The Puzzleheaded Girl

by Christina Stead

  Martin was not strong enough to make further inquiries that day. He went home and told everything to Laura, saying, “But I can’t be worried by these crazy American bohemian kids. What does it add up to but an army of remittance men? They’re not earning their living; they’re not students; they’re not studying the language or country. They’re bloodsuckers living off their parents and talking about youth and revolt.”

  They unexpectedly had a call from George Paul. He was working on a feature story of the German occupation and had to come out to St. Germain-en-Laye where the German High Command had been quartered and where there had been built into a cliff a huge secret headquarters, fully provisioned, staffed, armed. It could still be seen. Everyone in St. Germain knew about it. Indeed they were full of information, since they had all served the German occupant in some manner. Some were friendly to the present occupiers, the Americans; some, like a certain café-owner whose café had been reconstructed with German money, did not try to conceal their bitterness at the good days gone, and the tongues of these were sharp against the Americans, and their late allies.

  George was expected for lunch but did not get there till four in the afternoon. When the gate-bell jangled, the dog barked violently and Manette, the young maid in long hair, long apron and slippers, ran out to let him in. With her, young and beautiful, but a servant, he was rude and imperious, and imperious to Colonel de Charleville, owner of the villa. Colonel de Charleville, always described as a fine man of soldierly bearing, came around in gardening clothes to greet him. George turned his back on this man and spoke to the Deans who had run down from their upstairs flat.

  “That’s the Colonel,” said they.

  “The kind of colonel who let in the Germans,” said George.

  “You’re late, George.”

  “The train didn’t want to get here, French inefficiency, they have no schedules, no programme, the railroad men don’t work, they have no organization; or else they took me for a German, like everyone else and led me astray, on purpose, in their crafty bonhomme style. Since the Germans left, they have no one to give orders to them and they’re running round in circles. The Americans, of course, can’t do it. They have no idea of social order.

  “Even in the train they were looking at me. A man said aloud, If he’s speaking French, he’s a German. Fine logic. That’s what the Germans told them. We are the only ones who speak your beautiful language correctly: the English, the Americans, the rest, all illiterates. The girl said, He’s Danish. I was choking but I spoke up, I’m no German, no Alsatian, no Dane; I’m an American. I didn’t know where to get breakfast,” he said tramping upstairs. “There’s a coffee shop in the Rue St. Honoré where I had breakfast before the war and it’s still there. It’s run by an Englishman, good tea and the coffee is strong, a food and good for the digestion. The best coffee in Paris. The train was at 10:00 on the indicator.”

  While Laura was preparing food he told them a long, extra-ordinary story of his difficulties in getting there. “I nearly went back to Paris. But I had to get this story. Laura, you look wonderful. And is this the villa the Germans lived in and stole from?”

  He followed Laura into the kitchen asking urgently about his health, what he should eat. The bread was very bad; he could hardly get any milk.

  “Where’s Madeline, your American girl, who was typing for you?”

  “She’s left me: she went back to her husband who’s got a job in UNESCO. I’ve got to do everything for myself. I don’t mind the housework; I don’t need a woman for that. I type everything: but it’s the copying out. I have no time. I have to keep digging up new features, and I have to get the material and copy it. This project now is taking days. There ought to be someone there typing it out.”

  His wants, his clothes were simple. He wore sports clothes, nylon shirts and shorts that he could wash himself.

  “Your eyes look tired!”

  “It’s nothing,” he said hastily. “The blood rushes to my head and stays there; and I feel the heat.”

  “Martin will take you round the town and you come back and eat a big steak and we’ll see. You can get a room at the hotel in the market square. We went there for you.”

  “If you think so,” he grumbled dubiously. “No, no, I’ve got to get back to Paris. I’ve an obligation to someone—someone I don’t trust. I must ask your advice too. That’s another thing that’s troubling me. It’s a young girl.”

  When they returned and were having coffee, he sat in the chair, his rosy face in the daylight and he complained, “I nearly brought her along to leave her with you where she’d be safe. I’m sorry I didn’t. Barby’s in town and is making a nuisance of herself. I don’t want her to find out where my apartment is. She’s always breaking into my lodgings. It’s not that I’m afraid she’ll insult the girl. It’s that I’m afraid the girl will run away.” He said, in his nervousness, girrrl and rrrun. He leaned towards them, trustfully. “She looks fifteen, a small girl with a new haircut and bright lipstick, like a schoolchild who made herself up in the cloakroom before she ran out the school-gate. She has eyes that make you uneasy, that look straight at you with a smile and then seem to peel off, and there’s another eye underneath, sizing you up, a human eye that you see for a second and then the bright enamel eye is back. Expressions flick across her face as if she were trying to find one that will suit. I don’t know if it’s other phases of her personality, or if she is too young to have a personality. She had a room in a little hotel and ate all her meals there just as if she were at home. Then at the end of three days they gave her the bill because she had nothing but a handbag and was coming back with packets from stores. She paid them a little and promised the rest. After that, she spent a week wandering about the streets and gardens. I saw her a couple of days ago standing outside a little hotel near the Lion de Belfort, talking to the proprietor, who was saying, No, no, no, miss.”

  George’s face showed an older grain, more flesh: he looked paternal. He said energetically, irritated, “The child flickers like water. Evidently she feels she is irresistible, a temptress. She was following a middle-aged man about the garden outside the Luxemburg, near my rooms. She was telling him some story. He made a joke and left her. She spotted me sitting near her on a seat and came straight over to me. She came right up and said, You see, my cheques are late in coming. I changed my address and I expect the hotel is holding them up because I did not pay in full. And I expect my fiancé, but he is not allowed to cross the frontier; he is having trouble. He will come. And I wonder if you know the owner of a night club. I know that’s the way they earn money. I can sing and dance.

  “I got her a little room in a hotel near me and I had a talk to the hotel manager. Her name was Lili Charabas, she came from Lausanne and she was eighteen, she wrote in the hotel book. Yesterday, the hotel manager and I searched her room. There was never anything left in her room and she wouldn’t tell about her parents or home. But yesterday we found a little diary with notes in it, like: Had a chocolate sundae. Danced with a nice boy at the Buffalo. Went to the movies. Had my hair washed. Eventually we found a telephone number on a slip of paper. I knew it was a Swiss telephone number. We spoke to the girl’s uncle at Morges, near Lausanne. He said, It’s her third escapade. She has just turned fifteen and wants to live with men. That’s what she says. She got hold of a man at home; but she turned cold, dropped him and looked for another. She promises to meet them all privately, but she never meets anyone, never keeps appointments and hangs back from kisses. She won’t even let me take her elbow,” he said peevishly. “She used to sneak telephone calls at home and go to a certain hotel to telephone, always telephoning men, especially married men. I believe she thinks it’s safe to do so. Then she took to roaming the country, taking trains and buses. I can’t let her roam about Paris; and the uncle won’t send for her. Her family is finished with her. What sort of a man is that?”

  He was standing at the window, looking down into the garden.

  “T
hat’s Colonel de Charleville, un beau gendarme, as they say. As a young fellow he was a Spahi officer who, because of his connections, married a Marquise, calls himself Marquis. He’s nice with the women; and he had a Frenchman’s finger in cotton wool in a box. The Germans gave it to him and told him the Russians cut it off for the ring. He believes it. The German officers took over his villa, built themselves a deep dugout in his garden and allowed him and the Marquise to use it. He thinks they were very correct. When the Germans were on the run, they stopped long enough to take his household linen, tableware, pictures and carpets. But, says he, they were very correct.”

  “I was in Passy,” said George furiously, “I know them. The Americans were parading. All the sloths and slugs, the termites of Passy were out in the street. Comme c’est bien! Tellement corrects—impeccables! They think me German, do they? I turned to them and said, Do you find every army of occupation impeccable? I’m an American—I’m ashamed of you.”

  He took a few steps about the room. “God, look at his pictures! Such pictures haven’t been seen since Napoleon the Little. Perhaps she’s run away, wandered off. Laura, could you come back with me and get her? I can’t sleep with all these problems. I’ve got her there and I’m the sole person in the world responsible for her,” he exclaimed irascibly. “What’s the matter with that painting? On the wall there? You see, it’s poorly lighted. When I am near the window I see the Duc de Guise—”

  “Yes, it’s the Duc de Guise. The Colonel is very loyal.”

  “Yes, yes, but when I am here, near the divan, I can see a screaming pétroleuse with a liberty bonnet, underneath. I can see her perfectly. Like France,” he exclaimed. He stood in the window against the light looking towards the forest. “What’s going on in that château over there? There are dozens of people and they are loading things in the yard.”

  “They waterproof raincoats over there. You can see the colours.”

  “Yes, I see the boxes now. What is that house at the corner?”

  “It’s a house that’s shut in the daytime and open at night.”

  “Where does this street go to?”

  “To the country. They come past early in the morning, three times a week. The food is good here, better than Paris.”

  “I hate Paris, the food is so bad,” he said, worried. His face had many aspects. His eyes at this moment appeared cavernous, dark-circled. Pouches of flesh were forming along the stout jawbone. “There’s Barby and this girl from Morges—Lili—and that typist I must find and I have to get a fast car. I’ve ordered a Mercedes-Benz and it hasn’t come yet—and I have to go to Rome to see Easter Pascuale…”

  “The American gangster?”

  “Yes, I met him in Rome once already. He doesn’t meet people; but I met him. And he isn’t what they say. He told me everything. He’s not engaged in drugs and prostitution. He had a big organization in the USA and part of it got involved with drugs and prostitution without his knowledge. He fired the goons who were in it; then they ganged up against him and someone informed. He gave it all up. He said I could have the whole story if I’d write the truth. He consented to give me three interviews to write the truth for the American press. I can sell it for six thousand dollars; and I can get my car then, I hate these little Renaults. I gave a deposit for a Jaguar, that’s a British car; know the tester; and I couldn’t bear to have a German car. But the Germans are an efficient people and no strikes. They only want to work. The French only want to strike and drink red wine. As soon as you strike a red wine country, even Alsace, you find they won’t work. And you can tell them from the road”—he continued, his voice rising—“from the car. They’re red. They look red, red faces, red hands—the wine’s in them, they’re full of it. Just wineskins. I jabbed my tiepin in one day and it came out of him red, redder than nature, wine-red. If you stick a knife into one it would pour out of him like a knife in a goatskin. It runs out of their fingers,” he cried shaking his broad hairy hand in the air, fingers spread. “What are all those dogs? What is that big brute who jumped at me and put his muzzle in my face like a black wolf?”

  “That’s Fanfan the housedog and those are his brothers and sisters. They’re Greenlands.”

  “She’s a very pretty girl,” he said discontentedly, looking down at the servant, “but sluttish. I don’t like that long hair in a horsetail and she has a slippery smile. What am I to do, Martin? Laura? I’m in trouble. I had to keep my apartment in New York. I can’t pay hotel rates when I’m there. And now Barby has taken it over; she is there, she is doing business there with—her—gigolos,” he said furiously. “Then she followed me over!”

  His thick flaming hair folded itself into shells. The grey in it was hidden. His skin was rosy, his neck broader on thickening shoulders. He had loosened his tie and his broad stout chest and strong arms stuck out of the shirt. Though sixty he was still summer, strong, hot summer. “I won’t keep it on any more,” he said, “though it is so cheap. I’ve paid but I’ll give notice. And now she wants me to help her here. She’s making a big mistake. We’re divorced. I wrote to her, I’m not your man. I need certain conditions for my work, quiet, peace. I used to eat at a pension round the corner. It’s for Swiss students, it’s run by a German Swiss. The Germans are the same everywhere. They eat swill. They eat in platters, troughs I call them, piled to the top with sour cabbage and one sour sausage on top! At the end of the meal all the troughs are empty but mine; and those hills of sour grass and those lakes of sour sauce are inside; and inside them is buried the sour sausage. And because I speak German everyone sidles up to me and starts propaganda. It’s frightful. It’s torment. I don’t know what to do. But I must eat.”

  He said in a gentle sad voice, turning to Laura, “What am I to do, Laura? Advise me!”

  “Tell them you’re Viennese.”

  “No.”

  “You were brought up in Vienna.”

  “I am not Viennese,” he said, squeaking with rage. “I never saw the Viennese golden heart. All over central Europe the traces of the German brute. I am an American! In the war I fought for the USA and it was a pleasure, because it was against the Germans. Oh, you fought them, but you don’t know them as I do. Why did not you throttle every one of them? There is not one good one.”

  “That is race prejudice, pure, absurd race prejudice,” said Martin.

  “The Germans are no race, but a mess,” said George. “What am I to do with this girl? I have to get my work done. I can’t put her on the train for Lausanne. I can’t hand her over to the police. I can’t be in Switzerland for several months. I have a book lined up, about refugees. I hate them but I will get money for it. I interview refugees, from Eastern Germany or Russia, I listen to their ridiculous stories, and then I write a good book, I was an Eastern Refugee or some such thing. I’ll get five thousand dollars for it; more perhaps, eight thousand. I have to sell outright because I need the money; and it could be a movie.”

  “Perhaps the girl Lili will be gone when you go back and you can forget her.”

  “I can’t forget her. Besides she will be there. I asked Bunny Branch to look after her.”

  “Is that the Mrs. Bunny Branch I met in New York?”

  Still irritated but laughing he said, “She bummed her way to London as soon as the war was over, went over in a freighter that was empty because it went to New York full of Scotch. Bunny Branch was sick of New York. She’s not one of the multimillionaire Branches. She married one; he left her and they don’t give her anything; and she won’t sue. I’m not a highwayman, she says. She had to leave London because she got into the clutches of a society drug fiend, a doctor—a Yugoslav,” he said with fury.

  The Deans began to laugh. George became serious.

  “Oh, he is safe; he just married a title. He went around poisoning everyone, getting people down with synthetics and getting women in his clut-ches, picking and choosing and at last he got one that suited him. He made plenty of money. He gave anyone drugs that came to him. When he first
took Mrs. Branch for a patient, he thought she was one of the rich Branches; but he dropped her; and so she was able to escape. But she said, In London I was only a shuddering crying rag, freezing and hungry and unable to eat. She came to Paris without anything and came to me, and said, Georrrge, I am going to shack down with you; she had nowhere to go. I’ve only a little room for my bed, a bathroom and a sitting-room where my files and photographs are and there is a sofa there. I must work out on the landing, for she is there now. So there,” he finished, dejected, “she is and I can’t turn her out. She doesn’t know how to do anything. I look after her. I bring her her breakfast. Poor thing. I have got her to eat now. But I want a secretary who will do my typing. And I must make love to her. She expects it. But she is fifty! She did some typing for me and she is a good typist. But I don’t like her to do it. And I have no room for myself.”

  “George, you have a woman ranch.”

  “I do not,” he said indignantly, getting up and going to the window again. “I do not ask them to come and live with me. I don’t love them. I need money. I have to work. I have these frightful headaches and stomach-aches. What do you think it is?”

  “You must wear glasses. And eat properly.”

  “But I am too hot-headed! I must avoid alcohol and sugar and red meat. I must eat lightly.”

  Laura said, “A hot-headed man feels worse when he is hungry. When he eats, the blood goes from his head to his stomach.”

  “Do you think so?” said George hopefully.

  “And lead a quieter life,” said Martin with annoyance. “Women don’t shack down with me. I don’t find lunatic adolescents in the park. You must marry an older woman, George, and stick to her.”

  He stuck out his chin and an ugly look crossed his face. “Older women are good for aunts and mothers.” Then, afraid he had offended, he said, “But I had a very good housekeeper in Paris last year, an older woman who said she loved to look after me. You must eat more; yes, she told me that.”