Evening In Byzantium Part 31
"I don't like women of leisure," he said.
"Neither do I," Constance said. "Here-" She rummaged in her bag and brought out a slip of paper. He recognized Gail's handwriting. "I promised her I'd give you her telephone number if I saw you before she did. She's in Philadelphia, staying with her father to save money. She's flat broke, she told me."
He took the slip of paper. There was an address, a telephone number. No message. He put the slip of paper on the bedside table.
Constance stood up. "Your nurse told me not to tire you," she said.
"Will I see you again?"
"Not in New York," she said. She began pulling on her gloves. "You can't keep gloves clean more than an hour in this city." She brushed the back of one glove with an annoyed gesture. "I won't pretend I enjoyed New York this trip. A kiss for good-by." She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. "You're not going to die, darling, are you?" she whispered.
"No," he said. "I don't think so."
"I couldn't bear it if you did," she said. Then stood erect and smiled. "I'll send you a card from the Golden Gate," she said, and was gone.
She was the best girl he had ever known, and she was gone.
He didn't call the Philadelphia number until the next morning. A man who answered the phone and who said he was Miss McKinnon's father asked him who was calling. When Craig gave him his name, Mr. McKinnon's voice grew icy, and he seemed to be delighted to be able to tell Craig that Miss McKinnon had left the day before for London.
Fair enough, Craig thought. He himself would have been no more polite with Ian Wadleigh.
A week later they let him out of the hospital. His temperature had been normal for three days in a row. The evening before he was discharged Dr. Gibson had a long talk with him. Or what pa.s.sed for a long talk with Dr. Gibson. "You're a lucky man, Mr. Craig," Dr. Gibson had said. He sat there, a spare, ascetic old man who did a half-hour of exercise every morning and swallowed ten yeast tablets a day, laying down the law. "A lot of people wouldn't have pulled through the way you did. Now, you've got to be careful. Very, very careful. Stick to the diet. And no alcohol. Not even a sip of wine for a year. Maybe forever." Dr. Gibson was a fanatic teetotaler, and Craig thought he detected a steely pleasure in Gibson's voice as he said this. "And forget about working for six months. And you seem to be a man who leads a complicated life-most complicated, I would say." It was the first time that Dr. Gibson had suggested that he had drawn any conclusions from the list of people who had come to visit his patient. "If I were forced to make one single diagnosis of what produced your attack, Mr. Craig," the doctor said, "I would hazard the guess that it was not a functional accident or malformation, or some hereditary weakness. You understand what I mean, I'm sure, Mr. Craig."
"I do."
"Uncomplicate yourself, Mr. Craig," Dr. Gibson said. "Uncomplicate yourself. And eat yeast."
Eating yeast, Craig thought, as Dr. Gibson stalked out, eating yeast would be easy.
He shook hands with Miss Balissano at the hospital door and stepped out into the street. He had told Miss Balissano that he would have somebody pick up his things. He walked out into the sunshine slowly, blinking, his clothes hanging loose around his body. It was a clear, warm day. He hadn't let anyone, not even Belinda, know that today was to be the day. Superst.i.tion. Even as he went out the door, he was afraid that Miss Balissano would come running after him and say that a terrible mistake had been made and that he was to be rushed back into bed and the tube stuck once more into his arm.
But n.o.body came after him. He walked aimlessly on the sunny side of the street. The people he pa.s.sed seemed beautiful. The girls were lithe and walked with their heads up, half-smiling as though they were remembering innocent but intense pleasures of the night before. The young men, bearded and unbearded, walked with a purpose, looked everyone in the eye. The little children were clean and laughing, dressed in anemone colors, and darted past him with immortal energy. The old men were neat and sprightly, philosophic about death in the sunshine.
He had made no hotel reservation. He was alone, alive, walking, each step stronger than the one before it, alone, with no address, drifting down a street in his native city, and no one in the whole world knew where he was; no friend, enemy, lover, daughter, business a.s.sociate, lawyer, banker, certified public accountant, knew where he was going, had any claims on him, could reach him or touch him. For this moment, at least, he had made a s.p.a.ce for himself.
He pa.s.sed a shop in which typewriters were on display. He stopped and examined the window. The machines were clean, intricate, useful. He went into the shop. A soft-spoken clerk showed him various models. He thought of his friend the matador making a selection of swords in the shop in Madrid. He told the clerk he would be back and leave his order.
He left the shop, the future, comfortable clatter of the machine he would eventually buy tapping in his ear.
He found himself on Third Avenue. He was in front of a saloon he had once frequented. He looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty. Time for a drink. He went in. The saloon was almost empty. Two men talking at the other end of the bar. Male voices.
The bartender came up. The bartender was powerful, pink and fat in his ap.r.o.n, and had an old fighter's broken nose, scarred eyebrows. The bartender was beautiful. "A Scotch and soda," Craig said. He watched with great interest as the bartender poured the whisky into a jigger, splashed it over ice, opened a bottle of soda. He poured the soda himself, carefully, enjoying the cold feel of the bottle in his hand. He stood looking thoughtfully at his drink for a full minute. Then he drank, with truant joy.
From the other end of the bar a man's voice said loudly, "Then I told her-you know what I told her-'f.u.c.k off!' I told her."
Craig smiled. Still alive, he took another sip of his drink. He didn't remember when a drink had ever tasted as good.
A Biography of Irwin Shaw.
Irwin Shaw (19131984) was an award-winning American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short story writer. His novel The Young Lions (1948) is considered a cla.s.sic of World War II fiction. From the early pages of the New Yorker to the bestseller lists, Shaw earned a reputation as a leading literary voice of his generation.
Shaw was born Irwin Shamforoff in the Bronx, New York, on February 27, 1913. His parents, Will and Rose, were Russian Jewish immigrants and his father struggled as a haberdasher. The family moved to Brooklyn and barely survived the Depression. After graduating from high school at the age of sixteen, Shaw worked his way through Brooklyn College, where he started as quarterback on the school's sc.r.a.ppy football team.
"Discovered" by a college teacher (who later got him his first a.s.signment, writing for the d.i.c.k Tracy radio serials), Shaw became a household name at the age of twenty-two thanks to his first produced play, Bury the Dead. This 1935 Broadway hit-still regularly produced around the world-is a bugle call against profit-driven barbarity. Offered a job as a Hollywood staff scriptwriter, Shaw then contributed to numerous Golden Era films such as The Big Game (1936) and The Talk of the Town (1942). While continuing to write memorable stories for the New Yorker, he also penned The Gentle People (1939), a play that was adapted for film four different times.
World War II altered the course of Shaw's career. Refusing a commission, he enlisted in the army, and was shipped off to North Africa as a private in a photography unit in 1943. After the North African campaign, he served in London during the preparations for the invasion of Normandy. After D-Day, Shaw and his unit followed the front lines and doc.u.mented many of the most important moments of the war, including the liberations of Paris and the Dachau concentration camp.
The Young Lions (1948), his epic novel, follows three soldiers-two Americans and one German-across North Africa, Europe, and into Germany. Along with James Jones's From Here to Eternity, Joseph h.e.l.ler's Catch-22, Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, and The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk, The Young Lions stands as one of the great American novels of World War II. In 1958, it was made into a film starring Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift.
In 1951, wrongly suspected of Communist sympathies, Shaw moved to Europe with his wife and six-month-old son. In Paris, he was neighbors with journalist Art Buchwald and friends with the great French writers, photographers, actors, and moviemakers of his generation, including Joseph Kessel, Robert Capa, Simone Signoret, and Louis Malle. In Rome, Shaw gave author William Styron his wedding lunch, doctored screenplays, walked with director Federico Fellini on the Via Veneto, and got the idea for his novel Two Weeks in Another Town (1960).
Finally, he settled in the small Swiss village of Klosters and continued writing screenplays, stage plays, and novels. Rich Man, Poor Man (1970) and Beggerman, Thief (1977) were made into the first famous television miniseries. Nightwork (1975) will soon be a major motion picture. Shaw died in the shadow of the Swiss peaks that had inspired Thomas Mann's great novel The Magic Mountain.
Shaw as a young soldier crossing North Africa from Algiers to Cairo in 1943.
Shaw's US Army record.
Shaw just after D-Day in Normandy, France, in 1944.
A few weeks after D-Day, Shaw and his Signal Corps film crew liberate Mont Saint-Michel.
A 1944 letter from Shaw to his wife, Marian, describing the "taking" of Mont Saint-Michel, as well as a nerve-wracking night under a cathedral when he almost shot a group of monks, believing them to be Germans.
Shaw as a warrant-officer in Austria in 1945, with Signal Corps Captain Josh Logan (left) and Colonel Anatole Litvak (center), who became his lifelong friends.
Shaw, Marian, and their son, Adam, on the terrace of the newly built Chalet Mia in Klosters, Switzerland, in 1957.
Shaw at home with Marian at Chalet Mia, Klosters, in 1958.
Shaw (center) skiing in Klosters in 1960 with (left to right) Noel Howard (an actor), an unidentified Hollywood producer, Marian Shaw, Jacques Charmoz (a French World War II pilot, cartoonist, and painter), and Jacqueline Tesseron.
Shaw in Klosters in 1960 with (from left to right) Kathy Parrish, her husband Robert Parrish (an Academy Awardwinning film editor and director), and Peter Viertel (a screenwriter, novelist, and Shaw's coauthor for the play The Survivors). Shaw's friendship with Viertel started before the war, when they both lived in Malibu.
Shaw with Irving P. "Swifty" Lazar, the legendary talent agent who represented him, in Evian, France, in 1963.
Shaw playing tennis in Klosters in 1964.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fict.i.tiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 1973 by Irwin Shaw.
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