Birds of America

by Mary McCarthy

  For instance, the markets. “You know that old gag about making you buy a kilo?” Peter groaned. “God, yes.” “You don’t mean you still go along with it?” “All the French do,” argued Peter. “We’re not French! We’re Americans!” “OK, but I don’t see how you get around it.” “I have a system. Listen.” When he went marketing, Silly never took more than a few francs along. He looked over the vendors’ merchandise and decided what he wanted to buy. “Say it’s cabbage. I take two francs out of my pocket and tell the guy, ‘Give me two francs’ worth. That’s all the money I have.’ ” “And it works?” Not only did it work; he got more for his money that way. “Look. If four oranges weigh out at two francs and twenty-five centimes, they let me have them for two. They’re not going to take a slice off the fourth one. It never fails.” Peter felt torn between admiration and envious skepticism. He relaxed a bit when he heard that Silly did his shopping on the rue Mouffetard. He doubted very much that Silly’s system would function at the Marché Buci.

  Instead of debating that, he asked what had happened in Switzerland. “You were right,” Silly admitted. The ski-instructor job had not materialized. But he got a good tan and really scored playing poker. Moreover he had met a fantastic French girl who had invited him to her home in Versailles. “I’m getting around quite a lot now, as a matter of fact.” He had been given hospitality in a number of “homes,” which Peter translated to mean rich French people’s houses. “How do you do it?” said Peter. “I mean, get to know them—any kind of French?”

  Naturally Silly had a system. “Have you noticed that I never wear a watch?” He did that on purpose so as to be able to ask for the time. Also, he did not carry a lighter or matches. “But what use is it if they give you a light or tell you what time it is? In my experience, a hand just delivers a box of matches, and that’s it. No words wasted. Honestly, I’ve been going to the same café near where I live since I got here, and not even the waiter speaks to me.”

  “You should circulate more. And when somebody French gives you a light, don’t just say ‘Merci.’ Start talking. Don’t wait for them to make the move. And once you have your opening set, you have to be ready with the follow-up. Plan ahead, like in chess. All the time be thinking about how you’re going to shift your chair around to pull it up and sit down at their table. In fact when you come into a café look the terrain over and pick the table you want to be next to. Not a group that’s practically finished and getting ready to pay the check. Not lovey-dovey couples. Never Americans, because they’ll try to pick you up, and that’s fatal.”

  “Fatal?” “For both sides. If an American girl picks me up, it’s because she’s decided I’m French. They want to meet French boys, to practice French on them; American boys vice versa. And older American tourists just want to pick your brains for restaurants and night clubs. Or they have a daughter who’s a student who’ll be joining them. American girls bore me over here. I make a point of not knowing any, if I can help it. I mean the student crowd. They’re a drag. You should do the same. The idea is to be stripped for action.”

  The advice was wasted on Peter, but it was nice of Silly to give it. Peter could not help liking him for the candid way he shared his know-how and elucidated his ploys. Like the Phi Beta Kappa key he wore, which he had rented from his brother, Barnabas. “But isn’t that sort of dangerous? If you run into a real Phi Beta Kappa, won’t they start asking embarrassing questions?” “And do what? Call the police? It’s just another ice-breaker, don’t you see? Everybody that’s been to college knows right away that I’m too young and giddy to be a real Phi Bete. So they get interested in how I came by it, and I tell them. I’m not really fooling anybody. And the French, who don’t know what it stands for, can’t wait to have their curiosity satisfied.”

  He evidently thought that Peter was an unsuccessful operator in need of a helping hand. As a former fellow-sufferer, he sympathized with Peter’s shyness, as though this condition made them a single person, like in those testimonial ads for curing baldness that showed the same head before and after. This was a mistake that Peter could not bother to clear up. But though he did not feel much like Silly and would rather remain in his shell than grow what the guy called “armor,” it was surprising how much they had in common. Even in politics they were not so far apart. Over here, Silly felt more liberal, he revealed, though he expected he would revert when he got back to Princeton and the government-studies routine. He was more conscious of poor people here. His father, who was a town planner, kept him on a tight budget, and it interested Peter to learn that Silly, except in his dress (he was wearing a golden corduroy suit and another flowing cashmere scarf), was even more economical than himself. He lived with five other kids in an apartment near the rue Mouffetard, surrounded by Algerian cafés where knife fights went on. There was a kerosene stove for heating, but it was so cold you could see your breath. The toilet out in the hall they shared with three other people, and girls were afraid to go to it, on account of VD. They had rigged up a portable shower in the living room, where Silly slept on a cot between blankets, without sheets, to save on laundry. By cooking his own meals, he could get along, he figured, on $1.75 a day, if he had to.

  Amazingly, he liked animals, and they discussed going to the zoo at Vincennes together, when it got slightly, warmer. Silly had studied zoology and he had a bear he called “his” in the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes. Whenever he was depressed, he went and visited the bear. He also liked motorbikes, but his father had made him sell his before coming over. If his aunt would send him the money, he might buy Peter’s.

  Peter’s heart leapt. “Would you like to come and see it?” Together they went to Makowski’s place, where they inspected the motorbike and powwowed about the draft and Vietnam. The stolid, somber Pole did not take to Silly Boy, who had a lighthearted theory that the U.S. and Hanoi were merely playing poker: Hanoi had all its cards face up on the table, which gave it an advantage, because the U.S. did not want to uncover its hole cards but was gambling that Hanoi would cave in without “seeing” the U.S. royal flush of bombers and Marines. “And what will happen when the crunch comes?” “There won’t be any crunch. It’s a game, see.” He knew a girl’s father who worked in the Quai d’Orsay. The Russians were in a deal with the U.S. to fold up the game and deliver Hanoi to the peace table. At a new Geneva Conference. It was shaping up right now. Makowski did not believe it, and if there was such a deal it would be a sellout to Communism, just like in Eastern Europe. Silly said no, Vietnam would be neutralized, like Austria. Both players would get their ante back.

  When they left Makowski’s room, Silly said he was sorry that he could not bring Peter to his apartment. They were having problems. The other tenants were circulating a petition to have them bounced out on account of the noise they made and the parties they threw. His roommates took it seriously, though to him it was a laugh. He thought it was a sort of feather in his cap to have brought the neighbors to the point of petition and assembly. “But pro tem we can’t invite anybody. Anyway, the place is a mess.”

  Peter found Silly, as a companion, a welcome relief from himself. His hyperactive brain, unlike Peter’s, seemed to work full time for his airy will. It did not go looking for trouble. Silly’s will, Peter estimated, could not be farther from the moral will of Kant, yet there was something innocent and childlike in its operations. If other people were means to him, they were also in a strange way ends. He did not even seem particularly ambitious underneath his patter. “My father really worries that I might become an opportunist,” he confided, which made Peter laugh. “You mean you think I am one already?” Peter was not sure. “Paris is my chance to test myself, don’t you understand? Have you noticed how many mirrors there are here? Oh yes. It’s fantastic. You should try counting. Frenchmen look at themselves all the time. I feel I was predestined to come to Paris. I have to find myself. Put myself together out of all those bitty reflections I see in their eyes.” Peter laughed again. “That would make
you a mosaic, Silly.”

  Following this he heard no more from Silly. It was typical of that butterfly to vanish after a seemingly serious heart-to-heart and a pending deal on the motorbike. But Peter had other things on his agenda: the Wellesley girl had written that she was coming to Paris; Roberta had written and asked him to tea; his mother wrote that she might be passing through Paris around Valentine’s Day on her way to play in Poland and wanted him to find her a hotel. … The groundhog had failed to see his shadow, so spring might be on winter’s traces. When his allowance came, he thought of inviting Silly to join him in another oyster-eating orgy—this time chez him. He had acquired an oyster-opener. But since they both had no telephone, he procrastinated.

  He met him next at the dentist’s, when he kept an appointment to have his teeth cleaned, for which a reminder card had been sent: Monday, February 8; 10:00 A.M.; 33 boulevard Malesherbes. Peter had almost not showed up, after the night he had spent, the grimmest in his life. But because his mother was coming, he made himself obey the summons. When he came into the dentist’s waiting room, with the morning papers under his arm, he was crying, and the last person he would have wanted to find, reading Anesthesia Progress, was Silly Boy Platt.

  The night before, on a premature busman’s holiday, he had taken in a horror movie—the ten o’clock show. Coming home, he had noted the usual clochards on the Métro grating. All was quiet at the concierge’s when he passed. Then, on the second landing, he found it—what looked like a human puddle in the weak light of the minuterie. Mechanically, he circumvented it and continued his climb. He had seen that it was a woman, rolled up in a brown coat resembling a horse’s blanket. That checked out. He felt no surprise, only a horrible weariness. His head was nodding up and down in recognition of the event. This had been waiting for him, he should have known, like a big package with his name on it: Peter Levi, Esq., Noted Humanitarian. In fact, it was overdue. A man’s character was his fate—Heraclitus. Old Atropos had taken his measurements as if for a suit of clothes. All afternoon, while he peacefully watched the birds in the Yvelines, the plot against him had been thickening.

  Nevertheless, he went steadily on, up another flight. Then his steps lagged. He halted and considered. So far as he could tell, the rest of the building was asleep. Waking Madame Puel, to get her to cope, was not a possibility, despite the pleasure it might give her. Also eliminated was kicking the poor bum out himself. He could not. The alternative was what he was already doing: leave her down there on the landing and pursue his course to bed. To him, it was cold and drafty, but to her, it was doubtless cosy, compared with the street. She had the coat over her and probably a lot of filthy sweaters underneath. In the morning, she would be stiff, but it would not take her long to get oiled again.

  Till morning, nobody could find her. Madame Puel would not be prowling up the service stairs, and even if that happened, she could not know that Peter had seen the bum and failed to react. The woman could have crept in after he had gone to bed. Maybe when that night nurse came home, tired, she could have left the front door ajar. There could be lots of explanations.

  The minuterie went off. In the dark, its natural element, the voice of conscience bayed. A Peter Levi law said: Do not do what thou wouldst not be known to have done. If an action tempted you to disclaim it, you had better think twice. He thought, groping along the wall for the light button. The pale light came on again, showing him the worn splintery stair treads. Highly inflammable. And of course it was the same clocharde, the heavy smoker. It had to be. He acknowledged the other alternative that had been picking at his sleeve, like a person waiting to be recognized.

  Even when she opened her bleary eyes, the drunk woman did not understand what Peter wanted. His French did not get through the fumes of alcohol to her. He tried pointing upward and making encouraging signs, but her brain could not grasp that they were going to his apartment. At last he had her upright, and they started climbing, he leading the way and beckoning to her to follow, like Eurydice. She was younger than he thought at first—maybe only in her late thirties—and her features, though blurry, were soft and still feminine. She smelled of tobacco and sour stale booze, but at least she had not vomited recently. On the fourth-floor landing, she fell down, and he had trouble getting her to her feet again. She broke away from his grasp and began rolling heavily down the circular stairs. The last flight was an uphill battle all the way, with the minuterie constantly going off and plunging them into darkness. She took advantage of the dark to crawl away. Also she made quite a lot of noise. He was afraid his landlady would wake up. This showed him that his law needed some revision. There were times when you would not want to be caught performing a good action. While embarrassment played a part in his desire not to be discovered in the act of dragging a clocharde up to his apartment, his main motive was the fear that somebody would prevent him from carrying out the project. It was strange. Even now, the wish closest to his heart was that this female shambles would melt away, like a bad dream he might still wake from, yet at the same time, contradictorily, she had become an assignment he was determined to complete. And a big element in his determination was the resistance he could count on meeting in others, which in fact he was already meeting in the inert object herself.

  Unlocking his door and switching on the light, he saw that she was cowering, afraid to come in and afraid, he guessed, to run away. The glazed terror in her eyes told him clearly that she expected him to murder her—a realization that made him laugh dourly. Maybe a female clochard had reason to shrink from “normals,” and his reassuring smiles, far from accomplishing their purpose, might be scaring her stiff. He could be a grinning sex maniac. Nevertheless, having looked around the room, she consented to come in.

  He fixed her a place to sleep on the floor, next to the radiator, using his sheepskin-lined jacket and a chair cushion and praying that she would not be sick. He rolled up some sweaters for a pillow. Then he led her into his toilet and shut the door. When she failed to come out, he knocked. No reply. Eventually he went in and got her and propelled her to the bathroom with a clean towel. Again she did not emerge. For her, these were hiding-places. He found her huddled in the little bathtub. She had not washed. He guided her back into the living room. “Voici votre lit, mademoiselle.” For some reason, he could not call her “madame.” Then he showed her his own bed, to make it clear that she was safe. She responded only to signs, and the few thick unintelligible words she mumbled from time to time seemed to be addressed to somebody who was not him. After that, he got out a partly full bottle of wine and poured her some in a glass. He gave her a piece of stale bread, which was all he had, and some cheese. She drank the wine and stretched out her glass for more. “Après.” He pointed to the bread and cheese. “Pain.” Then to the wine bottle. “Puis vin.”

  So long as this dumb show went on, it was not so bad. But finally the time came when he had to turn out the light. In the dark, he slipped into the bathroom with his pajamas, to get undressed and washed. On reflection, he decided to sleep in his pants and jersey, taking only his jacket and shoes off. He could not tuck himself in, like a good little boy, in his nice clean pajamas, while the woman lay on the floor in her dirty ragged coat. It did not seem right, even, to brush his teeth.

  From his bed, he was unable to tell whether she was awake or not. She hacked and hawked repeatedly, with a smoker’s cough, but perhaps she did that in her sleep. The hawking made him feel sick, especially when it turned into choking and a long-drawn-out noise like retching. He put his head under the blanket and covered it with a pillow. He could not smell any vomit, but the window was open. He wished he had a flashlight so that he could creep across and make sure she had not puked over the landlady’s cushion. But if she had, what could he do? The only thing was to go to sleep and forget about it till morning. But he could not fall asleep, though after about an hour the clocharde was finally quiet.

  He recited all the poems he knew and reviewed the Sistine ceiling. Then as he start
ed to drift off, a terrible thought hit him. She might wake up and start smoking. After all the fresh air he had had today, if he dropped into the arms of Morpheus, he might never know the difference. In bringing her up here, he had never thought of that. It meant that he had only transferred the problem several stories higher. She might still set her clothes on fire and burn up the building. It was no great consolation that he would be among the first to be incinerated. He thought sadly of Madame Puel. She would never forgive him if she died on a widow’s pyre.

  He tried to remember what you did to put a fire out. You were not supposed to use water but smother it with blankets. But he had only one blanket. He should have taken the woman’s matches before he turned out the light. Now it was too late. If he woke her now, it might frighten her. He tiptoed across the room and put an ashtray beside her. Yet that was inadequate precaution. He saw what he had to do: stay awake and keep vigil, like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. He did not believe that you had a duty to yourself or maybe even your family, but you owed something to a unit as large as a building.

  These anxieties were giving him a perverse craving to smoke himself. In the toilet, he lit up. It had a tiny skylight, which he opened, so that the cigarette smoke would not filter under the door into the living room and put ideas in her head. But this stratagem destroyed his pleasure. He threw the cigarette into the toilet and flushed it away. There was an awful groaning and clanking of water pipes, which he feared might alert his landlady; he had strict orders never to pull the chain after 1:00 A.M. When he came back to bed, the clocharde was snoring and making a gurgling noise herself.