by Howard Engel
“But when they catch Jack eventually …”
“Well, by then it will be too late, won’t it? Nothing stays fixed on Montparnasse.”
“My favourite coal-and-wood dealer is closing down to make way for another café across the street from the Select. Everything changes.”
“I get the feeling — and I’ve had it more than once — that I’ve missed the best years in the Quarter. Today we have only the left-overs from a brilliant era, wondering where the parade went.”
“Wad calls them ‘scum,’ or, in a more benevolent mood, he softens it to ‘the dregs.’ I think he exaggerates. I hope he exaggerates, considering the amount of time I waste in places like the Dingo.”
“You used to know Laure Duclos very well, I hear. I knew her a little, was hoping to know her better. What do you make of her death? What was she like when she wasn’t tight?”
“Hell, when you change a subject, you don’t do it subtly, do you?”
“If it bothers you to talk about it…”
“No. Not at all. It was a long time ago. The war was just over. We lived together. Then we stopped living together. Laure was my first girl in Paris. She was quite young then and relatively unspoiled. At first we were very much in love. Then it moved away from that.”
“How do you mean?”
“It was as though once she had made a base with me, she was ready to cut the wire and move on to a forward position. She was always moving to a forward position from a place of relative calm: a shell hole, or the debris from a ruined chapel.”
“You’re getting poetic.”
“She used to bring it out in me. I was quite ambitious then, in a literary way. Saw writing as a way to escape the blood and bandages.”
“And?”
“She moved on. I stopped caring. Simple as that.”
Through the portholes, I could see the sun reflected in the high windows of the Petit Palais on the other side of the river. Anson turned off the gas from one of the lights. I was feeling gritty in the early light, feeling the need for a shave and bath coming on. I put down the cup near the others, some of them with dark stains, some with old coffee still in them.
“That theory of yours,” Anson said. “It would have made sense, you know, if Laure was like the rest of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Laure was an opium user. She used it rather heavily. That would have put her in contact with a network that has its branches on the Right Bank. It involved her with people we would know nothing about on Montparnasse. You see what I mean?” I nodded as I saw my hypothesis fall apart and remembered La Ruche in the early dawn.
“If Laure had been like Arlette, or Biz even, your theory…”
“Sure, well, I should remember that I’m a journalist and not Hawkshaw the Detective, I guess.”
Anson turned off another gas jet as the day poked shafts of light into all of the barge’s dusty corners. I said good night and climbed through the open hatch. The sun was now shining on the river and hiding in the trees behind Notre Dame. The streets were crowded with the morning’s business as I walked up the boulevard St-Germain, back to my room.
CHAPTER 15
The autumn was moving on towards winter. Paris had suffered a disastrous summer, and it was said that the winter was going to be worse. There were fewer clochards on the Métro gratings at night now. The door of the estaminet around the corner from me in the rue Gozlin was closed against the cold wind, and the patrons huddled around the high zinc bar for warmth as well as conversation. On Montparnasse, the patrons had moved off the uncovered parts of the terrasses to the protected insides, where a charcoal brazier gave an impression of heat if not the real thing. We watched the sign of the wood-and-coal dealer across from the Select come down: Juglar, Chantier, bois et charbon. This was followed by a general cleaning out of the yard. It was only a matter of time before the steam-shovels and wagons would turn the location, which went well back into the last century, into a quagmire, running muddy tracks out into the boulevard. At the Dôme, old Père Chambon joked that the new café would in the end drive him into a suicide pact, like the film actor Max Linder. If he could only find a partner, he complained. When it was suggested that he might consider Mme. Select from across the street, he admitted that there might be worse things on earth than a deteriorating Montparnasse after all.
During the day, I did my work at the agency. My command of French prepositions and irregular verbs improved to the point where I stopped worrying. I continued to play tennis with Wad and once in awhile with Hal Leopold, who always gave me a good game. In the evening, I tried to work on my notes, when I was in the mood and when I wasn’t too tired from work. I have to admit that at the end of November I had no more than a slender bundle of pages. From time to time, Wad and I would walk Snick-a-Fritz in the Luxembourg. Hash never asked her “Tatie” to help out in this way, but it was obvious she was delighted to see her men going off together. On these walks, Wad tried to get me to give him some idea of what I was working on. It was my private joke, as the only would-be writer in Paris more reticent to discuss his work than Wad, to keep him stewing about my “work in progress.” Mostly we talked about sports. He didn’t follow team sports, had at the most a sketchy idea of the baseball standings and never talked about football. He claimed that football was something he’d missed when he didn’t go to university, but I knew he was on his high school team.
Wad liked sports where one man was pitted against another force, be it man or beast. Everything was an extension of trout fishing. Even bullfighting. Sometimes he could get very sanctimonious about his bullfighting. I remember Hal Leopold once kidded him about setting up a system of points so that you could keep score of a corrida: so many points for the matador, so many for the bull. He didn’t see the funny side of that. But, then, it came from Leopold.
He enjoyed talking about his time in Pamplona and Madrid, speaking as though he had been raised in the Pyrenees or La Mancha. It was easy to forget that Spain was fairly new to him. That’s why he had to talk about it. He was trying to get it right. Wad’s Spain always seemed to have more Bizet in it than it should.
One afternoon, returning from a press conference on the boulevard Diderot, I stopped with a colleague for a drink across from the Gare de Lyon. After he left, I crossed over the boulevard and the open space in front of the station. Inside, I asked to see the chief of the railway police and was directed to an office near the rear, but still under the great curved and girdered roof. When asked for my platform ticket, I explained my mission to the controller, who let me pass while shaking his head. Soon I was facing a M. La Fond in the Commissariat Special de la Gare. I told him that I was interested in discovering what information I could about the disappearance of a suitcase just prior to Christmas three years ago. He asked to see my carte de séjour and my press identification papers. Once he had approved these, he went at once to the bottom drawer of a wooden filing case, from which he brought a file. He placed it on his desk, while I remained on the other side of the dark-stained counter. M. La Fond took his time.
“A woman named Colbrant, who was staying with the Soeurs de St-Vincent-de-Paul, reported a theft on the 12th of December, 1922,” he said unhelpfully.
“Is there anything else? Something between that date and Christmas Eve?” M. La Fond looked, then shook his head.
“Is there no record of any sort of an inquiry?”
“Monsieur may look for himself.” He lifted the file, which contained a ledger and turned it around for me. He indicated the entry he’d cited. It went into some detail: “. . . elle fut accostée par un individu qui lui offrit une consommation dans un bar, en attendant l’heure du départ du train. . .”
I left the station, passing up the twin curved stairways that invited me to the buffet on the floor above. I was baffled. The suitcase had been stolen, but no one had reported the theft. Or, if it was reported, no record existed to prove it. I was puzzled as I waited for a bus to return me to the off
ice.
That night I got an invitation from Sylvia Beach to present myself at the bookshop at closing time. Not knowing what to expect, I dressed well enough to be presentable at a reading by one of her favourite writers — Claudel or Valéry perhaps — but without putting on a special effort. That is to say, I wore my other suit, which was nearing retirement. As soon as I arrived, I met Sylvia, who had already rounded up Wad and Hash, and the four of us left the shop and crossed the street to pick up Adrienne Monnier at her own French bookshop. Everybody was in a holiday mood, so that even the purchase of tickets in the Métro took on a special flavour. Waddington — Sylvia on one arm and Adrienne on the other, with me and Hash bringing up the rear — announced the plan.
“We’re going to take the number 4 in the direction Porte de Clignancourt and make a correspondance at Reaumur-Sébastopol to a number 3, the Porte des Lilas to Porte de Champerret, in the direction Porte des Lilas, and we’ll get off at rue Pelleport.” He said this with some satisfaction, as though he was now authorized to reveal the contents of his sealed orders.
“What’s all this about?” I asked when we had settled ourselves in a second-class car and the doors banged shut behind us.
“We’re going to the boxing,” Adrienne said. “I thought you knew.”
“Nobody tells me anything.” Hash was sitting beside me, smiling to herself while idly tracing the pattern surrounding the enamelled wall panels with her grey gloves. I watched her fingers finding their way around the intricate, overlapping, interlocking square ornamentation at the corners. All the while, Wad was talking.
“This fellow Fournier is supposed to be tough, but I think that’s mostly his manager talking. Batty, the other man, has a string of wins. He doesn’t need to have his manager boasting. But it might be a fix. You can never tell in these small rings.”
On the way up the steep stairs at rue Pelleport, Wad looked back, laughing. “You remember the last time we came, Sylvia?”
“I do indeed! Cilla was panting so hard, I thought she was about to go into labour.”
“Oh, I wasn’t that far along!” protested Hash.
“That was the night the crowd didn’t like the referee’s decision,” Adrienne said. We all puffed our way to the top of the stairs.
“The policeman tried to ignore the whole disturbance,” recalled Sylvia as we came to the Métro exit and then out into a small square that looked down the sloping avenue Gambetta to a church steeple.
“And, Tatie, you nearly got us all pinched when you said that, as usual, the flic was in the vespasienne answering a call of nature.”
“He was trying not to get his head broken. In this part of town, a flic has to keep his head down.”
“Well, I hope they don’t repeat the performance tonight,” Adrienne said.
I found the intersection we had arrived at foreign and hostile. I was reminded that I had some time ago interrupted my exploration of the streets of Paris, a recreation that had afforded me much pleasure in my early days in town.
Wad led the way through an alley to the entrance of a small auditorium, which was already filled with spectators. It was only with some difficulty that we were able to find some backless benches close to the action. “If you can’t see what’s happening close up, you might as well read about it in the Echo des Sports tomorrow morning,” Wad said. Adrienne and I were seated behind Sylvia and the Waddingtons. Wad kept turning around during the preliminary bouts to tell us useful things about the fighters. I hadn’t seen a fight since my friend Callaghan and I had caught one at the Mutual Arena in Toronto four months ago. Already it seemed like four years. When the main event began, Wad leaned forward and watched what was going on with a concentration that could not have been broken by an earthquake. I enjoyed the bout as well, but I never forgot where I was or with whom I was sitting. I could feel the fighters move around one another, appreciate the beauty of the way they danced in and out and be dazzled by a sudden, well-calculated play, but I could never quite get beyond the ripe smell of flesh and liniment far enough to forget myself. I envied Wad, now sitting with his knees up and his arms wrapped around them. From where I sat, Wad wasn’t in his body just then; he was up there in the ring with the fighters. When it was over, he turned around and looked at us with eyes that had been well satisfied with their meal, asking questions as though sifting to see how many of the tasty dishes we had tried and enjoyed.
“Did you see how close Fournier was working to the belt? He was always close to being called for a foul, but never quite. Batty was doubling up so he’d have to reach farther. That’s why they gave the fight to Batty even though he hardly threw a good punch all night. Batty didn’t win the fight, Fournier lost it.” He was excited and full of fun afterwards, shadow-boxing with himself as we waited for our aisle to clear and taking a few punches at the program I was still carrying.
“Tolstoi should have been there,” Wad said when we were installed in a café on Ménilmontant that looked across the wide street to the Père Lachaise cemetery. “Englishmen understand about a good fight. Americans only want a scrap. There’s a difference.”
“At least this time there was no riot, Waddington,” Adrienne said with a puckish smile. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”
He shot her a grin. “There’ll be other fights, other riots. We’ll all have to go back to the Cirque de Paris next time there’s a Grand Gala de la boxe. We’ll make sure Tolstoi comes. He used to box at Oxford, you know.”
“Was he with us last time, Wad?” Sylvia wanted to know.
“No, he and Laure were having one of their battles and neither of them came.”
“How long were they together?” I asked, while the women were deciding on what they were going to order. Even Adrienne was suspicious of cafés this far away from the carrefour de l’Odéon.
“We heard about them fighting so much, it seems like twenty years. Whenever they weren’t holding hands, they were at one another’s throats. She made a little money teaching and he lived on hand-outs from the manor house,” Wad said, slipping an arm around Sylvia.
“Was that money to keep him out of England?” I asked.
“That’s my guess, but I’ve never known for sure. Laure was a wonderfully beautiful woman in those days. Everybody envied Tolstoi.”
“Everybody?” I echoed with a raised eyebrow.
“Everybody,” he said, making sure the others were still occupied.
Later, back on Montparnasse, after we had seen Sylvia and Adrienne safely home to the rue de l’Odéon, Hash, Wad and I stopped at the Select for a nightcap. As we sat down, Wad was approached by a lanky young man in an American army overcoat that had been stripped of all insignia and, like the young man himself, was looking a little the worse for wear. He explained that he was a writer from New York who’d heard that Wad was scouting for Burdock and his literary magazine. Hash was looking at the young writer’s dirty fingernails and spotted skin. Wad heard him out, and even smiled enthusiastically as he listened. Finally, a rolled manuscript was handed over to Waddington, after its author checked to see that his name and address were attached. Wad watched the back of the writer disappear through the busy traffic of the boulevard before speaking.
“Of all the different kinds of scum that float to the surface in the Quarter, the hopeful scum of the cafés is the worst.”
“‘Scum’? That’s a bit strong, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not half strong enough. I feel like a dip in the river after talking to one of that bunch. Too late in the year for it tonight, but I’ll plan to have a good wash before I go to bed.”
“Weren’t you a young hopeful not so long ago?” I asked.
“Yes, Tatie, you are being hard on the poor fellow. He doesn’t look to be one of those talking writers you complain about, the sort that never writes a word —”
“Except home for more money!” Wad sent a cold glance into the crowded street.
“This young fellow looked serious enough to be a younger versi
on of you when you first came to Paris.” Hash’s face had taken on a worried expression. She tried to mask it, but she’d gone quite pale.
“Listen, Feather P., I was here first in 1917 and I didn’t parade my jottings through the Quarter as if I was selling cacahuètes from table to table.”
“Tatie, be fair! He wasn’t peddling. He asked you to add his work to the pile you’re considering for Mr. Burdock, that’s all. I can’t see the harm in that. And as for ‘scum’ . . .”
“There are no office-hours at the Select, Wad,” I said. Wad’s heavy eyebrows were almost meeting. I’d never seen his face so dark.
“I’ve half a mind to do my late-night drinking at the Rotonde again. These youngsters are boycotting it because the patron called the flics on one of them. I’ll be safer there. And if you’re both on his side, I don’t see why you’re wasting time with a spoil-sport like me. Drunk or sober, I can find my own way home.”
“Hey, Wad! Steady on. You’re among friends. What the hell’s eating you?”
“Every goddamned kid who can afford boat fare and a pencil is suddenly Ring Lardner or Wilson O’Donnell, for Christ’s sake! Maybe I should retire and leave the field to these young Menckens and Sherwood Andersons. Maybe I’m the scum and you’re too polite to tell me.”
“Aw, go to hell! You don’t know when you’re well off! Hash, talk some sense into him.”
“I think you’ve been working too hard, that’s what I think, Tatie. Come on, kid, we’re going home. You need a good night’s sleep.”
“Don’t call me that. I don’t like to be called ‘kid.’”
“Tatie?”
“You go on. I’ll follow in a few minutes.”
Hash tried to cover the hurt and said nothing. A tram made a noisy clatter along the middle of the boulevard.
“Tatie?” Hash tried again when it was quiet.
“Goddamn it, are you going deaf? I said I’ll be along in a few minutes. I’ve got something I want to raise with Mike, here.”