Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“How about you?” Gosden said. “Even in your humble position as loader, as you put it, as a cog in the machinery—how did you feel, how do you feel now?”

Weatherby hesitated, on the verge of being angry with the man. “Now,” he said, “I regret it. While it was happening, I merely wanted to survive.”

“Have you given any thought to the institution of capital punishment, Mr. Weatherby?” Gosden spoke without looking in Weatherby’s direction, but staring at his own dim reflection above the bottles in the mirror above the bar. “Are you pro or con the taking of life by the State? Have you ever made an effort to have it abolished?”

“I signed a petition once, in college, I think.”

“When we are young,” Gosden said, speaking to his wavery reflection in the mirror, “we are more conscious of the value of life. I, myself, once walked in a procession protesting the hanging of several young colored boys. I was not in the South, then. I had already moved up North. Still, I walked in the procession. In France, under the guillotine, the theory is that death is instantaneous, although an instant is a variable quantity, as it were. And there is some speculation that the severed head as it rolls into the basket is still capable of feeling and thinking some moments after the act is completed.”

“Now, Mr. Gosden,” Giovanni said soothingly, “I don’t think it helps to talk like this, does it, now?”

“I’m sorry, Giovanni,” Gosden said, smiling brightly. “I should be ashamed of myself. In a charming bar like this, with a man of sensibility and talent like Mr. Weatherby. Please forgive me. And now, if you’ll pardon me, there’s a telephone call I have to make.” He got off his stool and walked jauntily, his shoulders thrown back in his narrow dark suit, toward the other end of the deserted restaurant and went through the little door that led to the washrooms and the telephone booth.

“My Lord,” Weatherby said. “What’s that all about?”

“Don’t you know who he is?” Giovanni said, in a low voice, keeping his eyes on the rear of the restaurant.

“Only what he just told me,” Weatherby said. “Why? Are people supposed to know who he is?”

“His name was in all the papers, two, three years ago,” Giovanni said. “His wife was raped and murdered. Somewhere on the East Side. He came home for dinner and found the body.”

“Good God,” said Weatherby softly, with pity.

“They picked up the guy who did it the next day,” Giovanni said. “It was a carpenter or a plumber or something like that. A foreigner from Europe, with a wife and three kids in Queens somewhere. No criminal sheet, no complaints on him previous. He had a job to do in the building and he rang the wrong doorbell and there she was in her bathrobe or something.”

“What did they do to him?” Weatherby asked.

“Murder in the first degree,” Giovanni said. “They’re electrocuting him up the river tonight. That’s what he’s calling about now. To find out if it’s over or not. Usually, they do it around eleven, eleven-thirty, I think.”

Weatherby looked at his watch. It was nearly eleven-fifteen. “Oh, the poor man,” he said. If he had been forced to say whether he meant Gosden or the doomed murderer, it would have been almost impossible for him to give a clear answer. “Gosden, Gosden …” he said. “I must have been out of town when it happened.”

“It made a big splash,” Giovanni said. “For a coupla days.”

“Does he come in here and talk like this often?” Weatherby asked.

“This is the first time I heard him say a word about it,” Giovanni said. “Usually, he comes in here once, twice a month, has one drink at the bar, polite and quiet, and eats by himself in back, early, reading a book. You’d never think anything ever happened to him. Tonight’s special, I guess. He came in around eight o’clock and he didn’t eat anything, just sat up there at the bar, drinking slow all night.”

“That’s why you’re still open,” Weatherby said.

“That’s why I’m still open. You can’t turn a man out on a night like this.”

“No,” Weatherby said. Once more he looked at the door to the telephone booth. He would have liked to leave. He didn’t want to hear what the man would have to say when he came out of the telephone booth. He wanted to leave quickly and be sure to be in his apartment when his wife came home. But he knew he couldn’t run out now, no matter how tempting the idea was.

“This is the first time I heard he asked his wife to marry him here,” Giovanni said. “I suppose that’s why …”. He left the thought unfinished.

“What was she like?” Weatherby asked. “The wife?”

“A nice, pretty little quiet type of woman,” Giovanni said. “You wouldn’t notice her much.”

The door at the rear of the restaurant opened and Gosden came striding lightly toward the bar. Weatherby watched him, but he didn’t see the man look either left or right at any particular table that might have held special memories for him. As he sprang up onto his stool and smiled his quick, apologetic smile, there was no hint on his face of what he had heard over the telephone. “Well,” Gosden said briskly, “here we are again.”

“Let me offer a round,” Weatherby said, raising his finger for Giovanni.

“That is kind, Mr. Weatherby,” said Gosden. “Very kind indeed.”

They watched Giovanni pour the drinks.

“While I was waiting for the connection,” Gosden said, “I remembered an amusing story. About how some people are lucky and some people are unlucky. It’s a fishing story. It’s quite clean. I never seem to be able to remember risqué stories, no matter how funny they are. I don’t know why. My wife used to say that I was a prude and perhaps she was right. I do hope I get the story right. Let me see—” He hesitated and squinted at his reflection in the mirror. “It’s about two brothers who decide to go fishing for a week in a lake in the mountains.… Perhaps you’ve heard it, Mr. Weatherby?”

“No,” Weatherby said.

“Please don’t be polite just for my sake,” Gosden said. “I would hate to think that I was boring you.”

“No,” Weatherby said, “I really haven’t heard it.”

“It’s quite an old story, I’m sure, I must have heard it years ago when I still went to parties and nightclubs and places like that. Well, the two brothers go to the lake and they rent a boat and they go out on the water and no sooner do they put down their lines than one brother has a bite and pulls up the hugest fish. He puts down his line again and once again immediately he pulls up another huge fish. And again and again all day long. And all day long the other brother sits in the boat and never gets the tiniest nibble on his hook. And the next day it is the same. And the day after that, and the day after that. The brother who is catching nothing gets gloomier and gloomier and angrier and angrier with the brother who is catching all the fish. Finally, the brother who is catching all the fish, wanting to keep peace in the family, as it were, tells the other brother that he will stay on shore the next day and let the one who hasn’t caught anything have the lake for himself that day. So the next day, bright and early, the unlucky brother goes out by himself with his rod and his line and his most succulent bait and puts his line overboard and waits. For a long time nothing happens. Then there is a splash nearby and a huge fish, the hugest fish of all, jumps out of the water and says, ‘Say, Bud, isn’t your brother coming out today?’” Gosden looked anxiously over at Weatherby to see what his reaction was. Weatherby made himself pretend to chuckle.

“I do hope I got it right,” Gosden said. “It seems to me to have a somewhat deeper meaning than most such anecdotes. About luck and destiny and things like that, if you know what I mean.”