OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  At the Régence they found a table on the terrace of the old café where Napoleon had played dominoes, and among the gay clatter of the crowd of waning afternoon they drank brandy, talked passionately and with almost delirious happiness, drank brandy again, and watched the swarming and beautiful life upon the pavements and at the crowded tables all around them.

  The streams of traffic up and down the whole Avenue de l'Opéra and the Place de la Comédie Française, the delicate, plain, and beautiful façade of the Comédie across the Square from them, the statue of frail De Musset, half-fainting backwards in the arms of his restoring muse--all this seemed not only part of him, but now that Starwick was here, to gain an enormous enhancement and enchantment, to be the total perfume of an incredibly good and lovely and seductive life, the whole of which, in all its infinite ramifications, seemed to be distilled into his blood like a rare liquor and to belong to him. And so they drank and talked and drank until full dark had come, and tears stood in their eyes, and the brandy saucers were racked up eight deep upon their table.

  Then, gloriously sad and happy and exultantly triumphant, and full of nameless joys and evil, they stepped into one of the shrill, exciting little taxis and were charioted swiftly up that thronging noble street, until the great soaring masses of the Opéra stood before them and the Café de la Paix was at one side.

  And they were young, all-conquering and exultant, and all the magic life of strange million-footed Paris belonged to them, and all its strange and evil fragrance burned fierce and secret in their veins, and they knew that they were young and that they would never die, that it was New Year's Eve in Paris, and that that magic city had been created for them. By this time they had between them about 400 francs.

  Then followed the huge kaleidoscope of night: at one o'clock, leaving a café, they got into a taxi, and vociferously demanded of the ruddy driver, in French made eloquently confident by alcohol and joy, that they be taken to the resorts most frequented by "nos frères--vous comprenez?--les honnêtes hommes--les ouvriers."

  He smilingly assented, and from that time on until dawn they made a madman's round of little vile cafés, so mazed, so numerous, so inextricably confused in the vast web-like slum and jungle of nocturnal Paris, that later they could never thread their way back through that labyrinth of crooked alley-ways, and drunkenness and confusion. Their driver took them to a region which they later thought was somewhere in that ancient, foul and tangled quarter between the Boulevard de Sébastopol and Les Halles. And all that night, from one o'clock to dawn, they threaded noxious alleys, beside the shuttered façades of ancient, evil, crone-like houses, and stopped at every blaze of garish light to enter dirty little dives, where sullen evil-visaged men surveyed them sullenly over bistro bars, and gave them with a slimy hand cheap vile cognac in greasy little glasses. In these places there was always the evil, swelling, fatly unctuous and seductive music of accordions, the hoarse bravos of applause. Here one bought metal slugs, a dozen for five francs, and gave them to sluttish sirens with no upper teeth for the favour of a dance; and here also there were many soldiers: Colonial negroes, black as ebony, were most in favour; and here were men with caps and scarves and evil, furtive eyes, who watched them steadily.

  From place to place, from dive to dive, all through that huge and noxious labyrinth of night, their wild debauch wore on. And presently they noticed that, wherever they went, two gendarmes followed them, stood quietly at the bar, and courteously and genially took the drinks they always bought for them, and were always there when they entered the next place. And the ruddy and good-natured taxi-man was always there as well, and he too always drank with them, and always said, with robust satisfaction: "Mais oui! Parbleu! A votre santé, messieurs!"

  The grey haggard light of daybreak showed the cold grey waters of the Seine, ancient, narrowed, flowing on between huge stone walls, the haggard steep façades of the old shuttered houses in the Latin Quarter, the narrow angularity of the silent streets. In Montparnasse they got out at the corner of the Boulevard Edgar Quinet and demanded the reckoning. All that remained to them was less than fifty francs; they took it all, the soiled and nibbled little five-franc notes, the coppery one and two-franc pieces, the ten- and twenty-five- and fifty-centime pieces, and poured it into his hands, and stood there, guilty, silent and ashamed, before his astonished and reproachful face, because he had stood by them well and loyally all through that blind kaleidoscope of night, and it was New Year's Eve, and they were drunk and gay, and, he had thought, rich Americans, and he had hired for, earned, expected, more.

  "It's all we have," they said.

  That ruddy robust man then did something that is perhaps rare in the annals of French taxidom, and which they never forgot.

  After an astonished moment, while he looked at the little wad of bills and coins in his broad palm, he suddenly laughed loud and cheerfully, tossed the little wad of money in the air and caught it as it fell, stripped off a five-franc note and pocketed the rest, handed the five-franc note to Starwick, and said cheerfully--

  "It's all right! You two boys take this and buy yourselves some breakfast to sober up on. Happy New Year!"--and with a friendly farewell wave of the hand, drove off.

  They had delicious morning crescent rolls, fresh-baked and crusty, and thick rich chocolate, at a little bakery in the Boulevard Edgar Quinet, next to Starwick's quarters. He was living in a studio, loaned to him, he said, by "two friends," whom he did not name, and who were "out of town for the holidays."

  The studio was one of a row of similar buildings all fronting on a little enclosed alley-way. One entered from a street through a gate set in the wall: one rang a bell, and presently la concierge pressed a button which released the door. Inside, it was very quiet and still and grey with the grey morning light of New Year's Day. And all the city was shut out. Then they entered Starwick's studio: in the grey light a big room with a slanting roof of grey glazed glass emerged: around the walls were paintings, the limbs and fragments of unfinished sculptures, a few chairs and tables, and a couch bed. At the back there was a balcony, and steps ascending to it: here too there was a cot, and Starwick told Eugene he could sleep up there.

  Both young men were groggy with weariness and the night's debauch: in the cold grey light, life looked black and ugly; they were exhausted and ashamed. Starwick lay down upon the couch and went to sleep; Eugene ascended to the balcony, pulled off his clothes and tossed them in a heap, and fell into the deep drugged sleep of drunkenness and exhaustion.

  He slept till noon; and was awakened by the sound of steps below, the opening and closing of the door, and suddenly a woman's voice, light, gay, authoritative, and incisive:

  "Darling, we're back again!" the gay, light voice cried out. "Welcome to our city! Happy New Year," she went on more quietly, and with a note of tender intimacy. "How have you been?"

  He heard Starwick's quiet voice as it answered her, and presently the low, brief, and almost sullen tones of another woman. Starwick called sleepily up to Eugene, telling him to dress at once and come down: when he got downstairs, Starwick and the two women were waiting for him.

  The one with the light, gay, incisive voice greeted him warmly and cordially, and made him feel instantly at home. She seemed to be the older of the two, and yet there was not much difference in their age. The other woman shook hands with him almost curtly, and muttered a few words of greeting. She was a big dark-haired New England sort of girl; she wore dark, drab, rusty-looking clothes, and her face had a sullen, almost heavy cast to it. While Starwick, and the other woman, whose name was Elinor, rattled gaily on together, the dark girl sat sullenly and awkwardly in her chair and said nothing. Once or twice they spoke to her: she had a way of answering with a few curt sullen words and a short angry laugh, which went as quickly as it came, and left her face heavy and sullen again. But the moment she laughed, Eugene noticed that her mouth was very red and sweet, her teeth beautifully white, and for a moment the girl's sullen face was illuminated by a radia
nt tender loveliness. He heard Frank call her Ann: Starwick seemed to want to tease her, and when he spoke to her there was a little burble of malicious laughter in his voice. Turning to Eugene, his pleasant face reddening and the burble of malicious laughter playing in his throat, Frank said:

  "She is very beautiful. You'd never think it, but she really is, you know."

  Ann muttered something short and angry, and her face flushing, she laughed her short sudden laugh of anger and exasperation. And as she did so, her face came alive at once with its radiant loveliness, and he saw that what Starwick said of her was true.

  LXXVII

  That was a fine life that he had that year. He lived in a little hotel in the Rue des Beaux-Arts. He had a good room there which cost him twelve francs a day. It was a good hotel, and was the place where Oscar Wilde had died. When anyone wanted to see the celebrated death-room, he would ask to see "la chambre de Monsieur Veeld," and Monsieur Gely, the proprietor, or one of his buxom daughters, would willingly show it.

  At nine o'clock in the morning the maid would come in with chocolate or coffee, bread and jam and butter, which was included in the price of the room. She put it down on a little cabinet beside his bed, which had a door and a chamber pot inside. After she went out he would get up and move it to the table, and drink the chocolate and eat some bread and jam. Then he would go back to bed and sleep until noon and sometimes later: at one o'clock, Starwick and the two women would come to take him to lunch. If they did not come, they would send him a pneumatique telling him where to meet them. They went to a great many different places, but the lunch was always good. Sometimes they would send a pneumatique telling him to meet them at the Dome or the Rotonde. When he got there they would be sitting at a table on the terrace, and already very gay. Starwick would have a stack of saucers racked up before him on the table. On each saucer would be a numeral which said 3.50, or 5.00, or 6.00, or 7.50 francs, depending on what he had been drinking.

  Usually it was cognac, but sometimes Starwick would greet him with a burble of laughter, saying in his sensuous and voluptuous voice: "Did you ever drink Amer Picon?"

  "No," he would say.

  "Well," said Starwick. "You ought to try it. You really ought, you know." And the soft burble would come welling up out of his throat again, and Elinor, looking at him tenderly, smiling, would say:

  "Francis! You idiot! Leave the child alone!"

  Then they would go to lunch. Sometimes they went to a place near by called Henriettes which Elinor had known about when she was an ambulance driver in the war. Again they would cross the river and eat at Prunier's, Weber's, the Café Régence, Fouquet's, or at a place halfway up the hill in Montmartre, which was in a square called the Place des Martyrs, and which was called L'Ecrevisse, probably because of a little shell-fish which they sold there, and which was a specialty. That was a fine place: they always ate out on the terrace, where they could see everything that was going on in the little square, and Elinor, who had known the place for years, said how lovely it would be in spring.

  Often they would eat at little places, which were not very expensive and which Elinor also knew about. She knew about everything: there was nothing about Paris she did not know. Elinor did the talking, rattling off her French like a native--or, anyway, like a native of Boston who speaks French well--trippingly off the tongue, getting the same intonations and gestures the French got, when she argued with them, saying:

  "Mais non--mais non mais non mais non mais non mais non!" so rapidly that we could hardly follow her, and she could say: "Oui. C'est ça!--Mais parfaitement!--Entendu! . . . Formidable!" etc., in the same way as a Frenchman could.

  Yet there was a trace of gaiety and humour in everything she said and did. She had "the light touch" about everything, and understood just how it was with the French. Her attitude toward them was very much the manner of a mature and sophisticated person with a race of clamouring children. She never grew tired of observing and pointing out their quaint and curious ways: if the jolly proprietor of a restaurant came to the table and proudly tried to speak to them his garbled English, she would shake her head sharply, with a little smile, biting her lower lip as she did so, and saying with a light and tender humour:

  "Oh, nice! . . . He wants to speak his English! . . . Isn't he a dear? . . . No, no," she would say quickly if anyone attempted to answer him in French. "Please let him go ahead--poor dear! He's so proud of it!"

  And again she would shake her head, biting her lower lip, with a tender, wondering little smile, as she said so, and "Yes!" Francis would say enthusiastically and with a look of direct, serious, and almost sorrowful earnestness. "And how grand the man is about it--how simple and grand in the way he does it! . . . Did you notice the way he used his hand?--I mean like someone in a painting by Cimabue--it really is, you know," he said earnestly. "The centuries of living and tradition that have gone into a single gesture--and he's quite unconscious of it. It's grand--I mean like someone in a painting by Cimabue--it really is, you know," he said with the sad, serious look of utter earnestness. "It's really quite incredible."

  "Quite," said Elinor, who with a whimsical little smile had been looking at a waiter with sprouting moustaches, as he bent with prayerful reverence, stirring the ingredients in a salad bowl--"Oh, Francis, darling, look--" she whispered, nodding toward the man. "Don't you love it? . . . Don't you simply adore the way they do it? . . . I mean, you know! Now where? Where?" she cried, with a gesture of complete surrender--"where could you find anything like that in America? . . . I mean, you simply couldn't find it--that's all."

  "Quite!" said Francis concisely. And turning to Eugene, he would say with that impressive air of absolute sad earnestness, "And it's really most important. It really is, you know. It's astonishing to see what they can put into a single gesture. I mean--the Whole Thing's there. It really is."

  "Francis!" Elinor would say, looking at him with her gay and tender little smile, and biting her lip as she did so--"You kid, you! I mean!--"

  Suddenly she put her hand strongly before her eyes, bent her head, and was rigid in a moment of powerful and secret emotion. In a moment, however, she would look up, wet-eyed, suddenly thrust her arm across the table at Eugene, and putting her hand on his arm with a slight gallant movement, say quietly:

  "O, I'm sorry--you poor child! . . . After all, there's no reason why you should have to go through all this. . . . I mean, darling," she explained gently, "I have an adorable kid at home just four years old--sometimes something happens to make me think of him--you understand, don't you?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "Good," she said briskly and decisively, with a swift and gallant smile, as she patted his arm again. "I knew you would!"

  She had left her husband and child in Boston, she had come here to join Francis, fatality was in the air, but she was always brave and gallant about it. As Francis would say to Eugene as they sat drinking alone in a café:

  "It's mad--Boston! . . . Perfectly mad--Boston! . . . I mean, the kind of thing they do when they ride a horse up the steps of the State House. . . . I mean, perfectly grand, you know," he cried with high enthusiasm. "They stop at nothing. It's simply swell--it really is, you know."

  Everyone was being very brave and gallant and stopping at nothing, and the French were charming, charming, and Paris gave them just the background that they needed. It was a fine life.

  Elinor took charge of everything. She took charge of the money, the making of plans, the driving of bargains with avaricious and shrewd-witted Frenchmen, and the ordering of food in restaurants.

  "It's really astonishing, you know," said Starwick--"the way she walks in everywhere and has the whole place at her feet in four minutes. . . . Really, Gene, you should have been with us this afternoon when she made arrangements with the man at the motor agency in the Champs-Elysées for renting the car. . . . Really, I felt quite sorry for him before the thing was over. . . . He kept casting those knowing and rather bitter glances of reproach at me," s
aid Starwick, with his burble of soft laughter, "as if he thought I had betrayed him by not coming to his assistance. . . . There was something very cruel about it . . . like a great cat playing with a mouse . . . there really was, you know," said Starwick earnestly. "She can be completely without pity when she gets that way," he added. "She really can, you know . . . which makes it all the more astonishing--I mean, when you consider what she really is--the way she let me go to sleep on her shoulder the night we were coming back from Rheims, and I was so horribly drunk and got so disgustingly sick," he said with a simple, touching earnestness. "I mean, the compassion of it--it was quite like that Chinese goddess of the Infinite Compassion they have in Boston--it really was, you know. It's quite astonishing," he said earnestly, "when you consider her background, the kind of people that she came from--it really is, you know . . . she's a grand person, simply terrific . . . it's utterly mad--Boston . . . it really is."

  Certainly it was very pleasant to be in the hands of such a captain. Elinor got things done with a beautiful, serene assurance that made everything seem easy. There was no difficulty of custom or language, no weird mystery and complication of traffic, trade, and commerce, so maddening and incomprehensible to most Americans, that Elinor did not understand perfectly. Sometimes she would just shake her head and bite her lip, smiling. Sometimes she would laugh with rich astonishment, and say: "Perfectly insane, of course--but then, that's the way the poor dears are, and you can't change them. . . . I know! I know! . . . It's quite incredible, but they'll always be that way, and we've simply got to make the best of it."