“O, Sinbad was in bad in Tokio and Rome,In bad in TrinidadAnd twice as bad at home,O, Sinbad was in bad all around!”
Everybody clapped. The white-faced woman in the corner cried “Bravo, Bravo,” in a shrill nightmare voice.
Heineman bowed, his big grinning face bobbing up and down like the face of a Chinese figure in porcelain.
“Lui est Sinbad,” he cried, pointing with a wide gesture towards Henslowe.
“Give 'em some more, Heinz. Give them some more,” said Henslowe, laughing.
“Big brunettes with long steletsOn the shores of Italee,Dutch girls with golden curlsBeside the Zuyder Zee...”
Everybody cheered again; Andrews kept looking at the girl at the next table, whose face was red from laughter. She had a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, and kept saying in a low voice:
“O qu'il est drole, celui-la.... O qu'il est drole.”
Heineman picked up a glass and waved it in the air before drinking it off. Several people got up and filled it up from their bottles with white wine and red. The French soldier at the next table pulled an army canteen from under his chair and hung it round Heineman's neck.
Heineman, his face crimson, bowed to all sides, more like a Chinese porcelain figure than ever, and started singing in all solemnity this time.
“Hulas and hulas would pucker up their lips,He fell for their ball-bearing hipsFor they were pips...”
His chunky body swayed to the ragtime. The woman in the corner kept time with long white arms raised above her head.
“Bet she's a snake charmer,” said Henslowe.
“O, wild woman loved that childHe would drive ten women wild!O, Sinbad was in bad all around!”
Heineman waved his arms, pointed again to Henslowe, and sank into his chair saying in the tones of a Shakespearean actor:
“C'est lui Sinbad.”
The girl hid her face on the tablecloth, shaken with laughter. Andrews could hear a convulsed little voice saying:
“O qu'il est rigolo....”
Heineman took off the canteen and handed it back to the French soldier.
“Merci, Camarade,” he said solemnly.
“Eh bien, Jeanne, c'est temps de ficher le camp,” said the French soldier to the girl. They got up. He shook hands with the Americans. Andrews caught the girl's eye and they both started laughing convulsively again. Andrews noticed how erect and supple she walked as his eyes followed her to the door.
Andrews's party followed soon after.
“We've got to hurry if we want to get to the Lapin Agile before closing... and I've got to have a drink,” said Heineman, still talking in his stagey Shakespearean voice.
“Have you ever been on the stage?” asked Andrews.
“What stage, sir? I'm in the last stages now, sir.... I am an artistic photographer and none other.... Moki and I are going into the movies together when they decide to have peace.”
“Who's Moki?”
“Moki Hadj is the lady in the salmon-colored dress,” said Henslowe, in a loud stage whisper in Andrews's ear. “They have a lion cub named Bubu.”
“Our first born,” said Heineman with a wave of the hand.
The streets were deserted. A thin ray of moonlight, bursting now and then through the heavy clouds, lit up low houses and roughly-cobbled streets and the flights of steps with rare dim lamps bracketed in house walls that led up to the Butte.
There was a gendarme in front of the door of the Lapin Agile. The street was still full of groups that had just come out, American officers and Y.M.C.A, women with a sprinkling of the inhabitants of the region.
“Now look, we're late,” groaned Heineman in a tearful voice.
“Never mind, Heinz,” said Henslowe, “le Guy'll take us to see de Clocheville like he did last time, n'est pas, le Guy?” Then Andrews heard him add, talking to a man he had not seen before, “Come along Aubrey, I'll introduce you later.”
They climbed further up the hill. There was a scent of wet gardens in the air, entirely silent except for the clatter of their feet on the cobbles. Heineman was dancing a sort of a jig at the head of the procession. They stopped before a tall cadaverous house and started climbing a rickety wooden stairway.
“Talk about inside dope.... I got this from a man who's actually in the room when the Peace Conference meets.” Andrews heard Aubrey's voice with a Chicago burr in the r's behind him in the stairs.
“Fine, let's hear it,” said Henslowe.
“Did you say the Peace Conference took dope?” shouted Heineman, whose puffing could be heard as he climbed the dark stairs ahead of them.
“Shut up, Heinz.”
They stumbled over a raised doorstep into a large garret room with a tile floor, where a tall lean man in a monastic-looking dressing gown of some brown material received them. The only candle made all their shadows dance fantastically on the slanting white walls as they moved about. One side of the room had three big windows, with an occasional cracked pane mended with newspaper, stretching from floor to ceiling. In front of them were two couches with rugs piled on them. On the opposite wall was a confused mass of canvases piled one against the other, leaning helter skelter against the slanting wall of the room.
“C'est le bon vin, le bon vin,C'est la chanson du vin.”
chanted Heineman. Everybody settled themselves on couches. The lanky man in the brown dressing gown brought a table out of the shadow, put some black bottles and heavy glasses on it, and drew up a camp stool for himself.
“He lives that way.... They say he never goes out. Stays here and paints, and when friends come in, he feeds them wine and charges them double,” said Henslowe. “That's how he lives.”
The lanky man began taking bits of candle out of a drawer of the table and lighting them. Andrews saw that his feet and legs were bare below the frayed edge of the dressing gown. The candle light lit up the men's flushed faces and the crude banana yellows and arsenic greens of the canvases along the walls, against which jars full of paint brushes cast blurred shadows.
“I was going to tell you, Henny,” said Aubrey, “the dope is that the President's going to leave the conference, going to call them all damn blackguards to their faces and walk out, with the band playing the 'Internationale.'”
“God, that's news,” cried Andrews.
“If he does that he'll recognize the Soviets,” said Henslowe. “Me for the first Red Cross Mission that goes to save starving Russia.... Gee, that's great. I'll write you a postal from Moscow, Andy, if they haven't been abolished as delusions of the bourgeoisie.”
“Hell, no.... I've got five hundred dollars' worth of Russian bonds that girl Vera gave me.... But worth five million, ten million, fifty million if the Czar gets back.... I'm backing the little white father,” cried Heineman. “Anyway Moki says he's alive; that Savaroffs got him locked up in a suite in the Ritz.... And Moki knows.”
“Moki knows a damn lot, I'll admit that,” said Henslowe.
“But just think of it,” said Aubrey, “that means world revolution with the United States at the head of it. What do you think of that?”
“Moki doesn't think so,” said Heineman. “And Moki knows.”
“She just knows what a lot of reactionary warlords tell her,” said Aubrey. “This man I was talking with at the Crillon—I wish I could tell you his name—heard it directly from...Well, you know who.” He turned to Henslowe, who smiled knowingly. “There's a mission in Russia at this minute making peace with Lenin.”
“A goddam outrage!” cried Heineman, knocking a bottle off the table. The lanky man picked up the pieces patiently, without comment.
“The new era is opening, men, I swear it is...” began Aubrey. “The old order is dissolving. It is going down under a weight of misery and crime.... This will be the first great gesture towards a newer and better world. There is no alternative. The chance will never come back. It is either for us to step courageously forward, or sink into unbelievable horrors of anarchy and civil war.... Peace or the dark ages again.”
Andrews had felt for some time an uncontrollable sleepiness coming over him. He rolled himself on a rug and stretched out on the empty couch. The voices arguing, wrangling, enunciating emphatic phrases, dinned for a minute in his ears. He went to sleep.
When Andrews woke up he found himself staring at the cracked plaster of an unfamiliar ceiling. For some moments he could not guess where he was. Henslowe was sleeping, wrapped in another rug, on the couch beside him. Except for Henslowe's breathing, there was complete silence. Floods of silvery-grey light poured in through the wide windows, behind which Andrews could see a sky full of bright dove-colored clouds. He sat up carefully. Some time in the night he must have taken off his tunic and boots and puttees, which were on the floor beside the couch. The tables with the bottles had gone and the lanky man was nowhere to be seen.
Andrews went to the window in his stockinged feet. Paris way a slate-grey and dove-color lay spread out like a Turkish carpet, with a silvery band of mist where the river was, out of which the Eiffel Tower stood up like a man wading. Here and there blue smoke and brown spiralled up to lose itself in the faint canopy of brown fog that hung high above the houses. Andrews stood a long while leaning against the window frame, until he heard Henslowe's voice behind him:
“Depuis le jour ou je me suis donnee.”
“You look like 'Louise.'”
Andrews turned round.
Henslowe was sitting on the edge of the bed with his hair in disorder, combing his little silky mustache with a pocket comb.
“Gee, I have a head,” he said. “My tongue feels like a nutmeg grater.... Doesn't yours?”
“No. I feel like a fighting cock.”
“What do you say we go down to the Seine and have a bath in Benny Franklin's bathtub?”
“Where's that? It sounds grand.”
“Then we'll have the biggest breakfast ever.”
“That's the right spirit.... Where's everybody gone to?”
“Old Heinz has gone to his Moki, I guess, and Aubrey's gone to collect more dope at the Crillon. He says four in the morning when the drunks come home is the prime time for a newspaper man.”
“And the Monkish man?”
“Search me.”
The streets were full of men and girls hurrying to work. Everything sparkled, had an air of being just scrubbed. They passed bakeries from which came a rich smell of fresh-baked bread. From cafes came whiffs of roasting coffee. They crossed through the markets that were full of heavy carts lumbering to and fro, and women with net bags full of vegetables. There was a pungent scent of crushed cabbage leaves and carrots and wet clay. The mist was raw and biting along the quais, and made the blood come into their cheeks and their hands stiff with cold.
The bathhouse was a huge barge with a house built on it in a lozenge shape. They crossed to it by a little gangplank on which were a few geraniums in pots. The attendant gave them two rooms side by side on the lower deck, painted grey, with steamed over windows, through which Andrews caught glimpses of hurrying green water. He stripped his clothes off quickly. The tub was of copper varnished with some white metal inside. The water flowed in through two copper swans' necks. When Andrews stepped into the hot green water, a little window in the partition flew open and Henslowe shouted in to him:
“Talk about modern conveniences. You can converse while you bathe!”
Andrews scrubbed himself jauntily with a square piece of pink soap, splashing the water about like a small boy. He stood up and lathered himself all over and then let himself slide into the water, which splashed out over the floor.
“Do you think you're a performing seal?” shouted Henslowe.
“It's all so preposterous,” cried Andrews, going off into convulsions of laughter. “She has a lion cub named Bubu and Nicolas Romanoff lives in the Ritz, and the Revolution is scheduled for day after tomorrow at twelve noon.”
“I'd put it about the first of May,” answered Henslowe, amid a sound of splashing. “Gee, it'd be great to be a people's Commissary.... You could go and revolute the grand Llama of Thibet.”
“O, it's too deliciously preposterous,” cried Andrews, letting himself slide a second time into the bathtub.
II
Two M.P.'s passed outside the window. Andrews watched the yellow pigskin revolver cases until they were out of sight. He felt joyfully secure from them. The waiter, standing by the door with a napkin on his arm, gave him a sense of security so intense it made him laugh. On the marble table before him were a small glass of beer, a notebook full of ruled sheets of paper and a couple of yellow pencils. The beer, the color of topaz in the clear grey light that streamed in through the window, threw a pale yellow glow with a bright center on the table. Outside was the boulevard with a few people walking hurriedly. An empty market wagon passed now and then, rumbling loud. On a bench a woman in a black knitted shawl, with a bundle of newspapers in her knees, was counting sous with loving concentration.
Andrews looked at his watch. He had an hour before going to the Schola Cantorum.
He got to his feet, paid the waiter and strolled down the center of the boulevard, thinking smilingly of pages he had written, of pages he was going to write, filled with a sense of leisurely well-being. It was a grey morning with a little yellowish fog in the air. The pavements were damp, reflected women's dresses and men's legs and the angular outlines of taxicabs. From a flower stand with violets and red and pink carnations irregular blotches of color ran down into the brownish grey of the pavement. Andrews caught a faint smell of violets in the smell of the fog as he passed the flower stand and remembered suddenly that spring was coming. He would not miss a moment of this spring, he told himself; he would follow it step by step, from the first violets. Oh, how fully he must live now to make up for all the years he had wasted in his life.
He kept on walking along the boulevard. He was remembering how he and the girl the soldier had called Jeanne had both kindled with uncontrollable laughter when their eyes had met that night in the restaurant. He wished he could go down the boulevard with a girl like that, laughing through the foggy morning.
He wondered vaguely what part of Paris he was getting to, but was too happy to care. How beautifully long the hours were in the early morning!
At a concert at the Salle Gaveau the day before he had heard Debussy's Nocturnes and Les Sirenes. Rhythms from them were the warp of all his thoughts. Against the background of the grey street and the brownish fog that hung a veil at the end of every vista he began to imagine rhythms of his own, modulations and phrases that grew brilliant and faded, that flapped for a while like gaudy banners above his head through the clatter of the street.
He noticed that he was passing a long building with blank rows of windows, at the central door of which stood groups of American soldiers smoking. Unconsciously he hastened his steps, for fear of meeting an officer he would have to salute. He passed the men without looking at them.
A voice detained him. “Say, Andrews.”
When he turned he saw that a short man with curly hair, whose face, though familiar, he could not place, had left the group at the door and was coming towards him. “Hello, Andrews.... Your name's Andrews, ain't it?”
“Yes.” Andrews shook his hand, trying to remember.
“I'm Fuselli.... Remember? Last time I saw you you was goin' up to the lines on a train with Chrisfield.... Chris we used to call him.... At Cosne, don't you remember?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, what's happened to Chris?”
“He's a corporal now,” said Andrews.
“Gee he is.... I'll be goddamned.... They was goin' to make me a corporal once.”
Fuselli wore stained olive-drab breeches and badly rolled puttees; his shirt was open at the neck. From his blue denim jacket came a smell of stale grease that Andrews recognised; the smell of army kitchens. He had a momentary recollection of standing in line cold dark mornings and of the sound the food made slopping into mess kits.
“Why didn't they make you a corporal, Fuselli?” Andrcws said, after a pause, in a constrained voice.
“Hell, I got in wrong, I suppose.”
They were leaning against the dusty house wall. Andrews looked at his feet. The mud of the pavement, splashing up on the wall, made an even dado along the bottom, on which Andrews scraped the toe of his shoe up and down.
“Well, how's everything?” Andrews asked looking up suddenly.
“I've been in a labor battalion. That's how everything is.”
“God, that's tough luck!”
Andrews wanted to go on. He had a sudden fear that he would be late. But he did not know how to break away.
“I got sick,” said Fuselli grinning. “I guess I am yet, G. O. 42. It's a hell of a note the way they treat a feller... like he was lower than the dirt.”
“Were you at Cosne all the time? That's damned rough luck, Fuselli.”
“Cosne sure is a hell of a hole.... I guess you saw a lot of fighting. God! you must have been glad not to be in the goddam medics.”
“I don't know that I'm glad I saw fighting.... Oh, yes, I suppose I am.”
“You see, I had it a hell of a time before they found out. Courtmartial was damn stiff... after the armistice too.... Oh, God! why can't they let a feller go home?”
A woman in a bright blue hat passed them. Andrews caught a glimpse of a white over-powdered face; her hips trembled like jelly under the blue skirt with each hard clack of her high heels on the pavement.
“Gee, that looks like Jenny.... I'm glad she didn't see me....” Fuselli laughed. “Ought to 'a seen her one night last week. We were so dead drunk we just couldn't move.”
“Isn't that bad for what's the matter with you?”
“I don't give a damn now; what's the use?”
“But God; man!” Andrews stopped himself suddenly. Then he said in a different voice, “What outfit are you in now?”
“I'm on the permanent K.P. here,” Fuselli jerked his thumb towards the door of the building. “Not a bad job, off two days a week; no drill, good eats.... At least you get all you want.... But it surely has been hell emptying ash cans and shovelling coal an' now all they've done is dry me up.”
“But you'll be goin' home soon now, won't you? They can't discharge you till they cure you.”
“Damned if I know.... Some guys say a guy never can be cured....”
“Don't you find K.P. work pretty damn dull?”
“No worse than anything else. What are you doin' in Paris?”
“School detachment.”
“What's that?”
“Men who wanted to study in the university, who managed to work it.”
“Gee, I'm glad I ain't goin' to school again.”
“Well, so long, Fuselli.”
“So long, Andrews.”
Fuselli turned and slouched back to the group of men at the door. Andrews hurried away. As he turned the corner he had a glimpse of Fuselli with his hands in his pockets and his legs crossed leaning against the wall behind the door of the barracks.
III
The darkness, where the rain fell through the vague halos of light round the street lamps, glittered with streaks of pale gold. Andrews's ears were full of the sound of racing gutters and spattering waterspouts, and of the hard unceasing beat of the rain on the pavements. It was after closing time. The corrugated shutters were drawn down, in front of cafe windows. Andrews's cap was wet; water trickled down his forehead and the sides of his nose, running into his eyes. His feet were soaked and he could feel the wet patches growing on his knees where they received the water running off his overcoat. The street stretched wide and dark ahead of him, with an occasional glimmer of greenish reflection from a lamp. As he walked, splashing with long strides through the rain, he noticed that he was keeping pace with a woman under an umbrella, a slender person who was hurrying with small resolute steps up the boulevard. When he saw her, a mad hope flamed suddenly through him. He remembered a vulgar little theatre and the crude light of a spot light. Through the paint and powder a girl's golden-brown skin had shone with a firm brilliance that made him think of wide sun-scorched uplands, and dancing figures on Greek vases. Since he had seen her two nights ago, he had thought of nothing else. He had feverishly found out her name. “Naya Selikoff!” A mad hope flared through him that this girl he was walking beside was the girl whose slender limbs moved in an endless frieze through his thoughts. He peered at her with eyes blurred with rain. What an ass he was! Of course it couldn't be; it was too early. She was on the stage at this minute. Other hungry eyes were staring at her slenderness, other hands were twitching to stroke her golden-brown skin. Walking under the steady downpour that stung his face and ears and sent a tiny cold trickle down his back, he felt a sudden dizziness of desire come over him. His hands, thrust to the bottom of his coat pockets, clutched convulsively. He felt that he would die, that his pounding blood vessels would burst. The bead curtains of rain rustled and tinkled about him, awakening his nerves, making his skin flash and tingle. In the gurgle of water in gutters and water spouts he could imagine he heard orchestras droning libidinous music. The feverish excitement of his senses began to create frenzied rhythms in his ears:
“O ce pauvre poilu! Qu'il doit etre mouille” said a small tremulous voice beside him.
He turned.
The girl was offering him part of her umbrella.
“O c'est un Americain!” she said again, still speaking as if to herself.
“Mais ca ne vaut pas la peine.”
“Mais oui, mais oui.”
He stepped under the umbrella beside her.
“But you must let me hold it.”
“Bien.”
As he took the umbrella he caught her eye. He stopped still in his tracks.
“But you're the girl at the Rat qui Danse.”
“And you were at the next table with the man who sang?”
“How amusing!”
“Et celui-la! O il etait rigolo....” She burst out laughing; her head, encased in a little round black hat, bobbed up and down under the umbrella. Andrews laughed too. Crossing the Boulevard St. Germain, a taxi nearly ran them down and splashed a great wave of mud over them. She clutched his arm and then stood roaring with laughter.
“O quelle horreur! Quelle horreur!” she kept exclaiming.
Andrews laughed and laughed.
“But hold the umbrella over us.... You're letting the rain in on my best hat,” she said again.
“Your name is Jeanne,” said Andrews.
“Impertinent! You heard my brother call me that.... He went back to the front that night, poor little chap.... He's only nineteen ... he's very clever.... O, how happy I am now that the war's over.”
“You are older than he?”
“Two years.... I am the head of the family.... It is a dignified position.”
“Have you always lived in Paris?”
“No, we are from Laon.... It's the war.”
“Refugees?”
“Don't call us that.... We work.”
Andrews laughed.
“Are you going far?” she asked peering in his face.
“No, I live up here.... My name is the same as yours.”
“Jean? How funny!”
“Where are you going?”
“Rue Descartes.... Behind St. Etienne.”
“I live near you.”
“But you mustn't come. The concierge is a tigress.... Etienne calls her Mme. Clemenceau.”
“Who? The saint?”
“No, you silly—my brother. He is a socialist. He's a typesetter at l'Humanite.”
“Really? I often read l'Humanite.”
“Poor boy, he used to swear he'd never go in the army. He thought of going to America.”
“That wouldn't do him any good now,” said Andrews bitterly. “What do you do?”
“I?” a gruff bitterness came into her voice. “Why should I tell you? I work at a dressmaker's.”
“Like Louise?”
“You've heard Louise? Oh, how I cried.”
“Why did it make you sad?”
“Oh, I don't know.... But I'm learning stenography.... But here we are!”
The great bulk of the Pantheon stood up dimly through the rain beside them. In front the tower of St. Etienne-du-Mont was just visible. The rain roared about them.
“Oh, how wet I am!” said Jeanne.
“Look, they are giving Louise day after tomorrow at the Opera Comique.... Won't you come; with me?”
“No, I should cry too much.”
“I'll cry too.”
“But it's not...”
“Cest l'armistice,” interrupted Andrews.
They both laughed!
“All right! Meet me at the cafe at the end of the Boul' Mich' at a quarter past seven.... But you probably won't come.”
“I swear I will,” cried Andrews eagerly.
“We'll see!” She darted away down the street beside St. Etienne-du-Mont. Andrews was left alone amid the seethe of the rain and the tumultuous gurgle of water-spouts. He felt calm and tired.
When he got to his room, he found he had no matches in his pocket. No light came from the window through which he could hear the hissing clamor of the rain in the court. He stumbled over a chair.
“Are you drunk?” came Walters's voice swathed in bedclothes. “There are matches on the table.”
“But where the hell's the table?”
At last his hand, groping over the table, closed on the matchbox.
The match's red and white flicker dazzled him. He blinked his eyes; the lashes were still full of raindrops. When he had lit a candle and set it amongst the music papers upon the table, he tore off his dripping clothes.
“I just met the most charming girl, Walters,” Andrews stood naked beside the pile of his clothes, rubbing himself with a towel. “Gee! I was wet.... But she was the most charming person I've met since I've been in Paris.”
“I thought you said you let the girls alone.”
“Whores, I must have said.”
“Well! Any girl you could pick up on the street....”
“Nonsense!”
“I guess they are all that way in this damned country.... God, it will do me good to see a nice sweet wholesome American girl.”
Andrews did not answer. He blew out the light and got into bed.
“But I've got a new job,” Walters went on. “I'm working in the school detachment office.”
“Why the hell do that? You came here to take courses in the Sorbonne, didn't you?”
“Sure. I go to most of them now. But in this army I like to be in the middle of things, see? Just so they can't put anything over on me.”
“There's something in that.”
“There's a damn lot in it, boy. The only way is to keep in right and not let the man higher up forget you.... Why, we may start fighting again. These damn Germans ain't showin' the right spirit at all... after all the President's done for them. I expect to get my sergeantcy out of it anyway.”
“Well, I'm going to sleep,” said Andrews sulkily.
John Andrews sat at a table outside the cafe de Rohan. The sun had just set on a ruddy afternoon, flooding everything with violet-blue light and cold greenish shadow. The sky was bright lilac color, streaked with a few amber clouds. The lights were on in all the windows of the Magazin du Louvre opposite, so that the windows seemed bits of polished glass in the afterglow. In the colonnade of the Palais Royal the shadows were deepening and growing colder. A steady stream of people poured in and out of the Metro. Green buses stuffed with people kept passing. The roar of the traffic and the clatter of footsteps and the grumble of voices swirled like dance music about Andrews's head. He noticed all at once that the rabbit man stood in front of him, a rabbit dangling forgotten at the end of its rubber tube.
“Et ca va bien? le commerce,” said Andrews.
“Quietly, quietly,” said the rabbit man, distractedly making the rabbit turn a somersault at his feet. Andrews watched the people going into the Metro.
“The gentleman amuses himself in Paris?” asked the rabbit man timidly.
“Oh, yes; and you?”
“Quietly,” the rabbit man smiled. “Women are very beautiful at this hour of the evening,” he said again in his very timid tone.
“There is nothing more beautiful than this moment of the evening... in Paris.”
“Or Parisian women.” The eyes of the rabbit man glittered. “Excuse me, sir,” he went on. “I must try and sell some rabbits.”
“Au revoir,” said Andrews holding out his hand.
The rabbit man shook it with sudden vigor and went off, making a rabbit hop before him along the curbstone. He was hidden by the swiftly moving crowds.
In the square, flaring violet arclights were flickering on, lighting up their net-covered globes that hung like harsh moons above the pavement.
Henslowe sat down on a chair beside Andrews.
“How's Sinbad?”
“Sinbad, old boy, is functioning.... Aren't you frozen?”
“How do you mean, Henslowe?”
“Overheated, you chump, sitting out here in polar weather.”
“No, but I mean.... How are you functioning?” said Andrews laughing.
“I'm going to Poland tomorrow.”
“How?”
“As guard on a Red Cross supply train. I think you might make it if you want to come, if we beat it right over to the Red Cross before Major Smithers goes. Or we might take him out to dinner.”
“But, Henny, I'm staying.”
“Why the hell stay in this hole?”
“I like it. I'm getting a better course in orchestration than I imagined existed, and I met a girl the other day, and I'm crazy over Paris.”
“If you go and get entangled, I swear I'll beat your head in with a Polish shillaughly.... Of course you've met a girl—so have I—lots. We can meet some more in Poland and dance polonaises with them.”
“No, but this girl's charming.... You've seen her. She's the girl who was with the poilu at the Rat qui Danse the first night I was in Paris. We went to Louise together.”
“Must have been a grand sentimental party.... I swear.... I may run after a Jane now and again but I never let them interfere with the business of existence,” muttered Henslowe crossly.
They were both silent.
“You'll be as bad as Heinz with his Moki and the lion cub named Bubu.... By the way, it's dead.... Well, where shall we have dinner?”
“I'm dining with Jeanne.... I'm going to meet her in half an hour.... I'm awfully sorry, Henny. We might all dine together.”
“A fat chance! No, I'll have to go and find that ass Aubrey, and hear all about the Peace Conference.... Heinz can't leave Moki because she's having hysterics on account of Bubu. I'll probably be driven to going to see Berthe in the end.... You're a nice one.”
“We'll have a grand seeing-off party for you tomorrow, Henny.”
“Look! I forgot! You're to meet Aubrey at the Crillon at five tomorrow, and he's going to take you to see Genevieve Rod?”
“Who the hell's Genevieve Rod?”
“Darned if I know. But Aubrey said you'd got to come. She is an intellectual, so Aubrey says.”
“That's the last thing I want to meet.”
“Well, you can't help yourself. So long!”
Andrews sat a while more at the table outside the cafe. A cold wind was blowing. The sky was blue-black and the ashen white arc lamps cast a mortuary light over everything. In the Colonnade of the Palais Royal the shadows were harsh and inky. In the square the people were gradually thinning. The lights in the Magazin du Louvre had gone out. From the cafe behind him, a faint smell of fresh-cooked food began to saturate the cold air of the street.
Then he saw Jeanne advancing across the ash-grey pavement of the square, slim and black under the arc lights. He ran to meet her.
The cylindrical stove in the middle of the floor roared softly. In front of it the white cat was rolled into a fluffy ball in which ears and nose made tiny splashes of pink like those at the tips of the petals of certain white roses. One side of the stove at the table against the window, sat an old brown man with a bright red stain on each cheek bone, who wore formless corduroy clothes, the color of his skin. Holding the small spoon in a knotted hand he was stirring slowly and continuously a liquid that was yellow and steamed in a glass. Behind him was the window with sleet beating against it in the leaden light of a wintry afternoon. The other side of the stove was a zinc bar with yellow bottles and green bottles and a water spigot with a neck like a giraffe's that rose out of the bar beside a varnished wood pillar that made the decoration of the corner, with a terra cotta pot of ferns on top of it. From where Andrews sat on the padded bench at the back of the room the fern fronds made a black lacework against the lefthand side of the window, while against the other was the brown silhouette of the old man's head, and the slant of his cap. The stove hid the door and the white cat, round and symmetrical, formed the center of the visible universe. On the marble table beside Andrews were some pieces of crisp bread with butter on them, a saucer of damson jam and a bowl with coffee and hot milk from which the steam rose in a faint spiral. His tunic was unbuttoned and he rested his head on his two hands, staring through his fingers at a thick pile of ruled paper full of hastily drawn signs, some in ink and some in pencil, where now and then he made a mark with a pencil. At the other edge of the pile of papers were two books, one yellow and one white with coffee stains on it.
The fire roared and the cat slept and the old brown man stirred and stirred, rarely stopping for a moment to lift the glass to his lips. Occasionally the scratching of sleet upon the windows became audible, or there was a distant sound of dish pans through the door in the back.
The sallow-faced clock that hung above the mirror that backed the bar, jerked out one jingly strike, a half hour. Andrews did not look up. The cat still slept in front of the stove which roared with a gentle singsong. The old brown man still stirred the yellow liquid in his glass. The clock was ticking uphill towards the hour.
Andrews's hands were cold. There was a nervous flutter in his wrists and in his chest. Inside of him was a great rift of light, infinitely vast and infinitely distant. Through it sounds poured from somewhere, so that he trembled with them to his finger tips, sounds modulated into rhythms that washed back and forth and crossed each other like sea waves in a cove, sounds clotted into harmonies.
Behind everything the Queen of Sheba, out of Flaubert, held her fantastic hand with its long, gilded finger nails on his shoulder; and he was leaning forward over the brink of life. But the image was vague, like a shadow cast on the brilliance of his mind.
The clock struck four.
The white fluffy ball of the cat unrolled very slowly. Its eyes were very round and yellow. It put first one leg and then the other out before it on the tiled floor, spreading wide the pinkey-grey claws. Its tail rose up behind it straight as the mast of a ship. With slow processional steps the cat walked towards the door.
The old brown man drank down the yellow liquid and smacked his lips twice, loudly, meditatively.
Andrews raised his head, his blue eyes looking straight before him without seeing anything. Dropping the pencil, he leaned back against the wall and stretched his arms out. Taking the coffee bowl between his two hands, he drank s little. It was cold. He piled some jam on a piece of bread and ate it, licking a little off his fingers afterwards. Then he looked towards the old brown man and said:
“On est bien ici, n'est ce pas, Monsieur Morue?”
“Oui, on est bien ici,” said the old brown man in a voice so gruff it seemed to rattle. Very slowly he got to his feet.
“Good. I am going to the barge,” he said. Then he called, “Chipette!”
“Oui, m'sieu.”
A little girl in a black apron with her hair in two tight pigtails that stood out behind her tiny bullet head as she ran, came through the door from the back part of the house.
“There, give that to your mother,” said the old brown man, putting some coppers in her hand.
“Oui, m'sieu.”
“You'd better stay here where it's warm,” said Andrews yawning.
“I have to work. It's only soldiers don't have to work,” rattled the old brown man.
When the door opened a gust of raw air circled about the wine shop, and a roar of wind and hiss of sleet came from the slush-covered quai outside. The cat took refuge beside the stove, with its back up and its tail waving. The door closed and the old brown man's silhouette, slanted against the wind, crossed the grey oblong of the window.
Andrews settled down to work again.
“But you work a lot a lot, don't you; M'sieu Jean?” said Chipette, putting her chin on the table beside the books and looking up into his eyes with little eyes like black beads.
“I wonder if I do.”
“When I'm grown up I shan't work a bit. I'll drive round in a carriage.”
Andrews laughed. Chipette looked at him for a minute and then went into the other room carrying away the empty coffee bowl.
In front of the stove the cat sat on its haunches, licking a paw rhythmically with a pink curling tongue like a rose petal.
Andrews whistled a few bars, staring at the cat.
“What d'you think of that, Minet? That's la reine de Saba... la reine de Saba.”
The cat curled into a ball again with great deliberation and went to sleep.
Andrews began thinking of Jeanne and the thought gave him a sense of quiet well-being. Strolling with her in the evening through the streets full of men and women walking significantly together sent a languid calm through his jangling nerves which he had never known in his life before. It excited him to be with her, but very suavely, so that he forgot that his limbs were swathed stiffly in an uncomfortable uniform, so that his feverish desire seemed to fly out of him until with her body beside him, he seemed to drift effortlessly in the stream of the lives of all the people he passed, so languid, from the quiet loves that streamed up about him that the hard walls of his personality seemed to have melted entirely into the mistiness of twilight streets. And for a moment as he thought of it a scent of flowers, heavy with pollen, and sprouting grass and damp moss and swelling sap, seemed to tingle in his nostrils. Sometimes, swimming in the ocean on a rough day, he had felt that same reckless exhilaration when, towards the shore, a huge seething wave had caught him up and sped him forward on its crest. Sitting quietly in the empty wine shop that grey afternoon, he felt his blood grumble and swell in his veins as the new life was grumbling and swelling in the sticky buds of the trees, in the tender green quick under their rough bark, in the little furry animals of the woods and in the sweet-smelling cattle that tramped into mud the lush meadows. In the premonition of spring was a resistless wave of force that carried him and all of them with it tumultuously.
The clock struck five.
Andrews jumped to his feet and still struggling into his overcoat darted out of the door.
A raw wind blew on the square. The river was a muddy grey-green, swollen and rapid. A hoarse triumphant roaring came from it. The sleet had stopped; but the pavements were covered with slush and in the gutters were large puddles which the wind ruffled. Everything,—houses, bridges, river and sky,—was in shades of cold grey-green, broken by one jagged ochre-colored rift across the sky against which the bulk of Notre Dame and the slender spire of the crossing rose dark and purplish. Andrews walked with long strides, splashing through the puddles, until, opposite the low building of the Morgue, he caught a crowded green bus.
Outside the Hotel Crillon were many limousines, painted olive-drab, with numbers in white letters on the doors; the drivers, men with their olive-drab coat collars turned up round their red faces, stood in groups under the portico. Andrews passed the sentry and went through the revolving doors into the lobby, which was vividly familiar. It had the smell he remembered having smelt in the lobbies of New York hotels,—a smell of cigar smoke and furniture polish. On one side a door led to a big dining room where many men and women were having tea, from which came a smell of pastry and rich food. On the expanse of red carpet in front of him officers and civilians stood in groups talking in low voices. There was a sound of jingling spurs and jingling dishes from the restaurant, and near where Andrews stood shifting his weight from one foot to the other, sprawled in a leather chair a fat man with a black felt hat over his eyes and a large watch chain dangling limply over his bulbous paunch. He cleared his throat occasionally with a rasping noise and spat loudly into the spittoon beside him.
At last Andrews caught sight of Aubrey, who was dapper with white cheeks and tortoise shell glasses.
“Come along,” he said, seizing Andrews by the arm.
“You are late.” Then, he went on, whispering in Andrews's ear as they went out through the revolving doors: “Great things happened in the Conference today.... I can tell you that, old man.”
They crossed the bridge towards the portico of the Chamber of Deputies with its high pediment and its grey columns. Down the river they could see faintly the Eiffel Tower with a drift of mist athwart it, like a section of spider web spun between the city and the clouds.
“Do we have to go to see these people, Aubrey?”
“Yes, you can't back out now. Genevieve Rod wants to know about American music.”
“But what on earth can I tell her about American music?”
“Wasn't there a man named MacDowell who went mad or something?” Andrews laughed.
“But you know I haven't any social graces.... I suppose I'll have to say I think Foch is a little tin god.”
“You needn't say anything if you don't want to.... They're very advanced, anyway.”
“Oh, rats!”
They were going up a brown-carpeted stair that had engravings on the landings, where there was a faint smell of stale food and dustpans. At the top landing Aubrey rang the bell at a varnished door. In a moment a girl opened it. She had a cigarette in her hand, her face was pale under a mass of reddish-chestnut hair, her eyes very large, a pale brown, as large as the eyes of women in those paintings of Artemisias and Berenikes found in tombs in the Fayum. She wore a plain black dress.
“Enfin!” she said, and held out her hand to Aubrey.
“There's my friend Andrews.”
She held out her hand to him absently, still looking at Aubrey.
“Does he speak French?... Good.... This way.” They went into a large room with a piano where an elderly woman, with grey hair and yellow teeth and the same large eyes as her daughter, stood before the fireplace.
“Maman... enfin ils arrivent, ces messieurs.”
“Genevieve was afraid you weren't coming,” Mme. Rod said to Andrews, smiling. “Monsieur Aubrey gave us such a picture of your playing that we have been excited all day.... We adore music.”
“I wish I could do something more to the point with it than adore it,” said Genevieve Rod hastily, then she went on with a laugh: “But I forget..... Monsieur Andreffs.... Monsieur Ronsard.” She made a gesture with her hand from Andrews to a young Frenchman in a cut-away coat, with small mustaches and a very tight vest, who bowed towards Andrews.
“Now we'll have tea,” said Genevieve Rod. “Everybody talks sense until they've had tea.... It's only after tea that anyone is ever amusing.” She pulled open some curtains that covered the door into the adjoining room.
“I understand why Sarah Bernhardt is so fond of curtains,” she said. “They give an air of drama to existence.... There is nothing more heroic than curtains.”
She sat at the head of an oak table where were china platters with vari-colored pastries, an old pewter kettle under which an alcohol lamp burned, a Dresden china teapot in pale yellows and greens, and cups and saucers and plates with a double-headed eagle design in dull vermilion. “Tout ca,” said Genevieve, waving her hand across the table, “c'est Boche.... But we haven't any others, so they'll have to do.”
The older woman, who sat beside her, whispered something in her ear and laughed.
Genevieve put on a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles and starting pouring out tea.
“Debussy once drank out of that cup..... It's cracked,” she said, handing a cup to John Andrews. “Do you know anything of Moussorgski's you can play to us after tea?”
“I can't play anything any more.... Ask me three months from now.”
“Oh, yes; but nobody expects you to do any tricks with it. You can certainly make it intelligible. That's all I want.”
“I have my doubts.”
Andrews sipped his tea slowly, looking now and then at Genevieve Rod who had suddenly begun talking very fast to Ronsard. She held a cigarette between the fingers of a long thin hand. Her large pale-brown eyes kept their startled look of having just opened on the world; a little smile appeared and disappeared maliciously in the curve of her cheek away from her small firm lips. The older woman beside her kept looking round the table with a jolly air of hospitality, and showing her yellow teeth in a smile.
Afterwards they went back to the sitting room and Andrews sat down at the piano. The girl sat very straight on a little chair beside the piano. Andrews ran his fingers up and down the keys.
“Did you say you knew Debussy?” he said suddenly. “I? No; but he used to come to see my father when I was a little girl.... I have been brought up in the middle of music.... That shows how silly it is to be a woman. There is no music in my head. Of course I am sensitive to it, but so are the tables and chairs in this apartment, after all they've heard.”