“Sitting?” said Mrs. Pierce, getting the picture. “Isn’t it idealistic for them to be sitting?”
“Madame,” said Dickie, leaning forward, “would you please repeat that statement?”
“What did I say?” said Mrs. Pierce. She looked around. “I don’t know when I’ve been so warm—”
“Maybe if we left the door open,” Proctor put in, got up from the table, and left the room. They heard him open the door, step into the bathroom on his way back.
“What clever thing did I say?” said Dickie. “You think I’ve given him the last chapter?”
“Once I read a true story,” Lou Baker began, “of a man who sent his friends live kittens in shoe boxes. He put fresh lilies in the box with them, and enclosed a card saying, ‘Please bury this coffin.’ ”
“Good heavens!” said Mrs. Pierce, half out of her chair, and dropped down again.
“I thought the story was phony,” Lou Baker said. “I didn’t believe there were people like that.”
“And now you do, dear?” Dickie said.
“I believe in evil,” Lou Baker said.
“Of course there’s evil,” Mrs. Pierce said, rising suddenly, for a rebuttal. “Of course there’s evil, but there’s every bit as much good. If I could just tell you the things people do—unselfish things, just out of pleasure in goodness—”
“I didn’t say there were not good people,” said Lou Baker. “I just said that I believed in evil. Just like I believe that the sun does not go around the earth. It is a fact. It is more of a fact than anything else. I guess I fear it because I believe in it.”
“Infantile paralysis,” said Mrs. Pierce, “is certainly a fact. I have a niece in Stamford—but just because it’s a fact is no reason to believe in it.”
“I think I see your point,” Foley said, noting the rise and fall of Mrs. Pierce’s bosom, the steady, remote serenity of Lou Baker’s gaze. “I see your point. I think the modern error has been in the ignoring of the power of evil, treating it as a childish superstition, or worse. Confusing it with sin. On the other hand—” He stopped when he saw Lou Baker’s gaunt head wagging slowly back and forth, as if her ears were ringing. Foley agreed. What was he saying? Words, words, words—
“Goodness,” Mrs. Pierce said—and for a moment Foley waited for her to say “gracious,” but no, she meant “goodness”—“is every bit as real.”
“It’s a very pretty picture,” Lou Baker said, “and even cheaper than books on flower arrangement, but it is not something”—she squeezed her small fists together—“in which your guts can believe.” Mrs. Pierce stared at her, fascinated. “Why are men of good will,” Lou Baker said, “all over the world, good for nothing? Why do men of evil rule the world?”
“I don’t for one single moment think they do,” said Mrs. Pierce. “I don’t for one moment heed the counsel of despair.”
“I know,” said Lou Baker. “That’s what I’m pointing out.”
Mrs. Pierce turned to Foley, who said, “People of good will are often blind to the facts. Now take Hitler. In the early thirties—”
“Oh, to hell with Hitler!” Lou Baker cried. “To hell with Mussolini, with Stalin, with Beria! To hell even with McCarthy! Let’s take me and you.” When Foley leaned back she said, “Let’s take me then. Am I a force for good or evil?”
“I’d say we’re all a little of both,” said Foley.
“You lie!” said Lou Baker. “You know that you lie! And when you lie you are a force for evil!” Her right arm waved in the air, flapping the towel she held like a broken wing.
“Children! Children!” Mrs. Pierce cried, but there she stopped, and Foley thought the roar that filled the room had been too much for her. Her jaw hung slack, the blood drained from her face, and on the no longer panting bosom Foley expected to see the sudden, spurting pump of blood.
“Oh, my God!” Lou Baker said, and on her way out of the room, toward the explosion, she left the towel looped over the arm that Mrs. Pierce, still breathing, had raised to stop her.
THE CAPTIVITY: XI
I spent a week around New York looking for the cattle boats that Richard Halliburton always sailed on, then I booked passage on a Diamond Lines freighter, the Black Gull. I had a lower berth, under the portholes and a Swedish artist named Larsen, who sat in his berth strumming a guitar most of the time. We had a Cincinnati janitor, Otto Klug, in the lower berth on the inside, and a Chase Bank clerk named Ruhig in the upper, who was sick all the way.
On the twelfth day out we saw Land’s End, then we spent two full days going up the Channel, the smell of the engines in the cabin and the foghorn blowing day and night. We docked in Antwerp the following morning, about three o’clock. The tide was in, and the deck of the boat was high above the street. When the gangplank went down we could hear all the windows facing the dock go up or come down, and then the hooting of the women, but in the fog we couldn’t see anything. They emptied their nightpots over the sidewalks as we passed. We sat around in a beer hall until morning, when we could get through the customs, then I went along with Larsen and Otto Klug to the American Express. Larsen bought a third-class ticket to Riga, Klug bought one to Spitz, which was near Vienna, and I bought one on the night train to Paris, to save paying for a room. Then we broke up, as we had seen a lot of one another on the boat.
I mailed a card of the cathedral to Arlene Miller, saying that Antwerp was all that I had expected, and one to my mother saying that I had arrived but the passage had been rough. Then I had a look at the cathedral, the Descent from the Cross as painted by Rubens, and several cafés au lait in an American-style restaurant on the avenue du Commerce.
In the afternoon I went to the Zoo, to keep from running into Otto Klug and Larsen, then I took in a movie until it was time for the Paris train. Emil Ruhig turned up on the train, where he offered me a seat in his compartment, but I said that on European-style trains I liked to stand in the aisle. I stood in the aisle from Antwerp to Paris, and near Paris, early in the morning, I took a live goose through the window and held him till the old woman boarded the train.
We pulled into the Gare St. Lazare about seven o’clock. Coming over on the boat, I’d studied Paris on the maps in my Baedeker, and when I got out of the station I headed down the rue Auber to the American Express.
Three letters and a postcard were waiting for me. One from Troy, Indiana, enclosing an invitation to the wedding of Lawrence and Miss Pamela Crowley, to take place on the 5th of June, in St. Cloud. One from Proctor, forwarded from California, saying that Lawrence had been injured in a novillada, and one from Arlene Miller, giving me a list of the stamps she would like. The postcard was from my mother, who said that she couldn’t say she was really surprised.
I couldn’t find “novillada” in my pocket Larousse, so I figured it must be some sort of sportscar, like the Bugatti, only very likely more powerful. We all took it for granted he would kill himself in one someday. I left a note for Proctor at the American Express, saying that I was on my way to Majorca, but I hoped to find the time to look him up before I left. Then I had a café noir at the Café de la Paix, walked down the rue de la Paix to the Tuileries, sat there for a while, then crossed the Pont des Arts to the Left Bank. I went along the quai to the Boul’ Mich’, where I had a café au lait and a croissant, then I looked at Notre Dame and walked up the Boul’ Mich’ to the Luxembourg. I had the address of a pension on rue Gobineau, but it was spring, I was in Paris, and when the kids around the pond yelled “Me void,” I turned and looked. They pronounced it as Mrs. Josephare had said they would.
In the afternoon I took a room at the pension. I had a shower, then I thought I’d take a nap, since I’d been on my feet all night, but some American girls were playing ping-pong down the hall. They didn’t play very well, and the ball would roll down and ping on my door. The place was full of girls, and one from Wellesley had just moved out of the room I was in, leaving her fingernail polish and four or five bobby pins in the bed.
&
nbsp; I got up around six, walked up Raspail to the American club. Some more American girls were having tea, playing records on a portable phonograph, and dancing that open stance way that girls like to dance. A couple of young men with beards were playing chess and smoking pipes. On some of the stationery the club provided I got off a short note to Lundgren, telling him that the Left Bank was lousy with Americans and phony as hell. Then I walked up to Montparnasse, where I bought a pack of Caporal Jaunes and had a café noir out in front of the Dôme, where the writers hung out. I had a café au lait inside the Coupole, where I read the sports in the Paris Herald, then I crossed the street and leaned on the railing at the Métro stop. Three old men were playing sad, whiny music that people seemed to like. I was smoking, listening to the music, when I noticed the English conversation that was going on on the steps of the Métro stop. Both girls were tall, but one had her hair in heavy braids, like the tails of saddle horses, and the other one, a blonde, had it more like Garbo, brushed back. She wore a turtleneck sweater, and it made you think of Garbo right off. They had a man along with them, right between them, and although I couldn’t see his face, just the back of his head, I knew that I had seen him somewhere before. I wasn’t sure where until he turned, as if he felt me looking at him, and I saw he was the fellow in the leering photograph on Lawrence’s desk. He leered at me just the same, as if he still had that French nude in his lap.
He led the girls across the street to a table at the Dôme, clacked a pair of castanets to attract the waiters, and ordered a vermouth cassis for the girls and an amer picon for himself. He called them chicks, and they called him Honey, Bunny, Dickie, and dear. I took a table back under the awning, ordered an amer picon myself, and watched the girl with braids play around with the tips of her gloves. She had a way of showing the tip of her tongue when she talked. I was putting her down as a piece from Goucher, the one who had written some of Lawrence’s papers, when she turned to this Dickie and said, “Bunny, you like to take the rap for me?”
“Love it, chick,” he said, swapped places with her, then he looked around to see what was the trouble, saw it was me, and came back to my table. He leaned forward on it and said, “Livingston speaking. Would it be Stanley?”
“No, it would be Foley,” I said, and let him figure it put.
He did all tight, then he said, “I got an extra chick on my hands, old boy. Don’t let the slouch fool you. Montana born aus Bryn Mawr chick.” That one was Lou Baker, the Garbo type, and the other one was Pamela Crowley. They didn’t care for each other particularly. After we were introduced and had a few drinks he asked me to take one of them off his hands.
“I got to feed these chicks, old boy,” he said, “but they won’t slobber out of the same trough. Montana Lou doesn’t seem to like the upperclass type of bitch.” I said I wasn’t much for that type of bitch myself. “Well, she’s all yours,” he said, meaning Montana Lou Baker, and slipped me three hundred francs to feed her.
We went over through the Luxembourg to the Café d’Harcourt, on the Boul’ Mich’. I spent about a hundred forty on her there, then we had our café noir at the Deux Magots. Just in passing I asked her what she was doing with a Boy Scout like Dickie, and she said he was paying her and a Frenchy to translate a novel. I asked her what novel, and she said the poor boob called it “Querencia,” which you couldn’t translate, but meant the place in the ring where the bull felt at home. Then I asked her what the name of this poor boob was, and she said Proctor, Jesse L.
I said I knew certain people who knew him, and she said he was a boob but a talented writer, and it had been something of an education to work on his book. Was it finished? I asked. No, he hadn’t finished it. He would never finish it, in her opinion, and she would very likely never finish the translation, since she hadn’t seen any of it for several weeks. For all she knew, Dickie might be finishing it himself. I asked her what the trouble seemed to be, and she said Proctor couldn’t make up his mind whether to save the hero in the book or kill him off. The book called for killing him off, since the hero had become a bullfighter, but this would leave the author without a querencia himself. He knew that. That was why he couldn’t finish it. He was one of these poor boobs who were looking for the great good place, a bullring without bulls, and he would probably end up in the Party or the Church.
“In the Party?” I said—the only Party I knew at the time was the Democratic. But she didn’t go on.
“The poor damn boob,” she said for no particular reason, then she looked at me and asked, “Am I especially unattractive?”
“You consider Garbo unattractive?” I said.
“You mind answering my question?”
“In my opinion you’re a very pretty girl.”
“That’s my opinion too,” she said, “but in more than three weeks he never once kissed me.” I looked at her, and she added, “I mean he never even tried to kiss me.”
“Who?” I said, thinking she meant Dickie.
“This awful damn Brooklyn boob.”
“I thought I knew him,” I said, “but I didn’t know he was crazy.”
“I wouldn’t kiss him now if he paid me,” she said and put her hand in my raincoat pocket. I don’t know whether she knew that mine was there or not. Most of the time we just walked, or stood on the bridges where we could watch the reflections on the water, or sit on the Right Bank and look at the lights over on the Left. Toward morning we walked up the Champs Elyées to a covered bus stop on the avenue Hoche, where she sat in my lap curled up in her camel’s-hair coat. I thought she had forgotten all about Proctor, when she brought him up. She began to quote him, and we had something of a little argument. It ended up with my trying to kiss her, and her almost biting the tongue out of my mouth. Then I chased her up the street, and she slammed the door of her pension.
I walked back through Paris to the Tuileries. I watched the sun rise on the Eiffel Tower and sat around until the bookstalls opened; then I crossed the river to the Left Bank and had a croissant at the Dôme. I studied one of the maps at the Métro station till I found Proctor’s place. He was in a small hotel, Lou Baker had hinted, on rue Duguesclin. It was not much of a street, as it turned out, but some acrobats were showing off on the corner, and most of the people on the street had stuck their heads out the windows to watch. One of them wore a turtleneck sweater, his hair clipped like a monk, and rimless glasses that he had raised to look at the street. He was thinner, and the barbed-wire scar was like a crack in his beard.
“How are you, Proctor?” I said.
“Christ!” he said, as he had in Chicago, put the pipe he was holding in his mouth, gave a wet suck on it. “Foley, old man, you old bastard, how are you?”
I said I was fine, considering that I’d gone several nights without sleep. I may have looked it, because he didn’t question the point. But I had given him such a start I didn’t know if he was glad to see me or not; he always needed time to figure out what it was he felt. He figured it out and said, “You like to come up, old man?”
I looked at my watch, as if I might be rushed, but it had stopped at three-fifteen that morning. That was just about the time Lou Baker had clamped down on my tongue.
“I’m here on the landing, old man,” he said and pulled his head out of the window to point behind him. Then he left the window, and I heard him open the door on the stairs. The Hotel Duguesclin was five floors high but not much wider than a streetcar. “This is quite a surprise, mon vieux,” he said and stepped out of his room so I could step in it. The end of the bed partially blocked the door. Near the window was a table, a chair without a back, one of Lawrence’s bags covered with Dollar Line stickers, and a paper bag that had just been crumpled up and thrown aside. On the table was his typewriter, several pipes, a pint-size carton with a wire handle, and a loaf of whole wheat bread with the word HOVIS stamped on it. A Boy Scout knife was sticking up in the bread.
“I was just about to dine, old man,” he said, “but I suppose my simple fare—” He wave
d his hand at the table.
I said thanks very much but I was right now on my way to eat. Some old Chicago friends had asked me to dine at the Deux Magots with them. I could see that he’d taken the bread out of the bag and sunk the knife into it in quite a hurry, for the bag kept crackling as it slowly opened up.
“Don’t have the money to waste myself, old man,” he said and opened up the flap of the carton, sawed off a slice of bread, and spread a thick layer of sour cream on it. He took a big bite and said, “Never felt better in my life.”
“Well, you’re looking pretty good,” I said, and he was. The beard suited him all right, but he looked more like a rabbi than a writer. It made his jaw seem squarer, and the point of the beard stuck out.
He swallowed down what he had, then said, “What brings you to Elsinore, old man?”
“I guess I felt like a change,” I said.
He put the bread down, wiped his mouth, and I thought he was going to ask me about it. But he got control of himself, said, “Christ, what a hole!”
“Colton’s not the place it used to be,” I said.
“My God, man,” he said, “but we were young at the time!” He stopped eating and began to fill his pipe.
“Don’t let me keep you from eating,” I said.
“I never eat much at one time,” he said and tossed me his tobacco pouch; I took out my own pipe, filled it, and he tossed me a box of French matches. Lighting my pipe, I could hear the music across the street.
“You’ve got a nice place here,” I said.
“It grows on you, old man,” he said.
We let it grow on us, then he said, “You just get here?”
“I put in some time in Antwerp first,” I said.
“Be sure you see the glass at Chartres before you leave, old man.”
“I don’t have too much time for France,” I said. “I want to get into Spain. Brush up on my Spanish.” We smoked awhile, then I said, “It’s a small world, n’est-ce pas?”
The Huge Season Page 20