They had been sitting at a small table on the second floor of the exclusive Century Club on Forty-third Street, a few doors off Fifth Avenue, in New York City. Barrett’s midnight call last night had not awakened Dr Eberhart - he always read late, it turned out -and Barrett’s enigmatic challenge to his proud scholarship had quickly provoked curiosity and an appointment. Dr Eberhart had said that he was a member of the Century Club and suggested that Barrett meet him there in the lobby near the first-floor entrance at one o’clock. Barrett had come straight from the airport and had arrived before the appointed time, but Dr Eberhart was already there, and by one o’clock they had been shown to their table upstairs.
Barrett had not wasted a minute, and Dr Eberhart also had no interest in cordiality. Unlocking his briefcase, Barrett had explained to his host who he was and what was the reason for his interest in J J Jadway and therefore in Dr Eberhart, and then he had read to Dr Eberhart the professor’s own anecdote about Jadway. He had then related how Van Fleet had quoted the passage in court late yesterday afternoon. Then, mercilessly, Barrett had turned the knob and let the guillotine’s blade flash downward.
Two unexpected anachronisms, Dr Eberhart. Did the professor know when Jadway had died ? No, it had not been relevant to what he had been writing. Well, Dr Eberhart, now it would seem to be relevant. Jadway died in February, 1937. Here you write of his discussing the Louis-Braddock fight, which in fact was staged four months later in 1937, and here you have him discussing Tropic of Capricorn, which in fact was not published until two years after his death. There you have it, Dr Eberhart.
Barrett had once heard that it took the guillotine ten seconds
to behead its victim. After the careful preparation, it had taken Barrett no longer than that to separate Dr Eberhart from his senses.
Dr Hiram Eberhart was a neat gnome of a scholar, perfectly fitted into an academic box, with no world beyond his literary scholarship. He knew very little about many things, but very much, perhaps all there was to know, about his one thing. He was not a snob, not mean, but merely an authority. He was musty, fussy, tidy, complacent. An elderly bachelor on the verge of becoming a professor emeritus. Strands of dull gray hair, myopia, a shiny red button of a nose (decades of medicinal sherry), chicken-breasted, an old-fashioned dull charcoal suit. What he knew he knew best of all, and he was never contradicted. Quoted, yes, but contradicted never.
Now he was undone.
The weak eyes tried to focus. ‘Are you sure, are you sure, Mr Barrett ? Let me see what you have there, let me see for myself. It can’t be.’
He had taken Barrett’s notes, and it was there.
‘Mr Barrett, this has never happened to me before. In a long lifetime dedicated purely to scholarship, I have never been confronted with such a contradiction in my facts. I do not mean to imply that there can exist a man who is without fallibility and error, but I have always been meticulous about my research and my accuracy. I have four textbooks in regular use in university literature courses. This volume, my most recently published work, appeared only the year before last. It was ten years in the making. Despite the imprecations of my publisher, I postponed releasing it for publication three times, in order to check and double-check my facts. Now, this dreadful error. I blame myself only for overlooking Jadway’s date of death. Had I not done that, this gruesome mistake would have been averted. But Jadway’s death date seemed so unnecessary. I had the information first hand - about Jadway’s comment on Tropic of Capricorn, and his analogy about the prize fight and love. I was accurate about tape-recording what I had learned. The mistake could have been made only by my source. He must be given the blame.’
‘Your source?’ said Barrett. ‘It was not evident to me there was any source other than yourself. You credited no one in a footnote for the anecdote. I assumed you were present when Jadway -‘
‘No, I was not. I recall it fully now. I received this material on the condition that I not publicly credit my source. My source was Jadway’s - one of Jadway’s closest friends in Paris in the nineteen-thirties. Entirely trustworthy. He had been with Jadway when the events in the anecdote transpired.’
‘Who was your source?’
‘Well, considering how I was misled, I see no reason not to reveal his name. I acquired the information from Sean O’Flanagan, a poet who had known Jadway in Paris.’
‘Sean O’Flanagan,’ Barrett murmured. ‘I’ve heard the name.’ He tried to recollect where or from whom, and then he remembered. From Olin Adams, the autograph dealer. ‘Yes,’ Barrett went on, ‘I’d hoped to see O’Flanagan myself recently, but he had no phone, no address, received his mail in care of General Delivery. How did you get to him, Dr Eberhart, and when?’
‘It was three years ago, while I was still rewriting Outside the Mainstream. By an accident of good luck - it seemed good luck then -I came across an obscure poetry quarterly being published in Greenwich Village. It contained an anonymously written verse about Jadway. The publisher of the poetry magazine was Sean O’Flanagan - publisher and editor, according to the masthead. I traveled to Greenwich Village to find him. At the publication’s address I learned that, weeks before, the magazine had been foreclosed on by creditors such as the printer and the landlord. I was directed to a neighborhood pub which, I was told, was O’Flanagan’s hangout, as it had been for many years.’
‘And you found him there?’
‘Not on my first visit, but I did on my third. There was a round corner table and a padded chair on which O’Flanagan had staked a claim, and from which he had held forth for almost a decade. The proprietor tolerated him as a character, a part of the decor, and he was regarded rather as the Ezra Pound of the pub. He had the reputation, I learned, of being a heavy drinker, an alcoholic, living off some meager private income, while occupying himself with reminiscing of his days as an expatriate in Paris and Rapallo and dispensing advice to the younger poets who gathered around.’
‘His drinking,’ said Barrett. ‘Perhaps that accounts for his misinforming you.’
‘I think not,’ said Dr Eberhart. The late afternoon that he received me, he was stone cold sober, at least in my view, and meticulous about the information that he gave me. He had agreed to speak to me providing I would not ask him any personal questions about Jadway. I promised to confine my interview to literary matters and did. It was O’Flanagan who, near the end of the interview, volunteered the personal anecdote in which you have discovered two horrifying anachronisms.’
‘What was O’Flanagan like?’
‘I have only a dim impression of him now. A somewhat rheumy, bucolic, ill-clad old man - in years perhaps younger than myself, but in appearance seemingly much my senior. I imagine he could be a nuisance and tiresome when tippling from the bottle. However, he determinedly avoided drink in my presence. One beer, I believe, and no more. I perceived he wanted his wits about him and was eager to put his best foot forward. A rather egotistical old man who felt that the world was remiss for not having crowned his own genius. In his failure he took refuge in self-deception. But I fear the world is right and O’Flanagan wrong. I have read his poetry. Now,
presuming he is still alive -‘
‘He is,’ said Barrett. ‘Or at least he was a week ago.’
‘Well, then, no doubt you will want to see him and probe for the truth behind this unfortunate anecdote. If you do, I am sure he is still entering that pub in Greenwich Village every cocktail hour, which is around five in the afternoon, assuming his place of honor at the corner table below the frosted window, and there nodding over memories of happier times. Should you find him, and straighten out the dates of Jadway mort and Jadway redivivus, I would be grateful if you would keep me informed. I must correct the unhappy error in the next edition of my book, or else excise the anecdote completely.’
‘I owe you a good deal, Dr Eberhart, and I promise to keep you informed. That club in Greenwich Village where Sean O’Flanagan hangs out. Can you tell me its name?’
‘O�
��Flanagan’s pub? It is called - forgive me - The Appropoet. No orchestra or dancing or floor show in the usual sense. The only entertainment consists of a poetry-reading session during every cocktail hour. Aspiring amateurs are invited to declaim their verse to the intoxicated clientele. The readers are accompanied by much hooting and catcalling. Deserved. The new poetry, the formlessness of it, the wretched corruption of the language, is enough to drive one to drink. I imagine that’s the point of it. What happened to Sara Teasdale? Now, that’s rather a good title, isn’t it ? At any rate, I wish you luck with the Keeper of the Anachronisms.’
The club had not been listed in the New York telephone directory. A new thing. Anti-conformity, anti-commercialism, anti-establish-ment. Barrett had supposed that to Charles Dodgson this might have made sense. After all, did Wonderland have an address ? Did Eden ? Does an oasis ?
By late afternoon, carrying his briefcase, Barrett had caught a taxi and directed the driver to take him to Greenwich Village. After leaving the cab near Washington Square, he had bought a copy of The Village Voice. It contained no listing or advertisement of the club. At last he had approached a boy and a girl - they both turned out to be girls, one in pea jacket and dungarees, the other in a colorful short shift and sandals - and they pointed the way.
Now, after walking four blocks through the Village, Mike Barrett had arrived at his destination.
There was a sign over a striped canopy that stretched above the sidewalk. The sign read: the appropoet. bar - snacks, open 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. Along the border of the fringed canopy, in Irish half-uncials, was the lettering ‘A Book of Verses underneath the Bough … A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Though … Beside me singing in the Wilderness… Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!’
There were two worn steps between wrought-iron rails leading down to the entrance. Barrett descended and went inside. The room
was crowded and cramped, with clouds of smoke curling beneath the ceiling. The professor had been wrong about the absence of music. Today there was the mournful strumming of a single guitar above the low-keyed chatter. Leaning against the far brick wall, a long-haired, beared young man, holding a yellow sheet of paper, was reading a poem. ‘Paint me by number / And perforate me for a machine.’ One more voice singing in the Wilderness, Barrett thought, and he headed for the nearest side of the bar just ahead.
The bartender, a black patch over one eye, was rinsing glasses. Barrett coughed to get attention. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m supposed to meet Sean O’Flanagan here.’
‘He’s at his regular table.’
Barrett looked about, confused, and the bartender pointed over Barrett’s shoulder.
‘Next to the window,’ the bartender added, ‘the fellow with the beret.’
‘Thanks,’ said Barrett. He turned around, waited for some new arrivals to pass, and then moved between the tables toward the fellow with the beret, who sat hunched over a drink beneath the oblong frosted window.
As he neared Sean O’Flanagan, the face of the poet took on definition. The beret was a soiled faded blue and was worn like a skullcap. The eyes were rheumy, the wrinkles above and below gouged deeply like seams stitched to hold the flesh together. There was a grayish stubble on the protruding chin. A rubbed corduroy jacket was draped over thin coat-hanger shoulders, and a string of love beads hung from the scrawny neck. All in all, he gave the impression of a failed Andre Gide.
‘Mr Sean O’Flanagan?’
The poet had been staring off into space. Now he lifted his gaze in the manner of one who was used to having strangers introduce themselves to him. ‘Yes, young man?’ he said.
‘I’m Mike Barrett. I’m in from Los Angeles. A mutual acquaintance suggested I look you up. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about. Mind if I sit down?’
O’Flanagan’s voice was whisky-hoarse, and doubtful. ‘Depends. What you want to talk to me about ?’
‘Mainly about your period in Paris.’
‘You’re not a poet?’
‘No,I-‘
‘You can’t tell any more, these days. Now poets wear ties and crew cuts and some of them work as dentists.’
‘Well, I did want to ask you a few questions about writing and writers. Can I treat you to a drink?’
O’Flanagan considered his almost empty glass, and then his head came up and the mouth cracked at the corners and wrinkled into a smile of brotherhood. ‘That last was poetry, Mr Banner. You are a qualified versifier. Grab a chair.’
Barrett found a free one nearby and dragged it to a spot across the circular table from O’Flanagan. No sooner was he seated than the poet had caught the attention of a waiter. ‘Chuck, I’ll be having another brandy and water. Make it a double - the brandy, not the water.’
‘Scotch on the rocks,’ Barrett called out.
O’Flanagan launched into a long, humorous anecdote about a St Bernard dog and its keg of brandy, and at its conclusion he cackled with glee, and Barrett laughed and felt better. The drinks appeared, and O’Flanagan’s hand trembled, as he brought the glass to his mouth. He gulped, smacked his lips, gulped again. Half of the brandy and water at had disappeared.
He winked at Barrett. ‘Needed that fueling up, Mr …’ He looked blank. ‘Lost my memory for names.’
‘Mike Barrett.’
‘Barrett, Barrett. Okay. Now, what’s it you wanted to ask me about Paris?’
‘Exactly when were you there?’
‘When was I? Let me see. Got there as a puling kid in 1929. Stayed on until 1938, I guess. About ten years. Never been years like those years. “Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets.” That’s Joyce. Knew him. First met him at La Maison des Amis des Livres. Knew Sylvia Beach too. And Gert Stein. But the main watering place was the Dome. You know Paris? The cafe in Montparnasse? It’s still there on the corner, I guess. That was real Bohemia. This -‘ he waved his hand to take in the room - ‘this is dross, fake, synthetic Bohemia.’
‘Have you ever been back to Paris?’ asked Barrett.
‘Back? No. I wouldn’t want to spoil the dream. Every man has his own annuity for his later years. Mine is the old dream. It was incredible, everybody writing way out ahead of the world, or painting, or getting laid. God, what a Mohammedan heaven for a kid with a questing cock. You know what? One night I banged some old frump. Turned out she had been one of Modigliani’s models once. And one night, Christ, I must’ve been loaded, I let some old buzzard bugger me. Know why? Because I was told he used to bugger Rimbaud or Verlaine, forget which. Ah, well, here’s mud in your eye, Barrett.’
He finished his drink.
‘Have another,’ said Barrett.
O’Flanagan signaled the waiter for a refill and nodded his thanks to Barrett. ‘My old pal Wilson Mizner used to say, ‘As a writer I am a stylist, and the most beautiful sentence I have ever heard is ‘Have one on the house.’ ” Ha!’ He broke into a fit of cackling and coughing, and at last he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Now, where were we?’
‘In Paris.’
‘Paris, that’s right.’
Barrett waited for the refill to be served and watched O’Flanagan go at it. ‘Mr O’Flanagan, when did you meet J J Jadway in Paris ?’
With the mention of Jadway’s name, the poet stopped drinking. ‘What makes you think I knew Jadway?’
‘Several people told me you did. In fact, this morning, a man who once spent time with you, Dr Hiram Eberhart -‘
‘Who?’
‘He’s a professor at Columbia. He wrote a book called Outside the Mainstream and he mentions Jadway in it. He said you gave him an interview once, right here.’
‘A little runt of a guy ? Yes, I remember him. Why are you interested in Jadway ? Are you writing a paper or book or something?’
‘I’ll be truthful. I’m an attorney. I’m the lawyer who’s defending Jadway’s book, The Seven Minutes, in the trial in Los Angeles.’
O’Flanagan looked troubled. ‘That trial. Been reading abo
ut it. You’re the lawyer, eh? Well, from where I sit, they’re making mincemeat out of you - and poor Jad.’
“That’s why I’m here. To try to improve our case. I was told you were one of Jadway’s closest friends.’
‘And that’s why I’m not going to talk about him, Barrett. I made a vow after he was gone. He was - he was driven to his death. Now he deserves to rest in peace. He deserves that much.’
‘Well, the censors aren’t letting him rest in peace. I want to defend him, not only to save his book, liberate it, but to see that his memory and name are honored. I’m afraid I’ve just about reached dead end. I need your help.’ Barrett stared at O’Flanagan, who was drinking silently. ‘Mr O’Flanagan, you were his friend, weren’t you?’
‘The only friend he ever had and trusted, besides Cassie McGraw. I’ll tell you this much, and with great pride in it. I knew him. I knew Jad and Cassie, and I was their friend. Met them the first time in Sylvia Beach’s bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, in the Rue de l’Odeon, number 12 Rue. de l’Odeon. Hemingway, Pound, Fitzgerald, they all browsed and bought and gabbed there, along with Joyce. And I came in there one day, and there was Jadway and there was Cassie.’
‘When was that?’
‘Summer of 1934, when he was writing his book.’
‘Christian Leroux testified that he wrote the book in three weeks.’
‘Leroux’s a turd. He’d say anything for a buck.’
Barrett’s heart leaped. ‘You mean he lied in his testimony?’
O’Flanagan drank. ‘I’m not saying he lied. I’m saying he has not always been a devotee of the truth. I don’t like him, never did, and I don’t want to talk about him.’
‘But was most of his testimony accurate?’
‘Most of it.’
‘The part about Jadway’s death?’
‘Generally true. The book came out. The daughter of another
one of Jadway’s friends got in trouble, and the friend blamed it on Jadway because of the book. Then there was some other trouble Jadway had with his parents. He was very sensitive. He fell into a depression. He killed himself. It’s already in the record.’
(1969) The Seven Minutes Page 52