The Belting Inheritance

by Julian Symons

  “She wanted to know whether we would be in to dinner. I said we wouldn’t. She’s rather melted towards us, seems to have made up her mind that we’re innocents abroad. When I told her where we were going she said we must be very careful.”

  “Why?”

  “She said it was a most unpleasant place.” Elaine looked at me and burst out laughing. I began to laugh too. “Sorry I was so mean in there.”

  “Why were you?”

  “I’m just mean by nature.” We were squeezed together on the narrow pavement by two men going the other way, and our hands touched. She put her hand in mine, and we walked along like that.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Taverne

  Certain things in one’s life stand out vividly, not because they are of importance in themselves, but because they represent so perfectly the quality of one’s feelings at the time. Elaine and I walked from our hotel to the Taverne. We did not even think of taking the Métro or a bus, but simply walked along, captured by the magic of the city at night, going in what we knew was roughly the right direction but unconcerned about when, or perhaps even whether, we should finally arrive. We wasted time, but what was time for that evening if not to waste, on the Ile St Louis by walking round the island instead of across it, round by the Quai de Bourbon and the Quai d’Anjou, stopping often to look down into the water or to watch the bateaux mouches go by, blazing with light. Often since then I have stood outside a crowded room looking in on people all of whom seemed to know each other, and have felt myself a stranger. This sense of isolation has grown in me with the passing years. But on this evening my happiness was such that, as I looked down at the river boats I felt that they were prisoners, enclosed as they were in their glass cabin, and that the whole world of Paris, of excitement and adventure, belonged to me.

  We crossed over to the Right Bank at last, and then lost ourselves among the streets leading off the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal. We did not ask the way, and hardly spoke to each other. Once Elaine got out her map, but she put it away when I shook my head and we walked on, coming at length to the rue St Antoine, crossing it, going through a wide archway and finding ourselves unexpectedly in the Place des Vosges. I stopped, fascinated by the elegance of the arcades, the gardens in the centre and the identical mansions surrounding three sides of the square. Elaine too was caught by the beauty of it and we walked slowly round. We stopped outside no 6, the Musée Victor Hugo, but of course it was closed – happily enough, for I found it extremely boring on a later visit. I recalled that Gautier had lived next door.

  Why do I put down all this? I don’t know, except that perhaps it helps to express my state of mental intoxication and to explain the unreality of everything else that happened during the evening. When, quite suddenly, we came upon the Taverne Maximilien Robespierre, I would have been prepared for a welcome inside it from Robespierre himself and the other members of the Revolutionary Committee.

  The Taverne was painted black outside. Within there could be seen a glimmer of light. The entrance doors were black with thick obscured glass, and when we pushed them open it was to find ourselves in a square anteroom where everything was red, the tables, a small sofa, the walls, and of course the electric light which cast a dull red glow around. There was a door on our right, and we pushed this open to find ourselves in a long narrow room done in green with small red lights dotted about. These were the glimmers we had seen from outside. Small and large tables topped with green glass were set at irregular intervals. It was possible to see that people were sitting at some of these tables, but their faces were indistinguishable. The general effect was that of being in an aquarium where red lights marked, to put it more fancifully, the more dangerous fish. I stumbled over somebody’s foot, and then we found an empty table and sat down. Conversation could be heard around us, continuous as the whispering of crickets. In the stress of surprise Elaine lapsed into American.

  “What’s it all in aid of? This is a hell of a joint.”

  Above her a head grinned out at me from the wall, and I saw that at least part of my expectation had been fulfilled. This was the head of Robespierre, lighted from inside, with the handkerchief tied round his face as it had been after his arrest, when part of his jaw was shot away. Looking round I saw that other scenes from the Revolution appeared round the walls. There was Marie Antoinette riding in the tumbrel, Marat in his bath, the trial of Louis XVI. These panels were set into the wall and lighted from inside.

  Elaine was just asking whether we should have a drink or leave straight away when a voice said, “Christopher.” The word seemed to be so much a part of the general cricket chirring, and it seemed so impossible that anybody in this place would know me, that I ignored it. It was repeated. “Christopher, Christopher Barrington.”

  Elaine faced the room, I had my back to it, but now I turned to see a number of shadowy figures advancing on me. The foremost one put a hand on my shoulder. It was Betty Urquhart.

  “I knew I recognised that head-up look, as though you weren’t quite sure where the earth was. Glad you’ve reached the home of civilisation.” Before I knew what was happening she had kissed me firmly on the mouth, adding amiably to Elaine, “Don’t worry, doesn’t mean anything, I’ve got a licence to kiss every man under twenty-five. Are you going to introduce me, Chris?”

  At another time I would have thought, this can’t be happening, but in the green and red light nothing seemed unlikely, and I was murmuring Elaine’s name while Betty, in a much louder voice which still seemed to blend with the anonymous buzz around us, was naming her friends, the action painter Max Miners, Norman Beaver, Sally Metz, and a man named Carl whose surname I never discovered. In no time we were all sitting at one table and Betty, with a snap of her fingers, had summoned up service in the form of a young man wearing what seemed to be a green striped apron and a plain green blouse. She was obviously well known here.

  “What are we drinking? Pastis, of course, except for that bloody barbarian Norman and his Scotch. Chris, you’ll drink pastis, won’t you? And what about you darling?”

  “Beer.” Elaine’s voice sounded emphatic.

  Betty sat next to me on the banquette that faced the room. “You two are having a ball in Paris, is that right?” She brushed aside my attempt to say that it was not. “Nowhere better, my dear, nowhere better. I could do with some romance myself. You haven’t brought my ex along with you, I suppose? Pity. Paris would be just the place to make a man of him, put some lead in his pencil.”

  Across the table I could hear Max Miners saying to Elaine, “I tell you why I like this place. They say at night all cats are grey, down here they’re all red and green. Now I’m black and I’m sensitive about that, you get me, but down here what does it matter?”

  The drinks came and I tasted mine. That is another of the things I shall never forget, the taste of the green drink in the green room. I had never tasted it before and from the first sip of that strange mixture, the blend of paregoric with something cold, remote, and in an obscure way sexually stirring and liberating, I knew that this was a drink for me. Something of this must have shown in my face even in the dim light, for Betty said, “You like this snake juice?”

  “Snake juice?”

  “Didn’t you know? The damned stuff’s poison, I wish I didn’t like it so much.”

  “David, the man who said he was David, was a fake.”

  “Of course he was, didn’t I say so five minutes after I saw him?”

  “I know, but – ” I didn’t feel I could tell her about Doctor Foster, and indeed that whole scene at Belting seemed at this moment extremely remote. “He’s come over here, he ran away from Belting. We’re here to look for him.”

  “Why here?”

  “They say he comes to this place.” I tried to remember who had said so, but couldn’t. It didn’t seem to matter.

  “Does he? Well, half the riff-raff in Paris get in here at one time or another. What are you going to do with him when you’ve got him?”r />
  It was a question to which I couldn’t think of a reply.

  On the other side of me Sally Metz said, “You a poet or a painter?”

  I said boldly, “A poet.”

  “Shake, Chris, so am I.” We shook hands. She was a big blonde woman with a face like an intelligent horse and an incongruous curl in the middle of her forehead. “But what do you do about words?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “They’re the hell of writing poetry, I find, the way paint’s the trouble for a painter. I mean there they all are, what do you do with them? A painter like Max, see, he’s got this technique of throwing the stuff at a wall, photographing the effect and taking it from there by tracing the photographs on a canvas and copying it, so it’s impersonal. But how do you get poetry impersonal like that? The words mean too much, isn’t that right?”

  “I can’t say it’s ever bothered me.”

  “You’re a Georgian then.” She turned away to talk to Carl. I found that another drink was in front of me, and began to protest that I must pay.

  “Don’t be a fool, Chris,” Betty said. “I own this place.”

  I gaped at her. Was she joking? “Didn’t you know I was stinking rich? Not stinking actually, just a bit filthy, but I don’t mind telling you it’s a curse.”

  “But you said you were trying to be an actress.”

  “That was a long time ago. I stepped into the stuff with both feet when my father died after the war. Since then I’ve tried to do something for art, but how do you tell what’s real from what’s phoney?” I couldn’t answer that. “Do you like it here? I had it done by a young man who said he had ideas, and perhaps he had but I don’t know. I don’t know at all.”

  “Do you own any other property?” It seemed a ridiculous form of words, and she obviously thought so too.

  “I don’t own property, Chris, I encourage art. I’ve got a little gallery here, put on a show of some Russian named Chromik. Everyone told me he was a genius, but we never sold a single painting. And the Seven Arts Coffee House, just round the corner from the People’s Art Gallery, I own that too. Bookshop on the ground floor, jazz and coffee bar downstairs. Shall I tell you something bloody awful, Chris? This place here makes money and so does the Seven Arts. They’re commercial enterprises, see, I can’t go wrong on those, but when it comes to painters and writers I back losers every time.”

  “Yes, I see that’s a problem.”

  “I sometimes think the only real thing I ever had was life with Miles.”

  “Who are those other two men?”

  “Carl’s a painter, some people say he’s good. I’m supposed to be putting on his first one-man show here. Norman Beaver’s a playwright, he’s taking us to – ”

  “What about Henrik?” Norman said from the other side of the table. “Got to make a move, Bets.”

  She turned to face me. Green points of light were reflected in her eyes. “Why don’t you two come?”

  “Come where?”

  Some Ibsen play Norman’s mad about, says it’s a model for modern verse drama or something. A friend of his is directing it, Paul Delmain. We can manage another couple of seats, can’t we, Norman?”

  “I’ve got pull enough for that, Bets. I don’t imagine it will be a full house anyway.”

  “I’d love to come.” My voice sounded loud in my own ears. I realised that I’d forgotten to ask Elaine. “We’d love it, wouldn’t we?”

  “Yes.” The monosyllable was not encouraging.

  We went out in a noisy group. As we moved out of the dim green room into the equally dim red entrance, two figures walked out of this red anteroom into the street. Half a minute passed by the time Betty had got her coat and we were outside in the rue Babeuf, and during that half-minute I tried to remember why I had noticed the figures. That is putting it too precisely, for under the influence of pastis one does not “try to remember” anything, although I did not know this at the time. Pastis is like no other intoxicant that I have tasted, in that it actually clears the mind so that one’s thought processes are not blunted but sharpened, yet at the same time it makes the communication of one’s wholly logical thoughts and arguments extremely difficult. A neglected poet has well expressed the effect of drinking it:

  Gently I wave the visible world away.

  A roar is in my ears, afar yet near,

  Far off yet near a voice is in my ear.

  And is the voice my own? The words I say

  Fall faintly, like a dream, across the day.

  If my senses had not been sharpened by those two glasses of pastis very likely I should not have seen anything familiar about the two figures who left the Taverne before us, but if I had by chance noticed them then I might have run after them but for the deadly influence of the green drink. Instead I said calmly, almost indifferently, as the two figures appeared briefly under a street lamp before turning into the street that led to the Place des Vosges, “There go David and Ulfheim.”

  Betty, who was talking earnestly to Max Miners, said, “What did you say, Chris?” The rest of them except for Elaine took no notice. Why should they have done? Elaine was standing beside me. She gripped my arm. “Where?”

  I pointed, but there was now nobody to be seen. “They were in the Taverne. They left just before us.”

  She ran up the street. I stood and watched her. When she came back she said, “Nothing.”

  “They’ve gone. I didn’t make a mistake.”

  “Then why didn’t – ” She began in exasperation, and stopped. “Do you feel all right?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “You’re not fit to be out on your own. That’s the only reason I’m coming,” she said savagely.

  Somehow the seven of us crowded into the little red car, three in front and four behind. I was wedged between Elaine and Sally Metz, wedged in such a manner that none of us was really sitting down, yet all had a share of the limited seating space. Norman Beaver sat on Sally’s knees, and he kept up a running flow of comment on what we were going to see, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say a flow of comment about its relation to his own work.

  “They say verse drama’s out, isn’t that so, but that’s because they’re looking for the wrong sort of verse drama, don’t you see?”

  This was at a time when The Lady’s Not For Burning had recently been produced successfully and I interjected, “Fry.” The word was misunderstood.

  “Fry, you’re right, let ’em fry, or stew in their own Eliot-juice if you like. It’s all guff, isn’t it, all verse and no drama, but Ibsen is something else again. With him it’s the way it is with Shakespeare, drama first every time, and that’s the way it is with me too in Marco Polo Shoots the Moon.”

  “I haven’t heard of that,” Elaine said.

  “How would you, when it hasn’t been produced? It takes eight hours to play, they say I’ve got to cut it. What the hell, I told them, Shaw’s Methuselah took longer, and you know what they said to me? They said ‘You’re not Methuselah’.” He guffawed. It occurred to me that another reply would have been “You’re not Shaw,” but I did not say so.

  The Secte, which was the name of the theatre, was in Montmartre, off the Place Pigalle, and it was of a kind new to me at that time, although I have visited a good many similar theatres since then. It was in a large basement room, and there were perhaps a hundred seats, some of them very close to the small stage. Norman bustled about as soon as he got inside, talking to a crop-headed narrow-waisted young man who wore tight trousers. He came back and announced triumphantly that the seats were okay, although since the theatre was only half-full this was not surprising. We had been in our seats only a couple of minutes when the play began.

  I had never heard then of Love’s Comedy, or Comédie d’Amour as the programme naturally had it, and my ignorance was excusable, for I doubt if many even of the devoutest Ibsenites have seen it performed. It was written in 1862 but not actually performed, even in Norway, for another decade. The last Engli
sh performance took place in 1909, and I should think it unlikely that the play had ever before been staged in Paris. Love’s Comedy presents one of the essential Ibsenite dramas or conflicts, between the forces of art and society. Falk, a young poet, is in love with Svanhild, who shares his contempt for the petty everyday world around them. The conflict is repeated in the lives of everybody else in the play – a student, a clergyman, a clerk – they are all married or intending to marry, and with marriage abandoning the poetic pretensions which they had at one time. In the end Falk and Svanhild agree to part in the interests of Falk’s genius, precisely because they do love each other. She tears off his ring, throws it into a fjord, and cries:

  My task is done!

  Now I have filled thy soul with song and sun.

  Forth! Now thou soarest on triumphant wings.

  Forth! Now thy Svanhild is the swan that sings!

  To the abysmal ooze of ocean bed

  Descend, my dream – I fling thee in its stead.

  Whether or not Love’s Comedy had a revolutionary effect on verse drama, whether indeed it influenced Marco Polo Shoots the Moon, I shall never know. I can’t even be sure whether we saw a well-acted version of it, although there seemed to me to be a good deal more declamation and gesticulation than I care for on the stage. At some time during the first act I was nagged by a feeling that something in the play was of special significance for me, and the attempt to discover this significance became at last so overwhelming that I could hardly sit in my seat. Something about Love’s Comedy held a message for me, and I did not know what it was.

  Dissatisfaction was expressed by others, for different reasons. “Shall we go?” Betty asked after the second act. “I’m hungry.”

  Norman was shocked. “We ought to stay, Bets, or Paul’s going to be upset. You know how temperamental he is. I said he should join us afterwards, is that all right?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know if I can last out. I thought you said Paul was a genius.”