My, these Saturday Soiree‘s come along ever so quickly. This past week I’ve been reading Salinger‘s For Esmé with Love and Squalor and Other Stories as my public transport book, so another Salinger story is the feature of this week’s Soiree, and I’ve chosen the quietly affecting “For Esmé with Love and Squalor.” In “For Esmé” an enlisted soldier and aspiring writer reminisces about a young girl he met in London during the war.
Following a training session and awaiting reassignment, the soldier takes a walk around the rainy town and happens upon a small church where a children’s choir is practicing. Sitting in on the practice, the soldier takes notice of a young female singer who appears to be bored but has a very sweet singing voice. Out in the rain again, the soldier avoids the recreation center where his fellow soldiers are spending time, and retires to an empty civilian tearoom. The young girl, her younger brother and their governess come into the tearoom out of the rain; the verbose and precocious young girl strikes up a conversation with the soldier.
‘I thought Americans despised tea,’ she said.
It wasn’t the observation of a smart aleck but that of a truth-lover or a statistics-lover. I replied that some of us never drank anything but tea. I asked her if she’d care to join me.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Perhaps for just a fraction of a moment.’
Esmé and the soldier discuss his reasons for being in town, her encounters with Americans, his personal life and her relationship with her deceased father whose watch she wears despite being too big for her tiny wrist. Esmé’s younger brother Charles eventually joins them, becoming Esmé’s topic of conversation and occasionally interjecting. Upon learning that the soldier is an aspiring writer Esmé asks him to write her a story, something about squalor which she loves reading about. The story then moves into what the soldier calls “the squalid, or moving, part of the story”, thinly disguised as Staff-Sergeant X, the soldier is quartered in a house in Bavaria after the Allies victory in the war, whose mind and psyche have been damaged by his war experiences.
He put his arms on the table and rested his head on them. He ached from head to foot, all zones of pain seemingly interdependent. He was rather like a Christmas tree whose lights, wired in series, must all go out if even one bulb is defective.
After a brief discussion with his companion, Clay, about Clay’s girlfriend who is studying psychology and has offered her diagnosis on X’s mental breakdown. Left alone again X discovers a parcel which has been readdressed to him three times. Esmé has sent him her fathers watch, and a short note telling him how much she enjoyed their time together that afternoon beforehand. Charles adds his own note as well, which made me laugh out loud:
Charles, whom I am teaching to read and write and whom I am finding an extremely intelligent novice, wishes to add a few words. Please write as soon as you have the time and inclination.
HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO LOVE AND KISSES CHALES
Thematically, it is very similar to “A Perfect Day for Bananafish“; a shellshocked soldier is touched, inspired, affected by the innocence of a child; the contrast between what he has seen in action and the unaffected innocence of the child almost becomes too much to bear. Unlike “Bananafish”, “For Esme” ends on a more positive note, with the soldier inspired by Esmé positivity and he finally senses the possibility of recovery. Though the watch has been damaged in transit, for the soldier it is a symbol of hope, of faith, and of the goodness that humans are, against all odds, capable.
