Identifying someone of importance inside, perhaps M. Fauré, the doorman opened the door of the tourer as though it were the most elegant limousine in Paris. They got out, Hahn extending a hand to help both Fauré and the Persian Prince under the elbow. Herma was left to clamber out for herself. To her surprise the chauffeur went in with them, under the modest white marquee hardly noticeable from the street. The Hispano was abandoned at the curb, steaming and clicking as a motorcar will.
The silver and gold foyer inside was immense. The floor was an expanse of tawny-colored marble, gleaming with wax. A woman with dark red hair appeared from behind a pillar and came straight toward them across the floor: swathed to the neck in furs, rather beyond her best years but still attractive, with a powerful and assertive sexuality. “Mon cher amour!” she burst out at Hahn, extending a hand.
Hahn took the hand. A diamond bracelet glittered on the rather thin wrist. He seemed a little less than pleased. But still he said with his usual good-natured insouciance, “Won’t you come and break a crust with us, Liane dear?”
It was Liane de Pougy, who had starred in Feminissima years before at the Larkin in San Francisco. Probably she wouldn’t remember Herma. At the moment she didn’t even deign to notice her. “I’d be enchanted,” she told Hahn. She seemed a little cool toward the Persian Prince too. She smiled mechanically at Fauré.
A waiter appeared and led them down the corridor to a gold and cherry private room. According to the songs, as Herma remembered, it was in such places that young girls fell. She smiled brilliantly and said to Pougy, “I sang with you once in San Francisco, years ago.”
“Ah?”
“Yes. In Feminissima. I sang a song called ‘Si tu m’aimes comme je t’aime, tu m’aimes.’ It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“I’m sure it was,” said Pougy a little distractedly. Her attention was still on Hahn. Perhaps also she didn’t care to be reminded of anything that had happened so long ago. The waiter seated them at a table with a linen cloth and embroidered Louis Quinze chairs. An extra chair was brought up for Pougy. With a regal motion of her chin she indicated her fur coat. The waiter removed it. Under it was a rose-colored gown cut so low that the division between her breasts was clearly visible, and even, when she bent forward, a glimpse of roseate nipple. Glancing in her direction, Hahn said with faint irony, “Liane, dear, you are charming this evening.”
Although Herma often came to the restaurant at the Ritz she had never been in this part of the hotel before. The room seemed to be permanently maintained for Marcel and his guests. The table was a small one; it was barely large enough for the five of them. There was an oriental carpet on the floor, and across the room a large Pleyel grand with music stands and some extra chairs near it. On the wall was what appeared to be an authentic Vermeer. Under it was a kind of divan scattered with cushions. For ruining young girls. Herma was still enjoying herself and entertained with the whole situation. For other decorations, there was only an archaic bust of Apollo on a pedestal. There were no flowers, she noticed, and the room was shut hermetically tight. Hardly a sound could be heard from the other parts of the hotel. The chauffeur Agostinelli had retreated to a kind of alcove behind the piano where he waited in case he was needed. He could be seen through the open door laying out a game of solitaire.
Olivier came in, without a note pad or anything in his hands. He had a perfect memory and never forgot an order. He bent first over the Persian Prince. “Monsieur?”
“I haven’t eaten anything for two days, Olivier. I’ve been writing; but first I want very strong black coffee, double strength. So,” he put in anxiously, “you mustn’t be afraid to charge me double for it on the bill. Afterward,” he added pessimistically, “perhaps I will be able to keep something light on my stomach.”
Fauré ordered a beefsteak, rare. Leonine was the word for him, Herma decided. For Hahn, a London Grill and fried potatoes. Pougy ordered Crèpes aux Champignons, and Herma—remembering Caruso—a little white meat of chicken with a few blades of asparagus. Olivier seemed impressed by this last; asparagus was out of season and very expensive. He disappeared with a faint bow.
Herma was seated next to Marcel. “So you’re a writer?” “Oh my soul,” said Hahn. “I cannot understand how someone has never heard of Marcel Proust. Haven’t you read Les Plaisirs et les Jours?”
“No. I don’t read very much.”
“Or Le Bible d’Amiens?”
“Why should she read anything, Reynaldo dear?” said Marcel. “It’s not her métier. I don’t sing opera and she doesn’t write books. Anyhow I haven’t published my novel yet.”
“So you’re writing a novel?”
“Ah, my dear. It’s an interminable task. I never expect to see the end of it. I write a little every day. I have a pile so high.” He indicated, holding his hand a foot or so above the table. “Grasset is going to print some of it, even though I’ll have to pay him.”
He sighed, and sipped a little of the black coffee. He had taken off the fur coat now and was revealed in an old-fashioned frock coat and striped trousers, like a diplomat, except that the clothes were worn and a little baggy, giving him the slightly touching look of a clown. For some reason he had added a white carnation boutonnière. He turned and looked at her with his penetrating and soft glance. “Your Giulietta was charming.”
“Ah. You preferred the Giulietta to the others?”
“Yes. Antonia is too much like myself.” He did not offer any explanation of this rather cryptic statement. “And as for Olympia, I’m too old to play with dolls.”
“Did you ever, Marcel?” Reynaldo asked.
“Oh yes. As a child I played with dolls. My grandmother gave them to me.”
The waiter poured out wine for everybody except Proust—a Saint-Emilion and a Montrachet white. Pougy sent hers away and asked for champagne. It was brought instantly. Hahn was slumped negligently in his chair, and Pougy was sitting opposite him. Evidently their ankles touched, because he sat up abruptly and stared at her with a cat-and-mouse sort of smile.
“Marcel prefers Giulietta,” he said, “because she is the most vicious of the three.”
“No, it’s Reynaldo who is vicious,” said Marcel. “Il aime les filles.” This was evidently a private joke between them. Pougy didn’t seem to be amused.
Marcel turned to Herma again. After a moment he said, “Broken mirrors bring misfortune.”
After a moment she grasped that he was talking about the second act of the Tales. “Yes, seven years of bad luck, we say in English. But that’s only when you break them by accident, not on purpose.”
“And why did you break it?”
“It’s part of the business.”
“No it isn’t. I’ve seen the Tales a dozen times, and Giulietta never breaks the mirror.”
“You must know a great deal about opera.”
“No.” He offered his Persian Prince smile. He was charming when he smiled. “It’s just that I’m observant. It’s the métier of the novelist. I’m an invalid, so I have nothing else to do except observe everything in life very carefully.”
Fauré, who had not said a word, went on methodically cutting up and disposing of his beefsteak. Hahn ignored his food for the most part and smoked one cigarette after another. A sandwich and a glass of beer were provided for Agostinelli in his alcove. Proust asked for a plate of noodles, perfectly plain except for a little butter and a touch of garlic. At the end the waiter, following the directions no doubt of the omniscient Olivier, brought Fraise Herma for everybody except Proust and Pougy, who declined on account of her diet. “My régime,” she called it in her queen-like way.
Fauré stared at the pale hemisphere in its circle of whipped cream as though he were not sure what he was supposed to do with it. Hahn ate the strawberry first, then scooped up a little of the whipped cream around the edge. He put his spoon down. He really wasn’t hungry.
“Sing something for us, Reynaldo,” suggested Marcel
. “And try not to roll your R’s. He has a slight Spanish accent,” he explained to Herma. “He was born in Venezuela. We call him our Venezuelan Macaque.”
“Marcel is always saying that I have a slight Spanish accent. But this isn’t so. The truth is that I have cultivated my voice in French to roll the R’s, since to grasseyer the R’s in the Parisian manner when singing is vulgar and music hall.” He glanced in the direction of Pougy, who showed no expression at all. “And this habit has passed over into my ordinary speech. I sing at all times, so to speak. And so they say I have a slight Spanish accent.”
“He has a slight Spanish accent,” said Marcel.
Hahn sat down at the Pleyel and sang a song or two of Debussy, without removing the cigarette from his mouth. Like Puccini, he always had a cigarette, but he could do more than Puccini could; he could sing with it dangling from the corner of his mouth. Marcel told Herma to pay no attention. It was only his “Apache airs,” as he called them.
“He’s really a very gentle fellow, very cultivated, and speaks six languages. Including Macaque,” he added.
Lifting his hand from the piano, Hahn cheerfully made an obscene gesture in his direction. Then he changed tempos deftly and broke into some Offenbach, not from the Tales but from the early operettas, Orphee aux Enfers and La Belle Helene. “When I was little,” he said from the piano, the cigarette still dangling, “it was to the strains of Offenbach that my father used to dandle me on his knee. Because of this, Offenbach to me is rhythm. Offenbach is an important influence on my work. I am famous for my mastery of rhythm.”
“The rhythm of a macaque,” said Marcel. He seemed to be enjoying himself and had thrown off his invalid languor. He bent to tell some private joke to Fauré, who smiled broadly.
To show his versatility, Hahn went on to the Barcarolle from the Tales. He had a delicate and pleasing but slightly gravelly tenor; he had perhaps damaged his voice by singing too much or by his continual smoking.
“O belle nuit d’amour,
Giuliette est vicieuse,”
he concluded with a seraphic earnestness.
Marcel smiled. “Gaby, won’t you …”
Still without a word, Fauré got up and went to the Pleyel. As a pianist and musician he was obviously a different sort of thing from Hahn. He played seriously and with impeccable form, even though rather negligently. He ran through a part of his piano quartet in C minor, then, at Marcel’s request, his Romance sans paroles. Hahn, slumped in his chair again, said, “For lechery and litanies, there is nothing to match our dear Gaby. I have always thought this was the sort of music a pederast might hum while raping a choirboy.”
He glanced at Herma to see if he had succeeded in shocking her. But she only inquired demurely, “Does the word violer in French have anything to do with violon?”
Hahn shrugged. “What an idea.” But the notion seemed to intrigue Marcel. He murmured to himself, “Le long sanglot des violons …”
Fauré was ready to get up. But Marcel insisted that Herma sing something, and he stayed at the piano to accompany her. Herma sang some Schubert lieder, then her own song or two of Debussy. When she came to the end of the second one Marcel gazed at her with his lazy Persian eyes.
“Won’t you sing us a bit of your ‘Addio California’?”
“Addio Marcel,” said Herma, turning as if to go.
Hahn said, “Marcel, my dear, I don’t think she cares much for the part. And in fact it’s quite a stupid little opera. There’s no music in it, and it’s full of cowboys and Indians.”
“Only one Indian,” said Herma.
“Well, excuse me.” Marcel applied his charm again. He was exquisite when he wished to please. “It’s just that—the first time I saw you it was as Minnie, galloping onto the stage with your American verve. You seemed—half a boy … a charming ambiguity.” His lazy glance was particularly penetrating here. “And then when I heard that the same person was going to do all three roles of the Tales—and such an interesting person—I couldn’t resist coming out. Although I never come out.”
“They seem to know you well here.”
“Ah, I come out to the Ritz. That’s different. It’s like home here.”
“Well, well,” said Fauré, getting up rather heavily from the piano. He found his overcoat on a chair.
“Gaby is too eminent to stay up late,” apologized Marcel. “Not only is he France’s most eminent living composer …”
“Come, come. There’s Debussy,” said the old gentleman.
“… but he is also the director of the Consérvatoire.”
“I shall resign soon,” said Fauré. “I’m tired of auditioning the mistresses of politicians. Good night, tout le monde. Good night, Marcel, you wicked boy.”
“Alfred,” Proust called softly.
Agostinelli got up from his card table in the alcove and appeared in the doorway.
“Could you be so good as to take M. Fauré home to place des Victoires?” he asked with elaborate politeness, as though Agostinelli were doing him a favor.
Agostinelli and Fauré went off. The others stayed; the waiter brought coffee.
Hahn slid into the chair next to Herma. “Don’t you find yourself flattered that Gabriel Fauré accompanies you?”
“Paderewski has,” she said indifferently.
“Oh my soul. The little thing is sure of herself. Perhaps, if I practice hard, I too may be allowed to accompany you someday.” He too was charming, in his bantering way, very different from the elaborate politesse of Marcel.
“I’d be enchanted if someone asked me to sing,” said Pougy.
“Ah, Liane dear,” said Hahn gallantly. “We’ve forgotten you.”
He went back to the piano, and Pougy sang her “Moi, j’ai vécu bien” in a throaty music-hall contralto.
“Elle a vécu bien. Indeed she has. Even a little too well,” murmured Marcel.
“How merciless you are.”
He allowed his soft dark eyes to play upon her for a moment before replying. “Not at all. It is life that is merciless. It is Time. I only observe its effects.” All this with the same air of elaborate and diplomatic tact, as though he were apologizing for his remarks and yet believed them to be true. “It is Time that is merciless.” If this were an unpleasant fact, at least he could say it with extreme politeness, a tone almost of regret. He spoke to everyone, Herma thought, in the way you speak to someone who has had a death in the family.
Pougy went on through the verse, then started the chorus for the second time. When she came to the R’s she sang them with deep Parisian grasseyement, practically swallowing them. Halm raised an eyebrow. His hands flew back and forth along the keyboard; his cigarette dangled. At the end of the chorus he joined in in harmony, a third below her:
“Je regrette rien,
desormais c’est fini,
moi j’ai vécu bien.”
Agostinelli reappeared, having taken Fauré back to his apartment. They all got up and searched for their wraps. Marcel donned his fur coat and wrapped the shawl under it, leaving the coat hanging open. Agostinelli was carrying the robe to wrap around his knees in the car.
Now Marcel began emptying his pockets in all directions. He paid the bill and tipped everyone heavily. He called the headwaiter mon cher Olivier, he called the first waiter mon cher Eustache, and he called the second waiter mon cher Hals. In the foyer he gave something to the chasseur, whom he called mon cher Maurice. He seemed worried whether he had given the chasseur enough.
In the middle of the foyer they stopped. It was the crucial point of separation.
Pougy said, “Won’t you come up for a little, Reynaldo dear? There’s my famous Turkish coffee.”
“No, I have to go home and write my review of Herma’s performance.”
“In that case,” she said a little stiffly, “perhaps she should go home with you and help you write it. No doubt it will be highly favorable.”
With a little actressy smile she turned and went off toward the
lifts.
“Goodnight, Liane dear. Sweet dreams.”
There was a silence. They made their way toward the door.
“Poor Liane,” said Hahn. “She was waiting for us. She found out somehow we were going to the Opéra, and she knew we would come on here afterward.”
The doorman opened the door with a bow. Marcel felt in his pockets and found them empty.
“Jules, mon cher, could you by any chance lend me fifty francs?”
The doorman got out his wallet and produced the banknotes with alacrity.
“No, please keep it,” Marcel told him. “It is for you.”
5.
Fred came into the Café de la Paix with a Figaro under his arm and looked around in a leisurely way. It was about ten o’clock in the morning. He saw Lloiseaux seated alone at his usual table by the angle of the street and nodded to him. He was uncertain whether to go and join him. Then across the terrasse he caught sight of something else: a shock of flame-colored hair, a pale face, and a pair of dark eyes heavy with makeup. Zing! went the harp string in his blood. There was nothing he could do about it. It was too powerful for him. It was pleasant enough, but even if it were unpleasant there would have been nothing he could do to prevent it.
He took a table and unfolded his newspaper. When the waiter came he ordered a Café Crème. “While he waited for the coffee to come he got out a calling card from his waistcoat, groped for a stub of pencil, and wrote something on it. Then he turned to his newspaper.
The coffee came. “If you would be so kind as to give this to the lady.” He indicated with a motion of his head. He slipped the card into his hand along with a ten-franc piece. The waiter nodded.
He pretended to read the newspaper for a while, watching Pougy over the top of it. She was sitting before an empty glass that had had something greenish and feminine in it, probably a Chartreuse. The waiter went up to the table, bowed, and set the card in front of her in a saucer. She looked interrogatively. The waiter, with his head, indicated Fred.
Pougy focused in his direction. She examined him for some time. Then, while she still looked straight at him, her chin went down a fraction of an inch and came back up again.
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