Giovanni's Room

by James Baldwin

  Chapter Three

  At five o'clock in the morning Guillaume locked the door of the bar behind us. The streets were empty and grey. On a corner near the bar a butcher had already opened his shop and one could see him within, already bloody, hacking at the meat. One of the great, green Paris buses lumbered past, nearly empty, its bright electric flag waving fiercely to indicate a turn. A garçon de cafe spilled water on the sidewalk before his establishment and swept it into the gutter. At the end of the long, curving street which faced us were the trees of the boulevard and straw chairs piled high before cafes and the great stone spire of Saint-Germain-des-Prés—the most magnificent spire, as Hella and I believed, in Paris. The street beyond the place stretched before us to the river and, hidden beside and behind us, meandered to Montparnasse. It was named for an adventurer who sowed a crop in Europe which is being harvested until today. I had often walked this street, sometimes, with Hella, towards the river, often, without her, towards the girls of Montparnasse. Not very long ago either, though it seemed, that morning, to have occurred in another life.

  We were going to Les Halles for breakfast. We piled into a taxi, the four of us, unpleasantly crowded together, a circumstance which elicited from Jacques and Guillaume, a series of lewd speculations. This lewdness was particularly revolting in that it not only failed of wit, it was so clearly an expression of contempt and self-contempt; it bubbled upward out of them like a fountain of black water. It was clear that they were tantalizing themselves with Giovanni and me and this set my teeth on edge. But Giovanni leaned back against the taxi window, allowing his arm to press my shoulder lightly, seeming to say that we should soon be rid of these old men and should not be distressed that their dirty water splashed—we would have no trouble washing it away.

  'Look,' said Giovanni, as we crossed the river. 'This old whore, Paris, as she turns in bed, is very moving.'

  I looked out, beyond his heavy profile, which was grey—from fatigue and from the light of the sky above us. The river was swollen and yellow. Nothing moved on the river. Barges were tied up along the banks. The island of the city widened away from us, bearing the weight of the cathedral; beyond this, dimly, through speed and mist, one made out the individual roofs of Paris, their myriad, squat chimney stacks very beautiful and varicolored under the pearly sky. Mist clung to the river, softening that army of trees, softening those stones, hiding the city's dreadful corkscrew alleys and dead-end streets, clinging like a curse to the men who slept beneath the bridges—one of whom flashed by beneath us, very black and lone, walking along the river.

  'Some rats have gone in,' said Giovanni, 'and now other rats come out.' He smiled bleakly and looked at me; to my surprise, he took my hand and held it. 'Have you ever slept under a bridge?' he asked. 'Or perhaps they have soft beds with warm blankets under the bridges in your country?'

  I did not know what to do about my hand; it seemed better to do nothing. 'Not yet,' I said, 'but I may. My hotel wants to throw me out.'

  I had said it lightly, with a smile, out of a desire to put myself, in terms of an acquaintance with wintry things, on an equal footing with him. But the fact that I had said it as he held my hand made it sound to me unutterably helpless and soft and coy. But I could not say anything to counteract this impression: to say anything more would confirm it. I pulled my hand away, pretending that I had done so in order to search for a cigarette.

  Jacques lit it for me.

  'Where do you live?' he asked Giovanni.

  'Oh,' said Giovanni, 'out. Far out. It is almost not Paris.'

  'He lives in a dreadful street, near Nation' said Guillaume, 'among all the dreadful bourgeoisie and their piglike children.'

  'You failed to catch the children at the right age,' said Jacques. 'They go through a period, all too brief, hélas! when a pig is perhaps the only animal they do not call to mind.' And, again to Giovanni: 'In a hotel?'

  'No,' said Giovanni, and for the first time he seemed slightly uncomfortable. 'I live in a maid's room.'

  With the maid?'

  'No,' said Giovanni, and smiled, 'the maid is I don't know where. You could certainly tell that there was no maid if you ever saw my room.'

  'I would love to,' said Jacques.

  'Then we will give a party for you one day,' said Giovanni.

  This, too courteous and too bald to permit any further questioning, nearly forced, nevertheless, a question from my Ups. Guillaume looked briefly at Giovanni, who did not look at him but out into the morning, whistling. I had been making resolutions for the last six hours and now I made another one: to have this whole thing 'ouf with Giovanni as soon as I got him alone at Les Halles. I was going to have to tell him that he had made a mistake but that we could still be friends. But I could not be certain, really, that it might not be I who was making a mis- take, blindly misreading everything—and out of necessities, then, too shameful to be uttered. I was in a box for I could see that, no matter how I turned, the hour of confession was upon me and could scarcely be averted; unless, of course, I leaped out of the cab, which would be the most terrible confession of all.

  Now the cabdriver asked us where we wanted to go, for we had arrived at the choked boulevards and impassable sidestreets of Les Halles. Leeks, onions, cabbages, oranges, apples, potatoes, cauliflowers, stood gleaming in mounds all over, on the sidewalks, in the streets, before great metal sheds. The sheds were blocks long and within the sheds were piled more fruit, more vegetables, in some sheds, fish, in some sheds, cheese, in some whole animals, lately slaughtered. It scarcely seemed possible that all of this could ever be eaten. But in a few hours it would all be gone and trucks would be arriving from all corners of France—and making their way, to the great profit of a beehive of middlemen, across the city of Paris—to feed the roaring multitude. Who were roaring now, at once wounding and charming the ear, before and behind, and on either side of our taxi— our taxi driver, and Giovanni, too, roared back. The multitude of Paris seems to be dressed in blue every day but Sunday, when, for the most part, they put on an unbelievably festive black. Here they were now, in blue, disputing, every inch, our passage, with their wagons, handtrucks, camions, their bursting baskets carried at an angle steeply self-confident on the back. A red-faced woman, burdened with fruit, shouted—to Giovanni, the driver, to the world—a particularly vivid cochonnerie, to which the driver and Giovanni, at once, at the top of their lungs, responded, though the fruit lady had already passed beyond our sight and perhaps no longer even remembered her precisely obscene conjectures. We crawled along, for no one had yet told the driver where to stop, and Giovanni and the driver, who had, it appeared, immediately upon entering Les Halles, been transformed into brothers, exchanged speculations, unflattering in the extreme, concerning the hygiene, language, private parts, and habits, of the citizens of Paris. (Jacques and Guillaume were exchanging speculations, unspeakably less good-natured, concerning every passing male.) The pavements were slick with leavings, mainly cast-off, rotten leaves, flowers, fruit, and vegetables which had met with disaster natural and slow, or abrupt. And the walls and corners were combed with pissoirs, dull-burning, make-shift braziers, cafes, restaurants, and smoky yellow bistros—of these last, some so small that they were little more than diamond-shaped, enclosed corners holding bottles and a zinc-covered counter. At all these points, men, young, old, middle-aged, powerful, powerful even in the various fashions in which they had met, or were meeting, their various ruin; and women, more than making up in shrewdness and patience, in an ability to count and weigh—and shout— whatever they might lack in muscle; though they did not, really, seem to lack much. Nothing here reminded me of home, though Giovanni recognized, revelled in it all.

  'I know a place,' he told the driver, 'très bon marche'—and told the driver where it was. It developed that it was one of the driver's favorite rendezvous.

  'Where is this place?' asked Jacques, petulantly. I thought we were going to'—and he named another place.

  'You are joking,' sa
id Giovanni, with contempt. 'That place is very bad and very expensive, it is only for tourists. We are not tourists,' and he added, to me, 'When I first came to Paris I worked in Les Halles—a long time, too. Nom de Dieu, quel boulot! I pray always never to do that again.' And he regarded the streets through which we passed with a sadness which was not less real for being a little theatrical and self-mocking.

  Guillaume said, from his corner of the cab: 'Tell him who rescued you.'

  'Ah, yes,' said Giovanni, 'behold my savior, my patron.' He was silent a moment. Then: *You do not regret it, do you? I have not done you any harm? You are pleased with my work?'

  'Mais oui,' said Guillaume.

  Giovanni sighed. 'Bien sûr.' He looked out of the window again, again whistling. We came to a corner remarkably clear. The taxi stopped.

  'Ici,' said the driver.

  'Ici,' Giovanni echoed.

  I reached for my wallet but Giovanni sharply caught my hand, conveying to me with an angry flick of his eyelash the intelligence that the least these dirty old men could do was pay. He opened the door and stepped out into the street. Guillaume had not reached for his wallet and Jacques paid for the cab.

  'Ugh,' said Guillaume, staring at the door of the cafe before which we stood, I am sure this place is infested with vermin. Do you want to poison us?'

  'It's not the outside you're going to eat,' said Giovanni. 'You are in much more danger of being poisoned in those dreadful, chic places you always go to, where they always have the face clean, mais, mon Dieu, les fesses!' He grinned. 'Fais-moi confiance. Why would I want to poison you? Then I would have no job and I have only just found out that I want to live.'

  He and Guillaume, Giovanni still smiling, exchanged a look which I would not have been able to read even if I had dared to try; and Jacques, pushing all of us before him as though we were his chickens, said, with that grin: 'We can't stand here in the cold and argue. If we can't eat inside, we can drink. Alcohol kills all microbes.'

  And Guillaume brightened suddenly—he was really remarkable, as though he carried, hidden somewhere on his person, a needle filled with vitamins, which, automatically, at the blackening hour, discharged itself into his veins. 'Il y a les jeunes dedans,' he said, and we went in.

  Indeed there were young people, half a dozen at the zinc counter before glasses of red and white wine, along with others not young at all. A pockmarked boy and a very rough-looking girl were playing the pinball machine near the window. There were a few people sitting at the tables in the back, served by an astonishingly clean-looking waiter. In the gloom, the dirty walls, the sawdust-covered floor, his white jacket gleamed like snow. Behind these tables one caught a glimpse of the kitchen and the surly, obese cook. He lumbered about like one of those overloaded trucks outside, wearing one of those high, white hats, and with a dead cigar stuck between his lips.

  Behind the counter sat one of those absolutely inimitable and indomitable ladies, produced only in the city of Paris, but produced there in great numbers, who would be as outrageous and unsettling in any other city as a mermaid on a mountaintop. All over Paris they sit behind their counters like a mother bird in a nest and brood over the cash register as though it were an egg. Nothing occurring under the circle of heaven where they sit escapes their eye, if they have ever been surprised by anything, it was only in a dream—a dream they long ago ceased having. They are neither ill- nor good-natured, though they have their days and styles, and they know, In the way, apparently, that other people know when they have to go to the bathroom, everything about everyone who enters their domain. Though some are white-haired and some not, some fat, some thin, some grandmothers and some but lately virgins, they all have exactly the same, shrewd, vacant, all-registering eye; it is difficult to believe that they ever cried for milk or looked at the sun; it seems they must have come into the world hungry for banknotes, and squinting helplessly, unable to focus their eyes until they came to rest on a cash register.

  This one's hair is black and grey, and she has a face which comes from Brittany; and she, like almost everyone else standing at the bar, knows Giovanni and, after her fashion, likes him. She has a big, deep bosom and she clasps Giovanni to it; and a big, deep voice.

  'Ah, mon pote!' she cries. 'Tu es revenu! You have come back at last! Salaud! Now that you are rich and have found rich friends, you never come to see us anymore! Canaille!'

  And she beams at us, the 'rich' friends, with a friendliness deliciously, deliberately vague; she would have no trouble reconstructing every instant of our biographies from the moment we were born until this morning. She knows exactly who is rich—and how rich—and she knows it isn't me. For this reason, perhaps, there was a click of speculation inflnitesimally double behind her eyes when she looked at me. In a moment, however, she knows that she will understand it all.

  'You know how it is,' says Giovanni, extricating himself and throwing back his hair, *when you work, when you become serious, you have no time to play.'

  'Tiens,' says she, with mockery. 'Sans blague?'

  'But I assure you,' says Giovanni, 'even when you are a young man like me, you get very tired'—she laughs—'and you go to sleep early'— she laughs again—'and alone,' says Giovanni, as though this proved everything, and she clicks her teeth in sympathy and laughs again.

  'And now,' she says, 'are you coming or going? Have you come for breakfast or have you come for a nightcap? Nom de Dieu, you do not look very serious; I believe you need a drink.'

  'Bien sûr,' says someone at the bar, 'after such hard work he needs a bottle of white wine— and perhaps a few dozen oysters.'

  Everybody laughs. Everybody, without seeming to, is looking at us and I am beginning to feel like part of a travelling circus. Everybody, also, seems very proud of Giovanni.

  Giovanni turns to the voice at the bar. 'An excellent idea, friend,' he says, 'and exactly what I had in mind.' Now he turns to us. Tou have not met my friends,' he says, looking at me, then at the woman. This is Monsieur Guillaume,' he tells her, and with the most subtle flattening of his voice, 'my patron. He can tell you if I am serious.'

  'Ah' she dares to say, 'but I cannot tell if he is' and covers this daring with a laugh.

  Guillaume, raising his eyes with difficulty from the young men at the bar, stretches out his hand and smiles. 'But you are right, Madame,' he says. 'He is so much more serious than I am that I fear he will own my bar one day.'

  He will when lions fly, she is thinking, but professes herself enchanted by him and shakes his hand with energy.

  'And Monsieur Jacques,' says Giovanni, 'one of our finest customers.'

  'Enchanté, Madame,' says Jacques, with his most dazzling smile, of which she, in responding, produces the most artless parody.

  'And this is monsieur l'américain,' says Giovanni, 'otherwise known as: Monsieur David. Madame Clothilde.'

  And he stands back slightly. Something is burning in his eyes and it lights up all his face, it is joy and pride.

  'Je suis ravie, monsieur,' she tells me and looks at me and shakes my hand and smiles.

  I am smiling too, I scarcely know why; everything in me is jumping up and down. Giovanni carelessly puts an arm around my shoulder. 'What have you got good to eat?' he cried. 'We are hungry.'

  'But we must have a drink first!' cried Jacques.

  'But we can drink sitting down,' said Giovanni, 'no?'

  'No,' said Guillaume, to whom leaving the bar, at the moment, would have seemed like being driven from the promised land, let us first have a drink, here at the bar, with Madame.'

  Guillaume's suggestion had the effect—but subtly, as though a wind had blown over everything or a light been imperceptibly intensified— of creating among the people at the bar, a troupe, who would now play various roles in a play they knew very well. Madame Clothilde would demur, as, indeed, she instantly did, but only for a moment; then she would accept, it would be something expensive; it turned out to be champagne. She would sip it, making the most noncommittal con
versation, so that she could vanish out of it a split second before Guillaume had established contact with one of the boys at the bar. As for the boys at the bar, they were each invisibly preening, having already calculated how much money he and his copain would need for the next few days, having already appraised Guillaume to within a decimal of that figure, and having already estimated how long Guillaume, as a fountainhead, would last, and also how long they would be able to endure him. The only question left was whether they would be vache with him, or chic, but they knew that they would probably be vache. There was also Jacques, who might turn out to be a bonus, or merely a consolation prize. There was me, of course, another matter altogether, innocent of apartments, soft beds, or food, a candidate, therefore, for affection, but, as Giovanni's môme, out of honorable reach. Their only means, practically at least, of conveying their affection for Giovanni and me was to relieve us of these two old men. So that there was added, to the roles they were about to play, a certain jolly aura of conviction and, to self-interest, an altruistic glow.

  I ordered black coffee and a cognac, a large one. Giovanni was far from me, drinking marc between an old man, who looked like a receptacle of all the world's dirt and disease, and a young boy, a redhead, who would look like that man one day, if one could read, in the dullness of his eye, anything so real as a future. Now, however, he had something of a horse's dreadful beauty; some suggestion, too, of the storm trooper; covertly, he was watching Guillaume; he knew that both Guillaume and Jacques were watching him. Guillaume chatted, meanwhile, with Madame Clothilde; they were agreeing that business was awful, that all standards had been debased by the nouveau riche, and that the country needed de Gaulle. Luckily, they had both had this conversation so many times before that it ran, so to speak, all by itself, demanding of them nothing in the way of concentration. Jacques would shortly offer one of the boys a drink but, for the moment, he wished to play uncle to me.