I nodded and said her father had probably taken the long view, while I was taking the short whatever that meant. He was extremely handsome, too. Not that one's appearance matters greatly, but he was.
He had terribly penetrating eyes, for a man who was intransically kind. I nodded. I said I imagined her father had had quite an extraordinary vocabulary. At that point, I felt an importunate tap, almost a punch, on my upper arm, from Charles' direction. I turned to him. He was sitting in a fairly normal position in his chair now, except that he had one knee tucked under him. I rolled my eyes reflectively ceilingward and repeated the question aloud. Then I looked at Charles with a stumped expression and said I gave up.
It went over biggest with Charles himself. It struck him as unbearably funny. She went back to her own seat. Usually he drools when he laughs. Now, just stop, please. In response to this compliment, he sank considerably lower in his chair and again masked his face up to the eyes with a corner of the tablecloth. He then looked at me with his exposed eyes, which were full of slowly subsiding mirth and the pride of someone who knows a really good riddle or two.
I said I hadn't been employed at all, that I'd only been out of college a year but that I like to think of myself as a professional short-story writer. She nodded politely. It was a familiar but always touchy question, and one that I didn't answer just one, two, three.
I started to explain how most editors in America were a bunch I said that sounded like a very good idea. I happened to be looking at her enormous-faced, chronographic-looking wristwatch again.
I asked if it had belonged to her father. She looked down at her wrist solemnly. I'm an avid reader. I told her I certainly would, if I could. I said that I wasn't terribly prolific. Just so that it isn't childish and silly. I'm extremely interested in squalor.
I was about to press her for more details, but I felt Charles pinching me, hard, on my arm. I turned to him, wincing slightly. He was standing right next to me. Ignoring his sister, and stepping up on one of my feet, Charles repeated the key question. I noticed that his necktie knot wasn't adjusted properly. I slid it up into place, then, looking him straight in the eye, suggested, "Meetcha at the corner?
The instant I'd said it, I wished I hadn't. Charles' mouth fell open. I felt as if I'd struck it open. He stepped down off my foot and, with white-hot dignity, walked over to his own table, without looking back. My mother had a propensity to spoil him. My father was the only one who didn't spoil him. I kept looking over at Charles, who had sat down and started to drink his tea, using both hands on the cup. I hoped he'd turn around, but he didn't.
I got up from my own chair, with mixed feelings of regret and confusion. I told her, in English, how very much I'd enjoyed her company. As a matter of fact, I think a lot of the wave is coming back already. She quickly touched her hair again. I answered that I'd like nothing better but that, unfortunately, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to make it again.
She made no move to leave the vicinity of the table. In fact, she crossed one foot over the other and, looking down, aligned the toes of her shoes.
It was a pretty little execution, for she was wearing white socks and her ankles and feet were lovely. She looked up at me abruptly. I ordered another pot of tea and sat watching the two of them till they, and the harassed Miss Megley, got up to leave. Charles led the way out, limping tragically, like a man with one leg several, inches shorter than the other. He didn't look over at me. I waved back, half getting up from my chair. It was a strangely emotional moment for me.
I immediately put down my cup, and said that was very nice, but was she sure? She let go Charles' sleeve and gave him a rather vigorous push in my direction. He came forward, his face livid, and gave me a loud, wet smacker just below the right ear. Following this ordeal, he started to make a beeline for the door and a less sentimental way of life, but I caught the half belt at the back of his reefer, held on to it, and asked him, "What did one wall say to the other wall?
His face lit up. Esme was standing with crossed ankles again. It can--". I said there was absolutely no chance that I'd forget. I told her that I'd never written a story for anybody, but that it seemed like exactly the right time to get down to it. I said not exactly but that I was getting better acquainted with it, in one form or another, all the time, and that I'd do my best to come up to her specifications. We shook hands. I said it was, I said it certainly was. I thanked her, and said a few other words, and then watched her leave the tearoom.
She left it slowly, reflectively, testing the ends of her hair for dryness. This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story, and the scene changes. The people change, too. I'm still around, but from here on in, for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose, I've disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me.
Staff Sergeant X was in his room on the second floor of the civilian home in which he and nine other American soldiers had been quartered, even before the armistice. He was seated on a folding wooden chair at a small, messy-looking writing table, with a paperback overseas novel open before him, which he was having great trouble reading.
The trouble lay with him, not the novel. Although the men who lived on the first floor usually had first grab at the books sent each month by Special Services, X usually seemed to be left with the book he might have selected himself. But he was a young man who had not come through the war with all his faculties intact, and for more than an hour he had been triple-reading paragraphs, and now he was doing it to the sentences.
He suddenly closed the book, without marking his place. With his hand, he shielded his eyes for a moment against the harsh, watty glare from the naked bulb over the table. He took a cigarette from a pack on the table and lit it with fingers that bumped gently and incessantly against one another. He sat back a trifle in his chair and smoked without any sense of taste. He had been chain-smoking for weeks. His gums bled at the slightest pressure of the tip of his tongue, and he seldom stopped experimenting; it was a little game he played, sometimes by the hour.
He sat for a moment smoking and experimenting. Then, abruptly, familiarly, and, as usual, with no warning, he thought he felt his mind dislodge itself and teeter, like insecure luggage on an overhead rack. He quickly did what he had been doing for weeks to set things right: he pressed his hands hard against his temples. He held on tight for a moment. His hair needed cutting, and it was dirty. He had washed it three or four times during his two weeks' stay at the hospital in Frankfort on the Main, but it had got dirty again on the long, dusty jeep ride back to Gaufurt.
Corporal Z, who had called for him at the hospital, still drove a jeep combat-style, with the windshield down on the hood, armistice or no armistice.
There were thousands of new troops in Germany. By driving with his windshield down, combat-style, Corporal Z hoped to show that he was not one of them, that not by a long shot was he some new son of a bitch in the E. When he let go of his head, X began to stare at the surface of the writing table, which was a catchall for at least two dozen unopened letters and at least five or six unopened packages, all addressed to him.
He reached behind the debris and picked out a book that stood against the wall. She had been a low official in the Nazi Party, but high enough, by Army Regulations standards, to fall into an automatic-arrest category.
X himself had arrested her. Now, for the third time since he had returned from the hospital that day, he opened the woman's book and read the brief inscription on the flyleaf. Written in ink, in German, in a small, hopelessly sincere handwriting, were the words "Dear God, life is hell.
Alone on the page, and in the sickly stillness of the room, the words appeared to have the stature of an uncontestable, even classic indictment. X stared at the page for several minutes, trying, against heavy odds, not to be taken in. He shut the book. He quickly picked up something else from the table, a letter from his older brother in Albany.
It had been on his table even before he had checked into the hospital. He opened the envelope, loosely resolved to read the letter straight through, but read only the top half of the first page. He stopped after the words "Now that the g. He saw that he had overlooked an enclosed snapshot. He could make out somebody's feet standing on a lawn somewhere. He put his arms on the table and rested his head on them. He ached from head to foot, all zones of pain seemingly interdependent.
He was rather like a Christmas tree whose lights, wired in series, must all go out if even one bulb is defective. The door banged open, without having been rapped on.
X raised his head, turned it, and saw Corporal Z standing in the door. Corporal Z had been X's jeep partner and constant companion from D Day straight through five campaigns of the war. He lived on the first floor and he usually came up to see X when he had a few rumors or gripes to unload. He was a huge, photogenic young man of twenty-four.
During the war, a national magazine had photographed him in Hurtgen Forest; he had posed, more than just obligingly, with a Thanksgiving turkey in each hand. X turned around in his chair and asked him to come in, and to be careful not to step on the dog. He's right under your feet, Clay. How 'bout turning on the goddam light? Clay found the overhead-light switch, flicked it on, then stepped across the puny, servant's-size room and sat down on the edge of the bed, facing his host.
His brick-red hair, just combed, was dripping with the amount of water he required for satisfactory grooming. A comb with a fountain-pen clip protruded, familiarly, from the right-hand pocket of his olive-drab shirt. Over the left-hand pocket he was wearing the Combat Infantrymen's Badge which, technically, he wasn't authorized to wear , the European Theater ribbon, with five bronze battle stars in it instead of a lone silver one, which was the equivalent of five bronze ones , and the pre-Pearl Harbor service ribbon.
He sighed heavily and said, "Christ almighty. He took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, tapped one out, then put away the pack and rebuttoned the pocket flap. Smoking, he looked vacuously around the room. His look finally settled on the radio. Bob Hope, and everybody. X, opening a fresh pack of cigarettes, said he had just turned the radio off. Undarkened, Clay watched X trying to get a cigarette lit.
Boy, have you got the shakes. Ya know that? X got his cigarette lit, nodded, and said Clay had a real eye for detail. I goddam near fainted when I saw you at the hospital. This is another interesting use of writing; here, it helps Clay become the war hero he dreams of being, at least in the eyes of the ones he loves. Parents Home Homeschool College Resources.
Study Guide. Previous Next. What's Up With the Ending? I feel as though there is a lot of hope and friendship in the story. After reading the story I felt like it is about Salinger himself, when he was a soldier. It felt so personal to me. Thanks for the comment Tina. The meaning of Esme wanting a story written exclusively for her, and that about squalor needs probe. The story brings happiness reading about Charlie and his pranks and the way Esme tries to control him and the way the Governess is not able to have hold on the children.
This story is akin to A Perfect day for Banana fish in structure without the dark allusions , the soldier returning from war, the mental state and his association with girls much younger.
Innocence rather than ignorance leading to mature empathy, it is really not possible to deduce what JD Salinger had in mind when he wrote this story. The conversation between Mother-in law and wife, versus between his child-friend in the beach and the soldier returnee in A Perfect day for Banana fish, and here in this case Esme and the Soldier in the cafe versus later in the post war situation between Clay and the Soldier. To what effect, the two tier works is to be analysed.
Great Comment, Saranyan. Ever thought about that? Dear Michelle Fair comment. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail. Currently you have JavaScript disabled. In order to post comments, please make sure JavaScript and Cookies are enabled, and reload the page.
Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser. Home About Contact. Cite Post McManus, Dermot. The Sitting Bee, 19 Mar. Share Post: Facebook Twitter Print. Nine Stories. Very good analysis. Dermot Post Author December 12, am. Thanks Pratik. Pratik December 12, am. Thanks for the reply Dermot. Can you suggest some good short stories or long. Your favorites. Dermot Post Author December 12, pm. Pratik December 13, am. Dermot Post Author December 14, am.
Subarna May 11, pm. Dermot Post Author May 12, am.
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