We’ll Always Have Paris, Ray Bradbury
Contents
Introduction: Watching and Writing
Massinello Pietro
The Visit
The Twilight Greens
The Murder
When The Bough Breaks
We’ll Always Have Paris
Ma Perkins Comes To Stay
Doubles
Pater Caninus
Arrival and Departure
Last Laughs
Pietà Summer
Fly Away Home
Un-Pillow Talk
Come Away With Me
Apple-core Baltimore
The Reincarnate
Remembrance, Ohio
If Paths Must Cross Again
Miss Appletree and I
A Literary Encounter
America
Introduction: Watching and Writing
The stories in this collection were created by two people: The me who watches and the me who writes.
Both of these creatures inside myself have lived under one sign, which has hung over my typewriter for seventy years: Don’t think, do.
I haven’t thought about any of these stories; they are explosions or impulses. Sometimes they are big explosions of ideas that cannot be resisted, sometimes small impulses coaxed to grow.
My favorite here is ‘Massinello Pietro’ because it happened to me many years ago, when I was in my early twenties and lived in and out of a tenement in downtown L.A. Massinello Pietro became a friend of mine whom I tried to protect from the police and help when he was brought into court. The short story that was inspired by this friendship is, in many ways, basically true and I simply had to write it.
The other stories, one by one, came to me throughout my life – from a very young age through my middle and later years. Every one of them has been a passion. Every story here was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me. I watch: I get an idea, fall in love with it, and try not to think too much about it. I then write: I let the story pour forth onto the paper as soon as possible.
So here you are with the works of the two people living inside my skin. Some may surprise you. And that is good. Many of them surprised me when they came to me and asked to be born. I hope you enjoy them. Don’t think about them too much. Just try to love them as I love them.
Be my guest.
Ray Bradbury
AUGUST 2008
Massinello Pietro
He fed the canaries and the geese and the dogs and the cats. Then he cranked up the rusty phonograph and sang to the hissing ‘Tales from the Vienna Woods’:
Life goes up, life goes down,
But please smile, do not sigh, do not frown!
Dancing, he heard the car stop before his little shop. He saw the man in the gray hat glance up and down the storefront and knew the man was reading the sign which in large, uneven blue letters declared THE MANGER. EVERYTHING FREE! LOVE AND CHARITY FOR ALL!
The man stepped halfway through the open door and stopped. ‘Mr Massinello Pietro?’
Pietro nodded vigorously, smiling. ‘Come in. Do you want to arrest me? Do you want to throw me in jail?’
The man read from his notes. ‘Better known as Alfred Flonn?’ He eyed the silver bells on Pietro’s shirtsleeves.
‘That’s me!’ Pietro’s eye flashed.
The man was uncomfortable. He looked around a room crammed full of rustling birdcages and packing crates. Geese rushed in through the back door, stared at him angrily, and rushed back out. Four parrots blinked lazily on their high perches. Two Indian lovebirds cooed softly. Three dachshunds capered around Pietro’s feet, waiting for him to put down just one hand to pet them. On one shoulder he carried a banana-beaked mynah bird, on the other a zebra finch.
‘Sit down!’ sang Pietro. ‘I was just having a little music; that’s the way to start the day!’ He cranked the portable phonograph swiftly and reset the needle.
‘I know, I know.’ The man laughed, trying to be tolerant. ‘My name’s Tiffany, from the D.A.’s office. We got a lot of complaints.’ He waved around the cluttered shop. ‘Public health. All these ducks, raccoons, white mice. Wrong zone, wrong neighborhood. You’ll have to clean it up.’
‘Six people have told me that.’ Pietro counted them proudly on his fingers. ‘Two judges, three policemen, and the district attorney himself!’
‘You were warned a month ago you had thirty days to stop this nuisance or go to jail,’ said Tiffany, over the music. ‘We’ve been patient.’
‘I,’ said Pietro, ‘have been the patient one. I have waited for the world to stop being silly. I have waited for it to stop wars. I have waited for politicians to be honest. I have waited–la la la–for real estate men to be good citizens. But while I wait, I dance!’ He demonstrated.
‘But look at this place!’ protested Tiffany.
‘Isn’t it wonderful? Do you see my shrine for the Virgin Mary?’ Pietro pointed. ‘And here, on the wall, a framed letter from the archbishop’s secretary himself, saying what good I’ve done for the poor! Once, I was rich, I had property, a hotel. A man took it all away, my wife with it, oh, twenty years ago. Do you know what I did? I invested what little I had left in dogs, geese, mice, parrots, who do not change their minds, who are always friends forever and forever. I bought my phonograph, which never is sad, which never stops singing!’
‘That’s another thing,’ said Tiffany, wincing. ‘The neighborhood says at four in the morning, um, you and the phonograph…’
‘Music is better than soap and water!’
Tiffany shut his eyes and recited the speech he knew so well. ‘If you don’t have these rabbits, the monkey, the parakeets, everything, out by sundown, it’s the Black Maria for you.’
Mr Pietro nodded with each word, smiling, alert. ‘What have I done? Have I murdered a man? Have I kicked a child? Have I stolen a watch? Have I foreclosed a mortgage? Have I bombed a city? Have I fired a gun? Have I told a lie? Have I cheated a customer? Have I turned from the Good Lord? Have I taken a bribe? Have I peddled dope? Do I sell innocent women?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Tell me, then, what have I done? Point to it, lay a hand on it. My dogs, these are evil, eh? These birds, their song is dreadful, eh? My phonograph–I suppose that’s bad, too, eh? All right, put me in jail, throw away the key. You will not separate us.’
The music rose to a great crescendo. He sang along with it:
Tiffa-nee! Hear my plea!
Can’t you smile; sit awhile, be my friend?
The dogs leaped about, barking.
Mr Tiffany drove away in his car.
Pietro felt a pain in his chest. Still grinning, he stopped dancing. The geese rushed in and pecked gently at his shoes as he stood, bent down, holding his chest.
At lunchtime, Pietro opened a quart of homemade Hungarian goulash and refreshed himself. He paused and touched his chest, but the familiar pain had vanished. Finishing his meal, he went to gaze over the high wooden fence in the backyard.
There she was! There was Mrs Gutierrez, very fat, and as loud as a jukebox, talking to her neighbors on the other side of the lot.
‘Lovely lady!’ called Mr Massinello Pietro. ‘Tonight I go to jail! Your war is fought and won. I give you my saber, my heart, my soul!’
Mrs Gutierrez came ponderously across the dirt yard. ‘What?’ she said, as if she couldn’t see or hear him.
‘You told the police, the police told me, and I laughed!’ His hand flirted on the air, two fingers wiggling. ‘I hope you will be happy!’
‘I didn’t call no police!’ she said indignantly.
‘Ah, Mrs Gutierrez, I will write a song for you!’
‘All of them other people must’ve called in,’ she insisted.
‘And when I leave today for jail, I’ll have a present for you.’ He bowed.
‘I tell you it wasn’t me!’ she cried. ‘You and your mealy mouth!’
‘I compliment you,’ he said sincerely. ‘You are a civic-minded citizen. All filth, all noise, all odd things must go.’
‘You, you!’ she shouted. ‘Oh, you!’ She had no more words.
‘I dance for you!’ he sang, and waltzed into the house.
In the late afternoon he put on his red silk bandanna and the huge gold earrings and the red sash and the blue vest with the golden piping. He put on his buckle shoes and tight knee breeches. ‘Come along! One last walk, eh?’ he told his dogs, and out of the shop they went, Pietro carrying the portable phonograph under his arm, wincing with the weight of it, for his stomach and body had been sick for some time and there was something wrong; he couldn’t lift things very easily. The dogs padded on either side of him, the parakeets shrieked wildly on his shoulder. The sun was low, the air cool and settled. He looked at everything as if it was new. He said good evening to everyone, he waved, he saluted.
In a hamburger stand he set the phonograph whirling and scratching out the song on top of a stool. People turned to watch as he dived into the song and came up shining with laughter. He snapped his fingers, dipped his legs, whistled sweetly, eyes closed, as the symphony orchestra soared through Strauss. He made the dogs stand in a row while he danced. He made the parakeets tumble on the floor. He caught the spinning, flashing dimes from the startled but responsive audience.
‘Get the hell out!’ said the hamburger man. ‘What in hell you think this is, the opera?’
‘Thank you, good friends!’ Dogs, music, parakeets, Pietro ran into the night, bells chiming softly.
On a street corner he sang to the sky, to the new stars, and the October moon. A night wind arose. Faces watched smiling from the shadows. Again Pietro winked, smiled, whistled, whirled.
For charity, the poor!
Ah sweet, ah demure!
And he saw all the faces, the looking faces. And
