?”

“I thought, ‘I must get that girl!’”

Dora laughed, close to him.

“What did you think?” Paul asked.

“I thought”—she giggled—“I thought, ‘I must get that man!’”

“Isn’t New York marvelous?” Paul said. “Where did you say you come from?”

“Seattle,” Dora said. “Seattle, Washington.”

“Here we are on Madison Avenue, holding hands, shopping for the future.…”

“Even if there was a war,” Dora said after a while, “why would you have to get mixed up in it? Why would the United States have to get mixed up in it?”

“They got into the last one, didn’t they?” Paul said. “They’ll get into this one.”

“They were gypped the last time,” Dora said. “The guys who were killed were gypped.”

“That’s right,” said Paul. “They were killed for six-per-cent interest on bonds, for oil wells, for spheres of influence. I wish I had a sphere of influence.”

“Still,” said Dora, “you’d enlist this time?”

“Yop. The first day. I’d walk right up to the recruiting office and say, ‘Paul Triplett, twenty-six years old, hard as nails, good eyes, good teeth, good feet; give me a gun. Put me in a plane, so I can do a lot of damage.”

They walked a whole block in silence.

“Don’t you think you’d be gypped this time, too?” Dora said. “Don’t you think they’d have you fighting for bonds and oil wells all over again?”

“Uh huh.”

“And even so, you’d sign up?”

“The first day.”

Dora pulled her hand away from him. “Do you like the idea of killing people?”

“I hate the idea,” Paul said slowly. “I don’t want to hurt anybody. I think the idea of war is ridiculous. I want to live in a world in which everybody sits on a terrace and eats off a metal-and-glass table off colored plates and the phonograph inside turns Mozart over automatically and the music is piped out to an extra loud-speaker on the terrace. Only Hitler isn’t interested in that kind of world. He’s interested in another kind of world. I couldn’t stand to live in his kind of world, German or homemade.”

“You wouldn’t kill Hitler,” Dora said. “You’d just kill young boys like yourself.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you like that?”

“I’m really not interested in killing Hitler, either,” Paul said. “I want to kill the idea he represents for so many people. In years to come I’ll cry over the young boys I’ve killed and maybe if they kill me, they’ll cry over me.”

“They’re probably just like you.” They were walking fast now.

“Sure,” Paul said. “I’m sure they’d love to go to bed with you tonight. I bet they’d love to walk along the fountains with the bronze statues in Rockefeller Plaza, holding hands with you on a spring Saturday evening and looking at the sports clothes in the windows. I bet a lot of them like Mozart, too, but still I’ll kill them. Gladly.”

“Gladly?”

“Yes, gladly.” Paul wiped his eyes with his hands, suddenly tired. “Gladly today. I’ll weep for them in years to come. Today they’re guns aimed at me and the world I want. Their bodies protect an idea I have to kill to live. Hey!” He stretched out his hands and caught hers. “What’s the sense talking about things like this tonight?”

“But it’s all a big fraud,” Dora cried. “You’re being used and you know it.”

“That’s right,” Paul said. “It’s all a big fraud, the whole business. Even so, I got to fight. I’ll be gypped, but by a little bit I’ll do something for my side, for Mozart on a terrace at dinner. What the hell, it’s not even heroism. I’ll be dragged in, whatever I say.”

“That’s too bad,” Dora said softly, walking by herself. “It’s too bad.”

“Sure,” Paul said. “Some day maybe it’ll be better. Maybe some day the world’ll be run for people who like Mozart. Not today.”

They stopped. They were in front of a little art store. There was a reproduction of the Renoir painting of a boating party on the river. There was the woman kissing the Pekinese, and the man in his underwear with a straw hat and his red beard, solid as earth, and the wit with his cocked derby hat whispering to the woman with her hands to her ears, and there was the great still life in the foreground, of wine and bottles and glasses and grapes and food.

“I saw it in Washington,” Paul said. “They had it in Washington. You can’t tell why it’s a great picture from the print. There’s an air of pink immortality hanging over it. They got it in New York now and I go look at it three times a week. It’s settled, happy, solid. It’s a picture of a summertime that vanished a long time ago.” Paul kissed her hand. “It’s getting late, darling, the hours’re dwindling. Let’s go home.”

They got into a cab and went downtown to his apartment.