Three Soldiers

by John Dos Passos

  “Why not say fit for John Andrews and Bob Henslowe, damn it? … Why the ghosts of poor old dead Romans should be dragged in every time a man eats an oyster, I don’t see. We’re as fine specimens as they were. I swear I shan’t let any old turned-to-clay Lucullus outlive me, even if I’ve never eaten a lamprey.”

  “And why should you eat a lamp-chimney, Bob?” came a hoarse voice beside them.

  Andrews looked up into a round, white face with large grey eyes hidden behind thick steel-rimmed spectacles. Except for the eyes, the face had a vaguely Chinese air.

  “Hello, Heinz! Mr. Andrews, Mr. Heineman,” said Henslowe.

  “Glad to meet you,” said Heineman in a jovially hoarse voice. “You guys seem to be overeating, to reckon by the way things are piled up on the table.” Through the hoarseness Andrews could detect a faint Yankee tang in Heineman’s voice.

  “You’ld better sit down and help us,” said Henslowe.

  “Sure. … D’you know my name for this guy?” He turned to Andrews. … “Sinbad!”

  “Sinbad was in bad in Tokio and Rome,

  In bad in Trinidad

  An’ twice as bad at home.”

  He sang the words loudly, waving a bread stick to keep time.

  “Shut up, Heinz, or you’ll get us run out of here the way you got us run out of the Olympia that night.”

  They both laughed.

  “An’ d’you remember Monsieur Le Guy with his coat?

  “Do I? God!” They laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks. Heineman took off his glasses and wiped them. He turned to Andrews.

  “Oh, Paris is the best yet. First absurdity: the Peace Conference and its nine hundred and ninety-nine branches. Second absurdity: spies. Third: American officers A.W.O.L. Fourth: The seven sisters sworn to slay.” He broke out laughing again, his chunky body rolling about on the chair.

  “What are they?”

  “Three of them have sworn to slay Sinbad, and four of them have sworn to slay me. … But that’s too complicated to tell at lunch time. … Eighth: there are the lady relievers, Sinbad’s specialty. Ninth: there’s Sinbad. …”

  “Shut up, Heinz, you’re getting me maudlin,” spluttered Henslowe.

  “O Sinbad was in bad all around,”

  chanted Heineman. “But no one’s given me anything to drink,” he said suddenly in a petulant voice. “Garçon, une bouteille de Macon, pour un Cadet de Gascogne. … What’s the next? It ends with vergogne. You’ve seen the play, haven’t you? Greatest play going. … Seen it twice sober and seven other times.”

  “Cyrano de Bergerac?”

  “That’s it. Nous sommes les Cadets de Gascogne, rhymes with ivrogne and sans vergogne. … You see I work in the Red Cross. … You know Sinbad, old Peterson’s a brick. … I’m supposed to be taking photographs of tubercular children at this minute. … The noblest of my professions is that of artistic photographer. … Borrowed the photographs from the rickets man. So I have nothing to do for three months and five hundred francs travelling expenses. Oh, children, my only prayer is ‘give us this day our red worker’s permit’ and the Red Cross does the rest.” Heineman laughed till the glasses rang on the table. He took off his glasses and wiped them with a rueful air.

  “So now I call the Red Cross the Cadets!” cried Heineman, his voice a thin shriek from laughter.

  Andrews was drinking his coffee in little sips, looking out of the window at the people that passed. An old woman with a stand of flowers sat on a small cane chair at the corner. The pink and yellow and blue-violet shades of the flowers seemed to intensify the misty straw color and azured grey of the wintry sun and shadow of the streets. A girl in a tight-fitting black dress and black hat stopped at the stand to buy a bunch of pale yellow daisies, and then walked slowly past the window of the restaurant in the direction of the gardens. Her ivory face and slender body and her very dark eyes sent a sudden flush through Andrews’s whole frame as he looked at her. The black erect figure disappeared in the gate of the gardens.

  Andrews got to his feet suddenly.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said in a strange voice. … “I just remember a man was waiting for me at the School Headquarters.”

  “Let him wait.”

  “Why, you haven’t had a liqueur yet,” cried Heineman.

  “No … but where can I meet you people later?”

  “Café de Rohan at five … opposite the Palais Royal.”

  “You’ll never find it.”

  “Yes I will,” said Andrews.

  “Palais Royal metro station,” they shouted after him as he dashed out of the door.

  He hurried into the gardens. Many people sat on benches in the frail sunlight. Children in bright-colored clothes ran about chasing hoops. A woman paraded a bunch of toy balloons in carmine and green and purple, like a huge bunch of parti-colored grapes inverted above her head. Andrews walked up and down the alleys, scanning faces. The girl had disappeared. He leaned against a grey balustrade and looked down into the empty pond where traces of the explosion of a Bertha still subsisted. He was telling himself that he was a fool. That even if he had found her he could not have spoken to her; just because he was free for a day or two from the army he needn’t think the age of gold had come back to earth. Smiling at the thought, he walked across the gardens, wandered through some streets of old houses in grey and white stucco with slate mansard roofs and fantastic complications of chimney-pots till he came out in front of a church with a new classic façade of huge columns that seemed toppling by their own weight.

  He asked a woman selling newspapers what the church’s name was.

  “Mais, Monsieur, c’est Saint Sulpice,” said the woman in a surprised tone.

  Saint Sulpice. Manon’s songs came to his head, and the sentimental melancholy of eighteenth century Paris with its gambling houses in the Palais Royal where people dishonored themselves in the presence of their stern Catonian fathers, and its billets doux written at little gilt tables, and its coaches lumbering in covered with mud from the provinces through the Porte d’Orleans and the Porte de Versailles; the Paris of Diderot and Voltaire and Jean-Jacques, with its muddy streets and its ordinaries where one ate bisques and larded pullets and soufflés; a Paris full of mouldy gilt magnificence, full of pompous ennui of the past and insane hope of the future.

  He walked down a narrow, smoky street full of antique shops and old bookshops and came out unexpectedly on the river opposite the statue of Voltaire. The name on the corner was quai Malaquais. Andrews crossed and looked down for a long time at the river. Opposite, behind a lace-work of leafless trees, were the purplish roofs of the Louvre with their high peaks and their ranks and ranks of chimneys; behind him the old houses of the quai and the wing, topped by a balustrade with great grey stone urns of a domed building of which he did not know the name. Barges were coming upstream, the dense green water spuming under their blunt bows, towed by a little black tugboat with its chimney bent back to pass under the bridges. The tug gave a thin shrill whistle. Andrews started walking downstream. He crossed by the bridge at the corner of the Louvre, turned his back on the arch Napoleon built to receive the famous horses from St. Marc’s,—a pinkish pastrylike affair— and walked through the Tuileries which were full of people strolling about or sitting in the sun, of doll-like children and nursemaids with elaborate white caps, of fluffy little dogs straining at the ends of leashes. Suddenly a peaceful sleepiness came over him. He sat down in the sun on a bench, watching, hardly seeing them, the people who passed to and fro casting long shadows. Voices and laughter came very softly to his ears above the distant stridency of traffic. From far away he heard for a few moments notes of a military band playing a march. The shadows of the trees were faint blue-grey on the ruddy yellow gravel. Shadows of people kept passing and repassing across them. He felt very languid and happy.

  Suddenly he started up; he had been dozing. He asked an old man with a beautifully pointed white beard the way to rue du Faubourg St. Honoré.


  After losing his way a couple of times, he walked listlessly up some marble steps where a great many men in khaki were talking. Leaning against the doorpost was Walters. As he drew near Andrews heard him saying to the man next to him:

  “Why, the Eiffel tower was the first piece of complete girder construction ever built. … That’s the first thing a feller who’s wide awake ought to see.”

  “Tell me the Opery’s the grandest thing to look at,” said the man next it.

  “If there’s wine an’ women there, me for it.”

  “An’ don’t forget the song.”

  “But that isn’t interesting like the Eiffel tower is,” persisted Walters.

  “Say, Walters, I hope you haven’t been waiting for me,” stammered Andrews.

  “No, I’ve been waiting in line to see the guy about courses. … I want to start this thing right.”

  “I guess I’ll see them tomorrow,” said Andrews.

  “Say have you done anything about a room, Andy? Let’s you and me be bunkies.”

  “All right. … But maybe you won’t want to room where I do, Walters.”

  “Where’s that? In the Latin Quarter? … You bet. I want to see some French life while I am about it.”

  “Well, it’s too late to get a room today.”

  “I’m going to the ‘Y’ tonight anyway.”

  “I’ll get a fellow I know to put me up. … Then tomorrow, we’ll see. Well, so long,” said Andrews, moving away.

  “Wait. I’m coming with you. … We’ll walk around town together.”

  “All right,” said Andrews.

  The rabbit was rather formless, very fluffy and had a glance of madness in its pink eye with a black center. It hopped like a sparrow along the pavement, emitting a rubber tube from its back, which went up to a bulb in a man’s hand which the man pressed to make the rabbit hop. Yet the rabbit had an air of organic completeness. Andrews laughed inordinately when he first saw it. The vendor, who had a basket full of other such rabbits on his arm, saw Andrews laughing and drew timidly near to the table; he had a pink face with little, sensitive lips rather like a real rabbit’s, and large frightened eyes of a wan brown.

  “Do you make them yourself?” asked Andrews, smiling.

  The man dropped his rabbit on the table with a negligent air.

  “Oh, oui, Monsieur, d’après la nature.”

  He made the rabbit turn a somersault by suddenly pressing the bulb hard. Andrews laughed and the rabbit man laughed.

  “Think of a big strong man making his living that way,” said Walters, disgusted.

  “I do it all … de matière première au profit de l’accapareur,” said the rabbit man.

  “Hello, Andy … late as hell. … I’m sorry,” said Henslowe, dropping down into a chair beside them. Andrews introduced Walters, the rabbit man took off his hat, bowed to the company and went off, making the rabbit hop before him along the edge of the curbstone.

  “What’s happened to Heineman?”

  “Here he comes now,” said Henslowe.

  An open cab had driven up to the curb in front of the café. In it sat Heineman with a broad grin on his face and beside him a woman in a salmon-colored dress, ermine furs and an emerald-green hat. The cab drove off and Heineman, still grinning, walked up to the table.

  “Where’s the lion cub?” asked Henslowe.

  “They say it’s got pneumonia.”

  “Mr. Heineman. Mr. Walters.”

  The grin left Heineman’s face; he said: “How do you do?” curtly, cast a furious glance at Andrews and settled himself in a chair.

  The sun had set. The sky was full of lilac and bright purple and carmine. Among the deep blue shadows lights were coming on, primrose-colored street lamps, violet arc lights, ruddy sheets of light poured out of shop windows.

  “Let’s go inside. I’m cold as hell,” said Heineman crossly, and they filed in through the revolving door, followed by a waiter with their drinks.

  “I’ve been in the Red Cross all afternoon, Andy. … I think I am going to work that Roumania business. … Want to come?” said Henslowe in Andrews’s ear.

  “If I can get hold of a piano and some lessons and the concerts keep up you won’t be able to get me away from Paris with wild horses. No, sir, I want to see what Paris is like. … It’s going to my head so it’ll be weeks before I know what I think about it.”

  “Don’t think about it. … Drink,” growled Heineman, scowling savagely.

  “That’s two things I’m going to keep away from in Paris; drink and women. … And you can’t have one without the other,” said Walters.

  “True enough. … You sure do need them both,” said Heineman.

  Andrews was not listening to their talk; twirling the stem of his glass of vermouth in his fingers, he was thinking of the Queen of Sheba slipping down from off the shoulders of her elephant, glistening fantastically with jewels in the light of crackling, resinous torches. Music was seeping up through his mind as the water seeps into a hole dug in the sand of the seashore. He could feel all through his body the tension of rhythms and phrases taking form, not quite to be seized as yet, still hovering on the borderland of consciousness. From the girl at the cross-roads singing under her street-lamp to the patrician pulling roses to pieces from the height of her litter. … All the imaginings of your desire. … He thought of the girl with skin like old ivory he had seen in the Place de Medicis. The Queen of Sheba’s face was like that now in his imaginings, quiet and inscrutable. A sudden cymbal-clanging of joy made his heart thump hard. He was free now of the imaginings of his desire, to loll all day at café tables watching the tables move in changing patterns before him, to fill his mind and body with a reverberation of all the rhythms of men and women moving in the frieze of life before his eyes; no more like wooden automatons knowing only the motions of the drill manual, but supple and varied, full of force and tragedy.

  “For Heaven’s sake let’s beat it from here. … Gives me a pain this place does.” Heineman beat his fist on the table.

  “All right,” said Andrews, getting up with a yawn.

  Henslowe and Andrews walked off, leaving Walters to follow them with Heineman.

  “We’re going to dine at Le Rat qui Danse,” said Henslowe, “an awfully funny place. … We just have time to walk there comfortably with an appetite.”

  They followed the long dimly-lighted Rue de Richelieu to the Boulevards, where they drifted a little while with the crowd. The glaring lights seemed to powder the air with gold. Cafés and the tables outside were crowded. There was an odor of vermouth and coffee and perfume and cigarette smoke mixed with the fumes of burnt gasoline from taxicabs.

  “Isn’t this mad?” said Andrews.

  “It’s always carnival at seven on the Grands Boulevards.”

  They started climbing the steep streets to Montmartre. At a corner they passed a hard-faced girl with rouge-smeared lips and over-powdered cheeks, laughing on the arm of an American soldier, who had a sallow face and dull-green eyes that glittered in the slanting light of a street-lamp.

  “Hello, Stein,” said Andrews.

  “Who’s that?”

  “A fellow from our division, got here with me this morning.”

  “He’s got curious lips for a Jew,” said Henslowe.

  At the fork of two slanting streets, they went into a restaurant that had small windows pasted over with red paper, through which the light came dimly. Inside were crowded oak tables and oak wainscoting with a shelf round the top, on which were shell-cans, a couple of skulls, several cracked majolica plates and a number of stuffed rats. The only people there were a fat woman and a man with long grey hair and beard who sat talking earnestly over two small glasses in the center of the room. A husky-looking waitress with a Dutch cap and apron hovered near the inner door from which came a great smell of fish frying in olive oil.

  “The cook here’s from Marseilles,” said Henslowe, as they settled themselves at a table for four.

  “I
wonder if the rest of them lost the way,” said Andrews.

  “More likely old Heinz stopped to have a drink,” said Henslowe. “Let’s have some hors d’œuvre while we are waiting.”

  The waitress brought a collection of boat-shaped plates of red salads and yellow salads and green salads and two little wooden tubs with herrings and anchovies.

  Henslowe stopped her as she was going, saying:

  “Rien de plus?”

  The waitress contemplated the array with a tragic air, her arms folded over her ample bosom.

  “Que vouley-vous, Monsieur, c’est l’armistice.”

  “The greatest fake about all this war business is the peace. I tell you, not till the hors d’œuvre has been restored to its proper abundance and variety will I admit that the war’s over.”

  The waitress tittered.

  “Things aren’t what they used to be,” she said, going back to the kitchen.

  Heineman burst into the restaurant at that moment, slamming the door behind him so that the glass rang, and the fat woman and the hairy man started violently in their chairs. He tumbled into a place, grinning broadly.

  “And what have you done to Walters?”

  Heineman wiped his glasses meticulously.

  “Oh, he died of drinking raspberry shrub,” he said. … “Dee-dong peteet du ving de Bourgogne,” he shouted towards the waitress in his nasal French. Then he added: “Le Guy is coming in a minute, I just met him.”

  The restaurant was gradually filling up with men and women of very various costumes, with a good sprinkling of Americans in uniform and out.

  “God, I hate people who don’t drink,” cried Heineman, pouring out wine. “A man who don’t drink just cumbers the earth.”

  “How are you going to take it in America when they have prohibition?”

  “Don’t talk about it; here’s le Guy. I wouldn’t have him know I belong to a nation that prohibits good liquor. … Monsieur le Guy, Monsieur Henslowe et Monsieur Andrews,” he continued getting up ceremoniously. A little man with twirled mustaches and a small vandyke beard sat down at the fourth place. He had a faintly red nose and little twinkling eyes.