The Merry Month of May

by James Jones

  Along the shady, dust-smelling Boulevard the sites of other fights and barricades were plainly evident. Where it junctioned with the Boul’ Mich’ at the Carrefour was of course always one of the big fights, and it looked truly beat up there. Six big camions of the CRS were parked there along the Boulevard just in front of the park-like trees and grass of the Musée de Cluny. But there had been another at the carrefour of the rue Danton in front of the École de Médecine, and just beyond it still another at the Carrefour Odéon. It was like that all the way up to the Place St.-Germain.

  There were other camions of CRS placed strategically around, the men in them playing cards, smoking, reading newspapers, or laughing and talking. But the streets were literally alive with kids, most of them with long hair, all of them laughing and strolling, and happy warmth and excitement on their faces. None of them were belligerent; rather the reverse. About two-thirds of them seemed to be wearing red shirts. Lots of others wore red bandannas. And in all the little yé-yé clothes shops around the rue de Seine and rue du Four (Street of the Oven, in English) the red motif had been picked up and showed conspicuously in the display windows: red shirts, red slacks, red socks, red scarves. Les commerçants, it appeared, were already riding the bandwagon of the Revolution.

  We crossed the dusty, litter-blown Place with the light. Then we worked our way through the usual press of people, mostly youngsters, outside the popular Drugstore St.-Germain. Brasserie Lipp was just next door.

  Across the street on the sunny side the famous Deux Magots and Café Flore squatted dusty under the trees in sunshine, their sidewalk tables spilling out almost to the curb. There were more American tourists this summer than anyone had expected. Maybe they had come to see and to photograph the Revolution.

  Lipp was crowded with lunchers. At the revolving-door entrance, which had been opened back in the warm summer weather, “young” Monsieur Cazes, the owner, met us, told us we would have to wait. But he gave me a look that said though there were others in front of us he would slip us in ahead. We sat down at an outside table and ordered the big schooners of beer which are called un sérieux at Lipp. Here on this side out of the sun it was almost cool.

  “It will be interesting to see what it is like over there,” Harry said after his first long pull, and wiped the foam off his lip. “The Sorbonne.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And I’ll be interested to make a comparison to what it was like the first day.”

  So we sat and watched the faces and stances of the people passing in the street for a while, always one of the best of the fringe benefits of Paris outdoor café sitting.

  “Young” Monsieur Cazes came and got us before our beers were even half finished and I told the outdoor waiter to put them on the bill inside. There were a number of dirty looks thrown at us by the other people waiting. But Monsieur Cazes, “young” Monsieur Cazes, who was aged about 56, only eyed them blandly with a cold smile.

  As a matter of fact, he was not the “young” Monsieur Cazes any more. Although we all still thought of him as that. He was now the “old” Monsieur Cazes, ever since his father the original “old” Monsieur Cazes, a tough white-haired very bourgeois old gent, had died in the spring of that year. There was no “young” Monsieur Cazes now, because the new “old” Monsieur Cazes had no son.

  We followed him inside and through the crowded tables, nodding or waving at various literati or movie people we knew. They never took reservations at Lipp. But if Monsieur Cazes knew you, and considered you adequate, there was always a place.

  I cannot say that it was I who introduced Harry Gallagher to Lipp. He had been there before. But it was I who introduced him into its inner sanctum by introducing him to “old” Monsieur Cazes, and to the then “young” Monsieur Cazes. I had been coming there the ten years I had been in Paris, and had been introduced myself by Romain Gary. Once they knew who I was and what I did, and that Romain Gary thought highly enough of me to introduce me, I became one of the special clients, of which there could not have been more than one or two thousand.

  I do not think any of them ever read much, though I may be wrong about that, or ever had time much to go to the movies; but they took very seriously, and with about equal importance, their literary and their film-world clienteles.

  It was an old tradition, going back to Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Edith Wharton and Cocteau in the Twenties, and even before that. It went back even to before the turn of the century. And its decor had not been changed since then, either.

  Since I introduced him, Harry had taken to coming there more than I had ever come and now was better known there than I ever was. Harry had really taken the place up.

  The waiters always dressed in black tuxedo-like suits and aprons and black bow ties from an earlier day. They all wore numbered metal checks on their lapels which signified strictly their proper place in the waiter hierarchy, and their seniority was a very jealously guarded thing.

  The most recent Number One had died about two years ago and the new Number One, who had been wearing the Number Two check since I had first come to Paris, was a tiny roly-poly man about as wide as tall, with white hair which stood out from his head and the flushed, veined nose and cheeks of a dedicated red wine drinker. He wheezed when he moved and seemed almost too feeble to work at all, but the others all seemed to help him out almost religiously.

  “Numéro Uno!” Harry called out, when the head waiter Monsieur Cazes had passed us to usher us into the back room. And Number One came trotting over to shake hands, his eyes almost disappearing behind his red cheeks. It was a big act Harry and I always did when either one of us came to Lipp. It helped preserve our much-liked Americanism.

  “M’sieu ’Artley, M’sieu Gallag-her,” Number One grinned. “Ease good toe zee hyou.” It was about all the English he knew. He put my name first because he had known me the longest and respected seniority everywhere, even though Harry was now more of an habitué than I was.

  “Comment ça va, Numéro Uno?” Harry cried.

  “Very finne, very finne,” the old man beamed.

  When we were seated against the wall it was waiter Number Fifteen who waited on us.

  The rest of the place was like its waiters. By stepping through the door you might have stepped back into the year 1900. There were no tables in the center of the floor in the back, only a big serving cabinet, which held the napkins and the bread and condiments and silverware: les couverts. The waiters continually clustered around it to get their serving stuff. The electric light fixtures looked like they should be gaslights. Each wall was decorated with a three-foot mirror above the seatbacks, and if you craned your neck you could see the lights and the mirror and the people reflected and re-reflected almost to an infinity. Between the lengths of mirror were murals made of tiny highly colored tiles which represented plants. The front was almost exactly like the back except that it was wider and a waist-high wood partition ran down the center making it two rooms. One side was for coffee and drinking only. The other side was for eating. Along its top was a slightly raised plate of glass, so that people could talk under it to each other and see who all was there. Upstairs on the first floor was still another salle, but nobody went there except the unknowns.

  The plat du jour for Thursdays was always fricandeau de veau rôti, and cassoulet maison. On Fridays there was brandade de morue and raie au beurre noir. On Saturdays and Sundays there was boeuf gros sel and gigot d’agneau. Sole meunière and choucroute garnie were standard daily items.

  Harry ordered Baltic herring which was served with sliced onions and whole peppercorns in a vinaigrette, and the cassoulet. I did not feel my stomach was up to a cassoulet, which was a delicious dish of various meats and sausages cooked with white beans in a red tomato sauce and served in an earthenware casserole but a little hard to assimilate. I loved it, but I ordered a boeuf museau vinaigrette and afterward a steak and pommes frites. We had another schooner of beer with the first course, and a bottle of Bordeaux with the entrée. But in the
end we drank two bottles of the Bordeaux. We must have known at least half of the people sitting in the crowded back room.

  “No Revolution here,” Harry said and grinned, as we were served the herring and the museau.

  “No,” I said, “but they’ve had their hard times just the same. They’ve been through the troubles of ’36, when M. Pompidou himself was on the student barricades. They’ve had two World Wars, and an Occupation. As well as the time of the Existentialists right after, which must never be discounted.”

  “Well, may this bastion never fall!” Harry said, and raised his big beer glass.

  I answered with mine and we toasted that.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time I was having lunch here and Louisa came in?” Harry said.

  I lied. “No.”

  “Well,” Harry said, “I was having lunch here with Zanuck and Ed Leggewie. About some screenplay job or other. And Louisa came in with this Canadian playwright friend of ours who happened to be in town. Well, we were sitting at that end table up front, right by the caisse. The head waiter—him—that little one, yeah, with the straight white hair—he got hold of Louisa and whispered to her, ‘Madame, Madame, Monsieur est là!’ She didn’t know what he meant, of course. But he said it again. ‘Madame, Madame, Monsieur est là!’ He was warning her. He thought she was out to lunch with a lover, and that she had stumbled onto me by mistake. Now, how’s that for French politesse?”

  I had heard it before, at least three times, but it was a funny story. It was very French, I suppose. But it was funny. I laughed, and then Harry laughed too, but there was a sort of anxious look on his face also. When Harry was anxious his forehead got wrinkled like a wash-board. I thought he had remembered in mid-story that he had told it to me before.

  “That little girl’s been calling me,” he said suddenly.

  “What little girl?”

  “That Sam. Samantha. Samantha-Marie.”

  “What?” I said. “No. Come on. You’re kidding me.”

  “No,” he said, “I’m serious. Quite serious. She’s called me five times since she and Weintraub were at the house Sunday.”

  “What does she want?” I said. “Outside of your money?”

  “Me,” Harry said. “Apparently, she wants me.”

  I think then I suddenly realized what was the purpose of our luncheon. And it had nothing at all to do with the Sorbonne.

  “Well, Harry, what do you want me to tell you?” I said.

  Probably I said it too sharply. In my middle-age I have become very short-tempered with people asking me for personal advice. I do not know where they get off thinking I know enough to give them any. I have found that the truth is personal advice is not at all what they want. What they really want is reassurance. And if you give them that, they are as often as not likely to come back and throw it in your face later, and tell you that whatever it was that they did was all your fault.

  “I don’t want you to tell me anything, Jack,” he said. “I want you to be a witness, that’s all.”

  “Witness?” I said. “Witness to what? I do not intend to be anybody’s witness to any God damned personal junk.”

  “Witness to the fact that I’m not having any,” Harry said. “Not any at all. I know what I am, I know where I stand, I know what is good for me, and furthermore I know what I really want. I think I know where I’ve been. And I’m making you my witness.”

  That was pretty hard to refuse. In fact, it was not possible to refuse it, under the circumstances. I had been impressed, like a sailor. Once he stated it, like that, I was already committed, simply because my ears had heard it. And anyway, under those circumstances, I did not want to refuse.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m your witness. I fail to see how I can not be. Under the circumstances. Now what?”

  “Now nothing,” he said. “Let’s go see the fucking Sorbonne.”

  We had about finished the herring and museau by this time. Our waiter Number Fifteen was hovering around waiting to serve the entrées.

  “If you are going to visit the Sorbonne, gentlemen,” he said in French, “I would like to offer very much the suggestion that you also pass by and view the Odéon. It is not possible that you could not find it amusing.”

  I thanked him. When he served Harry his cassoulet, I regretted my decision not to order it. But I stuck with my steak. We ate the rest of the meal without talking much, mostly nodding or saying hello to people we knew who came in or got up to leave.

  “Do not forget to pass by and view the Odéon,” Number Fifteen called, after we paid and were leaving.

  That was what we did. The easiest way to get to it was to walk back down the Boulevard we had come up, to the Carrefour Odéon, and turn up there, away from the river. It was pleasant strolling along under the shade trees, with the excited kids all around.

  “I thought it was Louisa she was after,” I said.

  “So did I,” Harry said beside me. “But maybe that was just a ploy. Anyway, that’s a joke!”

  When we turned up, the whole crazy place was visible way off, straight up the rue de l’Odéon, in the Place de l’Odéon, where the famous fish restaurant La Méditerranée nestled on a warped corner of the Place.

  The theater itself was called the Théâtre de France but everybody spoke of it as “the Odéon”. It had been built by Louis Quinze in the eighteenth century, 1781 or somewhere around there, then was burned in the Revolution and later restored. It had a huge colonnaded façade with the columns running four or five low stories up to the pediment, very Greek copy, with low, thick, arched arcades you could walk under running around the other three sides. It was a big building with lots of storage rooms and dressing rooms backstage around in the back which butted on the rue de Vaugirard, and just across the street were the Luxembourg Gardens.

  Now two huge red and two huge black flags were streaming in the breeze from the very top of the pediment, the tricolor had been hauled down, and the entire roof appeared to be alive with unkempt kids swarming around, or just standing, or sitting on the cornice eating their lunch of bread and meat or bread and cheese.

  Huge banners had been fastened to the big columns just under the architrave. “Imagination takes power at the Théâtre de l’Odéon.” Another said “Barrault is dead,” referring to the theater director’s own quote about himself on Wednesday night when he joined the invading students.

  Another said “FREE ENTRY”. The students intended to throw the stage and pit open to a perpetual dialogue that would go on 24 hours a day every day, everybody invited. Apparently this had already started, and lots of workers, waiters and petits commerçants appeared to be taking advantage of the invitation.

  Up closer, we saw somebody had painted a smaller banner: “When the Assemblée Nationale becomes bourgeois theater, the Bourgeois Theater must become the Assemblée Nationale!” This referred to Prime Minister Pompidou’s performances in front of the Assemblée at the beginning of the week.

  The whole Place was alive with people, not all of them students by any means, and discussions, dialogues and arguments were going on all around. No auto traffic could have gotten through it. Commerçants argued with waiters, waiters argued with students, students argued with commerçants, commerçants argued with commerçants. A TV group was filming it all from the top of their truck. Coming up, the sidewalks and the street itself were jammed with students and other people grinning or laughing and going to or coming from the Place, but there had been no jostling.

  The whole place was wild, laughing, scratching crazy.

  “Do you want to try to get in?” I shouted at Harry.

  The entire huge porch beneath the great columns was jammed with a mob of people, all evidently trying to get inside to hear the dialogue in the pit.

  “No,” he shouted back. “We’d never make it.”

  We worked our way across the Place, heading for the rue Racine, which would take us to the Sorbonne. It had the same look as the rue de l’Odéon had had.

>   The Boulevard St.-Michel when we came out into it had a soberer, saner look. We walked up it toward the Place de la Sorbonne. This of course was crowded with knots of kids. So were all the cafés along it.

  “Well, Number Fifteen was certainly right,” I said. “About Odéon.” Harry nodded. “He sure was. Great sport. But there’s going to be a big bill. I just wonder if anybody is thinking about who’s going to pay that big bill when it is presented.”

  This sobered me down a little. “Well, I guess they will all have to pay a part.”

  “They will,” Harry said, “yes. Because the Government and the Patronat sure as hell aint going to.”

  The word patronat translated means “body of employers”. The Patronat, with a capital P, means just about the same as our word Establishment, except that it is probably a little more precise in who it means. Everybody knew, at least every American did, just how antiquated the French Patronat was in comparison to our equally unloved American Establishment. It was about a hundred times worse, in just about every sense. It had hardly changed at all since Karl Marx started taking the Industrial Revolution to task. Their capitalism was still of the circa 1870 variety. Their Stock Exchange even, the Bourse, still worked by secrecy and hidden buying, without open declaration. Comparatively speaking, they were taxed almost not at all. And as a result the comparative richness between them and the French worker was enormously greater. Whoever lost in this “Revolution”, it would almost certainly not be the Patronat.

  “Well, it’s the people’s vacation,” I said, a little lamely, but Harry did not answer.

  The Sorbonne, when we got to it, looked about the same as it had on the first day of the occupation except that now everything looked a little dirtier. The streets and sidewalks outside were covered with litter: mimeographed pamphlets, tracts, mimeographed single-sheet announcements, candy bar wrappers, old cigarette packs. But the students were apparently trying to organize a clean-up group, because we saw a number of them wearing some kind of unreadable armband and carrying brooms. A few of them were sweeping away at the mess, but most were talking. We went in from the rue Victor Cousin side.