1919 (46 page)

“Lucky bastard . . . were you badly wounded, Skinny?” “Piece of shrapnel in the wing, captain,” said Skinny, coming to attention as a sergeant of M.P.'s stalked stiffly through the station restaurant. “Those birds gimme the willies.”

Dick hurried through his lunch, paid, and walked across the square outside the station. One of the cafés had a back room that looked dark and quiet. They were just settling down to chat over two beers when Dick remembered the despatch case. He'd left it at the table. Whispering breathlessly that he'd be back he ran across the square and into the station restaurant. Three French officers were at the table. “Pardon, messieurs.” It was still where he'd left it under the table. “If I'd lost that I'd have had to shoot myself,” he told Skinny. They chatted about Trenton and Philadelphia and Bay Head and Dr. Atwood. Skinny was married and had a good job in a Philadelphia bank. He had volunteered for the tanks and was winged by a bit of shrapnel before the attack started, damn lucky of him, because his gang had been wiped out by a black Maria. He was just out of hospital today and felt pretty weak on his pins. Dick took down his service data and said he'd get him transferred to Tours; just the kind of fellow they needed for a courier. Then Skinny had to run for his train, and Dick, with the despatch case tightly wedged under his arm, went out to stroll around the town daintily colored and faintly gay under the autumn drizzle.

The rumor of the fake armistice set Tours humming like a swarm of bees; there was a lot of drinking and backslapping and officers and enlisted men danced snakedances in and out of the officebuildings. When it turned out to be a false alarm Dick felt almost relieved. The days that followed everybody round the headquarters of the Despatch Service wore a mysterious expression of knowing more than they were willing to tell. The night of the real armistice Dick ate supper a little deliriously with Colonel Edgecombe and some other officers. After dinner Dick happened to meet the colonel in the courtyard out back. The colonel's face was red and his moustache bristled. “Well, Savage, it's a great day for the race,” he said, and laughed a great deal. “What race?” said Dick shyly. “The human race,” roared the colonel.

Then he drew Dick aside: “How would you like to go to Paris, my boy? It seems that there's to be a peace conference in Paris and that President Wilson is going to attend it in person . . . seems incredible . . . and I've been ordered to put this outfit at the disposal of the American delegation that's coming soon to dictate the peace, so we'll be Peace Conference couriers. Of course I suppose if you feel you have to go home it could be arranged.”

“Oh, no, sir,” broke in Dick hurriedly. “I was just beginning to worry about having to go home and look for a job. . . . The Peace Conference will be a circus and any chance to travel around Europe suits me.” The colonel looked at him with narrowed eyes. “I wouldn't put it just that way . . . service should be our first thought . . . naturally what I said is strictly confidential.” “Oh, strictly,” said Dick, but he couldn't help wearing a grin on his face when he went back to join the others at the table.

Paris again; and this time in a new whipcord uniform with silver bars at his shoulders and with money in his pockets. One of the first things he did was to go back to look at the little street behind the Pantheon where he'd lived with Steve Warner the year before. The tall chalkgrey houses, the stores, the little bars, the bigeyed children in the black smocks, the youngsters in caps with silk handkerchiefs around their necks, the Parisian drawl of the argot; it all made him feel vaguely unhappy; he was wondering what had happened to Steve. It was a relief to get back to the office where the enlisted men were moving in newly arrived American rolltop desks and yellow varnished card index cases.

The hub of this Paris was the hôtel de Crillon on the place de la Concorde, its artery the rue Royale where arriving dignitaries, President Wilson, Lloyd George and the King and Queen of the Belgians were constantly parading escorted by the garde republicaine in their plumed helmets; Dick began living in a delirium of trips to Brussels on the night express, lobster cardinal washed down with Beaune on the red plush settees at Larue's, champagne cocktails at the Ritz bar, talk full of the lowdown over a demie at the Café Weber; it was like the old days of the Baltimore convention, only he didn't give a damn any more; it all hit him cockeyed funny.

One night soon after Christmas, Colonel Edgecombe took Dick to dinner at Voisin's with a famous New York publicity man who was said to be very near to Colonel House. They stood a moment on the pavement outside the restaurant to look at the tubby domed church opposite. “You see, Savage, this fellow's the husband of a relative of mine, one of the Pittsburgh Staples . . . smooth . . . it seems to me. You look him over. For a youngster you seem to have a keen eye for character.”

Mr. Moorehouse turned out to be a large quietspoken blueeyed jowly man with occasionally a touch of the southern senator in his way of talking. With him were a man named Robbins and a Miss Stoddard, a fraillooking woman with very transparent alabaster skin and a sharp chirpy voice; Dick noticed that she was stunningly welldressed. The restaurant was a little too much like an Episcopal church; Dick said very little, was very polite to Miss Stoddard and kept his eyes and ears open, eating the grandducal food and carefully tasting the mellow wine that nobody else seemed to pay any attention to. Miss Stoddard kept everybody talking, but nobody seemed to want to commit themselves to saying anything about the peace conference. Miss Stoddard told with considerable malice about the furnishings of the hôtel de Mûrat and the Wilsons' colored maid and what kind of clothes the President's wife, whom she insisted on calling Mrs. Galt, was wearing. It was a relief when they got to the cigars and liqueurs. After dinner Colonel Edgecombe offered to drop Mr. Moorehouse at the Crillon, as he staffcar had come for him. Dick and Mr. Robbins took Miss Stoddard home in a taxicab to her apartment opposite Nôtre Dâme on the left bank. They left her at her door. “Perhaps you'll come around some afternoon to tea, Captain Savage,” she said.

The taximan refused to take them any further, said it was late and that he was bound home to Noisy-le-sec and drove off. Robbins took hold of Dick's arm. “Now for crissake let's go and have a decent drink. . . . Boy, I'm sick of the bigwigs.” “All right,” said Dick, “where'll we go?” Walking along the foggy quay, past the shadowly bulk of Nôtre Dâme, they talked scatteringly about Paris and how cold it was. Robbins was a short man with an impudent bossy look on his red face. In the café it was only a little less chilly than in the street. “This climate's going to be the death of me,” said Robbins, snuggling his chin down in his overcoat. “Woolly underwear's the only answer, that's one thing I've learned in the army,” said Dick laughing.

They settled on a plush bench near the stove at the end of the cigarsmoky giltornamented room. Robbins ordered a bottle of Scotch whiskey, glasses, lemon, sugar and a lot of hot water. It took a long time to get the hot water, so Robbins poured them each a quarter of a tumbler of the whiskey straight. When he'd drunk his, his face that had been sagging and tired, smoothed out so that he looked ten years younger. “Only way to keep warm in this goddam town's to keep stewed.” “Still I'm glad to be back in little old Paree,” said Dick, smiling and stretching his legs out under the table. “Only place in the world to be right at present,” said Robbins. “Paris is the hub of the world . . . unless it's Moscow.”

At the word Moscow a Frenchman playing checkers at the next table brought his eyes up from the board and stared at the two Americans. Dick couldn't make out what there was in his stare; it made him uneasy. The waiter came with the hot water. It wasn't hot enough, so Robbins made a scene and sent it back. He poured out a couple of halftumblers of straight whiskey to drink while they were waiting. “Is the President going to recognize the soviets?” Dick found himself asking in a low voice.

“I'm betting on it . . . I believe he's sending an unofficial mission. Depends a little on oil and manganese . . . it used to be King Coal, but now it's Emperor Petroleum and Miss Manganese, queen consort of steel. That's all in the pink republic of Georgia . . . I hope to get there soon, they say that they have the finest wine and the most beautiful women in the world. By God, I got to get there. . . . But the oil . . . God damn it, that's what this damned idealist Wilson can't understand, while they're setting him up to big feeds at Buckingham palace the jolly old British army is occupying Mosul, the Karun River, Persia . . . now the latrine news has it that they're in Baku . . . the future oil metropolis of the world.”

“I thought the Baku fields were running dry.”

“Don't you believe it . . . I just talked to a fellow who'd been there . . . a funny fellow, Rasmussen, you ought to meet him.” Dick said hadn't we got plenty of oil at home. Robbins banged his fist on the table.

“You never can have plenty of anything . . . that's the first law of thermodynamics. I never have plenty of whiskey. . . . You're a young fellow, do you ever have plenty of tail? Well, neither Standard Oil or the Royal Dutch-Shell can ever have plenty of crude oil.”

Dick blushed and laughed a little forcedly. He didn't like this fellow Robbins. The waiter finally came back with boiling water and Robbins made them each a toddy. For a while neither of them said anything. The checkerplayers had gone. Suddenly Robbins turned to Dick and looked in his face with his hazy blue drunkard's eyes: “Well, what do you boys think about it all? What do the fellers in the trenches think?”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, hell, I don't mean anything. . . . But if they thought the war was lousy wait till they see the peace . . . Oh, boy, wait till they see the peace.”

“Down at Tours I don't think anybody thought much about it either way . . . however, I don't think that anybody that's seen it considers war the prize way of settling international difficulties . . . I don't think Blackjack Pershing himself thinks that.”

“Oh, listen to him . . . can't be more than twentyfive and he talks like a book by Woodrow Wilson . . . I'm a son of a bitch and I know it, but when I'm drunk I say what I goddam please.”

“I don't see any good a lot of loud talk's going to do. It's a magnificent tragic show . . . the Paris fog smells of strawberries . . . the gods don't love us but we'll die young just the same. . . . Who said I was sober?”

They finished up a bottle. Dick taught Robbins a rhyme in French:

 

Les marionettes font font font

Trois petit tours etpuis's'en vont

 

and when the café closed they went out arm in arm. Robbins was humming,

 

Cheer up, Napoleon, you'll soon be dead

A short life and a gay one

 

and stopping to talk with all the petite femmes they met on the Boul' Mich'. Dick finally left him talking to a cowlike woman in a flappy hat in front of the fountain on the Place St. Michel, and began the long walk home to his hotel that was opposite the Gare St. Lazare.

The broad asphalt streets were deserted under the pink arclights but here and there on benches along the quais, under the bare dripping trees along the bank of the Seine, in spite of the raw night couples were still sitting huddled together in the strangleholds of l'amour. At the corner of the boulevard Sébastopol a whitefaced young man who was walking the other way looked quickly into his face and stopped. Dick slackened his pace for a moment, but walked on past the string of marketcarts rumbling down the rue de Rivoli, taking deep breaths to clear the reek of whiskey out of his head. The long brightlylighted avenue that led to the opera was empty. In front of the opera there were a few people, a girl with a lovely complexion who was hanging on the arm of a poilu gave him a long smile. Almost at his hotel he ran face to face into a girl who seemed remarkably pretty, before he knew it he was asking her what she was doing out so late. She laughed, charmingly he thought, and said she was doing the same thing he was. He took her to a little hotel on the back street behind his own. They were shown into a chilly room that smelt of furniture polish. There was a big bed, a bidet, and a lot of heavy claretcolored hangings. The girl was older than he'd thought and very tired, but she had a beautiful figure and very pale skin; he was glad to see how clean her underwear was, with a pretty lace edging. They sat a little while on the edge of the bed talking low.

When he asked her what her name was, she shook her head and smiled, “Qu'est-ce que ça vous fait?”

“L'homme sans nom et la femme sans nom, vont faire l'amour a l'hotel du néant,” he said. “Oh qu'il est rigolo, celui-là,” she giggled. “Dis, tu n'est pas malade?” He shook his head. “Moi non plus,” she said, and started rubbing up against him like a kitten.

When they left the hotel they roamed around the dark streets until they found an earlymorning coffeebar. They ate coffee and croissants together in drowsy intimate quiet, leaning very close to each other as they stood against the bar. She left him to go up the hill towards Montmartre. He asked her if he couldn't see her again sometime. She shrugged her shoulders. He gave her thirty francs and kissed her and whispered in her ear a parody of his little rhyme:

 

Les petites marionettes font font font

Un P'tit peu d'amour et puis s'en vont

 

She laughed and pinched his cheek and the last he heard of her was her gruff giggle and “Oh qu'il est rigolo, celui-là.”