Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Colonel,” Peter said, panting, “I’m so glad you’re up. I must talk to you. I hate to disturb you, but …”

“Come in.” The door was opened wider and Peter strode down the hall, into the living room. He heard the door close and turned around. “I …” he began. He stopped. The man who was standing there was not Colonel Foster. It was a large, red-faced man, bald, in a tattered red bathrobe. He had a mustache and tired eyes and he was holding a book in his hand. Peter looked at the book. The Poems of Robert Browning .

The man stood there, waiting, pulling his bathrobe a little tighter, a curious little smile on his weary face.

“I … I saw the light, sir,” Peter said. “I thought Colonel Foster would be up and I took the liberty of … I had some business with …”

“Colonel Foster doesn’t live here,” the man said. His voice was clipped and military, but tired, aging. “He moved out a week ago.”

“Oh,” Peter said. He suddenly stopped sweating. He swallowed, made a conscious effort to speak quietly. “Do you know where he lives, sir?”

“I’m afraid not. Is there anything I can do, Captain? I’m Colonel Gaines.” He smiled, false teeth above the old robe. “That’s why when you said Colonel, at the door, I …”

“No, sir,” Peter said. “Nothing, sir. I’m dreadfully sorry. This time of night …”

“Oh, that’s all right.” The man waved a little embarrassedly. “I never go to sleep. I was reading.”

“Well … Thank you, sir. Good night.”

“Uh …” The man looked hesitantly at him, as though he felt that somehow Peter should be helped in some dubious, obscure way. “Uh—perhaps a drink. I have some whisky I was just going to—for myself …”

“No, thank you, sir,” Peter said. “I’d better be getting along.”

Clumsily, they went down the passage together to the door. The man opened the door. He stood there, red-faced, huge, British, like a living Colonel Blimp, lonely and tired, with Robert Browning in the foreign night.

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night.…”

The door closed and Peter walked slowly down the dark stairs.

Peter started toward his hotel, but the thought of the disordered room and Mac lying there, steadily asleep, steadily and slightly snoring in the next bed, was impossible.

He walked slowly past the dark policemen standing quietly with their rifles on the street corners. Down the street garry-lights, small and flickering and lonesome, wandered past, and the sound of the horses’ hooves was deliberate and weary.

He came to the English Bridge and stood on the banks of the river, looking at the dark water swirling north toward the Mediterranean. Down the river a felucca, its immense sail spread in a soaring triangle, slowly made its way among the shadows from the trees along the shore. Across the river a minaret, poignant with faith, shone sharp and delicate in the moonlight.

Peter felt spent and drained. A nervous and hysteric pulse pulled at his bad eye and a gigantic sob seemed wedged into his throat.

Overhead, far away, there was the sound of a plane. It came nearer, passed across the stars, died away, going somewhere.

The wedge dislodged and the sob broke out like tears and blood.

Peter closed his eyes, and when he opened them again the wild pulse had stopped, his throat was clear. He stared across the river at the minaret, faithful and lovely in the light of the moon, by the side of the old river.

Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow there may be a letter from home.…

I t was late at night in Algiers and in the army newspaper office the clatter of typewriters had long since died down. Most of the men had gone to sleep upstairs and the halls were empty. The wisecracks and decisions and sudden laughter were over for the day, and in another building the presses were comfortably turning out the next day’s paper.

On the walls, the pictures of all the pretty girls with big bosoms looked a little weary in the dim light. Down on the street outside the Red Cross building, late-traveling soldiers whistled for hitches in the dark and a soldier who had had some wine was singing the “Marseillaise” in English, the brave words and the brave tune floating up a little uncertainly through the darkness until a truck stopped and picked the singer up. In the office the radio was on and Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto was coming in, moody and sorrowful, from London.

An assistant editor with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves came in and sat down wearily in front of the radio. He stared at it, remembering many things that had nothing to do with his job, remembering home and what his college campus looked like in June and how it had felt to sail out of New York harbor in the rain.

“Have some wine,” said the reporter who was sitting there listening to the music. The reporter had no stripes on his sleeves at all. The assistant editor took the wine and forgot to drink, just sitting there holding the bottle.

“There’s a bar in New York,” the assistant editor said. “Ralph’s. On Forty-fifth Street. Ugly little joint. I like to drink there. Ever been there?”

“Uhuh,” the reporter said.

“Scotch whisky,” the assistant editor said. “Cold beer.”

The concerto ended in wild, mournful thunder and a polite English voice said it had been Toscanini conducting and Horowitz at the piano, the names sounding strange on the night-time African coast. The polite voice said good night and the reporter got Berlin. There were waltzes on from Berlin, very prettily played, lilting through the small, paper-littered room. A polite German voice described the waltzes and once more the violins and trumpets swept out of the radio.

“The Germans,” the assistant editor said. “They should be deprived of music for fifty years. Should be part of the peace treaty.”

A rewrite man, a corporal, on his way up to bed, stuck his head in. “Anybody want a gumdrop?” He brought out the box. “Just got my rations today.”

The assistant editor and the reporter reached out. They chewed consideringly on the gumdrops, listening to the waltz.

“Nice music,” the rewrite man said.

“Fifty years,” said the assistant editor.

The rewrite man yawned and stretched. “Going to bed,” he said, and started out. “Maybe when I wake up tomorrow the war’ll be over. Good night.” He went out and the assistant editor washed down the rationed gumdrop with a little wine.

“Did you ever eat a gumdrop in civilian life?” he asked.

“No,” said the reporter.

“Neither did I.” He rolled the wine around reflectively in the bottle. “God, it’s dull around here. I wish I could have gone to Italy.” The radio turned to Hungarian dances and the assistant editor stared gloomily at it. He drank a little wine. “That’s the trouble, though. Now that the invasion has come at last, other guys are covering it. Other guys’ll write great stories. I’ll be sitting here on my can in Africa. The editor. The assistant editor … When I got out of college I wrote better than I do now. Eight years ago.” He rubbed his bald spot thoughtfully. “Somehow I got to be an editor. Eight years.” He finished the wine. “Maybe I should’ve got married.”

“Probably wouldn’t make any difference,” said the reporter, who was married.

“Probably not.” The assistant editor shrugged. “There was a girl back in college in my sophomore year. She was a year older than me. You had to date her up in October for the spring prom. There was a fellow with a car who used to drive her to breakfast, lunch and dinner and send her flowers every day, but she used to take walks with me and lunch sometimes. She did the most marvelous thing that anyone ever did for me. I was a kid then and maybe it oughtn’t to seem like so much to me now, but it still does. She broke a date with this other guy and went to the spring prom with me, I gave her orchids and we went to a couple of speakeasies and it was the best night I ever had in my whole life.” He sat back, remembering the orchids and the speakeasies. “I introduced her to a friend of mine that summer. He had a lot of dough and called her long distance three times a week and six months later they got married. You can’t blame a girl. Want to see her picture?”