We’ll Always Have Paris
Ray Douglas Bradbury
From one of the greatest living literary imaginations and the celebrated author of FAHRENHEIT 451 comes a collection of never-before-published effortlessly beautiful tales.Recently described in The Times as 'the uncrowned poet laureate of science fiction' Ray Bradbury has won numerous awards including a Pulitzer Prize special citation in 2007 and an Emmy.In this new volume of never-before-published stories, follow a space shuttle crew as they voyage sixty million miles from home, discover what happens when a writer 'with the future's eye' believes his friend to be writing stories aboard a UFO, and listen in on a couple talking themselves backwards through time to the moment when they first held hands.This entertaining and gripping collection is a treasure trove of Bradbury gems – eerie and strange, nostalgic and bittersweet, searching and speculative – to delight readers of all ages.
RAY BRADBURY
We’ll Always Have Paris
With love to my lifetime friend,
Donald Harkins, who is buried in Paris
Contents
Introduction: Watching and Writing (#uc349b3f5-ab82-57ce-ad64-c1881834435e)
Massinello Pietro (#ueb379d08-a78a-5947-84f0-71451f64c719)
The Visit (#u70351f19-6eb7-5285-9511-5d123485d361)
The Twilight Greens (#u6474ad3c-fa75-5204-ad4f-eecb8d56c249)
The Murder (#u622089b0-e1c3-5338-9043-55b87b8a23a6)
When the Bough Breaks (#u484b9d2b-3265-57fd-a97f-928a02dfc8b8)
We’ll Always Have Paris (#uc009a398-f568-5c0e-9cd8-c3cb5a8be762)
Ma Perkins Comes to Stay (#litres_trial_promo)
Doubles (#litres_trial_promo)
Pater Caninus (#litres_trial_promo)
Arrival and Departure (#litres_trial_promo)
Last Laughs (#litres_trial_promo)
Pietà Summer (#litres_trial_promo)
Fly Away Home (#litres_trial_promo)
Un-pillow Talk (#litres_trial_promo)
Come Away with Me (#litres_trial_promo)
Apple-core Baltimore (#litres_trial_promo)
The Reincarnate (#litres_trial_promo)
Remembrance, Ohio (#litres_trial_promo)
If Paths Must Cross Again (#litres_trial_promo)
Miss Appletree and I (#litres_trial_promo)
A Literary Encounter (#litres_trial_promo)
America (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By Ray Bradbury (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Introduction: Watching and Writing (#u8b75a0e4-bd55-5bf0-9db8-9723f7709824)
The stories in this collection were created by two people: The me who watches and the me who writes.
Both of these creatures inside myself have lived under one sign, which has hung over my typewriter for seventy years: Don’t think, do.
I haven’t thought about any of these stories; they are explosions or impulses. Sometimes they are big explosions of ideas that cannot be resisted, sometimes small impulses coaxed to grow.
My favorite here is ‘Massinello Pietro’ because it happened to me many years ago, when I was in my early twenties and lived in and out of a tenement in downtown L.A. Massinello Pietro became a friend of mine whom I tried to protect from the police and help when he was brought into court. The short story that was inspired by this friendship is, in many ways, basically true and I simply had to write it.
The other stories, one by one, came to me throughout my life – from a very young age through my middle and later years. Every one of them has been a passion. Every story here was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me. I watch: I get an idea, fall in love with it, and try not to think too much about it. I then write: I let the story pour forth onto the paper as soon as possible.
So here you are with the works of the two people living inside my skin. Some may surprise you. And that is good. Many of them surprised me when they came to me and asked to be born. I hope you enjoy them. Don’t think about them too much. Just try to love them as I love them.
Be my guest.
Ray Bradbury AUGUST 2008
Massinello Pietro (#u8b75a0e4-bd55-5bf0-9db8-9723f7709824)
He fed the canaries and the geese and the dogs and the cats. Then he cranked up the rusty phonograph and sang to the hissing ‘Tales from the Vienna Woods’:
Life goes up, life goes down,
But please smile, do not sigh, do not frown!
Dancing, he heard the car stop before his little shop. He saw the man in the gray hat glance up and down the storefront and knew the man was reading the sign which in large, uneven blue letters declared THE MANGER. EVERYTHING FREE! LOVE AND CHARITY FOR ALL!
The man stepped halfway through the open door and stopped. ‘Mr Massinello Pietro?’
Pietro nodded vigorously, smiling. ‘Come in. Do you want to arrest me? Do you want to throw me in jail?’
The man read from his notes. ‘Better known as Alfred Flonn?’ He eyed the silver bells on Pietro’s shirtsleeves.
‘That’s me!’ Pietro’s eye flashed.
The man was uncomfortable. He looked around a room crammed full of rustling birdcages and packing crates. Geese rushed in through the back door, stared at him angrily, and rushed back out. Four parrots blinked lazily on their high perches. Two Indian lovebirds cooed softly. Three dachshunds capered around Pietro’s feet, waiting for him to put down just one hand to pet them. On one shoulder he carried a banana-beaked mynah bird, on the other a zebra finch.
‘Sit down!’ sang Pietro. ‘I was just having a little music; that’s the way to start the day!’ He cranked the portable phonograph swiftly and reset the needle.
‘I know, I know.’ The man laughed, trying to be tolerant. ‘My name’s Tiffany, from the D.A.’s office. We got a lot of complaints.’ He waved around the cluttered shop. ‘Public health. All these ducks, raccoons, white mice. Wrong zone, wrong neighborhood. You’ll have to clean it up.’
‘Six people have told me that.’ Pietro counted them proudly on his fingers. ‘Two judges, three policemen, and the district attorney himself!’
‘You were warned a month ago you had thirty days to stop this nuisance or go to jail,’ said Tiffany, over the music. ‘We’ve been patient.’
‘I,’ said Pietro, ‘have been the patient one. I have waited for the world to stop being silly. I have waited for it to stop wars. I have waited for politicians to be honest. I have waited – la la la – for real estate men to be good citizens. But while I wait, I dance!’ He demonstrated.
‘But look at this place!’ protested Tiffany.
‘Isn’t it wonderful? Do you see my shrine for the Virgin Mary?’ Pietro pointed. ‘And here, on the wall, a framed letter from the archbishop’s secretary himself, saying what good I’ve done for the poor! Once, I was rich, I had property, a hotel. A man took it all away, my wife with it, oh, twenty years ago. Do you know what I did? I invested what little I had left in dogs, geese, mice, parrots, who do not change their minds, who are always friends forever and forever. I bought my phonograph, which never is sad, which never stops singing!’
‘That’s another thing,’ said Tiffany, wincing. ‘The neighborhood says at four in the morning, um, you and the phonograph …’
‘Music is better than soap and water!’
Tiffany shut his eyes and recited the speech he knew so well. ‘If you don’t have these rabbits, the monkey, the parakeets, everything, out by sundown, it’s the Black Maria for you.’
Mr Pietro nodded with each word, smiling, alert. ‘What have I done? Have I murdered a man? Have I kicked a child? Have I stolen a watch? Have I foreclosed a mortgage? Have I bombed a city? Have I fired a gun? Have I told a lie? Have I cheated a customer? Have I turned from the Good Lord? Have I taken a bribe? Have I peddled dope? Do I sell innocent women?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Tell me, then, what have I done? Point to it, lay a hand on it. My dogs, these are evil, eh? These birds, their song is dreadful, eh? My phonograph – I suppose that’s bad, too, eh? All right, put me in jail, throw away the key. You will not separate us.’
The music rose to a great crescendo. He sang along with it:
Tiffa-nee! Hear my plea!
Can’t you smile; sit awhile, be my friend?
The dogs leaped about, barking.
Mr Tiffany drove away in his car.
Pietro felt a pain in his chest. Still grinning, he stopped dancing. The geese rushed in and pecked gently at his shoes as he stood, bent down, holding his chest.
At lunchtime, Pietro opened a quart of homemade Hungarian goulash and refreshed himself. He paused and touched his chest, but the familiar pain had vanished. Finishing his meal, he went to gaze over the high wooden fence in the backyard.
There she was! There was Mrs Gutierrez, very fat, and as loud as a jukebox, talking to her neighbors on the other side of the lot.
‘Lovely lady!’ called Mr Massinello Pietro. ‘Tonight I go to jail! Your war is fought and won. I give you my saber, my heart, my soul!’
Mrs Gutierrez came ponderously across the dirt yard. ‘What?’ she said, as if she couldn’t see or hear him.
‘You told the police, the police told me, and I laughed!’ His hand flirted on the air, two fingers wiggling. ‘I hope you will be happy!’
‘I didn’t call no police!’ she said indignantly.
‘Ah, Mrs Gutierrez, I will write a song for you!’
‘All of them other people must’ve called in,’ she insisted.
‘And when I leave today for jail, I’ll have a present for you.’ He bowed.
‘I tell you it wasn’t me!’ she cried. ‘You and your mealy mouth!’
‘I compliment you,’ he said sincerely. ‘You are a civic-minded citizen. All filth, all noise, all odd things must go.’
‘You, you!’ she shouted. ‘Oh, you!’ She had no more words.
‘I dance for you!’ he sang, and waltzed into the house.
In the late afternoon he put on his red silk bandanna and the huge gold earrings and the red sash and the blue vest with the golden piping. He put on his buckle shoes and tight knee breeches. ‘Come along! One last walk, eh?’ he told his dogs, and out of the shop they went, Pietro carrying the portable phonograph under his arm, wincing with the weight of it, for his stomach and body had been sick for some time and there was something wrong; he couldn’t lift things very easily. The dogs padded on either side of him, the parakeets shrieked wildly on his shoulder. The sun was low, the air cool and settled. He looked at everything as if it was new. He said good evening to everyone, he waved, he saluted.
In a hamburger stand he set the phonograph whirling and scratching out the song on top of a stool. People turned to watch as he dived into the song and came up shining with laughter. He snapped his fingers, dipped his legs, whistled sweetly, eyes closed, as the symphony orchestra soared through Strauss. He made the dogs stand in a row while he danced. He made the parakeets tumble on the floor. He caught the spinning, flashing dimes from the startled but responsive audience.
‘Get the hell out!’ said the hamburger man. ‘What in hell you think this is, the opera?’
‘Thank you, good friends!’ Dogs, music, parakeets, Pietro ran into the night, bells chiming softly.
On a street corner he sang to the sky, to the new stars, and the October moon. A night wind arose. Faces watched smiling from the shadows. Again Pietro winked, smiled, whistled, whirled.
For charity, the poor!
Ah sweet, ah demure!
And he saw all the faces, the looking faces. And he saw the silent houses, with their silent people. And, in his singing, he wondered why he was the last one singing in the world. Why did no one else dance, open mouths, wink, strut, flourish? Why was the world a silent world, silent housed, silent faced? Why were all the people watching people instead of dancing people? Why were they all spectators and only he the performer? What had they forgotten that he always and always remembered? Their houses, small and locked and silent, soundless. His house, his Manger, his shop, different! Filled with squeaks and stirs and mutters of bird sound, filled with feather whisper and murmurings of pad and fur and the sound that animal eyelids make blinking in the dark. His house, ablaze with votive candles and pictures of rising – flying – saints, the glint of medallions. His phonograph circling at midnight, two, three, four in the morning, himself singing, mouth wide, heart open, eyes tight, world shut out; nothing but sound. And here he was now among the houses that locked at nine, slept at ten, wakened only from long silenced hours of slumber in the morn. People in houses, lacking only black wreaths on door fronts.
Sometimes, when he ran by, people remembered for a moment. Sometimes they squeaked a note or two, or tapped their feet, self-consciously, but most of the time the only motion they made to the music was to reach in their pockets for a dime.
Once, thought Pietro, once I had many dimes, many dollars, much land, many houses. And it all went away, and I wept myself into a statue. For a long time I couldn’t move. They killed me dead, taking away and taking away. And I thought, I won’t ever let anyone kill me again. But how? What do I have that I can let people take away without hurting? What can I give that I still keep?
And the answer was, of course, his talent.
My talent! thought Pietro. The more you give away, the better it is, the more you have. Those with talent must mind the world.
He glanced around. The world was full of statues much like he had been once. So many could move no longer, knew no way to even begin to move again in any direction, back, forth, up, down, for life had stung and bit and stunned and beat them to marble silence. So then, if they could not move, someone must move for them. You, Pietro, he thought, must move. And besides, in moving, you don’t look back at what you were or what happened to you or the statue you became. So keep running and keep so busy you can make up for all those with good feet who have forgotten how to run. Run among the self-monuments with bread and flowers. Maybe they will move enough to stoop, touch the flowers, put bread in their dry mouths. And if you shout and sing, they may even talk again someday, and someday fill out the rest of the song with you. Hey! you cry and La! you sing, and dance, and in dancing perhaps their toes may crack and knuckle and bunch and then tap and tremble and someday a long time after, alone in their rooms, because you danced they will dance by themselves in the mirror of their own souls. For remember, once you were chipped out of ice and stone like them, fit for display in a fish-grotto window. But then you shouted and sang at your insides and one of your eyes blinked! Then the other! Then you sighed in a breath and exhaled a great cry of Life! and trembled a finger and shuffled a foot and bounded back into the explosion of life!
Since then, have you ever stopped running?
Never.
Now he ran into a tenement and left white bottles of milk by strange doors. Outside, by a blind beggar on the hurrying street, he carefully placed a folded dollar bill into the lifted cup so quietly that not even the antennae fingers of the old man sensed the tribute. Pietro ran on, thinking, Wine in the cup and he doesn’t know … ha! … but, later, he will drink! And running with his dogs and birds flickering, fluttering his shoulders, bells chiming on his shirt, he put flowers by old Widow Villanazul’s door, and in the street again paused by the warm bakery window.
The woman who owned the bakery saw him, waved, and stepped out the door with a hot doughnut in her hand.
‘Friend,’ she said, ‘I wish I had your pep.’
‘Madam,’ he confessed, biting into the doughnut, nodding his thanks, ‘only mind over matter allows me to sing!’ He kissed her hand. ‘Farewell.’ He cocked his alpine hat, did one more dance, and suddenly fell down.
‘You should spend a day or two in the hospital.’
‘No, I’m conscious; and you can’t put me in the hospital unless I say so,’ said Pietro. ‘I have to get home. People are waiting for me.’
‘Okay,’ said the intern.
Pietro took his newspaper clippings from his pocket. ‘Look at these. Pictures of me in court, with my pets. Are my dogs here?’ he cried in sudden concern, looking wildly about.
‘Yes.’
The dogs rustled and whined under the cot. The parakeets pecked at the intern every time his hand wandered over Pietro’s chest.
The intern read the news clippings. ‘Hey, that’s all right.’
‘I sang for the judge, they couldn’t stop me!’ said Pietro, eyes closed, enjoying the ride, the hum, the rush. His head joggled softly. The sweat ran on his face, erasing the makeup, making the lampblack run in wriggles from his eyebrows and temples, showing the white hair underneath. His bright cheeks drained in rivulets away, leaving paleness. The intern swabbed pink color off with cotton.
‘Here we are!’ called the driver.
‘What time is it?’ As the ambulance stopped and the back doors flipped wide, Pietro took the intern’s wrist to peer at the gold watch. ‘Five-thirty! I haven’t much time; they’ll be here!’
‘Take it easy, you all right?’ The intern balanced him on the oily street in front of the Manger.
‘Fine, fine,’ said Pietro, winking. He pinched the intern’s arm. ‘Thank you.’
With the ambulance gone, he unlocked the Manger and the warm animal smells mingled around him. Other dogs, all wool, bounded to lick him. The geese waddled in, pecked bitterly at his ankles until he did a dance of pain, waddled out, honking like pressed horn-bulbs.
He glanced at the empty street. Any minute, yes, any minute. He took the lovebirds from their perches. Outside, in the darkened yard, he called over the fence, ‘Mrs Gutierrez!’ When she loomed in the moonlight, he placed the lovebirds in her fat hands. ‘For you, Mrs Gutierrez!’
‘What?’ She squinted at the things in her hands, turning them. ‘What?’
‘Take good care of them!’ he said. ‘Feed them and they will sing for you!’
‘What can I do with these?’ she wondered, looking at the sky, at him, at the birds. ‘Oh, please.’ She was helpless.
He patted her arm. ‘I know you will be good to them.’
The back door to the Manger slammed.
In the following hour he gave one of the geese to Mr Gomez, one to Felipe Diaz, a third to Mrs Florianna. A parrot he gave to Mr Brown, the grocer up the street. And the dogs, separately, and in sorrow, he put into the hands of passing children.
At seven-thirty a car cruised around the block twice before stopping. Mr Tiffany finally came to the door and looked in. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I see you’re getting rid of them. Half of them gone, eh? I’ll give you another hour, since you’re cooperating. That’s the boy.’
‘No,’ said Mr Pietro, standing there, looking at the empty crates. ‘I will give no more away.’
‘Oh, but look here,’ said Tiffany. ‘You don’t want to go to jail for these few remaining. Let my boys take these out for you—’
‘Lock me up!’ said Pietro. ‘I am ready!’
He reached down and took the portable phonograph and put it under his arm. He checked his face in a cracked mirror. The lampblack was reapplied, his white hair gone. The mirror floated in space, hot, misshapen. He was beginning to drift, his feet hardly touched the floor. He was feverish, his tongue thick. He heard himself saying, ‘Let us go.’
Tiffany stood with his open hands out, as if to prevent Pietro from going anywhere. Pietro stooped down, swaying. The last slick brown dachshund coiled into his arm, like a little soft tire, pink tongue licking.
‘You can’t take that dog,’ said Tiffany, incredulous.
‘Just to the station, just for the ride?’ asked Pietro. He was tired now; tiredness was in each finger, each limb, in his body, in his head.
‘All right,’ said Tiffany. ‘God, you make things tough.’
Pietro moved out of the shop, dog and phonograph under either arm. Tiffany took the key from Pietro. ‘We’ll clean out the animals later,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ said Pietro, ‘for not doing it while I’m here.’
‘Ah, for God’s sake,’ said Tiffany.
Everyone was on the street, watching. Pietro shook his dog at them, like a man who has just won a battle and is holding up clenched hands in victory.
‘Good-bye, good-bye! I don’t know where I’m going but I’m on my way! This is a very sick man. But I’ll be back! Here I go!’ He laughed, and waved.
They climbed into the police car. He held the dog to one side, the phonograph on his lap. He cranked it and started it. The phonograph was playing ‘Tales from the Vienna Woods’ as the car drove away.
On either side of the Manger that night it was quiet at one A.M. and it was quiet at two A.M. and it was quiet at three A.M. and it was such a loud quietness at four A.M. that everyone blinked, sat up in bed, and listened.
The Visit (#u8b75a0e4-bd55-5bf0-9db8-9723f7709824)
Ray Bradbury
October 20, 1984
9:45–10:07
(On reading about a young actor’s death and his heart placed in another man’s body last night.)
She had called and there was to be a visit.
At first the young man had been reluctant, had said no, no thanks, he was sorry, he understood, but no.
But then when he heard her silence on the other end of the telephone, no sound at all, but the kind of grief which keeps to itself, he had waited a long while and then said, yes, all right, come over, but, please, don’t stay too long. This is a strange situation and I don’t know how to handle it.
Nor did she. Going to the young man’s apartment, she wondered what she would say and how she would react, and what he would say. She was terribly afraid of doing something so emotional that he would have to push her out of the apartment and slam the door.
For she didn’t know this young man at all. He was a total and complete stranger. They had never met and only yesterday she had found his name at last, after a desperate search through friends at a local hospital. And now, before it was too late, she simply had to visit a totally unknown person for the most peculiar reasons in all her life or, for that matter, in the lives of all mothers in the world since civilization began.
‘Please wait.’
She gave the cabdriver a twenty-dollar bill to ensure his being there should she come out sooner than she expected, and stood at the entrance to the apartment building for a long moment before she took a deep breath, opened the door, went in, and took the elevator up to the third floor.
She shut her eyes outside his door, and took another deep breath and knocked. There was no answer. With sudden panic, she knocked very hard. This time, at last, the door opened.
The young man, somewhere between twenty and twenty-four, looked timidly out at her and said, ‘You’re Mrs Hadley?’
‘You don’t look like him at all,’ she heard herself say. ‘I mean—’ She caught herself and flushed and almost turned to go away.
‘You didn’t really expect me to, did you?’
He opened the door wider and stepped aside. There was coffee waiting on a small table in the center of the apartment.
‘No, no, silly. I didn’t know what I was saying.’
‘Sit down, please. I’m William Robinson. Bill to you, I guess. Black or white?’
‘Black.’ And she watched him pour.
‘How did you find me?’ he said, handing the cup over.
She took it with trembling fingers. ‘I know some people at the hospital. They did some checking.’
‘They shouldn’t have.’
‘Yes, I know. But I kept at them. You see, I’m going away to live in France for a year, maybe more. This was my last chance to visit my – I mean—’
She lapsed into silence and stared into the coffee cup.
‘So they put two and two together, even though the files were supposed to be locked?’ he said quietly.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It all came together. The night my son died was the same night you were brought into the hospital for a heart transplant. It had to be you. There was no other operation like that that night or that week. I knew that when you left the hospital, my son, his heart anyway’ – she had difficulty saying it – ‘went with you.’ She put down the coffee cup.
‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ she said.
‘Yes, you do,’ he said.
‘Not really, I don’t. It’s all so strange and sad and terrible and at the same time, I don’t know, God’s gift. Does that make any sense?’
‘To me it does. I’m alive because of the gift.’
Now it was his turn to fall silent, pour himself coffee, stir it and drink.
‘When you leave here,’ said the young man, ‘where will you go?’
‘Go?’ said the woman uncertainly.
‘I mean—’ The young man winced with his own lack of ease. The words simply would not come. ‘I mean, have you other visits to make? Are there other—’
‘I see.’ The woman nodded several times, took hold of herself with a motion of her body, looking at her hands in her lap, and at last shrugged. ‘Yes, there are others. My son, his vision was given to someone in Oregon. There is someone else in Tucson—’
‘You don’t have to continue,’ said the young man. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘No, no. It is all so strange, so ridiculous. It is all so new. Just a few years ago, nothing like this could have happened. Now we’re in a new time. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Sometimes I start one and then do the other. I wake up confused. I often wonder if he is confused. But that’s even sillier. He is nowhere.’
‘He is somewhere,’ said the young man. ‘He is here. And I’m alive because he is here at this very moment.’ The woman’s eyes grew very bright, but no tears fell.
‘Yes. Thank you for that.’
‘No, I thank him, and you for allowing me to live.’
The woman jumped up suddenly, as if propelled by an emotion stronger than she knew. She looked around for the perfectly obvious door and seemed not to see it.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I—’ she said.
‘You just got here!’
‘This is stupid!’ she cried. ‘Embarrassing. I’m putting too much of a burden on you, on myself. I’m going now before it all gets so ludicrous I go mad—’
‘Stay,’ said the young man.
Obedient to the command, she almost sat down.
‘Finish your coffee.’
She remained standing, but picked up her coffee cup with shaking hands. The soft rattle of the cup was the only sound for a time as she slaked the coffee with some unquenchable thirst. Then she put the empty cup down and said: ‘I really must go. I feel faint. I feel I might fall down. I am so embarrassed with myself, with coming here. God bless you, young man, and may you have a long life.’
She started toward the door, but he stood in her way.
‘Do what you came to do,’ he said.
‘What, what?’
‘You know. You know very well. I won’t mind it. Do it.’
‘I—’
‘Go on,’ he said gently, and shut his eyes, his hands at his side, waiting.
She stared into his face and then at his chest, where under his shirt there seemed the gentlest stirring.
‘Now,’ he said quietly.
She almost moved.
‘Now,’ he said, for a final time.
She took one step forward. She turned her head and quietly moved her right ear down and then again down, inch by inch, until it touched the young man’s chest.
She might have cried out, but did not. She might have exclaimed something, but did not. Her eyes were also shut now and she was listening. Her lips moved, saying something, perhaps a name, over and over, almost to the rhythm of the pulse she heard under the shirt, under the flesh, within the body of the patient young man.
The heart was beating there.
She listened.
The heart beat with a steady and regular sound.
She listened for a long while. Her breath slowly drained out of her, as color came into her cheeks.
She listened.
The heart beat.
Then she raised her head, looked at the young man’s face for a final time, and very swiftly touched her lips to his cheek, turned, and hurried across the room, with no thanks, for none was needed. At the door she did not even turn around but opened it and went out and closed the door softly.
The young man waited for a long moment. His right hand came up and slid across his shirt, across his chest to feel what lay underneath. His eyes were still shut and his face emotionless.
Then he turned and sat down without looking where he sat and picked up his coffee cup to finish his coffee.
The strong pulse, the great vibration of the life within his chest, traveled along his arm and into the cup and caused it to pulse in a steady rhythm, unending, as he placed it against his lips, and drank the coffee as if it were a medicine, a gift, that would refill the cup again and again through more days than he could possibly guess or see. He drained the cup.
Only then did he open his eyes and see that the room was empty.
The Twilight Greens (#u8b75a0e4-bd55-5bf0-9db8-9723f7709824)
It was getting late, but he thought there was just enough sunlight left that he could play a quick nine holes before he had to stop.
But even as he drove toward the golf course twilight came. A high fog had drifted in from the ocean, erasing the light.
He was about to turn away when something caught his eye.
Gazing out at the far meadows, he saw a half dozen or so golfers playing in the shadowed fields.
The players were not in foursomes, but walked singly, carrying their clubs across the grass, moving under the trees.
How strange, he thought. And, instead of leaving, he drove into the lot behind the clubhouse and got out.
Something made him go stand and watch a few men at the driving range, clubbing the golf balls to send them sailing out into the twilight.
But still those lone strollers far out on the fairway made him immensely curious; there was a certain melancholy to the scene.
Almost without thinking, he picked up his bag and carried his golf clubs out to the first tee, where three old men stood as if waiting for him.
Old men, he thought. Well no, not exactly old, but he was only thirty and they were well on into turning gray.
When he arrived they gazed at his suntanned face and his sharp clear eyes.
One of the aging men said hello.
‘What’s going on?’ said the young man, though he wondered why he asked it that way.
He studied the fields and the single golfers moving away in the shadows.
‘I mean,’ he said, nodding toward the fairway, ‘you’d think they’d be heading in. In ten minutes they won’t be able to see.’
‘They’ll see, all right,’ said one of the older men. ‘Fact is, we’re going out. We like the late hour, it’s a chance to be alone and think about things. So we’ll start off in a group and then go our separate ways.’
‘That’s a hell of a thing to do,’ said the young man.
‘So it is,’ said the other. ‘But we have our reasons. Come along if you want, but when we’re out about a hundred yards, you’ll most likely find yourself alone.’
The young man thought about it and nodded.
‘It’s a deal,’ he said.
One by one they stepped up to the tee and swung their clubs and watched the white golf balls vanish into the half dark.
They walked out into the last light, quietly.
The old man walked with the young man, occasionally glancing over at him. The other two men only looked ahead and said nothing. When they stopped the young man gasped. The old man said, ‘What?’
The young man exclaimed, ‘My God, I found it! How come, in this lousy light, I somehow knew where it would be?’
‘Those things happen,’ said the old man. ‘You could call it fate, or luck, or Zen. I call it simple, pure need. Go ahead.’
The young man looked down at his golf ball lying on the grass and stepped back quietly.
‘No, the others first,’ he said.
The other two men had also found their white golf balls lying in the grass and now took turns. One swung and hit and walked off alone. The other swung and hit and then he, too, vanished in the twilight.
The young man watched them going their separate ways.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I’ve never played in a foursome like this.’
‘It’s really not a foursome,’ said the old man. ‘You might call it a variation. They’ll go on and we’ll all meet again at the nineteenth green. Your turn.’
The young man hit and the ball sailed off into the purple-gray sky. He could almost hear it hit the grass a hundred yards out.
‘Go on,’ said the old man.
‘No,’ said the young man. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll walk with you.’
The old man nodded, positioned himself, and hit his golf ball into the dark. Then they walked on together in silence.
At last the young man, staring ahead, trying to figure the beginning night, said, ‘I’ve never seen a game played this way. Who are those others and what are they doing here? For that matter, who are you? And finally, I wonder, what in hell am I doing here? I don’t fit.’
‘Not quite,’ said the old man. ‘But perhaps someday you will.’
‘Someday?’ said the young man. ‘If I don’t fit now, why not?’
The old man kept walking, looking ahead, but not over at the younger man.
‘You’re much too young,’ he said. ‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty,’ said the young man.
‘That’s young. Wait until you’re fifty or sixty. Then maybe you’ll be ready to play the Twilight Greens.’
‘Is that what you call it, the Twilight Greens?’
‘Yes,’ said the old man. ‘Sometimes fellows like us go out and play really late, don’t come in till seven or eight o’clock; we have that need to just hit the ball and walk and hit again, then head in when we’re really tired.’
‘How do you know,’ said the young man, ‘when you’re ready to play the Twilight Greens?’
‘Well,’ said the old man, walking quietly, ‘we’re widowers. Not the usual kind. Everyone has heard of golf widows, women who are left at home when their husbands play golf all day Sunday, sometimes on Saturday, sometimes during the week; they get so caught up in it that they can’t quit. They become golfing machines and the wives wonder where in hell their husbands went. Well, in this case, we call ourselves the widowers; the wives are still at home, but the homes are cold, nobody lights a fire, meals are cooked, though not very often, and the beds are half empty. The widowers.’
The young man said, ‘Widowers? I still don’t quite understand. Nobody’s dead, are they?’
‘No,’ the old man said. ‘When you say “golf widows,” it means women left at home when men go out to play golf. In this case, “widowers” means men who have in fact widowed themselves from their homes.’
The young man mused for a moment and then said, ‘But there are people at home? There is a woman in each house, yes?’
‘Oh yes,’ said the old man. ‘They are there. They are there. But …’
‘But what?’ said the young man.
‘Well, look at it this way,’ said the old man, still walking quietly and looking off into the Twilight Greens. ‘For whatever reason, we come here at twilight, onto the fairway. Maybe because at home there is too little talk, or too much. Too much pillow talk, or too little. Too many children, or not enough children, or no children at all. All sorts of excuses. Too much money, not enough. Whatever the reason, all of a sudden these loners here have discovered that a good place to be as the sun goes down is out on the fairway, playing alone, hitting the ball, and following it into the fading light.’
‘I see,’ said the young man.
‘I’m not quite sure that you do.’
‘No,’ said the young man, ‘I do indeed, I do indeed. But I don’t think I’ll ever come back here again at twilight.’
The old man looked at him and nodded.
‘No, I don’t think you will. Not for a while, anyway. Maybe in twenty or thirty years. You’ve got too good a suntan and you walk too quickly and you look like you’re all revved up. From now on you should arrive here at noon and play with a real foursome. You shouldn’t be out here, walking on the Twilight Greens.’
‘I’ll never come back at night,’ said the young man. ‘It will never happen to me.’
‘I hope not,’ said the old man.
‘I’ll make sure of it,’ said the young man. ‘I think I’ve walked as far as I need to walk. I think that last hit put my ball too far out in the dark; I don’t think I want to find it.’
‘Well said,’ said the old man.
And they walked back and the night was really gathering now and they couldn’t hear their footsteps in the grass.
Behind them the lone strollers still moved, some in, some out, along the far greens.
When they reached the clubhouse, the young man looked at the old, who seemed very old indeed, and the old man looked at the young, who looked very young indeed.
‘If you do come back,’ said the old man, ‘at twilight, that is, if you ever feel the need to play a round starting out with three others and winding up alone, there’s one thing I’ve got to warn you about.’
‘What’s that?’ said the young man.
‘There is one word you must never use when you converse with all those people who wander out along the evening grass prairie.’
‘And the word is?’ said the young man.
‘Marriage,’ whispered the old man.
He shook the young man’s hand, took his bag of clubs, and walked away.
Far out, on the Twilight Greens, it now was true dark, and you could not see the men who still played there.
The young man with his suntanned face and clear, bright eyes turned, walked to his car, and drove away.
The Murder (#u8b75a0e4-bd55-5bf0-9db8-9723f7709824)
‘There are some people who would never commit a murder,’ said Mr Bentley.
‘Who, for instance?’ said Mr Hill.
‘Me, for instance, and lots more like me,’ said Mr Bentley.
‘Poppycock!’ said Mr Hill.
‘Poppycock?’
‘You heard what I said. Everybody’s capable of murder. Even you.’
‘I haven’t a motive in the world, I’m content with things, my wife is a good woman, I’ve got enough money, a good job, why should I commit murder?’ said Mr Bentley.
‘I could make you commit murder,’ said Mr Hill.
‘You could not.’
‘I could.’ Mr Hill looked out over the small green summer town, meditatively.
‘You can’t make a murderer out of a nonmurderer.’
‘Yes, I could.’
‘No, you couldn’t!’
‘How much would you like to bet?’
‘I’ve never bet in my life. Don’t believe in it.’
‘Oh, hell, a gentleman’s bet,’ said Mr Hill. ‘A dollar. A dollar to a dime. Come on, now, you’d bet a dime, wouldn’t you? You’d be three kinds of Scotchman not to, and showing little faith in your thesis, besides. Isn’t it worth a dime to prove you’re not a murderer?’
‘You’re joking.’
‘We’re both joking and we’re both not. All I’m interested in proving is that you’re no different than any other man. You’ve got a button to be pushed. If I could find it and push it, you’d commit murder.’
Mr Bentley laughed easily and cut the end from a cigar, twirled it between his comfortably fleshy lips, and leaned back in his rocker. Then he fumbled in his unbuttoned vest pocket, found a dime, and laid it on the porch newel in front of him. ‘All right,’ he said, and, thinking, drew forth another dime. ‘There’s twenty cents says I’m not a murderer. Now how are you going to prove that I am?’ He chuckled and squeezed his eyes deliciously shut. ‘I’m going to be sitting around here a good many years.’
‘There’ll be a time limit, of course.’
‘Oh, will there?’ Bentley laughed still louder.
‘Yes. One month from today, you’ll be a murderer.’
‘One month from today, eh? Ho!’ And he laughed, because the idea was so patently ridiculous. Recovering enough, he put his tongue in his cheek. ‘Today’s August first, right? So on September first, you owe me a dollar.’
‘No, you’ll owe me two dimes.’
‘You’re stubborn, aren’t you?’
‘You don’t know how stubborn.’
It was a fine late-summer evening, with just the right breeze, a lack of mosquitoes, two cigars burning the right way, and the sound of Mr Bentley’s wife clashing the dinner plates into soapsuds in the distant kitchen. Along the streets of the small town, people were coming out onto their porches, nodding at one another.
‘This is one of the most foolish conversations I’ve ever held in my life,’ said Mr Bentley, sniffing the air with glad appreciation, noting the smell of fresh-cut grass. ‘We talk about murder for ten minutes, we get off into whether all of us are capable of murder, and, next thing you know, we’ve made a bet.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Hill.
Mr Bentley looked over at his boarder. Mr Hill was about fifty-five, though he looked a bit older, with cold blue eyes, and a gray face, and lines that made it look like an apricot that has been allowed to shrivel in the sun. He was neatly bald, like a Caesar, and had an intense way of talking, gripping the chair, gripping your arm, gripping his own hands together as if in prayer, always convincing himself or convincing you of the truth of his exclamations. They had had many good talks in the past three months, since Mr Hill had moved into the back bedroom. They had talked of myriad things: locusts in spring, snow in April, seasonal tempests and coolings, trips to far places, the usual talk, scented with tobacco, comfortable as a full dinner, and there was a feeling in Mr Bentley that he had grown up with this stranger, known him from his days as a yelling child through bumpy adolescence to whitening senility. This, come to think of it, was the first time they had ever disagreed on anything. The wonderful thing about their friendship had been that it had so far excluded any quibblings or side issues, and had walked the straight way of Truth, or what the two men thought was truth, or perhaps, thought Mr Bentley now, with the cigar in his hand, what he had thought was the truth and what Mr Hill, out of politeness or plan, had pretended to take for the truth also.
‘Easiest money I ever made,’ said Mr Bentley.
‘Wait and see. Carry those dimes with you. You may need them soon.’
Mr Bentley put the coins into his vest pocket, half soberly. Perhaps a turn in the wind had, for a moment, changed the temperature of his thoughts. For a moment, his mind said, Well, could you murder? Eh?
‘Shake on it,’ said Mr Hill.
Mr Hill’s cold hand gripped tightly.
‘It’s a bet.’
‘All right, you fat slob, good night,’ said Mr Hill, and got up.
‘What?’ cried Mr Bentley, startled, not insulted yet, but because he couldn’t believe that terrible use of words.
‘Good night, slob,’ said Mr Hill, looking at him calmly. His hands were busy, moving aside the buttons on his summer shirt. The flesh of his lean stomach was revealed. There was an old scar there. It looked as if a bullet had gone cleanly through.
‘You see,’ said Mr Hill, seeing the wide popping eyes of the plump man in the rocking chair, ‘I’ve made this bet before.’
The front door shut softly. Mr Hill was gone.
The light was burning in Mr Hill’s room at ten minutes after one. Sitting there in the dark, Mr Bentley at last, unable to find sleep, got up and moved softly into the hall and looked at Mr Hill. For the door was open and there was Mr Hill standing before a mirror, touching, tapping, pinching himself, now here, now there.
And he seemed to be thinking to himself, Look at me! Look, here, Bentley, and here!
Bentley looked.
There were three round scars on Hill’s chest and stomach. There was a long slash scar over his heart, and a little one on his neck. And on his back, as if a dragon had pulled its talons across in a furious raveling, a series of terrible furrows.
Mr Bentley stood with his tongue between his lips, his hands open.
‘Come in,’ said Mr Hill.
Bentley did not move.
‘You’re up late.’
‘Just looking at myself. Vanity, vanity.’
‘Those scars, all those scars.’
‘There are a few, aren’t there?’
‘So many. My God, I’ve never seen scars like that. How did you get them?’
Hill went on preening and feeling and caressing himself, stripped to the waist. ‘Well, now maybe you can guess.’ He winked and smiled friendlily.
‘How did you get them?!’
‘You’ll wake your wife.’
‘Tell me!’
‘Use your imagination, man.’
He exhaled and inhaled and exhaled again.
‘What can I do for you, Mr Bentley?’
‘I’ve come—’
‘Speak up.’
‘I want you to move out.’
‘Oh now, Bentley.’
‘We need this room.’
‘Really?’
‘My wife’s mother is coming to visit.’
‘That’s a lie.’
Bentley nodded. ‘Yes. I’m lying.’
‘Why don’t you say it? You want me to leave, period.’
‘Right.’
‘Because you’re afraid of me.’
‘No, I’m not afraid.’
‘Well, what if I told you I wouldn’t leave?’
‘No, you couldn’t do that.’
‘Well, I could, and I am.’
‘No, no.’
‘What are we having for breakfast, ham and eggs again?’ He craned his neck to examine that little scar there.
‘Please say you’ll go,’ asked Mr Bentley.
‘No,’ said Mr Hill.
‘Please.’
‘There’s no use begging. You make yourself look silly.’
‘Well, then, if you stay here, let’s call off the bet.’
‘Why call it off?’
‘Because.’
‘Afraid of yourself?’
‘No, I’m not!’
‘Shh.’ He pointed to the wall. ‘Your wife.’
‘Let’s call off the bet. Here. Here’s my money. You win!’ He groped frantically into his pocket and drew forth the two dimes. He threw them on the dresser, crashing. ‘Take them! You win! I could commit murder, I could, I admit it.’
Mr Hill waited a moment, and without looking at the coins, put his fingers down on the dresser, groped, found them, picked them up, clinked them, held them out. ‘Here.’
‘I don’t want them back!’ Bentley retreated to the doorway.
‘Take them.’
‘You win!’
‘A bet is a bet. This proves nothing.’
He turned and came to Bentley and dropped them in Bentley’s shirt pocket and patted them. Bentley took two steps back into the hall. ‘I do not make bets idly,’ Hill said.
Bentley stared at those terrible scars. ‘How many other people have you made this bet with!’ he cried. ‘How many?!’
Hill laughed. ‘Ham and eggs, eh?’
‘How many?! How many?!’
‘See you at breakfast,’ said Mr Hill.
He shut the door. Mr Bentley stood looking at it. He could see the scars through the door, as if by some translucency of the eye and mind. The razor scars. The knife scars. They hung in the paneling, like knots in old wood.
The light went out behind the door.
He stood over the body and he heard the house waking up, rushing, the feet down the stairs, the shouts, the half screams and stirrings. In a moment, people would be flooding around him. In a moment, there’d be a siren and a flashing red light, the car doors slamming, the snap of manacles to the fleshy wrists, the questions, the peering into his white, bewildered face. But now he only stood over the body, fumbling. The gun had fallen into the deep, good-smelling night grass. The air was still charged with electricity but the storm was passing, and he was beginning to notice things again. And there was his right hand, all by itself, fumbling about like a blind mole, digging, digging senselessly at his shirt pocket until it found what it wanted. And he felt his gross weight bend, stoop, almost fall, as he almost rushed down over the body. His blind hand went out and closed the up-staring eyes of Mr Hill, and on each wrinkled, cooling eyelid put a shiny new dime.
The door slammed behind him. Hattie screamed.
He turned to her with a sick smile. ‘I just lost a bet,’ he heard himself say.
When the Bough Breaks (#u8b75a0e4-bd55-5bf0-9db8-9723f7709824)
The night was cold and there was a slight wind which had begun to rise around two in the morning.
The leaves in all the trees outside began to tremble.
By three o’clock the wind was constant and murmuring outside the window.
She was the first to open her eyes.
And then, for some imperceptible reason, he stirred in his half sleep.
‘You awake?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There was a sound, something called.’
He half raised his head.
A long way off there was a soft wailing.
‘Hear that?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Something’s crying.’
‘Something?’ he said.
‘Someone,’ she said. ‘It sounds like a ghost.’
‘My God, what a thing. What time is it?’
‘Three in the morning. That terrible hour.’
‘Terrible?’ he said.
‘You know Dr Meade told us at the hospital that that’s the one hour when people just give up, they don’t keep trying anymore. That’s when they die. Three in the morning.’
‘I’d rather not think about that,’ he said.
The sound from outside the house grew louder.
‘There it is again,’ she said. ‘That sounds like a ghost.’
‘Oh my God,’ he whispered. ‘What kind of ghost?’
‘A baby,’ she said. ‘A baby crying.’
‘Since when do babies have ghosts? Have we known any babies recently that died?’ He made a soft sound of laughter.
‘No,’ she said, and shook her head back and forth. ‘But maybe it’s not the ghost of a baby that died, but … I don’t know. Listen.’
He listened and the crying came again, a long way off.
‘What if—’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘What if it’s the ghost of a child—’
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘That hasn’t been born yet.’
‘Are there such ghosts? And can they make sounds? My God, why do I say that? What a strange thing to say.’
‘The ghost of a baby that hasn’t been born yet.’
‘How can it have a voice?’ he said.
‘Maybe it’s not dead, but just wants to live,’ she said. ‘It’s so far off, so sad. How can we answer it?’
They both listened and the quiet cry continued and the wind wailed outside the window.
Listening, tears came into her eyes and, listening, the same thing happened to him.
‘I can’t stand this,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get up and get something to eat.’
‘No, no,’ she said, and took his hand and held it. ‘Be very quiet and listen. Maybe we’ll get answers.’
He lay back and held her hand and tried to shut his eyes, but could not.
They both lay in bed and the wind continued murmuring, and the leaves shook outside the window.
A long way off, a great distance off, the sound of weeping went on and on.
‘Who could that be?’ she said. ‘What could that be? It won’t stop. It makes me so sad. Is it asking to be let in?’
‘Let in?’ he said.
‘To live. It’s not dead, it’s never lived, but it wants to live. Do you think—’ She hesitated.
‘What?’
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Do you think the way we talked a month ago …?’
‘What talk was that?’ he said.
‘About the future. About our not having a family. No family. No children.’
‘I don’t remember,’ he said.
‘Try to,’ she said. ‘We promised each other no family, no children.’ She hesitated and then added, ‘No babies.’
‘No children. No babies?’
‘Do you think—’ She raised her head and listened to the crying outside the window, far away, through the trees, across the country. ‘Can it be that—’
‘What?’ he said.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that I know a way to stop that crying.’
He waited for her to continue.
‘I think that maybe—’
‘What?’ he said.
‘Maybe you should come over on this side of the bed.’
‘Are you asking me over?’
‘I am, yes, please, come over.’
He turned and looked at her and finally rolled completely over toward her. A long way off the town clock struck three-fifteen, then three-thirty, then three forty-five, then four o’clock.
Then they both lay, listening.
‘Do you hear?’ she said.
‘I’m listening.’
‘The crying.’
‘It’s stopped,’ he said.
‘Yes. That ghost, that child, that baby, that crying, thank God it stopped.’
He held her hand, turned his face toward her, and said, ‘We stopped it.’
‘We did,’ she said. ‘Oh yes, thank God, we stopped it.’
The night was very quiet. The wind began to die. The leaves on the trees outside stopped trembling.
And they lay in the night, hand in hand, listening to the silence, the wonderful silence, and waited for the dawn.
We’ll Always Have Paris (#ulink_acd7b358-c128-5d2f-af67-059e22062142)
It was a hot Saturday night in July in Paris, near midnight, when I prepared to head out and walk around the city, my favorite pastime, starting at Notre Dame and ending, sometimes, at the Eiffel Tower.
My wife had gone to bed at nine o’clock and as I stood by the door she said, ‘No matter how late, bring back some pizza.’
‘One pizza coming up,’ I said, and stepped out into the hall.
I walked from the hotel across the river and along to Notre Dame and then stopped in at the Shakespeare Bookstore and headed back along the Boul Miche to stop at Les Deux Magots, the outdoor café where Hemingway, more than a generation ago, had regaled his friends with Pernod, grappa, and Africa.
I sat there for a while watching the Parisians, of which there was a multitude, had myself a Pernod and a beer, and then headed back toward the river.
The street leading away from Les Deux Magots was no more than an alley lined with antiques stores and art galleries.
I walked along, almost alone, and was nearing the Seine when a peculiar thing happened, the strangest thing that had ever happened in my life.
I realized I was being followed. But it was a strange kind of following.
I looked behind me and no one was there. I looked ahead about forty yards and saw a young man in a summer suit.
At first I didn’t realize what he was doing. But when I stopped to look in a window and glanced up, I saw that he had stopped eighty or ninety feet ahead of me and was looking back, watching me.
As soon as he saw my glance he walked away, farther on up the street, where he stopped again and looked back.
After a few more of these silent exchanges, it came to me what was going on. Instead of following me from behind, he was following me by leading the way and looking back to make sure that I came along.
The process continued for an entire city block and then finally, at last, I came to an intersection and found him waiting for me.
He was tall and slender and blond and quite handsome and seemed, somehow, to be French; he looked athletic, perhaps a tennis player or a swimmer.
I didn’t know quite how I felt about the situation. Was I pleased, was I flattered, was I embarrassed?
Suddenly, confronted with him, I stood at the intersection and said something in English and he shook his head.
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