The Use of Force

The Use of Force
William Carlos Williams

They were new patients to me, all I had was the name, Olson. Please come down as soon as you can, my daughter is very sick.

When I arrived I was met by the mother, a big startled looking woman, very clean and apologetic who merely said, Is this the doctor? and let me in. In the back, she added. You must excuse us, doctor, we have her in the kitchen where it is warm. It is very damp here sometimes.

The child was fully dressed and sitting on her father's lap near the kitchen table. He tried to get up, but I motioned for him not to bother, took off my overcoat and started to look things over. I could see that they were all very nervous, eyeing me up and down distrustfully. As often, in such cases, they weren't telling me more than they had to, it was up to me to tell them; that's why they were spending three dollars on me.

The child was fairly eating me up with her cold, steady eyes, and no expression to her face whatever. She did not move and seemed, inwardly, quiet; an unusually attractive little thing, and as strong as a heifer in appearance. But her face was flushed, she was breathing rapidly, and I realized that she had a high fever. She had magnificent blonde hair, in profusion. One of those picture children often reproduced in advertising leaflets and the photogravure sections of the Sunday papers.

She's had a fever for three days, began the father and we don't know what it comes from. My wife has given her things, you know, like people do, but it don't do no good. And there's been a lot of sickness around. So we tho't you'd better look her over and tell us what is the matter.

As doctors often do I took a trial shot at it as a point of departure. Has she had a sore throat?

Both parents answered me together, No . . . No, she says her throat don't hurt her.

Does your throat hurt you? added the mother to the child. But the little girl's expression didn't change nor did she move her eyes from my face.

Have you looked?

I tried to, said the mother, but I couldn't see.

As it happens we had been having a number of cases of diphtheria in the school to which this child went during that month and we were all, quite apparently, thinking of that, though no one had as yet spoken of the thing.

Well, I said, suppose we take a look at the throat first. I smiled in my best professional manner and asking for the child's first name I said, come on, Mathilda, open your mouth and let's take a look at your throat.

Nothing doing.

Aw, come on, I coaxed, just open your mouth wide and let me take a look. Look, I said opening both hands wide, I haven't anything in my hands. Just open up and let me see.

Such a nice man, put in the mother. Look how kind he is to you. Come on, do what he tells you to. He won't hurt you.

At that I ground my teeth in disgust. If only they wouldn't use the word "hurt" I might be able to get somewhere. But I did not allow myself to be hurried or disturbed but speaking quietly and slowly I approached the child again.

As I moved my chair a little nearer suddenly with one catlike movement both her hands clawed instinctively for my eyes and she almost reached them too. In fact she knocked my glasses flying and they fell, though unbroken, several feet away from me on the kitchen floor.

Both the mother and father almost turned themselves inside out in embarrassment and apology. You bad girl, said the mother, taking her and shaking her by one arm. Look what you've done. The nice man . . .

For heaven's sake, I broke in. Don't call me a nice man to her. I'm here to look at her throat on the chance that she might have diphtheria and possibly die of it. But that's nothing to her. Look here, I said to the child, we're going to look at your throat. You're old enough to understand what I'm saying. Will you open it now by yourself or shall we have to open it for you)

Not a move. Even her expression hadn't changed. Her breaths however were coming faster and faster. Then the battle began. I had to do it. I had to have a throat culture for her own protection. But first I told the parents that it was entirely up to them. I explained the danger but said that I would not insist on a throat examination so long as they would take the responsibility.

If you don't do what the doctor says you'll have to go to the hospital, the mother admonished her severely.

Oh yeah? I had to smile to myself. After all, I had already fallen in love with the savage brat, the parents were contemptible to me. In the ensuing struggle they grew more and more abject, crushed, exhausted while she surely rose to magnificent heights of insane fury of effort bred of her terror of me.

The father tried his best, and he was a big man but the fact that she was his daughter, his shame at her behavior and his dread of hurting her made him release her just at the critical times when I had almost achieved success, till I wanted to kill him. But his dread also that she might have diphtheria made him tell me to go on, go on though he himself was almost fainting, while the mother moved back and forth behind us raising and lowering her hands in an agony of apprehension.

Put her in front of you on your lap, I ordered, and hold both her wrists.

But as soon as he did the child let out a scream. Don't, you're hurting me. Let go of my hands. Let them go I tell you. Then she shrieked terrifyingly, hysterically. Stop it! Stop it! You're killing me!

Do you think she can stand it, doctor! said the mother.

You get out, said the husband to his wife. Do you want her to die of diphtheria?

Come on now, hold her, I said.

Then I grasped the child's head with my left hand and tried to get the wooden tongue depressor between her teeth. She fought, with clenched teeth, desperately! But now I also had grown furious--at a child. I tried to hold myself down but I couldn't. I know how to expose a throat for inspection. And I did my best. When finally I got the wooden spatula behind the last teeth and just the point of it into the mouth cavity, she opened up for an instant but before I could see anything she came down again and gripping the wooden blade between her molars she reduced it to splinters before I could get it out again.

Aren't you ashamed, the mother yelled at her. Aren't you ashamed to act like that in front of the doctor?

Get me a smooth-handled spoon of some sort, I told the mother. We're going through with this. The child's mouth was already bleeding. Her tongue was cut and she was screaming in wild hysterical shrieks. Perhaps I should have desisted and come back in an hour or more. No doubt it would have been better. But I have seen at least two children lying dead in bed of neglect in such cases, and feeling that I must get a diagnosis now or never I went at it again. But the worst of it was that I too had got beyond reason. I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to attack her. My face was burning with it.

The damned little brat must be protected against her own idiocy, one says to one's self at such times. Others must be protected against her. It is a social necessity. And all these things are true. But a blind fury, a feeling of adult shame, bred of a longing for muscular release are the operatives. One goes on to the end.

In a final unreasoning assault I overpowered the child's neck and jaws. I forced the heavy silver spoon back of her teeth and down her throat till she gagged. And there it was--both tonsils covered with membrane. She had fought valiantly to keep me from knowing her secret. She had been hiding that sore throat for three days at least and lying to her parents in order to escape just such an outcome as this.

Now truly she was furious. She had been on the defensive before but now she attacked. Tried to get off her father's lap and fly at me while tears of defeat blinded her eyes.
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Dry September

After reading the story Dry September we know about all of the characters. There were many characters in this story. The first are the barbers, (the first barber, the second barber and the third barbers who have some play to spread out the vague news about Ms. Minnie Cooper and a Negro. The second is Will Mayes (a man of middle age, thin, sand colored and mild face). The third is Butch (a youth man that with his braveness attacked the barbers). The fourth is Jack (a youth that encourage his friend, Butch). Butch and Jack are the clients of barber’s shop. The other character is Mc Lendon. He is a ladder of troops in French who always could make his dream come true by doing everything he want and do not care with the other (egoist). He was arrogant soldier, snobbery, cruel and temperament. The others are the soldiers. They are cruel as pleaders of Mc. Lendon. The other one is Mrs. Minnie Cooper or Mc. Lendon’s wife. She is haggard, patient, kind, tender, and vivacity in her life.

The story of Dry September is actually interesting to read, because the story tells us about the differences of two races, white men and black men or Negro (who commonly called niggerlover) that always discriminated each others. From this, we can take advantages that in this life must be no differences in everything, because we have the same degree as human in front of God. We just need a corporation in surviving this life and keeping in help to each other.

The big break event is begun from a small problem. It is just their self-defense, moreover about their differences of skin color. Mc. Lendon had been offended by barber’s saying which told that just little white man who live in those places (country). This way is also caused by one case of white woman’s ripping that was done by a black man on St. Jefferson.

Sometimes this story plot of story tends to bewilder the reader because the plot is difficult to follow. We need comprehend understanding in reading this story. For the word it is no much difficulty. This story have nice ending because it has clear explanation, and the reader could gives themselves about the place or the person because each of objects have been descript.
The story itself happened in the barber’s shop, St. Jefferson, and in Mc. Lendon’s house. The barber’s shop is crowded by many people, so is the street, while Mc. Lendon’s house is made so quiet. The kidnapping event is done around the barber shop.

Game: “Special Force 2” Made by Hizbullah

Glad news for game lover. One expert of game maker from Hizbullah (Islamic military organization one gets station at Lebanon) make one game 3D one figure wars among Hisbullah's fighter with Israel soldier.
Game that gets title "Special Force 2" this, taking setting their war one year last. In that martial, Hizbullah's fighter declares for that they successfuling to kill 158 Israel soldiers, meanwhile on one's side Lebanon 1.200 deads which largely islandic civil.

This is constitute Hizbullah's resistance and struggle in style that innovative and smart. "This game represent resistance culture in the future for our the rising generation, that colonization shall be defied and state has to be protected”, such revealed by Hizbullah's official. Player also have chance to catch Israel soldier, attacking Israels martial vehicle those are on South Lebanon and shoots off rudal towards Israel cities.

This game is designed to give a lesson on the rising generation about combat trick against enemy. Are not just in term utilize weapon only, but, preparation, stock, strategy, concentration and tactics also indispensable to win this game.
This game is sold at the price USS 10 in Lebanon and will at production by volunteers. Hizbullah estimates available tall requisition to this game, from Lebanon and also of abroad.

Indonesian Hell

An Indonesian citizen passes away and make towards hell. over there, he sees available many hells that variably for each one state.

First, he gets to come over to German hells, and asks: "Hey...! what do you do in here?"

German answer: "firstly, we are seated up the stairs electric chair up to one hour, then we are fallen down up the stairs spike cot up to one hour again. then Germanic Devil appearance and canes us up to day rest"

Since heard inconvenience, therefore that Indonesian people visit goes to other place.

Then he sees how situation at united states of America hell, and asks: "What do you do in here?”

They answer: "firstly, we are seated up the stairs electric chair up to one hour, then we are fallen down up the stairs spike cot up to one hour again. Then american devil appearance and canes us up to day rest"

Since gets same answer, then he goes to japan hell, russian hell and another hells. but, he gets answer that equals German and American hell.

Finally, he gets in at her hell, Indonesian hell. Over there he see very long queue. They wait go for entering.

With surprise face, he asks: "What do be done in here?"

"Firstly, we are seated up the stairs electric chair up to one hour, then we are fallen down up the stairs spike cot up to one hour again. Then Indonesian devil appearance and canes us up to day rest"

"But it equals that happening other hells! Why here happens length queue?”

"Herein miserably preserve, electric chair doesn't blaze, there is that bone all spike of spike cot, and its devil is former public servant, so, he just coming, absent signature, then goes to canteen, then goes home after their belly be full".

An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge

An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge

Ambrose Bierse

I

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners--two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest--a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it. Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground--a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators--a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieu tenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good--a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move, What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift--all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by--it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer, the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance."

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

II

Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only toe, happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.

"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."

"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.

"About thirty miles."

"Is there no force on this side the creek?"

"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge."

"Suppose a man--a civilian and student of hanging--should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"

The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow."

The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.

III

As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened--ages later, it seemed to him--by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness--of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!--the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface--knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought? "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!--what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf--saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat--all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a grey eye and remembered having read that grey eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieu. tenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly--with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquillity in the men--with what accurately measured inter vals fell those cruel words:

"Attention, company! . . Shoulder arms! . . . Ready! . . . Aim! . . . Fire!"

Farquhar dived--dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.

The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!"

An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps!

A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me--the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round--spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men--all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color--that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream--the southern bank--and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of Æolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape--was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great garden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which--once, twice, and again--he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue--he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet.

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene--perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon--then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.

A Journey

A Journey

After reading the story of A Journey, we know about the characters. In this story there are a couple of wife and husband. The husband is a strong man, active, masterful and temperament while the wife is patient, lenient, careful, and a loyal wife. In this story, the names of characters are not mentioned. Because of his temperament, the husband often stuck on his wife while the wife is always patient of it.

The other characters are the porters (the servant in the train). They serve the passengers faithfully and contented. They make and fold the bed and offer the passengers such as a glass of milk and other drinks. Another one is the old lady. She is the passengers who give advice to the wife how to face her husband sickness.

A Journey tells us about a journey from Colorado to New York that was done by a couple of husband and wife while the husband got hard sickness in their journey. The story is good enough to read, because the plots of the story bewilder the readers. It needs more time to get the understanding, because there are many difficult words. From the story, the readers could take the advantage of the characters experiences. A patient of a wife in facing her husband’s condition could bring their family in steady. Life is like a journey that everybody should run in. there would be much challenges in this journey, so we must prepare our future to reach the top of our life. It is better for us to give goodness instead of badness and we should be patient in facing this life.

The story of A Journey takes a place in train from Colorado to New York. The train is crowded by man passengers.

A Girl I Knew

A Girl I Knew
J. D. Salinger

Good Housekeeping 126, Feb 1948, pages 37, 186-196
Originally to be titled Wien, Wien

AT the end of my freshman year of college, back in 1936, I flunked five out of five subjects. Flunking three out of five would have made me eligible to report for an invitation to attend some other college in the fall. But men in this three-out-of-five category sometimes had to wait outside the Dean’s office as long as two hours. Men in my group—some of whom had big dates in New York that same night—weren’t kept waiting a minute. It went one, two, three, the way most men in my group liked things to go.
The particular college I had been attending apparently does not simply mail people’s grades home, but prefers to shoot them out of some kind of gun. When I got home to New York, even the butler looked tipped off and hostile. It was a bad night altogether. My father informed me quietly that my formal education was formally over. In a way, I felt like asking for a crack at summer school or something. But I didn’t. For one reason, my mother was in the room, and she kept saying that she just knew I should have gone to see my faculty adviser more regularly, that that was what he was there for. This was the kind of talk that made me want to go straight to the Rainbow Room with a friend. At any rate, one thing leading to another, when the familiar moment came for me to advance one of my fragile promises really to apply myself this time, I let it go by unused.
Although my father announced the same night that he was going to put me directly into his business, I felt confident that nothing wholly unattractive would happen for at least a week or so. I knew it would take a certain amount of deep, constructive brooding on my father’s part to figure out a way of getting me into the firm in broad daylight—I happened to give both his partners the willies on sight.
I was taken a little aback, four or five evenings later, when my father suddenly asked me at dinner how I would like to go to Europe to learn a couple of languages the firm could use. First to Vienna and then maybe to Paris, he said unelaborately.
I replied in effect that the idea sounded all right to me. I was breaking off anyway with a certain girl on Seventy-Fourth Street. And I very clearly associated Vienna with gondolas. Gondolas didn’t seem like too bad a setup.
A FEW weeks later, in July of 1936, I sailed for Europe. My passport photograph, it might be worth mentioning, looked exactly like me. At eighteen I was six feet two, weighed 119 pounds with my clothes on, and was a chain-smoker. I think that if Goethe’s Werther and all his sorrows had been placed on the promenade deck of the S.S. Rex beside me and all my sorrows, he would have looked by comparison like a rather low comedian.
The ship docked at Naples, and from there I took a train to Vienna. I almost got off the train at Venice, when I found out just who had the gondolas, but two people in my compartment got off instead—I had been waiting too long for a chance to put my feet up, gondolas or no gondolas.
Naturally, certain when-you-get-to-Vienna rules had been laid down before my ship sailed from New York. Rules about taking at least three hours of language lessons daily; rules about not getting too friendly with people who take advantage of other, particularly younger, people; rules about not spending money like a drunken sailor; rules about the wearing of clothes in which a person wouldn’t catch pneumonia; and so on. But after a month or so in Vienna I had most of that taken care of: I was taking three hours of German lesson every day—from a rather exceptional young lady I had met in the lounge of the Grand Hotel. I had found, in one of the far-outlying districts, a place that was cheaper than the Grand Hotel—the trolleys didn’t run to my place after ten at night, but the taxis did. I was dressing warm—I had bought myself three pure-wool Tyrolean hats. I was meeting nice people—I had lent three hundred shillings to a very distinguished-looking guy in the bar of the Bristol Hotel. In short, I was in a position to cut my letter home down to the bone.
I spent a little more than five months in Vienna. I danced. I went ice skating and skiing. For strenuous exercise, I argued with young Englishmen. I watched operations at two hospitals and had myself psychoanalyzed by a young Hungarian woman who smoked cigars. My German lessons never failed to hold my unflagging interest. I seemed to move, with all the luck of the undeserving, from gemutlichkeit to gemutlichkeit. But I mention these things only to keep the Baedeker straight.
Probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. How well or how badly the man actually knew the girl doesn’t necessarily affect the transformation. She was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that.
Leah was the daughter in the Viennese-Jewish family who lived in the apartment below mine—that is, below the family I was boarding with. She was sixteen, and beautiful in an immediate yet perfectly slow way. She had very dark hair that fell away from the most exquisite pair of ears I have ever seen. She had immense eyes that always seemed in danger of capsizing in their own innocence. Her hands were very pale brown, with slender, actionless fingers. When she sat down, she did the only sensible thing with her beautiful hands there was to be done: she placed them on her lap and left them there. In brief, she was probably the first appreciable thing of beauty I had seen that struck me as being wholly legitimate.
FOR about four months I saw her two or three evenings a week, for an hour or so at a time. But never outside the apartment house in which we lived. We never went dancing; we never went to a concert; we never even went for a walk. I found out soon after we met that Leah’s father had promised her in marriage to some young Pole. Maybe this fact had something to do with my not quite palpable, but curiously steady disinclination to give our acquaintanceship the run of the city. Maybe I just worried too much about things. Maybe I consistently hesitated to risk letting the thing we had together deteriorate into a romance. I don’t know any more. I used to know, but I lost the knowledge a long time ago. A man can’t go along indefinitely carrying around in his pocket a key that doesn’t fit anything.
I met Leah a nice way.
I had a phonograph and two American phonograph records in my room. The two American records were a gift from my landlady—one of those rare, drop-it-and-run gifts that leave the recipient dizzy with gratitude. On one of the records Dorothy Lamour sang Moonlight and Shadows, and on the other Connee Boswell sang Where Are You? Both girls got pretty scratched up, hanging around my room, as they had to go to work whenever I heard my landlady’s step outside my door.
One evening I was in my sitting room, writing a long letter to a girl in Pennsylvania, suggesting that she quit school and come to Europe to marry me—a not infrequent suggestion of mine in those days. My phonograph was not playing. But suddenly the words to Miss Boswell’s song floated, just slightly damaged, through my open window:
“Where are you?
Where have you gone wissout me?
I sought you cared about me.
Where are you?”
Thoroughly excited, I sprang to my feet, then rushed to my window and leaned out.
The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in a pool of autumn twilight. She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together. The way the profile of her face and body refracted in the soupy twilight made me feel a little drunk. When a few seconds had throbbed by, I said hello to her. She then looked up at me, and though she seemed decorously startled, something told me she wasn’t too surprised that I had heard her doing the Boswell number. This didn’t matter, of course. I asked her, in murderous German, if I might join her on the balcony. The request obviously rattled her. She replied, in English, that she didn’t think her “fahzzer” would like me to come down to see her. At this point, my opinion of girls’ fathers, which had been low for years, struck bottom. But nevertheless I managed a drab little nod of understanding.
It turned out all right, though. Leah seemed to think it would be perfectly all right if she came up to see me. Entirely stupefied with gratitude, I nodded, then closed my window and began to wander hurriedly through my room, rapidly pushing things under other things with my foot.
I DON’T really remember our first evening in my sitting room. All our evenings were pretty much the same. I can’t honestly separate one from another; not any more, anyway.
Leah’s knock on my door was always poetry—high, beautifully wavering, absolutely perpendicular poetry. Her knock started out speaking of her own innocence and beauty, and accidentally ended speaking of the innocence and beauty of all very young girls. I was always half-eaten away by the respect and happiness when I opened the door for Leah.
We would solemnly shake hands at my sitting-room door. Then Leah would walk, self-consciously but beautifully, to my window seat, sit down, and wait for our conversation to begin.
Her English, like my German, was nearly all holes. Yet invariably I spoke her language and she mine, although any other arrangement at all might have made for a less perforated means of communication.
“Uh. Wie geht es Ihnen?” I’d start out. (How are you?) I never used the familiar form in addressing Leah.
“I am very well, sank you very much,” Leah would reply, never failing to blush. It didn’t help much to look at her indirectly; she blushed anyway.
“Schön hinaus, nicht wahr?” I’d ask, rain or shine. (Nice out, isn’t it?)
“Yes,” she’d answer, rain or shine.
“Uh. Waren Sie heute in der Kino?” was a favorite question of mine. (Did you go to the movies today?) Five days a week Leah worked in her father’s cosmetics plant.
“No. I was today working by my fahzzer.”
“Oh, dass ist recht! Uh. Ist es schön dort?” (Oh, that’s right. Is it nice there?)
“No. It is a very big fabric, with very many people running around about.”
“Oh. Dass ist schlecht.” (That’s bad.)
“Uh. Wollen Sie haben ein Tasse von Kaffee mit mir haben?” (Will you have a cup of coffee with me?)
“I was already eating.”
“Ja, aber Haben Sie ein Tasse anyway.” (Yes, but have a cup anyway.)
“Sank you.”
At this point I would remove my note paper, shoe trees, laundry, and other unclassifiable articles from the small table I used as a desk and catchall. Then I would plug in my electric percolator, often commenting sagely, “Kaffee ist gut.” (Coffee is good.)
We usually drank two cups of coffee apiece, passing each other the cream and sugar with all the drollery of fellow pallbearers distributing white gloves among themselves. Often Leah brought along some kuchen or torte, wrapped rather inefficiently—perhaps surreptitiously—in waxed paper. This offering she would deposit quickly and insecurely in my left hand as she entered my sitting room. It was all I could do to swallow the pastry Leah brought. First, I was never at all hungry while she was around; second, there seemed to be something unnecessarily, however vaguely, destructive about eating anything that came from where she lived.
We usually didn’t talk while we drank our coffee. When we had finished, we picked up our conversation where we had left it—on its back, more often than not.
“Uh. Ist die Fenster—uh—Sind Sie sehr kalt dort?” I would ask solicitously. (Is the window—uh—Are you very cold there?)
“No! I feel very warmly, sank you.”
“Dass ist gut. Uh. Wie geht’s Ihre Eltern?” (That’s good. How are your parents?) I inquired regularly after the health of her parents.
“They are very well, sank you very much.” Her parents were always enjoying perfect health, even when her mother had pleurisy for two weeks.
Sometimes Leah introduced a subject for conversation. It was always the same subject, but probably she felt she handled it so well in English that repetition was little or no drawback. She often inquired, “How was your hour today morning?”
“My German lesson? Oh. Uh. Sehr gut. Ja. Sehr gut.” (Very good. Yes. Very good.)
“What were you learning?”
“What did I learn? Uh. Die, uh wuddayacallit. Die starke verbs. Sehr interessant.” (The strong verbs. Very interesting.)
I COULD fill several pages with Leah’s and my terrible conversation. But I don’t see much point to it. We just never said anything to each other. Over a period of four months, we must have talked for thirty or thirty-five evenings without saying a word. In the long shadow of this small, obscure record, I’ve acquired a dogma that if I should go to Hell, I’ll be given a little inside room—one that is neither hot nor cold, but extremely drafty—in which all my conversations with Leah will be played back to me, over an amplification system confiscated from the Yankee Stadium.
One evening I named for Leah, without the slightest provocation, all the Presidents of the United States, in as close order as possible: Lincoln, Grant, Taft, and so on.
Another evening I explained American football to her. For at least an hour and a half. In German.
On another evening I felt called on to draw her a map of New York City. She certainly didn’t ask me to. And Lord knows I never feel like drawing maps for anybody, much less have any aptitude for it. But I drew it—the U. S. Marines couldn’t have stopped me. I distinctly remember putting Lexington Avenue where Madison should have been—and leaving it that way.
Another time I read a new play I was writing, called He Was No Fool. It was about a cool, handsome, casually athletic young man—very much my own type—who had been called from Oxford to pull Scotland Yard out of an embarrassing situation: One Lady Farnsworth, who was a witty dipsomaniac, was being mailed one of her abducted husband’s fingers every Tuesday. I read the play to Leah in one sitting, laboriously editing out all the sexy parts—which, of course, ruined the play. When I had finished reading, I hoarsely explained to Leah that the play was “Nicht fertig yet.” (Not finished yet.) Leah seemed to understand that perfectly. Moreover, she seemed to convey to me a certain confidence that perfection would somehow overtake the final draft of whatever the thing was I had just read to her … She sat so well on a window seat.
I FOUND out entirely by accident that Leah had a fiancé. It wasn’t the kind of information that stood a chance of coming up in our conversation.
On a Sunday afternoon, about a month after Leah and I had become acquainted, I saw her standing in the crowded lobby of the Schwedenkino, a popular movie house in Vienna. It was the first time I had seen her either off the balcony or outside my sitting room. There was something fantastic and extremely heady about seeing her standing in the very pedestrian lobby of the Schwedenkino, and I readily gave up my place in the box-office queue to go to speak to her. But as I charged across the lobby toward her over a number of innocent feet, I saw that she was neither alone nor with a girl friend or someone old enough to be her father.
She was visibly flustered to see me, but managed to make introductions. Her escort, who was wearing his hat down over one of his ears, clicked his heels and crushed my hand. I smiled patronizingly at him—he didn’t look like much competition, grip of steel or no grip of steel; he looked too much like a foreigner.
For a few minutes the three of us chatted unintelligibly. Then I excused myself and got back on the end of the line. During the showing of the film, I went up the aisle several times, carrying myself as erectly and dangerously as possible; but I didn’t see either of them. The film itself was one of the worst I’d seen.
The next evening, when Leah and I had coffee in my sitting room, she stated, blushing, that the young man I had seen her with in the lobby of the Schwedenkino was her fiancé.
“My fahzzer is wedding us when I have seventeen years,” Leah said, looking at a doorknob.
I merely nodded. There are certain foul blows, notably in love and soccer, that are not immediately followed by audible protest. I cleared my throat. “Uh. Wie heisst er, again?” (What’s his name, again?)
Leah pronounced once more—not quite phonetically enough for me—a violently long name, which seemed to me predestined to belong to somebody who wore his hat down over one ear. I poured more coffee for both of us. Then, suddenly, I stood up and went to my German-English dictionary. When I had consulted it, I sat down again and asked Leah, “Lieben Sie Ehe?” (Do you love marriage?)
She answered slowly, without looking at me, “I don’t know.”
I nodded. Her answer seemed the quintessence of logic to me. We sat for a long moment without looking at each other. When I looked at Leah again, her beauty seemed too great for the size of the room. The only way to make room for it was to speak of it. “Sie sind sehr schön. Weissen Sie dass?” I almost shouted at her.
But she blushed so hard I quickly dropped the subject—I had nothing to follow up with, anyway.
That evening, for the first and last time, something more physical than a handshake happened to our relationship. About nine-thirty, Leah jumped up from the window seat, saying it was becoming very late, and rushed to get downstairs. At the same time, I rushed to escort her out of the apartment to the staircase, and we squeezed together through the narrow doorway of my sitting room—facing each other. It nearly killed us.
WHEN it came time for me to go to Paris to master a second European language, Leah was in Warsaw visiting her fiancé’s family. I didn’t get to say good-bye to her, but I left a note for her, the next-to-last draft of which I still have:
“Wien
“December 6, 1936
“Liebe Leah,
“Ich muss fahren nach Paris nun, und so ich sage auf wiedersehen. Es war sehr nett zu kennen Sie. Ich werde schreiben zu Sie wenn ich bin in Paris. Hoffentlich Sie sind haben eine gute Ziet in Warsaw mit die familie von ihre fiancé. Hoffent- lich wird die Ehe gehen gut. Ich werde Sie schicken das Buch ich habe gesprochen uber, ‘Gegangen mit der Wind.’ Mit beste Grussen.
“Ihre Freund,
“John”
Taking this note out of Jack-the-Ripper German, it reads:
“Vienna
“December 6, 1936
DEAR LEAH,
“I must go to Paris now, and so I say good-bye. It was very nice to know you. I hope you’re having a good time in Warsaw with your fiancé’s family. I hope the marriage goes all right. I will send you that book I was talking about, Gone with the Wind. With best greetings.
“Your friend,
“John”
But I never did write to Leah from Paris. I never wrote to her again at all. I didn’t send a copy of Gone with the Wind. I was very busy in those days.
Late in 1937, when I was back in college in America, a round, flat package was forwarded to me from New York. A letter was attached to the package:
“Vienna
“October 14, 1937
“DEAR JOHN,
“I have many times thought of you and wondered what is become of you. I myself am now married and am living in Vienna with my husband. He sends you his great regards. If you can recall, you and he made each other’s acquaintance in the hall of the Schweden Cinema.
“My parents are still living at 18 Stiefel Street, and often I visit them, because I am living in the near. Your landlady, Mrs. Schlosser, has died in the summer with cancer. She requested me to send you these gramophone records, which you forgot to take when you departed, but I did not know your address for a long time. I have now made the acquaintance of an English girl named Ursula Hummer, who has given to me your address.
“My husband and I would be extremely pleased to hear from you frequently.
“With very best greetings,
“Your friend,
“LEAH”
Her married name and new address were not given.
I carried the letter with me for months, opening and reading it in bars, between halves of basketball games, in Government classes, and in my room, until finally it began to get stained, from my wallet, the color of cordovan, and I had to put it away somewhere.
ABOUT the same hour Hitler’s troops were marching into Vienna, I was on reconnaissance for geology 1-b, searching perfunctorily, in New Jersey, for a limestone deposit. But during the weeks and months that followed the German takeover of Vienna, I often thought of Leah. Sometimes just thinking of her wasn’t enough. When, for example, I had examined the most recent newspaper photographs of Viennese Jewesses on their hands and knees scrubbing sidewalks, I quickly stepped across my dormitory room, opened a desk drawer, slipped an automatic into my pocket, then dropped noiselessly from my window to the street, where a long-range monoplane, equipped with a silent engine, awaited my gallant, foolhardy, hawklike whim. I’m not the type that just sits around.
In late summer of 1940, at a party in New York, I met a girl who not only had known Leah in Vienna, but had gone all through school with her. I pulled up a chair, but the girl was determined to tell me about some man in Philadelphia, who looked exactly like Gary Cooper. She said I had a weak chin. She said she hated mink. She said that Leah had either got out of Vienna or hadn’t got out of Vienna.
During the war in Europe, I had an Intelligence job with a regiment of an infantry division. My work called for a lot of conversation with civilians and Wehrmacht prisoners. Among the latter, sometimes there were Austrians. One feldwebel, a Viennese, whom I secretly suspected of wearing lederhosen under his field-gray uniform, gave me a little hope; but it turned out he had known not Leah, but some girl with the same last name as Leah’s. Another Wiener, an unteroffizier, standing at strict attention, told me what terrible things had been done to the Jews in Vienna. As I had rarely, if ever, seen a man with a face quite so noble and full of vicarious suffering as this unteroffizier’s was, just for the devil of it I had him roll up his left sleeve. Close to his armpit he had the tattooed blood-type marks of an old SS man. I stopped asking personal questions after a while.
A few months after the war in Europe had ended, I took some military papers to Vienna. In a jeep with another man, I left Nϋrnburg on a hot October morning and got into Vienna the next, even hotter, morning. In the Russian Zone we were detained five hours while two guards made passionate love to our wrist watches. It was mid-afternoon by the time we entered the American Zone of Vienna, in which Stiefelstrasse, my old street, was located.
I talked to the Tabak-Trafik vendor on the corner of Stiefelstrasse, to the pharmacist in the near-by Apotheke, to a neighborhood woman, who jumped at least an inch when I addressed her, and to a man who insisted that he used to see me on the trolley car in 1936. Two of these people told me that Leah was dead. The pharmacist suggested that I go to see a Dr. Weinstein, who had just come back to Vienna from Buchenwald, and gave me his address. I then got back into the jeep, and we cruised through the streets toward G-2 Headquarters. My jeep partner tooted his horn at the girls in the streets and told me at great length what he thought of Army dentists.
When we had delivered the official papers, I got back into the jeep alone and went to see Dr. Weinstein.
IT WAS twilight when I drove back to Stiefelstrasse. I parked the jeep and entered my old house. It had been turned into living quarters for field-grade officers. A red-haired staff sergeant was sitting at an Army desk on the first landing, cleaning his fingernails. He looked up, and, as I didn’t outrank him, gave me that long Army look that holds no interest or curiosity at all. Ordinarily I would have returned it.
“What’s the chances of my going up to the second floor just for a minute?” I asked. “I used to live here before the war.”
“This here’s officers’ quarters, Mac,” he said.
“I know. I’ll only be a minute.”
“Can’t do it. Sorry.” He went on scraping the insides of his fingernails with the big blade of his pocketknife.
“I’ll only be a minute,” I said again.
He put down his knife, patiently. “Look, Mac. I don’t wanna sound like a bum. But I ain’t lettin’ nobody go upstairs unless they belong there. I don’t give a damn if it’s Eisenhower himself. I got my—” He was interrupted by the sudden ringing of the telephone on his desk. He picked up the phone, keeping an eye on me, and said, “Yessir, Colonel, sir. This is him on the phone…. Yessir…. Yessir…. I got Corporal Santini puttin’ ‘em on the ice right now, right this minute. They’ll be good and cold…. Well, I figured we’d put the orchestra right out on the balcony, like. Account of there’s only three of ‘em…. Yessir…. Well, I spoke to Major Foltz, and he said the ladies could put their coats and stuff in his room…. Yessir. Right, sir. Ya wanna hurry up, now. Ya don’t wanna miss any of that moonlight…. Ha,ha,ha!…Yessir. G’bye, sir.” The staff sergeant hung up, looking stimulated.
“Look,” I said, distracting him, “I’ll only be a minute.”
He looked at me. “What’s the big deal, anyhow, up there?”
“No big deal.” I took a deep breath. “I just want to go up to the second floor and take a look at the balcony. I used to know a girl who lived in the balcony apartment.”
“Yeah? Where’s she at now?”
“She’s dead.”
“Yeah? How come?”
“She and her family were burned to death in an incinerator, I’m told.”
“Yeah? What was she, a Jew or something?”
“Yes. Can I go up a minute?”
Very visibly, the sergeant’s interest in the affair waned. He picked up a pencil and moved it from the left side of the desk to the right. “Cripes, Mac. I don’t know. It’ll be my skin if you’re caught.”
“I’ll just be a minute.”
“Okay. Make it snappy.”
I climbed the stairs quickly and entered my old sitting room. It had three single bunks in it, made up Army style. Nothing in the room had been there in 1936. Officers’ blouses were suspended on hangers everywhere. I walked to the window, opened it, and looked down for a moment at the balcony where Leah had once stood. Then I went downstairs and thanked the staff sergeant. He asked me, as I was going out the door, what the devil you were supposed to do with champagne—lay it on its side or stand it up. I said I didn’t know, and left the building.

A Girl I Knew

A Girl I Knew
J. D. Salinger

Good Housekeeping 126, Feb 1948, pages 37, 186-196
Originally to be titled Wien, Wien

AT the end of my freshman year of college, back in 1936, I flunked five out of five subjects. Flunking three out of five would have made me eligible to report for an invitation to attend some other college in the fall. But men in this three-out-of-five category sometimes had to wait outside the Dean’s office as long as two hours. Men in my group—some of whom had big dates in New York that same night—weren’t kept waiting a minute. It went one, two, three, the way most men in my group liked things to go.
The particular college I had been attending apparently does not simply mail people’s grades home, but prefers to shoot them out of some kind of gun. When I got home to New York, even the butler looked tipped off and hostile. It was a bad night altogether. My father informed me quietly that my formal education was formally over. In a way, I felt like asking for a crack at summer school or something. But I didn’t. For one reason, my mother was in the room, and she kept saying that she just knew I should have gone to see my faculty adviser more regularly, that that was what he was there for. This was the kind of talk that made me want to go straight to the Rainbow Room with a friend. At any rate, one thing leading to another, when the familiar moment came for me to advance one of my fragile promises really to apply myself this time, I let it go by unused.
Although my father announced the same night that he was going to put me directly into his business, I felt confident that nothing wholly unattractive would happen for at least a week or so. I knew it would take a certain amount of deep, constructive brooding on my father’s part to figure out a way of getting me into the firm in broad daylight—I happened to give both his partners the willies on sight.
I was taken a little aback, four or five evenings later, when my father suddenly asked me at dinner how I would like to go to Europe to learn a couple of languages the firm could use. First to Vienna and then maybe to Paris, he said unelaborately.
I replied in effect that the idea sounded all right to me. I was breaking off anyway with a certain girl on Seventy-Fourth Street. And I very clearly associated Vienna with gondolas. Gondolas didn’t seem like too bad a setup.
A FEW weeks later, in July of 1936, I sailed for Europe. My passport photograph, it might be worth mentioning, looked exactly like me. At eighteen I was six feet two, weighed 119 pounds with my clothes on, and was a chain-smoker. I think that if Goethe’s Werther and all his sorrows had been placed on the promenade deck of the S.S. Rex beside me and all my sorrows, he would have looked by comparison like a rather low comedian.
The ship docked at Naples, and from there I took a train to Vienna. I almost got off the train at Venice, when I found out just who had the gondolas, but two people in my compartment got off instead—I had been waiting too long for a chance to put my feet up, gondolas or no gondolas.
Naturally, certain when-you-get-to-Vienna rules had been laid down before my ship sailed from New York. Rules about taking at least three hours of language lessons daily; rules about not getting too friendly with people who take advantage of other, particularly younger, people; rules about not spending money like a drunken sailor; rules about the wearing of clothes in which a person wouldn’t catch pneumonia; and so on. But after a month or so in Vienna I had most of that taken care of: I was taking three hours of German lesson every day—from a rather exceptional young lady I had met in the lounge of the Grand Hotel. I had found, in one of the far-outlying districts, a place that was cheaper than the Grand Hotel—the trolleys didn’t run to my place after ten at night, but the taxis did. I was dressing warm—I had bought myself three pure-wool Tyrolean hats. I was meeting nice people—I had lent three hundred shillings to a very distinguished-looking guy in the bar of the Bristol Hotel. In short, I was in a position to cut my letter home down to the bone.
I spent a little more than five months in Vienna. I danced. I went ice skating and skiing. For strenuous exercise, I argued with young Englishmen. I watched operations at two hospitals and had myself psychoanalyzed by a young Hungarian woman who smoked cigars. My German lessons never failed to hold my unflagging interest. I seemed to move, with all the luck of the undeserving, from gemutlichkeit to gemutlichkeit. But I mention these things only to keep the Baedeker straight.
Probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. How well or how badly the man actually knew the girl doesn’t necessarily affect the transformation. She was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that.
Leah was the daughter in the Viennese-Jewish family who lived in the apartment below mine—that is, below the family I was boarding with. She was sixteen, and beautiful in an immediate yet perfectly slow way. She had very dark hair that fell away from the most exquisite pair of ears I have ever seen. She had immense eyes that always seemed in danger of capsizing in their own innocence. Her hands were very pale brown, with slender, actionless fingers. When she sat down, she did the only sensible thing with her beautiful hands there was to be done: she placed them on her lap and left them there. In brief, she was probably the first appreciable thing of beauty I had seen that struck me as being wholly legitimate.
FOR about four months I saw her two or three evenings a week, for an hour or so at a time. But never outside the apartment house in which we lived. We never went dancing; we never went to a concert; we never even went for a walk. I found out soon after we met that Leah’s father had promised her in marriage to some young Pole. Maybe this fact had something to do with my not quite palpable, but curiously steady disinclination to give our acquaintanceship the run of the city. Maybe I just worried too much about things. Maybe I consistently hesitated to risk letting the thing we had together deteriorate into a romance. I don’t know any more. I used to know, but I lost the knowledge a long time ago. A man can’t go along indefinitely carrying around in his pocket a key that doesn’t fit anything.
I met Leah a nice way.
I had a phonograph and two American phonograph records in my room. The two American records were a gift from my landlady—one of those rare, drop-it-and-run gifts that leave the recipient dizzy with gratitude. On one of the records Dorothy Lamour sang Moonlight and Shadows, and on the other Connee Boswell sang Where Are You? Both girls got pretty scratched up, hanging around my room, as they had to go to work whenever I heard my landlady’s step outside my door.
One evening I was in my sitting room, writing a long letter to a girl in Pennsylvania, suggesting that she quit school and come to Europe to marry me—a not infrequent suggestion of mine in those days. My phonograph was not playing. But suddenly the words to Miss Boswell’s song floated, just slightly damaged, through my open window:
“Where are you?
Where have you gone wissout me?
I sought you cared about me.
Where are you?”
Thoroughly excited, I sprang to my feet, then rushed to my window and leaned out.
The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in a pool of autumn twilight. She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together. The way the profile of her face and body refracted in the soupy twilight made me feel a little drunk. When a few seconds had throbbed by, I said hello to her. She then looked up at me, and though she seemed decorously startled, something told me she wasn’t too surprised that I had heard her doing the Boswell number. This didn’t matter, of course. I asked her, in murderous German, if I might join her on the balcony. The request obviously rattled her. She replied, in English, that she didn’t think her “fahzzer” would like me to come down to see her. At this point, my opinion of girls’ fathers, which had been low for years, struck bottom. But nevertheless I managed a drab little nod of understanding.
It turned out all right, though. Leah seemed to think it would be perfectly all right if she came up to see me. Entirely stupefied with gratitude, I nodded, then closed my window and began to wander hurriedly through my room, rapidly pushing things under other things with my foot.
I DON’T really remember our first evening in my sitting room. All our evenings were pretty much the same. I can’t honestly separate one from another; not any more, anyway.
Leah’s knock on my door was always poetry—high, beautifully wavering, absolutely perpendicular poetry. Her knock started out speaking of her own innocence and beauty, and accidentally ended speaking of the innocence and beauty of all very young girls. I was always half-eaten away by the respect and happiness when I opened the door for Leah.
We would solemnly shake hands at my sitting-room door. Then Leah would walk, self-consciously but beautifully, to my window seat, sit down, and wait for our conversation to begin.
Her English, like my German, was nearly all holes. Yet invariably I spoke her language and she mine, although any other arrangement at all might have made for a less perforated means of communication.
“Uh. Wie geht es Ihnen?” I’d start out. (How are you?) I never used the familiar form in addressing Leah.
“I am very well, sank you very much,” Leah would reply, never failing to blush. It didn’t help much to look at her indirectly; she blushed anyway.
“Schön hinaus, nicht wahr?” I’d ask, rain or shine. (Nice out, isn’t it?)
“Yes,” she’d answer, rain or shine.
“Uh. Waren Sie heute in der Kino?” was a favorite question of mine. (Did you go to the movies today?) Five days a week Leah worked in her father’s cosmetics plant.
“No. I was today working by my fahzzer.”
“Oh, dass ist recht! Uh. Ist es schön dort?” (Oh, that’s right. Is it nice there?)
“No. It is a very big fabric, with very many people running around about.”
“Oh. Dass ist schlecht.” (That’s bad.)
“Uh. Wollen Sie haben ein Tasse von Kaffee mit mir haben?” (Will you have a cup of coffee with me?)
“I was already eating.”
“Ja, aber Haben Sie ein Tasse anyway.” (Yes, but have a cup anyway.)
“Sank you.”
At this point I would remove my note paper, shoe trees, laundry, and other unclassifiable articles from the small table I used as a desk and catchall. Then I would plug in my electric percolator, often commenting sagely, “Kaffee ist gut.” (Coffee is good.)
We usually drank two cups of coffee apiece, passing each other the cream and sugar with all the drollery of fellow pallbearers distributing white gloves among themselves. Often Leah brought along some kuchen or torte, wrapped rather inefficiently—perhaps surreptitiously—in waxed paper. This offering she would deposit quickly and insecurely in my left hand as she entered my sitting room. It was all I could do to swallow the pastry Leah brought. First, I was never at all hungry while she was around; second, there seemed to be something unnecessarily, however vaguely, destructive about eating anything that came from where she lived.
We usually didn’t talk while we drank our coffee. When we had finished, we picked up our conversation where we had left it—on its back, more often than not.
“Uh. Ist die Fenster—uh—Sind Sie sehr kalt dort?” I would ask solicitously. (Is the window—uh—Are you very cold there?)
“No! I feel very warmly, sank you.”
“Dass ist gut. Uh. Wie geht’s Ihre Eltern?” (That’s good. How are your parents?) I inquired regularly after the health of her parents.
“They are very well, sank you very much.” Her parents were always enjoying perfect health, even when her mother had pleurisy for two weeks.
Sometimes Leah introduced a subject for conversation. It was always the same subject, but probably she felt she handled it so well in English that repetition was little or no drawback. She often inquired, “How was your hour today morning?”
“My German lesson? Oh. Uh. Sehr gut. Ja. Sehr gut.” (Very good. Yes. Very good.)
“What were you learning?”
“What did I learn? Uh. Die, uh wuddayacallit. Die starke verbs. Sehr interessant.” (The strong verbs. Very interesting.)
I COULD fill several pages with Leah’s and my terrible conversation. But I don’t see much point to it. We just never said anything to each other. Over a period of four months, we must have talked for thirty or thirty-five evenings without saying a word. In the long shadow of this small, obscure record, I’ve acquired a dogma that if I should go to Hell, I’ll be given a little inside room—one that is neither hot nor cold, but extremely drafty—in which all my conversations with Leah will be played back to me, over an amplification system confiscated from the Yankee Stadium.
One evening I named for Leah, without the slightest provocation, all the Presidents of the United States, in as close order as possible: Lincoln, Grant, Taft, and so on.
Another evening I explained American football to her. For at least an hour and a half. In German.
On another evening I felt called on to draw her a map of New York City. She certainly didn’t ask me to. And Lord knows I never feel like drawing maps for anybody, much less have any aptitude for it. But I drew it—the U. S. Marines couldn’t have stopped me. I distinctly remember putting Lexington Avenue where Madison should have been—and leaving it that way.
Another time I read a new play I was writing, called He Was No Fool. It was about a cool, handsome, casually athletic young man—very much my own type—who had been called from Oxford to pull Scotland Yard out of an embarrassing situation: One Lady Farnsworth, who was a witty dipsomaniac, was being mailed one of her abducted husband’s fingers every Tuesday. I read the play to Leah in one sitting, laboriously editing out all the sexy parts—which, of course, ruined the play. When I had finished reading, I hoarsely explained to Leah that the play was “Nicht fertig yet.” (Not finished yet.) Leah seemed to understand that perfectly. Moreover, she seemed to convey to me a certain confidence that perfection would somehow overtake the final draft of whatever the thing was I had just read to her … She sat so well on a window seat.
I FOUND out entirely by accident that Leah had a fiancé. It wasn’t the kind of information that stood a chance of coming up in our conversation.
On a Sunday afternoon, about a month after Leah and I had become acquainted, I saw her standing in the crowded lobby of the Schwedenkino, a popular movie house in Vienna. It was the first time I had seen her either off the balcony or outside my sitting room. There was something fantastic and extremely heady about seeing her standing in the very pedestrian lobby of the Schwedenkino, and I readily gave up my place in the box-office queue to go to speak to her. But as I charged across the lobby toward her over a number of innocent feet, I saw that she was neither alone nor with a girl friend or someone old enough to be her father.
She was visibly flustered to see me, but managed to make introductions. Her escort, who was wearing his hat down over one of his ears, clicked his heels and crushed my hand. I smiled patronizingly at him—he didn’t look like much competition, grip of steel or no grip of steel; he looked too much like a foreigner.
For a few minutes the three of us chatted unintelligibly. Then I excused myself and got back on the end of the line. During the showing of the film, I went up the aisle several times, carrying myself as erectly and dangerously as possible; but I didn’t see either of them. The film itself was one of the worst I’d seen.
The next evening, when Leah and I had coffee in my sitting room, she stated, blushing, that the young man I had seen her with in the lobby of the Schwedenkino was her fiancé.
“My fahzzer is wedding us when I have seventeen years,” Leah said, looking at a doorknob.
I merely nodded. There are certain foul blows, notably in love and soccer, that are not immediately followed by audible protest. I cleared my throat. “Uh. Wie heisst er, again?” (What’s his name, again?)
Leah pronounced once more—not quite phonetically enough for me—a violently long name, which seemed to me predestined to belong to somebody who wore his hat down over one ear. I poured more coffee for both of us. Then, suddenly, I stood up and went to my German-English dictionary. When I had consulted it, I sat down again and asked Leah, “Lieben Sie Ehe?” (Do you love marriage?)
She answered slowly, without looking at me, “I don’t know.”
I nodded. Her answer seemed the quintessence of logic to me. We sat for a long moment without looking at each other. When I looked at Leah again, her beauty seemed too great for the size of the room. The only way to make room for it was to speak of it. “Sie sind sehr schön. Weissen Sie dass?” I almost shouted at her.
But she blushed so hard I quickly dropped the subject—I had nothing to follow up with, anyway.
That evening, for the first and last time, something more physical than a handshake happened to our relationship. About nine-thirty, Leah jumped up from the window seat, saying it was becoming very late, and rushed to get downstairs. At the same time, I rushed to escort her out of the apartment to the staircase, and we squeezed together through the narrow doorway of my sitting room—facing each other. It nearly killed us.
WHEN it came time for me to go to Paris to master a second European language, Leah was in Warsaw visiting her fiancé’s family. I didn’t get to say good-bye to her, but I left a note for her, the next-to-last draft of which I still have:
“Wien
“December 6, 1936
“Liebe Leah,
“Ich muss fahren nach Paris nun, und so ich sage auf wiedersehen. Es war sehr nett zu kennen Sie. Ich werde schreiben zu Sie wenn ich bin in Paris. Hoffentlich Sie sind haben eine gute Ziet in Warsaw mit die familie von ihre fiancé. Hoffent- lich wird die Ehe gehen gut. Ich werde Sie schicken das Buch ich habe gesprochen uber, ‘Gegangen mit der Wind.’ Mit beste Grussen.
“Ihre Freund,
“John”
Taking this note out of Jack-the-Ripper German, it reads:
“Vienna
“December 6, 1936
DEAR LEAH,
“I must go to Paris now, and so I say good-bye. It was very nice to know you. I hope you’re having a good time in Warsaw with your fiancé’s family. I hope the marriage goes all right. I will send you that book I was talking about, Gone with the Wind. With best greetings.
“Your friend,
“John”
But I never did write to Leah from Paris. I never wrote to her again at all. I didn’t send a copy of Gone with the Wind. I was very busy in those days.
Late in 1937, when I was back in college in America, a round, flat package was forwarded to me from New York. A letter was attached to the package:
“Vienna
“October 14, 1937
“DEAR JOHN,
“I have many times thought of you and wondered what is become of you. I myself am now married and am living in Vienna with my husband. He sends you his great regards. If you can recall, you and he made each other’s acquaintance in the hall of the Schweden Cinema.
“My parents are still living at 18 Stiefel Street, and often I visit them, because I am living in the near. Your landlady, Mrs. Schlosser, has died in the summer with cancer. She requested me to send you these gramophone records, which you forgot to take when you departed, but I did not know your address for a long time. I have now made the acquaintance of an English girl named Ursula Hummer, who has given to me your address.
“My husband and I would be extremely pleased to hear from you frequently.
“With very best greetings,
“Your friend,
“LEAH”
Her married name and new address were not given.
I carried the letter with me for months, opening and reading it in bars, between halves of basketball games, in Government classes, and in my room, until finally it began to get stained, from my wallet, the color of cordovan, and I had to put it away somewhere.
ABOUT the same hour Hitler’s troops were marching into Vienna, I was on reconnaissance for geology 1-b, searching perfunctorily, in New Jersey, for a limestone deposit. But during the weeks and months that followed the German takeover of Vienna, I often thought of Leah. Sometimes just thinking of her wasn’t enough. When, for example, I had examined the most recent newspaper photographs of Viennese Jewesses on their hands and knees scrubbing sidewalks, I quickly stepped across my dormitory room, opened a desk drawer, slipped an automatic into my pocket, then dropped noiselessly from my window to the street, where a long-range monoplane, equipped with a silent engine, awaited my gallant, foolhardy, hawklike whim. I’m not the type that just sits around.
In late summer of 1940, at a party in New York, I met a girl who not only had known Leah in Vienna, but had gone all through school with her. I pulled up a chair, but the girl was determined to tell me about some man in Philadelphia, who looked exactly like Gary Cooper. She said I had a weak chin. She said she hated mink. She said that Leah had either got out of Vienna or hadn’t got out of Vienna.
During the war in Europe, I had an Intelligence job with a regiment of an infantry division. My work called for a lot of conversation with civilians and Wehrmacht prisoners. Among the latter, sometimes there were Austrians. One feldwebel, a Viennese, whom I secretly suspected of wearing lederhosen under his field-gray uniform, gave me a little hope; but it turned out he had known not Leah, but some girl with the same last name as Leah’s. Another Wiener, an unteroffizier, standing at strict attention, told me what terrible things had been done to the Jews in Vienna. As I had rarely, if ever, seen a man with a face quite so noble and full of vicarious suffering as this unteroffizier’s was, just for the devil of it I had him roll up his left sleeve. Close to his armpit he had the tattooed blood-type marks of an old SS man. I stopped asking personal questions after a while.
A few months after the war in Europe had ended, I took some military papers to Vienna. In a jeep with another man, I left Nϋrnburg on a hot October morning and got into Vienna the next, even hotter, morning. In the Russian Zone we were detained five hours while two guards made passionate love to our wrist watches. It was mid-afternoon by the time we entered the American Zone of Vienna, in which Stiefelstrasse, my old street, was located.
I talked to the Tabak-Trafik vendor on the corner of Stiefelstrasse, to the pharmacist in the near-by Apotheke, to a neighborhood woman, who jumped at least an inch when I addressed her, and to a man who insisted that he used to see me on the trolley car in 1936. Two of these people told me that Leah was dead. The pharmacist suggested that I go to see a Dr. Weinstein, who had just come back to Vienna from Buchenwald, and gave me his address. I then got back into the jeep, and we cruised through the streets toward G-2 Headquarters. My jeep partner tooted his horn at the girls in the streets and told me at great length what he thought of Army dentists.
When we had delivered the official papers, I got back into the jeep alone and went to see Dr. Weinstein.
IT WAS twilight when I drove back to Stiefelstrasse. I parked the jeep and entered my old house. It had been turned into living quarters for field-grade officers. A red-haired staff sergeant was sitting at an Army desk on the first landing, cleaning his fingernails. He looked up, and, as I didn’t outrank him, gave me that long Army look that holds no interest or curiosity at all. Ordinarily I would have returned it.
“What’s the chances of my going up to the second floor just for a minute?” I asked. “I used to live here before the war.”
“This here’s officers’ quarters, Mac,” he said.
“I know. I’ll only be a minute.”
“Can’t do it. Sorry.” He went on scraping the insides of his fingernails with the big blade of his pocketknife.
“I’ll only be a minute,” I said again.
He put down his knife, patiently. “Look, Mac. I don’t wanna sound like a bum. But I ain’t lettin’ nobody go upstairs unless they belong there. I don’t give a damn if it’s Eisenhower himself. I got my—” He was interrupted by the sudden ringing of the telephone on his desk. He picked up the phone, keeping an eye on me, and said, “Yessir, Colonel, sir. This is him on the phone…. Yessir…. Yessir…. I got Corporal Santini puttin’ ‘em on the ice right now, right this minute. They’ll be good and cold…. Well, I figured we’d put the orchestra right out on the balcony, like. Account of there’s only three of ‘em…. Yessir…. Well, I spoke to Major Foltz, and he said the ladies could put their coats and stuff in his room…. Yessir. Right, sir. Ya wanna hurry up, now. Ya don’t wanna miss any of that moonlight…. Ha,ha,ha!…Yessir. G’bye, sir.” The staff sergeant hung up, looking stimulated.
“Look,” I said, distracting him, “I’ll only be a minute.”
He looked at me. “What’s the big deal, anyhow, up there?”
“No big deal.” I took a deep breath. “I just want to go up to the second floor and take a look at the balcony. I used to know a girl who lived in the balcony apartment.”
“Yeah? Where’s she at now?”
“She’s dead.”
“Yeah? How come?”
“She and her family were burned to death in an incinerator, I’m told.”
“Yeah? What was she, a Jew or something?”
“Yes. Can I go up a minute?”
Very visibly, the sergeant’s interest in the affair waned. He picked up a pencil and moved it from the left side of the desk to the right. “Cripes, Mac. I don’t know. It’ll be my skin if you’re caught.”
“I’ll just be a minute.”
“Okay. Make it snappy.”
I climbed the stairs quickly and entered my old sitting room. It had three single bunks in it, made up Army style. Nothing in the room had been there in 1936. Officers’ blouses were suspended on hangers everywhere. I walked to the window, opened it, and looked down for a moment at the balcony where Leah had once stood. Then I went downstairs and thanked the staff sergeant. He asked me, as I was going out the door, what the devil you were supposed to do with champagne—lay it on its side or stand it up. I said I didn’t know, and left the building.