by Howard Engel
“Do you want to be spanked and sent home?”
“Oh, I’d hoped you weren’t one of them.” I blushed at my loose tongue. “There are rather a lot of them in the Quarter just now. Most of them are darling. Do anything for me. Drink vin ordinaire from my slipper.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I never could make it work that way.”
“Thank God! The last of a disappearing breed!”
“Would you like another lager?”
“Rather! That’s almost a rhyme, isn’t it? You’re a friend of Wad’s, aren’t you? He talks about you a good deal. I shouldn’t tell you that. Swell your head. I say, does your hair always fall about like that?”
“Afraid that it has always blinded me in one eye or the other.”
“Wad says that apart from the two of you, there aren’t any serious writers in town. That is a bit thick, isn’t it?”
“Waddington’s famous imagination. He does work hard, though.”
“I know. I hear he’s putting our trip to Spain into a book. Can’t wait to see it. Of course I never shall. Nobody, not even a Paris printer, would publish rubbish like that. I can’t remember half of what happened. It will be an aide-mémoire for me if it ever sees the light of day. Do I seem to you to be the sort of chap who might end up in a book?”
“I can see it. I might even try it myself, when I know you better.”
“I’ll make jolly sure you don’t get to know me any better, then. I would rather like sometimes to return to a more formal relationship with myself. Familiarity … You know how it goes on.”
“Do you think Wad is really writing about you?”
“You never can tell with him, can you? He talks a lot of rot, but then we all do. It’s like Wad’s boxer friends. They put on those padded gloves. Fibs, lies, stories, exaggerations. These are the paddings I use, and maybe Wad as well.”
“You heard about the latest murder?”
“Yes. I don’t want to talk about that. That story’s been holding up the Crillon bar all afternoon. The bartender says that a story like that saps the alcohol out of his drinks. Leaches it away so that the bar stands still in one place for far too long. I couldn’t stand it. I left my fiancé over on the other side of the river. Fiancé and cousin. If we marry, I’ll be twice his kinsman, won’t I?”
“I thought he only thought he was your fiancé. You must have doubts?”
“I owe George a good deal. He got me out of England and brought me here. George may be a drunk, but he has very decent instincts. He’s going to be very rich one day, if we all live long enough. He has a mother. Do you know what it is to have a mother who won’t let go? He calls her his keeper. He may come looking for me.”
“What was it like in Spain?”
“That’s one of the things I’d rather not talk about. I was a bitch. The worst kind of bitch. I want to forget all about that. Wad was decent to me, though. He was damned decent. Saw me through the worst of my stupidities and took nothing in return. Of course, Cilla, his wife, was there. She was always there, calming, muting, deadening. Wad’s very lucky to have Cilla. She’s a brick of the best kind. Makes women like me blush, if we’ve retained the instinct.”
“Do you know anything about the story of Wad losing his manuscripts?”
“Fancy Wad losing anything! Oh, he told me about it. I always thought it was one of his yarns. He tells stories, Wad does. It makes him feel good, like drinking does for most of us chaps. But I never make the mistake of believing him. If you told me you’d leave your wife to live with me, should I believe you? It’s just talk and drink.”
“I’ve got no wife to leave,” I told her, but she’d already forgotten the relevance of the statement. I watched the curve of her long neck as she turned her head to follow the waiter through the crowded tables. There was something about the way she held her head. Suddenly, she was smiling at me, and I was caught by surprise, as though I’d skipped a page.
“I say,” she said, “this place is looking very dull all of a sudden. Would you walk a chap up the rue Delambre to the Dingo? In case Jack is lurking in a doorway?” It wasn’t what I’d hoped she would say, but it meant that the evening was not about to end. I was an optimistic fellow; I lived in hope. I would settle for a walk with Biz to the Dingo.
I waved to the waiter, indicating my pile of saucers, and paid the score. He took his own 15 percent service charge, saving me the effort of figuring it out. I hadn’t noticed, but the two painters, Pascin with his derby hat tipped on one side of his head and Foujita with his round eyeglasses and bangs, had vanished with their restless women. I hadn’t even noticed them get up.
CHAPTER 4
Biz was well known at the Dingo. As soon as we walked in, she was surrounded by a clutch of young men with their hair slicked back like tango dancers. They minced, they capered, they waved their hands. They spoke in high voices telling Biz everything, everything about a scene at a bal musette where one of them, Lett Haines, had been bodily evicted by the owner. Lett swore that he would never put a foot in that place again. I believed him the first time; by the time he’d told me for the fifth, I was beginning to think that he might be a part-owner and trying to encourage trade. Biz accepted a warm greeting from the bartender and reserved a place for me next to her. I was on the point of leaving, not wishing to add another stem to this particular bouquet, when Waddington and Julia Lowry came into the room with some other people. Wad saw us at the bar. He saw, and smiled a superior smile. I went over to the table they’d settled at.
“Hello, Wad. How are you, Julia?” I said. “Would you like to have a drink?”
“And join the daisy-chain? No thanks.”
I decided not to bother trying to explain anything to Wad. I could see myself digging a deep grave with excuses. And what the hell? They’re people. As long as I know who I am, I don’t have to worry about Waddington. Julia was looking friendly. She grabbed my arm and insisted that I have a drink with them. I was curious enough to see what was bothering Wad to allow Julia to find a place for me. Wad kept looking at Biz’s straight back at the bar. He added a beer for me to the order of drinks that the white-coated waiter was collecting. When he’d gone, I was introduced to the others: Dr. Anson Tyler, an American with rabbit-like teeth, his friend Arlette La Motte, whom I’d already met, and someone they called Tolstoi, who looked more English than Russian.
“Tolstoi, the Doctor and I have just come from a bridge game where Arlette beat the hell out of us,” Wad said. Arlette, her superior smile fixed, looked around the room, encouraging Wad to elaborate. Instead, he put an arm on Julia’s shoulder and asked:
“What are you celebrating, kid?”
“Le Figaro reports that the world remains round,” I said.
“Astounding! Have you cabled the news to Toronto?”
“And to Vancouver, for Burdock’s sake.”
“Yes, he’s fond of Vancouver. Perhaps because Stella comes from Australia,” Julia said.
“How stupid of me not to see it!” Wad looked at the others again. “I think Tolstoi should pay, you know, Arlette. He was your partner. And he’s up on the evening. What do you say, Michaeleen?”
“Sorry, I don’t know how you bet on bridge. If Arlette was the big winner, maybe she should pay.”
“Ah, M. Ward, you are un salaud.” She tried to entangle me in the smile that accompanied the remark. She was pretty enough: tall, poised, well-dressed, ironic as hell, but she looked complicated. She was about five years older than I was.
“You are a hard man, McWardo,” Waddington said.
“I say, I don’t mind paying for the first round,” said Tolstoi. He did, and we toasted the Russian Steppes.
“Let’s celebrate them one by one,” Wad said, lifting his glass. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you —”
“Please,” said Arlette, “I don’t see any ladies.” Tolstoi gave her a friendly jab.
“Gentlemen, I give you Steppe Number Six!” We clapped and drank.
“On be
half of Steppe Number Six, I accept,” said Tolstoi. He spilled part of his drink as he made a grand flourish with his hand, glancing from one face to the next, looking for assurances that he had caught the proper spirit of fun. He seemed a little behind the others in picking up cues. Tolstoi was a compact but well-built Englishman with a public school accent, rather worn clothes and a dissipated manner. He had a face that hadn’t been lived in, the male equivalent of a virgin at a bacchanal. Wad told me privately that he was being paid by his parents to stay away from the family acres near King’s Lynn in Norfolk.
“He’s been on the dope,” Wad said. “Whenever he threatens to come home, the family raises his allowance. The dope-peddlers at the Hole in the Wall couldn’t ask for a more obliging customer.”
We continued to toast Russian geographical landmarks and institutions. Dr. Tyler had a deep understanding of Russian geography and the drinks were disappearing quickly. A skinny, hollow-chested man, just under six feet tall, Tyler had large teeth protruding from under his military-looking moustache. His greenish eyes were hooded; his nose jutted out like the pointer on a sundial. His tailoring was without fault, and he didn’t seem to care a damn about it.
“Here’s to Tchaikovski, the Tennyson of composers,” he said.
“Here’s to Schubert, the Keats of composers,” said Wad.
“Schubert’s not Russian.”
“He is from here,” Wad protested.
While they fought it out, I turned to Julia, who had hardly said a word since she came into the bar. She’d been watching Biz with the men swarming around her across the room. Biz didn’t seem to be missing the fellow who brought her.
“You weren’t playing bridge?” I asked Julia.
“Oh, I’m too good for this bunch. They won’t let me play. It isn’t fair.”
“I’ll bet Wad would let you put on the gloves with him.”
“That’s all I can look forward to. He won’t play tennis with me again. Not since I beat him with a sprained ankle.”
“That slowed him down, did it?”
“Don’t be absurd!” she said. “It was my ankle!” She enjoyed the joke, and we laughed as we both imagined Wad’s face on being beaten in such circumstances.
“Are you one of the characters in this Spanish novel he’s been working on?”
“Certainly not,” she said, managing to put as much southern inflection as it is possible to put on two words. “Waddington knows the name of my father’s law firm. They scan the daily papers looking for opportunities to sue, bless their little hearts. But he isn’t really putting people we know in the novel, is he?”
“That’s the talk around the Quarter. Ask him.”
When we looked over at the others, Tolstoi was trying to think of a Russian composer who might be described as the Browning of Russian composers. Anson suggested Rimsky-Korsakov.
“Of the five Russian composers of the last century, only Rimsky-Korsakov was able to throw off his amateur standing. He was a perfectionist, not the musical equivalent of a Sunday painter, Tolstoi. By God, Korsakov had standards! What mastery of form! Forget his lyricism for a moment — it just gets in the way, as Browning’s does — just think of his opulence, his output, his command of his orchestra.”
“You’re not related, are you, Anson?” Arlette asked with a smile. “I wish someone would endorse me as strongly. I might get somewhere.”
“He was the consummate professional. As a professional myself, I have to salute him,” the Doctor said.
“I think you need another drink, Anson. Let’s toast both Browning and Rish-ky … Rimsky-Korsakov,” said Tolstoi.
“Julia,” I said, turning back to her, “can you tell me why Tolstoi is Tolstoi? Has he published much about the retreat from Moscow or women who walk the wrong way on railway tracks?”
“Oh, Mike, I thought you knew! His name is really Warren Pease. Now, honestly, who could resist the temptation to play with that?”
Wad certainly couldn’t resist the compulsion to bestow a nickname. After years of being “Michael” or “Mike,” I was resigned to being “Wardo” or “McWardo” and “Michaeleen” as long as Wad remained in the Quarter. I glanced over at him, looking unshaven and heavy in his Fair Isle sweater. Next to him, the Doctor looked almost dapper. Anson Tyler had been listening to our conversation with more than half an ear. Julia leaned over towards him, picking off a mote of make-believe lint from his jacket.
“Mike was asking about the Spanish book.”
Anson raised his eyebrows. “That’s the big question,” he said. “Everybody wants to get a look at it. Lawyers on two continents are sharpening their pencils.” He grinned at his exaggeration. There was a small tuft of whiskers in the cleft of his chin. His face was reddening with drink, or perhaps it was reflecting mine.
“Why don’t we get Wad to tell us about it?” I asked.
“There are a few rules in the Quarter, Mr. Ward —”
“Mike, please.”
“Although we survive on rations of gossip, the direct question is frowned upon as unsubtle. All mystery wilts before the question direct. In a way, Paris is like an island. You may see a whispered exchange across the floor. There’s no need to bend an ear or move closer. Someone will tell you what was going on before the week is over. That’s the way it is in an expatriate community.”
“You sound as though you’ve studied in Vienna.”
“No, but I’m in touch with the literature. Actually, I’m a general surgeon at the American Hospital in Neuilly. For my sins, which are beyond numbering, I remove gallstones from American tourists who have eaten too much pâté while ‘exploring’ the Dordogne. I have quite a collection of them.”
“Does that mean you’ve been here for some time?”
“My boy,” he said, ignoring the prohibition on direct questions, “I was here before Gaul was divided into three parts. I’m beginning to think it’s a life sentence.”
“And you live in the Quarter?”
“I live exactly between the Right and Left Banks. I’ll explain that to you one day.” He gave me a friendly but rather superior, rabbity grin. “I’ve been in France on and off since the war.”
“Apart from me, you’re practically the only person I’ve met with a real job to go to in the morning.”
“Hey, you fellows, I resent that!” Julia put in. “Vogue pays me a salary every month! I’m not to be considered part of the décor. I’m a working girl and my daddy’s proud of me.”
“A thousand pardons, Miss Lowry. I’m still not used to the idea of women working for a living. That comes of living in a backwater like Toronto.”
“He said Vancouver, didn’t he?” said Wad, putting a clumsy hand on Julia’s tiny shoulder. She took the paw in her small hand and held it.
“In Toronto, the Blue Laws are made from choice indigo. Imported by supporters of the Lord’s Day Alliance and defended by all those who disapprove of tobogganing in High Park on Sundays.”
“You’re both changing the subject,” scolded Julia. “I work for a living.”
“Julie’s the editor’s right-hand man; Paul Poiret, the designer, won’t take a step without consulting Julie. She’s made herself indispensable.”
“Hash devours Paris Vogue every chance she gets. On the news-stands mostly. We’re too broke to buy it. Tell me, Pudding, do you ever actually write for the magazine?”
“Write? Waddington, darling, I bloody well translate most of it! And I don’t mean from French. My specialty is going from broken to standard English.”
“The editor’s hired some so-called writers he’s lured out of Brooklyn and the Bronx with pieces of raw meat,” Wad added. “Julie has to change all their Vs to Ws.”
“Listen, Vaddinkstein, you could do verse than vorkink for Vogue,” Tolstoi said with a funny accent.
“I think he’s out to pinch my job,” said Julia.
“Pudding! How can you even think such a thing?”
“Wad doesn’t know anything abo
ut fashion,” Arlette said. “He can’t tell an out-seam from an in-seam. And what about those new fasteners? What do you call them?”
“Zippers,” Julia said, with an air of superiority. “They will put buttons out to pasture.”
“Oh! I just had a painful thought,” said Waddington, pulling his knees up.
“You’re more interested in what’s going on behind the fashions,” said Julia.
“Or under them,” added the Doctor.
“Now boys! You’re wandering away from the libretto,” Arlette said. “We need to see where they put the drinks we requested.”
I looked around and found Biz still seated at the bar. She was talking to the bartender, who was nodding slowly, then shaking his head. She was still surrounded but no longer being spoken to. Wad was now sitting with his back towards her. He didn’t look in her direction.
When the fines arrived, we let the old fag-ends of conversation die a natural death.
“Here’s rain on your cotton!” said Julia, and we drank to that in case she’d meant it for a toast. For a few minutes, we talked about Jack the Ripper of Paris. Wad was very good at getting into the mind of the killer. He should have been seconded to the Sûreté. Then I saw Hal Leopold come into the Dingo. He was looking grim. Wad saw him too as he walked through the tables to where Biz was still sitting at the bar. He took the stool that Biz had been holding for me and my recovered sense of duty. He moved her bag to the bar and spoke with the bartender briefly.
“I knew he’d show up if Biz was here. They have an instinct for trouble.” Wad pulled himself out of his chair. The legs squeaked as he got up.
“Ah, lay off, Wad. He’s a he-man at least. He may only be thirsty,” I said.
“Right. Thirst is a great lev-leveller. I once found myself drinking out of the same stream as a water moccasin. Kike bastard!”