We'll Always Have Paris: Stories Read online

  ‘Your wish, dear lady, my command. Please pass the salt.’

  But he did not remember the names of the books. The long evening passed and she looked at her hands, biting her lips.

  Promptly at eight o’clock, she jumped up, crying out, ‘I remember!’

  In a matter of instants she was in their car, driving down the dark streets to town, into a bookstore where, laughing, she bought ten books.

  ‘Thank you!’ said the book dealer. ‘Good night!’

  The door slammed with a tinkle of bells.

  Charlie read late at night, sometimes fumbling to bed, blind with literature, at three in the morning.

  Now, at ten o’clock, before retiring, Marie slipped into the library, laid the ten books quietly next to Charlie, and tiptoed out.

  She watched through the library keyhole, her heart beating loudly in her. She was in a perfect fever.

  After a time, Charlie glanced up at the desk. He blinked at the new books. Hesitantly, he closed his copy of Samuel Johnson, and sat there.

  ‘Go on,’ whispered Marie through the keyhole. ‘Go on!’ Her breath came and went in her mouth.

  Charlie licked his lips thoughtfully and then, slowly, he put out his hand. Taking one of the new books, he opened it, settled down, and began reading.

  Singing softly, Marie walked off to bed.

  He bounded into the kitchen the next morning with a glad cry. ‘Hello, beautiful woman! Hello, lovely, wonderful, kind, understanding creature, living in this great wide sweet world!’

  She looked at him happily. ‘Saroyan?’ she said.

  ‘Saroyan!’ he cried, and they had breakfast.

  America

  We are the dream that other people dream.

  The land where other people land.

  When late at night

  They think on flight

  And, flying, here arrive

  Where we fools dumbly thrive ourselves.

  Refuse to see

  We be what all the world would like to be.

  Because we hive within this scheme

  The obvious dream is blind to us.

  We do not mind the miracle we are,

  So stop our mouths with curses.

  While all the world rehearses

  Coming here to stay.

  We busily make plans to go away.

  How dumb! newcomers cry, arrived from Chad.

  You’re mad! Iraqis shout.

  We’d sell our souls if we could be you.

  How come you cannot see the way we see you?

  You tread a freedom forest as you please.

  But, damn! You miss the forest for the trees.

  Ten thousand wanderers a week

  Engulf your shore,

  You wonder what their shouting’s for,

  And why so glad?

  Run warm those souls: America is bad?

  Sit down, stare in their faces, see!

  You be the hoped-for thing a hopeless world would be.

  In tides of immigrants that this year flow

  You still remain the beckoning hearth they’d know.

  In midnight beds with blueprint, plan and scheme

  You are the dream that other people dream.

  About the Author

  One of the greatest writers of science fiction and fantasy in the world today, Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920. He moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1934. He has published some 500 short stories, novels, plays, scripts and poems since his first story appeared in Weird Tales when he was twenty years old. Ray Bradbury lives in Los Angeles.

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  By Ray Bradbury

  Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines

  The Anthem Sprinters

  Bradbury Speaks

  The Cat’s Pajamas

  Dandelion Wine

  Dark Carnival

  The Day it Rained Forever

  Death is a Lonely Business

  Driving Blind

  Fahrenheit 451

  Farewell Summer

  From the Dust Returned

  The Golden Apples of the Sun

  A Graveyard for Lunatics

  Green Shadows, White Whale

  The Halloween Tree

  I Sing the Body Electric!

  The Illustrated Man

  Let’s All Kill Constance

  Long After Midnight

  The Machineries of Joy

  The Martian Chronicles

  A Medicine for Melancholy

  Moby Dick (screenplay)

  Now and Forever

  The October Country

  One More for the Road

  Quicker Than the Eye

  R is for Rocket

  Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 1

  Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2

  S is for Space

  The Small Assassin

  Something Wicked this Way Comes

  A Sound of Thunder

  The Toynbee Convector

  When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed

  Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Town

  The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit

  We’ll Always Have Paris

  Yestermorrow

  Zen in the Art of Writing