“This is a surprise!”
I turned at the sound of the familiar voice to see the familiar face of Zelda Fitzgerald coming in for a hug. The glass she was holding spilled a little bit of champagne on my sleeve, which Woodrow, whom I was holding, mopped up.
“It certainly is,” I said. “Ernest said I wouldn’t see you until lunch tomorrow.”
I waved to Scott, a few heads away. He was talking with Mr. Benchley.
“Zelda, I want you to meet Soledad Soleil. We met on the boat.”
“Oh,” said Zelda, looking at Soledad with squinty eyes as if trying to place her face. “I know the name, and I know I’ve seen your picture in—where?—Vanity Fair? Or was it Town & Country? One of those horsey magazines like Thoroughbred Monthly—I know! You’re that mystery writer. Yeah, hello.”
She cut through the queue lining the bar, and yelled at le barman to break open a bottle of champagne. Then she turned and asked, “How was the crossing? You survived a week with Hemingway?”
“Murder and mayhem,” said Soledad, but Zelda had no idea how true the statement was.
“Where’s the son-of-a-bitch, anyway? I don’t see him,” she said, patting Woodrow’s head.
“Ernest went back home after dinner at Michaud’s. He didn’t want to come.”
“I should say not! Too many homosexuals around—he doesn’t like fairies, you know. Did he tell you he used to carry a knife for protection, just in case he was accosted by a fag?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Well, he’ll tell you about it someday; he likes to tell that story.”
“I think he was just tired and wanted to go home.” I said.
“Tired, shit! He’s gone home to write down everything you all said during dinner before he forgets, so he can make a book out of it. Watch out what you all say to him. An original voice, my ass!” She said it as if she were quoting a review.
There was no place to sit, but a waiter carried over a tray of glasses filled with champagne. We each took one, and then Zelda yelled out over people’s heads for Scott to bring the gang for a drink.
“Have you read Hem’s new book?” I asked.
“The one he went off to New York to sell?” She took a sip from her glass and then offered the rest of it to Woodrow as she continued, “The one about bullfighting, bull-slinging, and bullshit?”
Soledad and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Zelda didn’t appear to find what she’d said particularly funny, and I saw that she was not joking. She didn’t like Hem, even though her husband considered him a great writer and tried to help him and generally thought the world of him. And from what I gathered from spending time with Hem, he didn’t have much use for the flapper type; they were all style and no substance as far as he was concerned, and Zelda was the embodiment of today’s popular feminine image. She had once said to me, back in New York after the birth of her daughter, Scottie, that she wanted the child to grow up to be a flapper, “to be free and know her own mind, and live a happy and gay life.”
I looked at her now, after not seeing her for a good three years, and was sad to see a little of her youthful bloom had faded; the lines around her mouth that once had appeared only when she smiled were now embedded and visible when her face was at rest, and the skin around her jaw hung a little slack. I thought she was playing too hard, running too fast, and drinking too much. Zelda was not a great beauty, but there was this aura about her, an excitement—she vibrated enthusiasm. With that level gaze of hers, blue eyes fixed straight at whomever she was addressing or listening to, one couldn’t help but be drawn in. Her spontaneity was charming, too. She never bothered with much small talk; it was always the bigger things, ideas, and points of view that she set her thinking to. I liked her directness; I liked the way she showed no fear in what she said or did. The surprises she sprung weren’t founded on an ability to be witty; they were the results of a deeper intellect and were sparked like spontaneous combustion in her mind. Sometimes, from out of the blue, she’d say things that would make you wonder to what far-reaching place her mind had wandered. If you didn’t know her well enough, you’d be a little shocked. If you had spent a lot of time in her company, you would just smile and let the strange comment go as the result of too much champagne and not enough sleep.
The music changed tempo and then Bricktop began to sing “Embraceable You” in French. She and her dancers did a Charleston, and the club was smoky and hot, and there was no place to sit, and I couldn’t put Woodrow on the floor or he would have been trampled in the crush, so I held him sleeping in my arms. The men all bought cigars, which were the signature smokes of la doyenne of café society, and went out to the courtyard to light up. Soledad, Zelda, Sara, and I followed.
“Where are you staying?” asked Scott.
“Fleabag Central,” I replied.
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” chuckled Mr. Benchley. “Toughens the spirit, you know?”
I countered his remark. “For a man who’s lived with crabs and bunked with rats, fleas ain’t so bad, I suppose.”
“Let me guess,” said Zelda, “Hem got the rooms for you.”
“Zel-da!” jumped in Scott, “be a honey, will you. I’m sure Ernest thought—”
“Yeah, yeah, well, I don’t know what the hell he was thinking. You must check into the Ritz. Scott, in the morning we’ll send the chauffeur over there to get their trunks—no two ways about it, now, Dottie, I won’t have Woodrow infested.” Zelda bent down to pet Woodrow, who was lying on the walk, asleep on his back. “What’s wrong with the little thing?” she said when he didn’t respond to her touch. “Is he dead?”
“He’s drunk!” said Scott, and he was right. “Tell me you didn’t pollute the little lad with—”
“So he had a drink, what’s the big deal; at least he’s happy.”
Once again I scooped up Woodrow into my arms. His snoring made everybody laugh. And when Harpo suddenly emerged from the club he thought we were laughing at him.
“It’s Woodrow; he’s drunk and he’s snoring like your uncle!” said Scott.
“My uncle? Uncle Jake warned me never to do an act with a kid or a dog. They get all the laughs.”
“Harpo,” said Zelda, “don’t you think that Al Jolson is just like Christ?”
“Oh, brother!” said Scott.
Harpo stared back at Zelda’s penetrating eyes, and decided to contemplate the absurd comparison that came from out of the blue, because in some portion of Zelda’s intoxicated mind this was a serious consideration, and Harpo was never unkind.
“They have a lot in common; they are both Jewish and only-begotten sons, who love their mammies. And they both command an audience, so they have a lot of fans.” And then, as an afterthought, he added, “But Jolson can sure belt out a hell of a great tune.”
“On the contrary, Harpo, my boy; Jolson is not an only-begotten son. He does, indeed, have a brother.”
“Shut up, Aleck,” replied Harpo.
The Murphys, Soledad, Aleck, and Harpo got into Scott and Zelda’s chauffeur-driven car, and the rest of us crammed into a cab to follow them to the next nightspot.
But, there appeared to be a diversion. The Fitzgeralds’ car made a few unpredictable turns, and we entered the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs before slowing to a stop at the curb.
Scott leaped out of his car as Zelda hung out from the window yelling at him to come back. But after a few indistinguishable words to her, Scott turned and walked through the courtyard of number one-thirteen.
Mr. Benchley asked the taxi driver to wait and we all got out of the cab and walked to the car. Zelda practically flew out of the automobile and after Scott, and then Gerald Murphy slowly stepped out through the street-side door and walked around to meet us.
“Scott wants Ernest to join us,” he said, pulling from his coat his cigarette case and offering it around. He watched Zelda as she grabbed onto Scott’s arm, pleading with him to return to the car. I heard the doorbell and the concierge
’s window brightened slowly as a lamp was lit—the yellow glow of gaslight. Gerald said no more, but I could see the trying of his patience in his demeanor, his eyebrow raised, a hand slipped into his coat pocket, as he just stood there, watching. The only thing that revealed his tension was the rush of smoke as he exhaled.
Sara and Soledad stayed in the car, chatting with Aleck, who wouldn’t budge his ponderous physique from a comfortable position unless it was absolutely a matter of life and death or on the request of a rumbling stomach. Sara leaned out of the car window to say, “Scott, dear, I don’t believe he’s home—or perhaps Hem’s asleep. You can see the apartment is dark.”
Mathew said, “He’s probably sleeping—that’s what he said he was going to do when he left us after dinner. I should stop Scott from waking the concierge. Hem gave me the key to the front door.”
But it was too late. Woodrow was awake, and the effects of the champagne he had imbibed were wearing off because he began pulling at his leash toward the ruckus playing out between the concierge, Scott, and Zelda.
“Now, listen, you!” Scott barked at the night-robed woman of uncertain years. “I demand to see him. What have you done to our friend?”
“Scott! Don’t be an ass; the man’s not home,” yelled Zelda.
Gerald pitched his cigarette to the ground, stamped it out, and walked over to Scott. “Get into the car, boy; everyone is waiting on you. Scottie! Ernest is not here, and you are behaving abominably.”
The concierge made shooing motions at the couple, obviously not understanding why the man was yelling at her with such force. She didn’t understand a word of English. With a scowl, she stuck out her lips and told him where to go, by the sound of it, and then, shaking her fist, she backed up into the entryway and shut the door in his face. By this time, several windows around the courtyard over the sawmill had been thrown open and there began a series of taunts and threats and jeers. A dog started barking and from the rooms inside the building I could hear a baby crying and the voices of others shaken from sleep.
“Hem!” shouted Scott, “come down here right away. We need you to settle something. That fellow up there—” he shouted, pointing at a scruffy-looking bald man in his union suit who was hanging out over the little balcony on the second floor, “he has insulted me!”
The man was about to climb down from the balcony when his wife started to yell at him to come in. She, too, began to curse the couple in the courtyard.
Harpo, who’d joined us at the curb, said: “This is just like back home on East Ninety-Third Street! Only they’re yelling in French instead of German!”
Mathew walked to Scott’s side and told him that he thought maybe Hem had gone out, and that when he and Hem had settled in after their train ride Hem had gone out to use a telephone, and Mathew figured he was arranging a meeting. This explanation, and Gerald’s hand on his shoulder, appeared to placate the insistent Scott, who then turned back to the car with a new plan to track down his friend. Zelda trailed behind him, spent from the game of tug-of-war with her husband.
After our first bar stop in search of Hemingway, Aleck, obviously tired of the pointless mission, begged to be excused to go back to the Hôtel Crillon, where he and Harpo were staying.
Harpo said, “See you all tomorrow,” when we hit the second bar on the Hemingway search. Within the five minutes we were there he was deep in conversation with a girl who had let him light her cigarette. The Murphys took our cab, to be dropped off at their apartment. So Woodrow and I, Mr. Benchley, Soledad, and Mathew hopped into Scott’s car to continue the search for the wayward Ernest Hemingway.
We found him at the third stop: the Dingo Bar.
Hem was at a table with Daphne, and at first I thought they were alone, until Ronnie emerged from the crowd with a woman who had a haggard air about her. She was very rough looking, and her black hair was lank and, on closer view, oily and needed washing. Her eyes were rimmed with dark lines and her mouth was a red slash and her skin had an unhealthy-looking pallor. She was very thin, and her arms were bare; she wore an orange blouse, which was none too clean, off the shoulders to show her brittle shoulder blades, and a tight-fitting black satin slit skirt. There was no doubt of her profession. When Ronnie sat down she took his lap.
“You see?” said Scott to a weary Zelda, “I told you he’d be here.”
“You didn’t know nothin’ like that,” she replied, deliberately fracturing her English. “Why do you want to spoil a perfectly lovely night?”
When Hem saw us, he didn’t even look nonplussed at our unexpected appearance, notwithstanding a couple of hours ago he had claimed exhaustion. He simply stood and grabbed available chairs for me and Soledad to sit. Zelda made a beeline to the bar.
“We met up at Bricktop’s,” said Mr. Benchley, by way of explanation of the inclusion of Scott and Zelda.
A table cleared, and Mr. Benchley and Mathew brought over a few more chairs. Zelda returned from the bar, and when she was offered a chair she told Scott to sit and then mimicked the girl on Ronnie’s lap by sitting on Scott’s. Her arms around him, she pecked his cheek.
“I was looking for you,” said Scott. “I wanted you to settle something.”
“What’s that?” asked Hem.
“It was important; I don’t remember now.”
Hem introduced Scott and Zelda to Daphne and Ronnie and Pipette, who claimed, too readily, that she was a cashier—not that anyone asked her; she probably offered the information so we wouldn’t presume her a prostitute. I supposed cashiering was her day job.
She trumped Zelda’s kiss on Scott’s cheek by planting a full one smack on Ronnie’s mouth. Daphne didn’t seem to give it a thought, and if she was miffed it was probably because her cozy tête-à-tête with Hem had been interrupted.
“Can’t a chap get a drink around here?” she said after draining her glass.
“What’ll you have?” asked Scott.
“Thanks, a brandy and soda.”
“Right you are; I’ll fix that right up.”
Scott didn’t budge. Well, he couldn’t; Zelda kept her stranglehold around his neck. “Bobby, tell the waiter to bring a bottle of brandy and a siphon of soda, would you?”
“What will you have?” he asked Zelda.
“I’ll stick to champagne; what about you girls?”
We agreed that was best, and although Pipette spoke not a word of conversational English, she did say, “hansum mon, hansum mon” repeatedly to Ronnie, her eyes widening greedily when she saw the bottle arrive and a glass flute placed before her.
Zelda said, “Have you ever seen Sara Murphy sip champagne?” She lifted her glass and imitated Sara’s cultured tone: “One must look to-ward the heavens, as the glass touches the lips.”
After a few minutes Daphne announced, “I need to bathe.”
So do I need a bath, I thought. From this company I felt soiled and oily, like Pipette’s hair, and it wasn’t just the result of a long exhausting day hopping from a boat to a train to a dozen nightspots. Woodrow and I needed a bed, even if it were a bit lumpy. Zelda had stopped talking altogether and spent the time we were at the Dingo watching Hemingway with her hawk eyes, which was a bit unnerving. I expected her at any moment to fly at his neck and say something like, “What makes you think you’re such a hot shit?” Woodrow, who’d been snoring on my lap, poor dear, opened one suspicious eye. He would never trust Zelda again. He’d have a hangover in the morning. At around two o’clock we called it a night.
As we waited for the chauffeur to bring the car, Soledad looked at me and said in a whisper, “There’s no love between Zelda and Hem.”
“Well, he called her crazy, and Scott foolishly told her, and Hem says she deliberately interferes with Scott’s work. No love between them.”
“That Ronnie, what does she see in him?”
“She’ll move on, soon as she’s licked all the gilt off his ass.”
“I was talking about what Daphne sees in Ronnie, Dorothy, not that sa
d little ‘Puppet’ sitting on his lap,” she corrected.
“Aren’t they the same?” I replied, realizing that some behavior transcends class. “And I was talking about Lady Daphne.”
I was in a tranquil glen surrounded by woods. I heard the buzzing of bees around my head and the twitter of birds in the low bushes. There floated on the breeze the high-pitched melody of a Pan flute, and I marveled at the specter of the satyr emerging through the line of trees. The yellow eyes of the creature bore into mine; a shiver ran through me when I heard its goat-like bray . . . . The bee buzzed dizzily around the clover, and then landed on my nose.
I awoke with a start, having smacked myself awake. No one else could have struck me, I realized, as I looked around the shabby room, because I was alone, except for Woodrow sleeping at the foot of the bed, and the horsefly that was still screaming and whining around my face.
I was in my seedy hotel room, which, with the sun streaming in, was a bit cheerier than in the shadowy night. And yet the dreamscape lingered after I sat up and threw off the covers. The music of a Pan flute persisted, as did the baaing of goats. I rose stiffly from the bed and Woodrow followed me to the window. I pushed aside the tired-looking curtains, pulled open the French doors, and stepped out onto the little balcony for a better view of the courtyard below. At the pavement was a goatherd with his flock, playing his flute as women from the surrounding houses, carrying empty pails, gathered in the yard and began milking the goats while chattering happily. Such a thing as this I had not seen since I was a very little girl, growing up before the turn of the century on the Upper West Side of New York. At that time the land was still a landscape of farms and shanties bordering rectangular tracts where brownstone houses had begun to fill Manhattan’s grid plots all the way up to Riverdale. I watched with fascination the country ways in a modern urban setting. And then I lifted my eyes to the view beyond the roofs across the yard.
The rising sun brushed the city into a golden sfumato landscape. The Seine, a short distance away, shimmered. The fragrant spring air was balm for my spirit, and the warm, yeasty aroma of baking bread wafted seductively along the breeze and lent a feeling of well-being. I wanted to run outside and see and explore and eat the warm bread and capture the heart of Paris for my own. So this was why Hemingway had put us here in la dump: to see his glorious city at its best advantage. I couldn’t fault him for it. Even after the noisy bedroom gymnastics in the room above mine at three in the morning, I could forgive him because of this view, this moment of beauty.
[Dorothy Parker 05] - A Moveable Feast of Murder Page 16