Paris at the End of the World

by John Baxter

  Colonial powers rely on converting subject races to their own values, teaching them the national language, introducing them to the national cuisine, educating them in the national manners. It would take a while for the French to realize that the Americans had no intention of becoming French. Rather, they intended to turn the French into Americans. Over the next century, the two cultures would fight each other to a standstill.

  But it was becoming clear that four years of war and exposure to alien standards had damaged France as much as the American Civil War wounded the United States. Of the war’s effect on France, Edith Wharton wrote, “Like a monstrous landslide, it had fallen across the path of an orderly laborious nation, disrupting its routine, annihilating its industries, rending families apart, and burying under a heap of senseless ruin the patiently and painfully wrought machinery of civilization.”

  Gertrude Stein coined the phrase “lost generation” to describe not the disillusioned expatriate writers, but those young French men and women who, because of the war, hadn’t finished their education, learned a trade, or developed an affinity for their culture. When, after 1919, Paris was gripped by les années folles, the crazy years, many of the disaffected young would find work in the growth industries of show business, prostitution, and crime.

  No longer the woman of Europe, Paris became its whore, the international capital of sex and jazz, jiving to the charleston, the black bottom, le fox. Cafés rebranded themselves as bars americains, serving the cocktails the French never drank. High-stakes casinos, banished in 1913 beyond a hundred-kilometer radius of the city, returned now as spurious “clubs.” One of the largest, the Sporting Club de France, bought a mansion next to the residence of the president, installed a gym and a swimming pool, then dropped the pretence. “Members mostly ‘sport’ in the card rooms,” noted journalist Basil Woon, “and days go by when the pool is empty of anything but water.”

  The arrival of Prohibition in 1920 would accelerate the flow of tourists. Visiting Paris for the first time in 1906, Ezra Pound met people who’d never seen an American. After the war, they could scarcely be avoided. By 1923, 135,000 arrived there every year, a number rising fast. So devalued would the franc become that, as Ernest Hemingway explained in a 1923 article for Esquire, one could live comfortably in Paris for a year on just a thousand U.S. dollars.

  One historian analyzed these changes optimistically as “a giant step into modernity. Life would never again be about a state of being; it would be about doing. Pleasure would give way to productivity, and men who were once worshipped for their beauty, money, and abundance of leisure time would become extraneous when usefulness and purpose took over.”

  Painters, composers, and authors were not so philosophical. Accustomed to singing for their supper at the salons of the rich, they would find those tables bare, their candles snuffed, the gas lamps dimmed, never to be relit. In the electric light that illuminated postwar Paris, a culture that looked its best in the soft glow of gas and beeswax was exposed by the pitiless glare of the incandescent bulb as blighted and sick to death.

  39

  The City of Darkness

  As a small boy, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.

  CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, My Heart Laid Bare, 1887

  Archie woke to a nudge in his ribs. He barely felt it through the greatcoat wrapped around him, but a second dig, more of a kick, opened his eyes. The bargeman’s wife, half-crouched, was staring down at him through the open hatch, a blob of darker darkness against a sky without stars.

  “Nous voilà.”

  Archie boosted himself onto the deck. He could have slept warm in the cabin, but as he was, technically at least, AWOL, it seemed more prudent to doss down on some empty sacks in the hold, which, during the down-river part of the trip, had held cabbages. Their gassy smell hung around him as he shivered in the predawn chill, sensing rather than seeing buildings lining both sides of the river.

  This was Paris? At 3:00 a.m., and obscured by the blackout, it looked desolate, abandoned. Then a light flared on the bank. A man in a flat cap, pushing a bicycle, had paused to light a cigarette. As he cupped the match to his mouth, his face seemed to float in velvet blackness. For an instant he looked across at Archie, probably seeing no more than a shrouded shape bulking against the loom of the dark. The spark of his discarded match arced into the water. Archie almost thought he heard it hiss.

  At the same moment, the barge angled toward the opposite bank. So deep was the silence of the sleeping city that he heard the gurgle of the water under its bow. Other barges lined the bank, moored to iron bollards and rings sunk into the stone abutment. On the deck of one, wet shirts and underwear hung limp from a line; another had a rowboat lashed to the stern. Archie glimpsed a window, with a flowerpot, a wilting tulip.

  “Allez. Allez vite!”

  As the gap narrowed, he hopped across the few feet of black water onto the moored barge, then, carried by his momentum, across its deck and onto the bank. By the time he looked back, the barge that brought him up from Le Havre was barely visible. Before he could wave his thanks, it had disappeared altogether.

  Fifty yards ahead, an old stone bridge loomed. He walked under its arch, through a miasma of rotting damp and ancient piss. Something scuttled in the dark. Rats. But on the other side, stone steps led up to street level.

  He emerged next to the statue of a man on a horse; what man it was too dark to tell, since the dim orange streetlights barely lit the pavement. But probably some king; it usually was.

  He looked around at the deserted streets with a sense of anticlimax. His spontaneous gesture of independence now looked absurd. He felt like the general who, ready to surrender, could find nobody to accept his sword.

  A horse-drawn cart materialized out of the dark and clopped toward him. But nobody sat on the high bench seat. Where was the driver? Only as it passed did he notice a figure lying on top of the load, reins wrapped round his hands, apparently asleep.

  A pothole jolted the cart and something fell off. Stepping out into the street, Archie picked it up. A carrot. Realizing he was hungry, and taking the vegetable as Paris’s offhand gift of welcome, a sort of key to the city, he wiped it on the side of his coat and took a bite, the earth grating on his teeth.

  As he chewed, another cart approached. He felt through the stones rather than heard the heavy tread of the hooves, the iron wheels grinding the cobbles. Materializing from the same direction as the first, it crossed in front of him, close enough for him to see the tousled hair of the boy on top, his blond hair like a more refined sketch of the heads of cauliflowers on which he slept.

  Sustained by the carrot juice, Archie stepped into the road and joined the somnambulistic caravan.

  He heard and smelled the market before he saw it: a muted muttering of voices and noise, carried on the same waft as the cocktail of odors—fruit, meat, herbs, smoke—that shouted in the universal language of appetite: “Food.”

  By the time he could see the vast iron-and-glass pavilions, glowing like lanterns in the dark, he was walking alongside a score of carts, nose to tail. Sensing the lack of motion, farm boys were awaking sleepily, unrolling themselves from their cocoon-like woolen coats. Hand-knitted on thick needles, they used wool that retained the original grease. It waterproofed the garment, at the cost of making the wearer smell like a sheep.

  A few boys hung feed bags over the heads of the horses. One, taking a leisurely piss in the gutter, nodded as Archie walked past.

  The head of the line was a melée of disciplined activity. Brawny men in ankle-length aprons led horses to where others with baskets and handcarts waited to offload turnips, potatoes, cabbages, kale, onions, and other vegetables Archie had never seen, let alone eaten. Everything was hauled into the nearest pavilion, where avenues of market stalls disappeared into the remote distance.

  To left and right, other carts at other pavilions disgorged baskets of apples and pears or sides of lamb and p
ork. Men in bloody aprons balanced whole carcasses on their heads. Others hauled heavy handcarts loaded with produce. And everywhere, a torrent of noise and an avalanche of odors.

  Among the sounds and smells, he identified some that interested him most. They came not from the market but from cafés that lined the streets. One at the next corner, larger and brighter than the others, displayed a sign over the door. LE CHAT QUI FUME. The cat that . . . fumes? A painting on one of its windows, of a ragged tabby with a pipe, provided the clue. The Smoking Cat.

  A big red car nosed into the street behind him, its driver hooting at the queued-up carts. Nobody took any notice. Finally, it rode its front wheels up onto the sidewalk, and the passengers, five of them, dressed in evening clothes, climbed out. As they pushed through the double doors into the restaurant, their chauffeur got out, tilted his cap with the shiny visor onto the back of his head, and, leaning against the mudguard, lit a cigarette.

  Archie followed the party into the café.

  Even at three in the morning, the place was seething. For all the notice they took of the world outside, it might have been bright day and not the middle of the night. Waiters in long aprons wove between the tables, holding trays above their heads loaded with glasses of beer and wine and plates of food. There was a constant traffic of people climbing and descending a wooden staircase to the first floor. The roar of conversation blended into a fog of sound as all-enveloping as the mixture of cigarette smoke and breath and food smells that passed for air.

  A couple got up from a tiny corner table, and Archie seized it, wedging himself against the wall. He’d begun to sweat, but it was too late now to struggle out of his greatcoat. Resigning himself to discomfort, he looked around the room.

  The party from the car were installed in the corner opposite, spreading out over two tables. The women, shrugging their evening cloaks off bare shoulders of ivory and gold, let the rich, brilliantly figured fabric spill across the back of their chairs, even brush the floor. As one of them crossed her legs, a slim ankle enclosed in a silver sandal emerged from a shimmer of electric blue satin.

  The three men were in evening dress, but one of them—the undoubted star—also wore a light beige overcoat, which he didn’t remove; just left it draped like a cloak over his narrow shoulders. Though he should be perspiring like Archie, he was not a man with whom one associated the word “sweat.” Thin and pale, with a narrow birdlike face, he never stopped talking or moving his thin pale hands. They fluttered.

  “Je vous écoute.”

  A waiter stood over Archie, staring indifferently through the window toward the market.

  “Uh . . . I don’t know.”

  The man at the next table, one of the market porters, was spooning up soup covered with a cheesy crust. Archie pointed to it.

  “This.”

  “D’acc. Soupe à l’oignon,” the waiter said, making a note. “Et pour boire?”

  Seeing that Archie didn’t understand, he frowned in exasperation, then mimed upending a glass.

  “Uh . . . beer?”

  “Bière.” The waiter left, yelling over his shoulder, in the direction of the bar, “Un pression!”

  “Puis-je m’asseoir ici?”

  The girl just materialized. He hadn’t seen her come in—wondered later if she might have been upstairs and seen him from the stairs. Old or young, pretty or plain? Under the rice powder, lipstick, and mascara, the fringe of black hair, he received only that instinctive animal impression of Other.

  “I . . . uh, I don’t . . . I mean . . .”

  “Ah, English?”

  “No. Australian.”

  “Australien . . . huh.” She touched the back of the chair opposite. “I can?”

  “Yes. Please. Sit.”

  She sat, and put a purse—cracked black patent leather, clasp rubbed down to the yellow brass—on the table next to her hand.

  “You are army? En permission?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t speak . . .”

  “Permission is . . .” She searched for the English word. “Leave?”

  “Oh, yes. Leave.”

  She mimed smoking; two fingers to her lips. “Cigarette?”

  “I don’t . . .” He thought of the cat with the pipe. “Fume.”

  “Ah, vous parlez français.”

  He shook his head. “But you parlez anglais.”

  Her pout signified doubt or disagreement.

  “Little . . . Enough . . .” A seesaw motion with her hand. “Not enough. Alors . . .” Her eyes moved around the room restlessly. “So . . . no cigarette. A drink?”

  “Yes. If you like. What?”

  Casually she reached behind her, snagged a waiter with a hand on his arm and spoke very fast. He nodded and shouted something to the barman. Belatedly, Archie remembered horror stories of men on leave lured into bars where girls ordered expensive drinks and forced them to pay.

  She seemed to sense his panic.

  “Du calme. Is not champagne. A pastis.” She held out her hand to shake. “Edith.” She didn’t pronounce the “h” so it came out “Ay-dit.”

  He took her fingers in his. “Archie.”

  “Achille?”

  “No. Arch-ee.”

  She tried again, but the “ch” defeated her.

  “All right,” he said. “Achille.” Could anyone really take him for an Achilles? But the very thought made him feel bolder.

  The corner party had become more animated, the man with the pale hands more voluble. With the coat over his shoulders, he resembled a gaunt desert bird with folded wings.

  She followed his gaze. “You know?”

  “Me? No. Do you?”

  She stared over her shoulder, frankly inquisitive. The second of the two women, small, dark, was talking, leaning forward, moving her head. Diamonds sparkled at her ears.

  When Edith turned back, she said, “Her, I think. The Jew. Une comtesse de Hongrie, je crois.” Seeing that Archie didn’t understand, she went on, “The brune . . . dark hair. A countess, I think. Of . . . ’ungary?”

  The waiter brought his beer and her pastis, with a jug of water.

  “And the man? With the coat?”

  “Uh . . . moment. I listen.” Abstractedly, her attention focused on the conversation at the other table, she trickled water into the glass as she did so. As if watching a magic trick, Archie saw the green liquid become suddenly milky.

  At last she said, “I think . . . writer?” She listened some more. “He talk about . . .”

  Exasperated, she buttonholed their waiter again. After a muttered conversation, she let him go and turned back to Archie.

  “ ’is name Jean Cocteau. ’E write poésie, pièce théâtrale . . . er, play for theater. Is pedé . . .” She made the universal gesture of the limp wrist. “How do you say?”

  “We say ‘poofter’—but I know what you mean.”

  “Pouf-tair?” She grinned. “Chouette! My first Australian word!”

  The waiter plonked down Archie’s soup, a spoon, and a napkin. Just the smell was enough to make him salivate.

  He gestured to Edith. “Would you . . . ?”

  She shook her head and tapped her glass with one nail.

  As he ate, she listened to the man she called Cocteau and gave Archie a running commentary.

  “ ’E talk of zer war. (Everyone talk of war. I am tired of zis war.) ’E lose, ’e say, seven friends . . . one, un poète, Apollinaire. . . . Ah, I ’ave seen this one in here. Fat . . .” She mimed winding something around her head. “Blessé.”

  Some gestures were universal. A bandaged head wound.

  But she was listening again.

  “Another . . . un aviateur . . . oh, Garros! Was friend of Garros.”

  Archie found he could reconstruct much of what the man was saying just from watching his hands. Turned toward the others, palms outward, offering, I don’t have to tell you, my friends. . . . Palms inward, crossed on his chest, My heart, my very soul . . . The right hand lifted,
open, with a gesture of release, Gone . . . The same hand laid like a dead thing on the table, Never to return. . .

  But then he made a gesture Archie couldn’t read. The hands lifted, turned outward as if to encompass the whole of existence: the long face morose, chin high, a slow shake of the head, the eyes close to tears. Christ, sorrowing for the fall of Man.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “Oh . . . is poésie. N’importe.”

  “No. Please. What?”

  She sighed. “ ’E talk of Paree. Un cité des ténèbres. A city of . . . dark shadows? ’E look for verité . . . truth.” That moue again, now signifying skepticism. “Is poésie. Ca ne fait rien.”

  His soup bowl was empty. The beer glass too. Apparently he’d eaten and drunk both, though he couldn’t remember doing so. The girl’s pastis was gone also.

  Delving inside his uniform, he found his meager roll of notes and started to peel off the largest. Shaking her head, Edith took the money, selected three notes of smaller denomination, and handed back the rest.

  “Save . . . for hotel.”

  “No hotel. I came . . .” Unable to explain the complexities of his flight, he fell back on French usage, and shrugged.

  She pointed at the money in his hand. “For hotel . . . is not much. For good hotel . . .” She shook her head. Her expression conveyed her opinion of the kind of room he could get for this kind of money.

  Looking at him appraisingly, she teased out another note between thumb and forefinger.

  “For Edith?”

  “Yes. Why not?”

  She smiled and made another moue. This time, a fake kiss.

  “You come,” she said, standing up.

  “Come . . . where?”

  “Chez moi. Is salle de bain.” She wrinkled her nose. “You smell of choux . . . cabbage.” She hooked her arm through his. “And you will tell me of les kangourous.”