Soon they knew everybody in the Quarter, though no one knew either of them very intimately. People sitting at the café in the evening when the lights were on, saw them crossing the road together under the street lamp, their bodies leaning forward at the same angle, and walking on tiptoe. No one knew where they were going. Really they weren’t going anywhere in particular. They had been sitting at the café, nibbling pieces of sugar they had dipped in coffee, till Johnny said, “We’re being seen here too much, don’t you think, Charles?” And Charles said, “I think we ought to be seen at all the bars. We ought to go more often to the new bar.” So they had paid for their coffee and walked over to a side-street bar panelled in the old English style, with a good-natured English bartender, and sat together at a table listening to the careless talk of five customers at the bar, occasionally snickering out loud when a sentence overheard seemed incredibly funny. Stan Mason, an ingenuous heavy drinker, who had cultivated a very worldly feeling sitting at the same bars every night, explaining the depth of his sophistication to the same people, saw the boys holding their heads together and yelled, “What are you two little goats snickering at?” The boys stood up, bowing to him so politely and seriously he was ashamed of himself and asked them to have a drink with him. The rest of the evening they laughed so charmingly at his jokes he was fully convinced they were the brightest youngsters who had come to the Quarter in years. He asked the boys if they liked Paris, and smiling at each other and raising their glasses together they said that architecturally it was a great improvement over America. They had never been in New York or any other large American city but had no use for American buildings. There was no purpose in arguing directly with them. Charles would simply have raised his eyebrows and glanced slyly at Johnny, who would have snickered with his fingers over his mouth. Mason, who was irritated, and anxious to make an explanation, began talking slowly about the early block-like houses of the Taos Indians and the geometrical block style of the New York skyscrapers. For ten minutes he talked steadily about the Indians and a development of the American spirit. The boys listened politely, never moving their heads at all. Watching them, while he talked, Mason began to feel uncomfortable. He began to feel that anything he had to say was utterly unimportant because the two boys were listening to him so politely. But he finished strongly and said, “What do you think?”
“Do you really believe all that’s important?” Charles said.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s not.”
“Well, as long as you don’t think it important,” Johnny said.
At home the boys sat on the edge of the bed, talking about Stan Mason and snickered so long they were up half the night.
They had their first minor disagreement in the Quarter one evening in November with Milton Simpson, a prosperous, bright and effeminate young American business man who was living in Paris because he felt vaguely that the best approach to life was through all the arts together. He was secretly trying to write, paint and compose pieces for the piano. The boys were at a small bar with a floor for dancing and an American jazz artist at the piano, and Simpson and his wife came in. Passing, Simpson brushed against Charles, who, without any provocation at all, suddenly pushed him away. Simpson pushed too and they stood there pushing each other. Simpson began waving his arms in circles, and the man at the piano threw his arms around Charles, dragging him away. Neither one of them could have hurt each other seriously and everybody in the room was laughing at them. Finally Simpson sat down and Charles, standing alone, began to tremble so much he had to put his head down on the table and cry. His shoulders were moving jerkily. Then everybody in the room was sorry for Charles. Johnny, putting his arm around him, led him outside. Simpson, whose thin straight lips were moving nervously, was so impressed by Charles’s tears, that he and his wife followed them outside and over to the corner café where they insisted on sitting down with them at one of the brown oblong tables inside. Simpson bought the boys a brandy and his wife, who was interested in the new psychology, began to talk eagerly with Charles, evidently expecting some kind of an emotional revelation. The boys finished their brandies and Simpson quickly ordered another for them. For an hour the boys drank brandies and listened patiently and seriously to Simpson, who was talking ecstatically because he thought they were sensitive, sympathetic boys. They only smiled at him when he excitedly called them “sensitive organisms.” Charles, listening wide-eyed, was nervously scratching his cheek with the nail of his right forefinger till the flesh was torn and raw.
Afterwards, undressing slowly at home, Johnny said, “Simpson is such a bore, don’t you think so, Charles?”
“I know, but the brandies were very good.” They never mentioned the fight at the bar.
“It was so funny when you looked at him with that blue-eyed Danish stare of yours,” Johnny said, chuckling.
“People think I expect them to do tricks like little animals when I look at them like that,” Charles explained.
Naked, they sat on the edge of the bed, laughing at Simpson’s eagerness to buy them brandies, and they made so many witty sallies they tired themselves out and fell asleep.
For two weeks they weren’t seen around the cafés. Charles was writing another book and Johnny was typing it for him. It was a literary two weeks for both of them. They talked about all the modern authors and Johnny suggested that not one of them since Henry James had half Charles’s perception or subtle delicacy. Actually Charles did write creditably enough and everything he did had three or four good paragraphs in it. The winter was coming on and when this literary work was finished they wanted to go south.
No one ever knew how they got the money to go to the Riviera for the winter. No one knew how they were able to drink so much when they had only Johnny’s hundred dollars a month. At Nice, where Stan Mason was living, they were very cheerful and Mason, admiring their optimism because he thought they had no money, let them have a room in his apartment. They lived with him till the evening he put his ear against the thin wall and heard them snickering, sitting on the edge of the bed. They were talking about him and having a good laugh. Stan Mason was hurt because he had thought them bright boys and really liked them. He merely suggested next morning that they would have to move since he needed the room.
The boys were mainly happy in Nice because they were looking forward to returning to Paris in April. The leaves would be on all the trees and people would be sitting outside on the terraces at the cafés. Everybody they met in Nice told them how beautiful it was in Paris in the early spring, so they counted upon having the happiest time they had ever had together. When they did leave Nice they owed many thousand francs for an hotel bill, payment of which they had avoided by tossing their bags out of the window at two o’clock in the morning. They even had a little extra money at the time, almost twenty dollars they had received from an elderly English gentleman, who had suggested, after talking to them all one morning, he would pay well to see the boys make a “tableau” for him. The old fellow was enthusiastic about the “tableau” and the boys had something to amuse them for almost two weeks.
They returned to Paris the first week in April. Now that April was here they had expected to have so much fun, but the weather was disagreeable and cold. This year the leaves were hardly on the trees and there was always rain in the dull skies. They assured each other that the dull days could not last because it was April and Paris was the loveliest city in the world in the early spring.
Johnny’s father had been writing many irritable letters from England, where he was for a few months, and the boys decided it was an opportune time for Johnny to go and see him for a week. When he returned they would be together for the good days at the end of the month.
People were not very interested in Charles while Johnny was away. They liked him better when he was with Johnny. All week he walked around on tiptoe or sat alone at a corner table in the café. The two boys together seemed well mannered and bright, but Charles, alone, looked rather insignificant. Without
thinking much about it he knew the feeling people had for him and avoided company, waiting impatiently for the days to pass, worrying about Johnny. He said to Stan Mason late one night, “I hope Johnny has enough sense not to pick up with a girl over in England.”
“Why worry? Do it yourself now.”
“Oh I do, too, only I don’t take them as seriously as Johnny does. Not that I mind Johnny having a girl,” he said, “only I don’t want him to have a complicated affair with one.”
The night Johnny returned to Paris they went around to all the bars and people, smiling, said, “There go the two boys.” They were happy, nervously happy, and Charles was scratching his cheek with his nail. Later on they wanted to be entirely alone and left the café district and the crowds to walk down the narrow side streets to the Seine while Johnny, chuckling, related the disagreeable circumstances of his visit to his father. His father had contended that he was a wastrel who ought to be earning his own living, and Johnny had jeeringly pointed out that the old man had inherited his money without having to work for it. They were angry with each other, and the father had slapped Johnny, who retaliated by poking him in the jaw. That was the most amusing part of the story the boys talked about, walking along the left bank of the Seine opposite the Louvre. Casually Johnny told about a few affairs he had with cheap women in London, and Charles understood that these affairs had not touched him at all. It was a warm clear evening, the beginning of the real spring days in April, and the boys were happy walking by the river in the moonlight, the polished water surface reflecting the red and white lights on the bridges.
Near the end of the month Constance Foy, whom the boys had known at Nice, came to Paris, and they asked her to live with them. She was a simple-minded fat-faced girl with a boy’s body and short hair dyed red, who had hardly a franc left and was eager to live with anybody who would keep her. For a week the three of them were happy in the big studio. The boys were proud of their girl and took her around to all the bars, buying drinks for her, actually managing to do it on the hundred dollars a month. In the nighttime they were impartial and fair about Constance, who appeared to have all her enthusiasm for the one who, at the moment, was making love to her. But she said to Stan Mason one evening, “I don’t know whether or not I ought to be there messing up that relationship.”
“Aren’t the three of you having a good time?”
“Good enough, but funny things are happening.”
The boys were satisfied till Charles began to feel that Johnny was making love to Constance too seriously. It was disappointing, for he had never objected to having her in the studio, and now Johnny was so obvious in his appreciation of her. Charles, having this feeling, was now unable to touch her at all, and resented Johnny’s unabated eagerness for her. It was all the same to Constance.
Before the end of the month the two boys were hardly speaking to each other, though always together at the cafés in the evening. It was too bad, for the days were bright and clear, the best of the April weather, and Paris was gay and lively. The boys were sad and hurt and sorry but determined to be fair with each other. The evening they were at the English bar, sitting at one of the table beer barrels, Charles had a hard time preventing himself crying. He was very much in love with Johnny and felt him slipping away. Johnny, his fingers over his mouth, sometimes shook his head but didn’t know what to say.
Finally they left the bar to walk home. They were going down the short, quiet street leading to the Boulevard.
“What are you going to do about Constance?” Charles said.
“If it’s all the same to you I’ll have her to myself.”
“But what are you going to do with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’d let a little tart like that smash things,” Charles said, shaking his hand at Johnny.
“Don’t you dare call her a tart.”
“Please, Johnny, don’t strike at me.”
But Johnny who was nearly crying with rage swung his palm at Charles, hitting him across the face. Stan Mason had just turned the corner at the Boulevard, coming up to the bar to have a drink, and saw the two of them standing there.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“I begged him, I implored him not to hit me,” Charles said.
“Oh, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him, what’ll I do?” Johnny said, tears running down his cheeks.
They stood there crying and shaking their heads, but would not go home together. Finally Charles consented to go with Stan to his hotel and Johnny went home to Constance.
Charles stayed with Mason all week. He would not eat at all and didn’t care what he was drinking. The night Mason told him Johnny was going back to America, taking Constance with him, he shook his head helplessly and said, “How could he hit me, how could he hit me, and he knew I loved him so much.”
“But what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“How are you going to live?”
“I’ll make enough to have a drink occasionally.”
At the time, he was having a glass of Scotch, his arm trembling so weakly he could hardly lift the glass.
The day Johnny left Paris it rained and it was cold again, sitting at the café in the evening. There had been only one really good week in April. The boys always used to sit at the cafés without their hats on, their hair brushed nicely. This evening Charles had to go home and get his overcoat and the big black hat he had bought in America. Sitting alone at his table in the cool evening, his overcoat wrapped around him, and the black hat on, he did not look the same at all. It was the first time he had worn the hat in France.
1929
THE FAITHFUL WIFE
Until a week before Christmas George worked in the station restaurant at the lunch counter. The weather was extraordinarily cold, then the sun shone strongly for a few days, though it was always cold again in the evenings. There were three other men working at the counter. They had a poor reputation. Women, unless they were careless and easygoing, never started a conversation with them over lunch at noontime. The girls at the station always avoided the red-capped negro porters and the countermen.
George was working there till he got enough money to go back home for a week and then start late in the year at college. He had wiry brown hair receding on his forehead and bad upper teeth, but he was very polite and open. Steve, the plump Italian with the waxed black moustache, who had charge of the restaurant, was very fond of George.
Many people passed the restaurant window on the way to the platform and the trains. The four men got to know some of them. Girls, brightly dressed, loitered in front of the open door, smiling at George, who saw them so often he knew their first names. Other girls, with a few minutes to spare before going back to work, used to walk up and down the tiled tunnel to the waiting room, loafing the time away, but they never glanced in at the countermen. It was cold outside, the streets were slippery, and it was warm in the station, that was all.
George watched one girl every day at noon hour. The others had also noticed her, and two or three times she came in for a cup of coffee, but she was so gentle, and aloofly pleasant, and so unobtrusively beyond them, they were afraid to try and amuse her with easy cheerful talk. George wished she had never seen him in the restaurant behind the counter, though he knew she had not noticed him at all. Her cheeks were usually rosy from the cold wind outside. When she went out of the door to walk up and down for a few minutes, an agreeable expression on her face, she never once looked back at the restaurant. George, pouring coffee, did not expect her to look back. She was about twenty-eight, pretty, rather shy, and dressed plainly and poorly in a thin, blue cloth coat. Then, one day she had on a fawn felt hat. She smiled politely at him when having a cup of coffee, and as long as possible he stood opposite her, cleaning the counter with a damp cloth.
The last night he worked at the station he went out at about half past eight in the evening, for he had an hour to himself, and then he would work till ten
o’clock. In the morning he was going home, so he walked out of the station and down the side street to the docks, and was having only pleasant thoughts, passing the warehouses, looking out over the dark cold lake and liking the tang of the wind on his face. Christmas was only a week away. The falling snow was melting when it hit the sidewalk. He was glad he was through with the job at the restaurant.
An hour later, back at the counter, Steve said, “A dame just phoned you, George, and left her number.”
“You know who she was?”
“No, you got too many girls, George. Don’t you know the number?”
“Never saw it before.”
He called the number and did not recognize the voice that answered. A woman was asking pleasantly if he remembered her. He said he did not. She said she had had a cup of coffee that afternoon at noontime, and added that she had worn a blue coat and a fawn-colored felt hat, and even though she had not spoken to him, she thought he would remember her.
“Good Lord,” he said.
She wanted to know if he would come and see her at ten-thirty that evening. He said he would, and hardly heard her giving the address. Steve and the others started to kid him brightly, but he was too astonished, wondering how she had found out his name, to bother with them. As they said goodbye to him and elbowed him in the ribs, urging him to celebrate on his last night in the city, Steve shook his head and pulled the ends of his moustache down into his lips.
The address the girl had given him was only eight blocks away, so he walked, holding his hands clenched in his pockets, for he was cold and uncertain. The brownstone, opposite a public school on a side street, was a large old rooming house. A light was in a window on the second storey over the door. Ringing the bell he didn’t really expect anyone to answer, and was surprised when the girl opened the door.
“Good evening,” he said shyly.
“Come upstairs,” she said smiling and practical.
Ancient Lineage and Other Stories Page 8