Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Yes, sir,” said Garbrecht.

The Major picked up three sheets of clipped-together papers. “This is your last report,” he said. He ripped the papers methodically in half and then once more in half and threw them on the floor. “That is what I think of it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Garbrecht. He knew the sweat was streaming down into his collar and he knew that the Major must have noticed it and was probably sourly amused at it, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“This office has sent out its last chambermaid-gossip report,” the Major said. “From now on, we will send out only useful military information, or nothing at all. I’m not paying you for the last two weeks’ work. You haven’t earned it. Get out of here. And don’t come back until you have something to tell me.”

He bent down once more over the papers on his desk. Garbrecht stood up and slowly went out the door. He knew that the Major did not look up as he closed the door behind him.

Greta wasn’t home, and he had to stand outside her door in the cold all evening because the janitress refused to recognize him and let him in. Greta did not get back till after midnight, and then she came up with an American officer in a closed car, and Garbrecht had to hide in the shadows across the street while the American kissed Greta clumsily again and again before going off. Garbrecht hurried across the broken pavement of the street to reach Greta before she retreated into the house.

Greta could speak English and worked for the Americans as a typist and filing clerk, and perhaps something else, not quite so official, in the evenings. Garbrecht did not inquire too closely. Greta was agreeable enough and permitted him to use her room when he was in the American zone, and she always seemed to have a store of canned food in her cupboard, gift of her various uniformed employers, and she was quite generous and warm-hearted about the entire arrangement. Greta had been an energetic patriot before the defeat, and Garbrecht had met her when she visited the hospital where he was lying with his arm freshly severed after the somber journey back from Russia. Whether it was patriotism, pity, or perversity that had moved her, Garbrecht did not know, nor did he inquire too deeply; at any rate, Greta had remained a snug anchorage in the wild years that had passed, and he was fond of her.

“Hello,” he said, as he came up behind her. She was struggling with the lock, and turned abruptly, as though frightened.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d be here tonight.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t get in touch with you.”

She opened the door, and he went in with her. She unlocked the door of her own room, which was on the ground floor, and slammed it irritably behind her. Ah, he thought unhappily, things are bad here, too, tonight.

He sighed. “What is it?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said. She started to undress, methodically, and without any of the usual graceful secrecy she ordinarily managed even in the small drab room.

“Can I be of any help?” Garbrecht asked.

Greta stopped pulling off her stockings and looked thoughtfully at Garbrecht. Then she shook her head and yanked at the heel of the right stocking. “You could,” she said, contemptuously. “But you won’t.”

Garbrecht squinted painfully at her. “How do you know?” he asked.

“Because you’re all the same,” Greta said coldly. “Weak. Quiet. Disgusting.”

“What is it?” he asked. “What would you want me to do?” He would have preferred it if Greta had refused to tell him, but he knew he had to ask.

Greta worked methodically on the other stocking. “You ought to get four or five of your friends, the ex-heroes of the German Army,” she said disdainfully, “and march over to Freda Raush’s house and tear her clothes off her back and shave her head and make her walk down the street that way.”

“What?” Garbrecht sat up increduously. “What are you talking about?”

“You were always yelling about honor,” Greta said loudly. “Your honor, the Army’s honor, Germany’s honor.”

“What’s that got to do with Freda Raush?”

“Honor is something Germans have only when they’re winning, is that it?” Greta pulled her dress savagely over her shoulders. “Disgusting.”

Garbrecht shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I thought Freda was a good friend of yours.”

“Even the French,” Greta said, disregarding him, “were braver. They shaved their women’s heads when they caught them.…”

“All right, all right,” Garbrecht said wearily. “What did Freda do?”

Greta looked wildly at him, her hair disarranged and tumbled around her full shoulders, her large, rather fat body shivering in cold and anger in her sleazy slip. “Tonight,” she said, “she invited the Lieutenant I was with and myself to her house.…”

“Yes,” said Garbrecht, trying to concentrate very hard.

“She is living with an American captain.”

“Yes?” said Garbrecht, doubtfully. Half the girls Greta knew seemed to be living with American captains, and the other half were trying to. That certainly could not have infuriated Greta to this wild point of vengeance.

“Do you know what his name is?” Greta asked rhetorically. “Rosenthal! A Jew. Freda!”

Garbrecht sighed, his breath making a hollow, sorrowful sound in the cold midnight room. He looked up at Greta, who was standing over him, her face set in quivering, tense lines. She was usually such a placid, rather stupid, and easygoing girl that moments like this came as a shocking surprise.

“You will have to find someone else,” Garbrecht said wearily, “if you want to have Freda’s head shaved. I am not in the running.”

“Of course,” Greta said icily. “I knew you wouldn’t be.”

“Frankly,” Garbrecht said, trying to be reasonable with her, “I am a little tired of the whole question of the Jews. I think we ought to drop it, once and for all. It was all right for a while, but I think we’ve probably just about used it all up by now.”

“Ah,” Greta said, “keep quiet. I should have known better than to expect anything from a cripple.”

They both were silent then. Greta continued undressing with contemptuous asexual familiarity, and Garbrecht slowly took his clothes off and got into bed, while Greta, in a black rayon nightgown that her American Lieutenant had got for her, put her hair up in curlers before the small, wavy mirror. Garbrecht looked at her reflection in the mirror and remembered the nervous, multiple reflections in the cracked mirror in Seedorf’s office.

He closed his stinging eyes, feeling the lids trembling jumpily. He touched the folded, raw scar on his right shoulder. As long as he lived, he probably would never get over being shocked at the strange, brutal scar on his own body. And he would never get over being shocked when anybody called him a cripple. He would have to be more diplomatic with Greta. She was the only girl he was familiar with, and occasionally there was true warmth and blessed hours of forgetfulness in her bed. It would be ridiculous to lose that over a silly political discussion in which he had no real interest at all. Girls were hard to get these days. During the war it was better. You got a lot of girls out of pity. But pity went out at Rheims. And any German, even a whole, robust one, had a hard time competing with the cigarettes and chocolates and prestige of the victors. And for a man with one arm … It had been a miserable day, and this was a fitting, miserable climax to it.

Greta put out the light and got aggressively into bed, without touching him. Tentatively he put his hand out to her. She didn’t move. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’ve had a long day. Good night.”