by James Jones
“Men always have to pee when they’re nervous,” she said in that drawly voice. “Women, on the other hand, find trouble holding their water when they’re terrified, deeply in love, or about to drop a child.”
“Yes,” I said, coming back out. “I’ve noticed that.”
“Have you?” Edith smiled, as we went on. “Now, about McKenna. I think the very best thing is just to tell her that mother was taken sick, and is in the hospital, and that she should come stay with me until momma is better.”
“I would take her myself,” I said. “But being a bachelor—”
“And sot in his ways,” Edith said.
“Yes. Somewhat. Also, I only have this one rather neurotic Portuguese lady servant.”
“Don’t say servant,” Edith said crisply. “They don’t like to be called servants any more. They like to be called domestics.”
“I don’t really see how I can take her,” I said. “But after all, I am her Godfather.”
“Absolutely not,” Edith said. “You couldn’t possibly. Anyway, McKenna and I are great friends. We’ll get along fine in my house out there.”
“Could you possibly come to my place and wait out the afternoon?” I said. “Until McKenna gets back from school? It’ll only be until four-thirty.” Suddenly I wondered if I had designs on Edith without knowing it.
“Darling, I couldn’t possibly!” Edith said. “I have a class. The Sorbonne is closed, but we meet privately, with the professor. At three-forty-five. In Marine Biology. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll meet you at the Gallaghers’ at around seven, when all the Americans are congregating. I understand you’ve kept that up. After the news, we’ll talk to McKenna alone, you and I, and explain our lie about what’s happened, and then I’ll take her home with me. It’s much better than leaving her with their hysterical Portuguese, I think. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“Could you possibly call me a cab from your place, darling?”
“Of course,” I said.
We were just crossing the old Bailey bridge of Pont St. Louis. There was a fine breeze.
I called Harry back that night in Rome, a second time.
“How is she?” he said immediately.
“No change,” I said. “No visible change.”
“Well, all right,” he said. “I’ll stay here another night, and another, and another. And another. Until we find out the ultimate prognosis. But, well, if she doesn’t die, I’m not coming back.”
“Do you expect me to take care of her, Harry?”
“Well, no. Of course not. But there’s Edith. We have lots of friends there, lady friends, in Paris. Edith can organize them. She’ll love it.”
“McKenna is going to stay with her,” I said. “I saw Edith today.”
“Good,” Harry said.
“What if Louisa has brain damage?” I said.
“What brain damage?” Harry said.
“Well, the doctor who gave her the shot to start her heart going again, after a stoppage of we don’t know how many minutes exactly, said if it was over four or five minutes, she might have permanent brain damage. That apparently means she’ll be a vegetable, or half vegetable.”
“That means we’ll have to put her permanently in some kind of a sanatorium, won’t it?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Am I supposed to take care of that?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I’ll get somebody to take care of it. If it becomes a necessity.”
“Okay, Harry,” I said. “I think that’s very kind of you.”
“Fuck you!” he cried suddenly. “You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
“You don’t know what I’ve been through, either,” I said. “I’ve been through a lot of things. In my time.”
“Well, I’ve been through a bunch myself,” he said.
“Yes, but it’s not my wife,” I said.
“I know it’s not your wife,” he said. “I never claimed it was.”
“Well, just lay off of me!” I said. “I’ll go and visit your God damned wife! In that damned intensive care unit! But don’t ask me to do any more than that!”
“I’m not asking you to do anything,” he said.
“Go and fuck yourself!” I cried. “Of course you are! You’re asking me to save your damned wife’s life! And I’m not at all sure I want the God damned job! Listen, I guess you know I think you’re a cheap fucker, and a totally irresponsible man, totally irresponsible husband and father! Don’t you?” And I hung up, slammed down the phone.
Then I realized I had forgotten to tell him I would call him back tomorrow. I worried about that a little, but I didn’t feel up to putting through another call to him. And I guessed he knew me well enough to know I would call.
The next day Louisa did not appear to be any better. Her condition had not deteriorated, the doctors at the Hôtel-Dieu told me. She had not sunk. But they had been hoping for a massive move back toward normalcy, after treatment. And this had not occurred. I sat by her bed for an hour or more in the late morning, trying to talk fight into her. Edith had said she would do the same thing later in the afternoon. Louisa’s stentorious breathing was a very enervating thing to be around. I left and went down past Notre-Dame, feeling exhausted, and crossed the bridge to the Brasserie for some lunch. There was no point in my even thinking about working.
Apparently everybody on the damned Island knew the whole story. Madame Dupont left her cash box and came over to my table to ask about her.
“Et comment va la pauvre Madame Gallagher?”
I said not bad, and that I thought she’d be all right. Later, when she came in, the little daughter came and asked me the same thing. I gave her the same answer. After saucisses and choucroute I went home and lay down on my bed. My Portuguese came and stood by the door and asked me the same question.
I called Harry again that evening in Rome, and gave him my latest report. He had apparently been in touch with the hospital authorities in the Hôtel-Dieu, who had told him the same as what I told him.
“I was afraid you might not call back,” he said over the phone. “But I should have known.”
“Oh. You know me,” I said feebly. “But I want you to know that I still think you’re a prick. A prime prick.”
“I suppose I am,” he said slowly. “It’s just that— It’s just that, I thought of all people you might understand me when I told you I couldn’t help it.”
“Well, you ought to be able to help it,” I said with some heat.
“I suppose I should,” Harry said, “I suppose I should.” This time it was he who hung up in my ear.
The day before a series of street battles had spread all through Paris. Students and workers were out all over the place, battling thousands of helmeted police and CRS. Another death had been reported in the morning, this time a worker in a town called Sochaux near the Swiss border, where a strikebound factory full of sit-ins was being cleared out by police. Union leaders claimed the bullet which killed the worker, a young man of 24 named Jean Beylot, was a 9 mm bullet. Many of the police were armed with 9 mm handguns. The police, of course, claimed—and proved—that workers and rioters had robbed police vans of guns and ammunition, and said that none of their men had fired any shots.
In any case, it set off in Paris another frantic day of rioting. In Toulouse, in southern France, a demonstration by 2,500 students turned into a melée with the police in which the students set up a large number of barricades and burned out the Gaullist election headquarters.
I had not gone out. I had the feeling that it was the last flurry before the end, and anyhow, I was too worried about Louisa. But the police and troops had gotten much tougher now, and a strict curfew was imposed on the Latin Quarter, and the students were really no longer any match for them. It was tapering off, or would soon. The consensus of public opinion was no longer with the students. Lots of workers wanted to get back to work. That night I had stood in my windows drinking Scotch, w
hile across the river the Latin Quarter blazed with action and burning cars. Percussion grenades by the hundreds cracked their explosions across the water and into my ears, lighting the tops of the buildings with their flashes. I stood and watched it, and thought about Louisa.
I could not escape the feeling that if I had been more thoughtful and considerate, that if I had realized what was really bothering her when she came and asked me to have an affair with her, and had gone ahead and done it, then she would not be where she was now. So that, in a way, it was my fault, and I was guilty.
Still, I just don’t see how I could have done it like that, on such short notice.
Late Wednesday the doctors said she had improved a little, slightly. At least, her blood pressure was more nearly back to normal.
27
FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS I kept in constant touch with Harry in Rome. This was fairly easy since all the Government postal, telephone and telegraph people were now back at work. Harry remained adamant about not coming back unless Louisa actually died. And even then he was not absolutely sure.
He seemed to care nothing for her at all. Although, I have to admit, he said several times that he felt sorry for her. He seemed to actively detest her and have no patience with her at all since the night he saw her with Samantha.
Louisa, or I should say Louisa’s body, was showing marked improvement on Thursday. At least, physically—in her blood pressure, pulse, temperature, breathing capacity, etc. But she remained in the coma.
Then on Friday she came to, throwing an enormous fit, and thrashing about. She managed to work one arm loose and tore the glucose needle out of her arm. Fortunately, they were able to get to her and hold her down before she could tear the tubes out of her nostrils, which might have done her really serious damage. And after that they strapped her down completely, legs and all.
After the Tuesday night rioting, there was a sort of cooling off, and nothing much happened during the next two days. There were a couple of interesting developments that appeared in the papers, however.
On Wednesday, after the two nights of renewed rioting in Paris, the French Government officially banned all street demonstrations throughout France. They would be banned indefinitely, and at least until after the National Election campaign. They also dissolved seven extreme-left student groups. The decisions were made and approved at a cabinet meeting presided over by de Gaulle himself.
The principal group banned was the 22nd of March Movement of young Dany le Rouge Cohn-Bendit, who was now in London, seeking political asylum, and posing for news photos in front of the gravestone of Karl Marx—whom, if I understood Hill Gallagher right, Dany had consistently repudiated in favor of Anarchism.
The ban on the seven groups meant that the Government could seize their offices, that they could not hold meetings, publish newspapers or have bank accounts. Although, none of this was likely to bother the 22nd of March Movement which had never had any official organization.
And on Thursday, Thursday the 13th, the Paris Herald carried a front-page piece on the fact that it appeared likely that le Général in the next few days would pardon the remaining Army Officers still in jail because of the celebrated “Generals’ Putsch” in Algeria back in 1961. One of them was General Salan, one of the leaders, and another was some hot-shot Colonel named Jean Lacheroy. The rumor was all over that this was part of the deal le Général had had to make with the Army, in order to get their backing. Certainly, it was not going to alienate any Rightist votes for Gaullist candidates in the up-coming Assembly elections.
Right alongside, another article, continued on the second page, told how the student rebels of the Sorbonne were planning an evacuation in order to “clean house”. They were afraid the police might try to take them over on the grounds of health and sanitation. So they were going to scrub the place down, get rid of all the garbage, and in the process throw out a group of young toughs who called themselves “les Katangais”, who were inhabiting one corner of the huge Sorbonne cellars. I knew nothing of the “Katangais”, but I could testify to the fact that they ought to get rid of the garbage. It would be a good thing.
On Friday, the day that Louisa came surging and fighting out of her coma, the police took back the Odéon from the students. There was not any fighting. Everybody left quietly. The lions were turning into lambs.
The newspapers gave conflicting and garbled accounts of it. But apparently the Government’s reason, or excuse, for the move was that they wanted to oust a group of “mercenaries” who had taken refuge in the Odéon after being thrown out of the Sorbonne. Apparently, these were “les Katangais”. In their “clean-up” campaign, as they had promised, the students had also cleaned out the “mercenaries” in the Sorbonne’s basement. Apparently the name “Katangais” came from the fact that one of the leaders of the group claimed to have been a mercenary in the Congo fighting. Whether this was true, no one seemed to know. Several other armed and organized groups were ousted with them by the students, but the “Katangais” were the only ones who put up any fight. In any case, 80 students overwhelmed the 30 “Katangais” in less than half an hour, and no one was seriously hurt. So it could not have been much of a “battle”.
This apparently was when the “Katangais” descended on the Odéon, and now late on Friday morning the police were knocking at the door, on the pretext of getting out the dangerous mad-dog “mercenaries”, but incidentally clearing everybody else out at the same time. They sent in a young doctor who had been working there in the students’ hospital with a message that anybody who left of his own accord would not be arrested. About 130 came out, several of them young student mothers with what appeared to be new-born babies, but of the 75 who stayed inside, a lot of them hospital patients and personnel, none offered any resistance when the police entered. The “Katangais”, apparently, had quickly shaved and cut their hair and changed their clothes in order to walk out with the students, but several of them were recognized anyway and apprehended. The first thing the police did inside was to remove the big red and black flags that floated on the roof and replace them with the Tricolor. So, the month-long, 24-hours-a-day “cultural dialogue” was finally ended. And the Odéon had fallen, back into Government hands.
There were reports in the French afternoon papers that day about how filthy the students had left the place, but they said that nothing had been seriously damaged except for the costume department, where all helmets, shields and spears had disappeared.
I could not help feeling a little nostalgic. And I could not help wondering what had happened to our poor little Cinema Committee. But Weintraub, who stopped by the Gallaghers’ apartment that night, told me that evening that they had moved to the Sorbonne, as had most of the other student committees housed there. But what about all their files, and their film? I wanted to know. Oh, they had gotten those out before, Weintraub told me, about two hours before the police arrived. The minute the “Katangais” had moved in they had begun getting their things out. I nodded, and then asked Weintraub over to Harry’s pulpit bar to have a drink.
I had, as Edith said, kept up the evening meetings at the Gallaghers, even though now there were no Gallaghers there, including McKenna. I somehow felt Louisa would want me to do that. I suppose I am a sentimentalist. But I told their Portuguese to stock up on booze and to lay out the bread and plates of different sausages and hams as usual, all paid for by me of course. I told the other guests only that Louisa had been taken ill. If any of them knew the truth, they did not mention any suicide attempt. It was only on Sunday, the Sunday of June 16th, when I began these papers, that I stopped the evenings, and told the Portuguese to turn off the lights and lock the place up. That was the night Weintraub, I suppose with nowhere else to go, stopped by my place.
The maid, of course, had been retained by Harry to come in once a day and clean and take care of things.
They moved Louisa, in an ambulance, to the American Hospital in Neuilly on Saturday. The whole thing was handled by the Ame
rican-trained French doctor we knew who worked there, and whom all of us, including Edith and Weintraub, used as our doctor. I had called him up on Friday evening. He was a remarkable man, and an excellent doctor, who worked himself into exhaustion just about every day. His name was Dax, like the colonel in Humphrey Cobb’s novel, and he had the same humanitarian qualities as the colonel. I was not worried he would not handle it perfectly. I did not feel up to riding out with her myself, but Edith de Chambrolet went with her. It had already been established that she had a certain amount of brain damage, maybe a considerable amount. The thing now was to establish just how much.
I had visited her on Friday. I had called the Hôtel-Dieu that morning, and they had told me how she had come out of the coma fighting and tearing.
“Come,” the nurse said, “but don’t come until late in the afternoon.”
When I arrived, walking in past all those sad, horrifying beds, the glucose bottle and the needle in her arm had disappeared, and the tubes in her nose were gone also. But she was still nude and under the oxygen tent and still strapped down, this time with straps across her legs and thighs and chest stretched all across the bed. Her eyes were glassy.
Her stomach seemed strangely swollen and bloated, and I commented on this.
“Well, she’s had a lot of water, fluid in her lungs, you see,” the nurse told me in French. “That was one of the worst problems.”
She could move her head, and she rolled it over toward me and stared at me rather wildly. For a while she said nothing. “Do I know him?” she said finally, in a husky whisper.
“Yes, dear,” the nurse said, and smiled and nodded sadly. “She’s had some throat damage, too,” she said to me. “From the tubes. We don’t know yet just how much.”
“I’m Jack,” I said to Louisa in English.
“Jack,” she said, as if tasting the name for the first time. She seemed to have more trouble with English than with French. Then she made a ghastly smile. “Well, hello, darling! How are you!” It was as if she was having trouble remembering the words.