I
See You Never
By Ray
Bradbury
The
soft knock came at the kitchen door, and when Mrs. O’Brian
opened
it, there on the back porch were her best tenant, Mr. Ramirez,
and
two police officers, one on each side of him. Mr. Ramirez
just
stood there, walled in and small.
“Why, Mr. Ramirez!” said Mrs. O’Brian.
Mr. Ramirez was overcome. He did not seem to
have words to
explain.
He
had arrived at Mrs. O’Brian’s rooming house more than two
years
earlier and had lived there ever since. He had come by bus
from
Mexico City to San Diego and had then gone up to Los Angeles.
There
he had found the clean little room, with glossy blue
linoleum,
and pictures and calendars on the flowered walls, and
Mrs.
O’Brian as the strict but kindly landlady. During the war, he
had
worked at the airplane factory and made parts for the planes
that
flew off somewhere, and even now, after the war, he still held
his
job. From the first, he had made big money. He saved some
of
it, and he got drunk only once a week—a privilege that, to Mrs.
O’Brian’s
way of thinking, every good workingman deserved,
Unquestioned
and unreprimanded.
Inside
Mrs. O’Brian’s kitchen, pies were baking in the oven. Soon
the
pies would come out with complexions like Mr. Ramirez’s,
brown and shiny and crisp, with slits in them
for the air almost like
the
slits of Mr. Ramirez’s dark eyes. The kitchen smelled good. The
policemen
leaned forward, lured by the odor. Mr. Ramirez gazed at
his
feet, as if they had carried him into all this trouble.
“What happened, Mr. Ramirez?” asked Mrs.
O’Brian.
Behind
Mrs. O’Brian, as he lifted his eyes, Mr. Ramirez saw the
long
table, laid with clean white linen and set with a platter, cool,
shining
glasses, a water pitcher with ice cubes floating inside it, a
bowl
of fresh potato salad, and one of bananas and oranges, cubed
and
sugared. At this table sat Mrs. O’Brian’s children—her three
grown
sons, eating and conversing, and her two younger daughters,
who
were staring at the policemen as they ate.
“I
have been here thirty months,” said Mr. Ramirez quietly, looking
at
Mrs. O’Brian’s plump hands.
“That’s
six months too long,” said one policeman. “He only had a
temporary
visa. We’ve just got around to looking for him.”
Soon
after Mr. Ramirez had arrived, he bought a radio for his
little
room; evenings, he turned it up very loud and enjoyed it. And
he
had bought a wrist-watch and enjoyed that, too. And on many
nights
he had walked silent streets and seen the bright clothes in
the
windows and bought some of them, and he had seen the jewels
and
bought some of them for his few lady friends. And he had
gone
to picture shows five nights a week for a while. Then, also,
he
had ridden the streetcars—all night some nights—smelling the
electricity,
his dark eyes moving over the advertisements, feeling
the
wheels rumble under him, watching the little sleeping houses
and
big hotels slip by. Besides that, he had gone to large restaurants,
where
he had eaten many-course dinners, and to the opera
and
the theatre. And he had bought a car, which later, when he
forgot
to pay for it, the dealer had driven off angrily from in front of
the
rooming house.
“So
here I am,” said Mr. Ramirez now, “to tell you that I must give
up
my room, Mrs. O’Brian. I come to get my baggage and clothes
and
go with these men.”
“Back to Mexico?”
“Yes. To Lagos. That is a little town north of
Mexico City.”
“I’m
sorry, Mr. Ramirez.”
“I’m packed,” said Mr. Ramirez hoarsely,
blinking his dark eyes
rapidly
and moving his hands helplessly before him. The policemen
did
not touch him. There was no necessity for that. “Here is
the
key, Mrs. O’Brian,” Mr. Ramirez said, “I have my bag already.”
Mrs.
O’Brian, for the first time, noticed a suitcase standing behind
him
on the porch.
Mr.
Ramirez looked in again at the huge kitchen, at the bright
silver
cutlery and the young people eating and the shining waxed
floor.
He turned and looked for a long moment at the apartment
house
next door, rising up three stories, high and beautiful. He
looked
at the balconies and fire escapes and back-porch stairs, at
the
lines of laundry snapping in the wind.
“You’ve
been a good tenant,” said Mrs. O’Brian.
“Thank
you, thank you, Mrs. O’Brian,” he said softly. He closed
his
eyes.
Mrs. O’Brian stood holding the door half open.
One of her sons,
behind
her, said that her dinner was getting cold, but she shook
her
head at him and turned back to Mr. Ramirez. She remembered
a
visit she had once made to some Mexican border towns—the hot
days,
the endless crickets leaping and falling or lying dead and brittle
like
the small cigars in the shop windows’ and the canals taking
river
water out to the farms, the dirt roads, the scorched
fields,
the little adobe houses, the bleached clothes, the eroded landscape.
She
remembered the silent towns, the warm beer, the hot, thick
foods
each day. She remembered the slow, dragging horses and the
parched
jack rabbits on the road. She remembered the iron mountains
and
the dusty valleys and the ocean beaches that spread hundreds
of
miles with no sound but the waves —no cars, no buildings,
nothing.
“I’m
sure sorry, Mr. Ramirez,” she said.
“I don’t want to go back, Mrs. O’Brian,”
he said weakly. “I like
it
here. I want to stay here. I’ve worked, I’ve got money. I look all
right,
don’t I? And I don’t want to go back!”
“I’m
sorry, Mr. Ramirez,” she said. “I wish there was something I
could
do.”
“Mrs.
O’Brian!” he cried suddenly, tears rolling out from under
his
eyelids. He reached out his hands and took her hand fervently,
shaking
it, wringing it, holding to it. “Mrs. O’Brian, I see you never,
I
see you never!”
The
policemen smiled at this, but Mr. Ramirez did not notice it,
and
they stopped smiling very soon.
“Goodbye,
Mrs. O’Brian. You have been good to me. Oh, goodbye,
Mrs.
O’Brian. I see you never”
The
policemen waited for Mr. Ramirez to turn, pick up his suitcase,
and
walk away. Then they followed him, tipping their caps to
Mrs.
O’Brian. She watched them go down the porch steps. Then she
shut
the door quietly and went slowly back to her chair at the table.
She
pulled the chair out and sat down. She picked up the shining
knife
and fork and started once more upon her steak.
“Hurry
up, Mom,” said one of the sons. “It’ll be cold.”
Mrs.
O’Brian took one bite and chewed on it for a long, slow time;
then
she stared at the closed door. She laid down her knife and
fork.
“What’s wrong, Ma?” asked her son.
“I
just realized,” said Mrs. O’Brian—she put her hand to her face—
“I’ll
never see Mr. Ramirez again.”
The New Yorker, 1949.
