We’ll Always Have Paris

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.