So about two months later, the girl with the beautiful eyes at the travel bureau in Washington Square called me at the 28th Street foreign exchange section of the library. She said, “Mr. Walter, I have an unscheduled Dutch freighter carrying a load of ice-cream mix to Antwerp. It’s $110 for the trip. Ten days, five meals a day.” Dutch: five meals a day.
So then I went to John Vari and took him to dinner, and I said, “You are going to hate me, but you’ve got four months to plan.” I said, “I’ve got to go to Europe, and I can’t come to you as a designer.” He was furious. Italian. Sicilian. But we never ceased to be friends. Then came this moment maybe eight years later, I got a letter from John Vari and a clipping from a London newspaper. The letter said only “Revenge!” The clipping was from the London
Times
announcing the opening of a new play by John Vari starring Margaret Rutherford called
Farewell, Farewell, Eugene.
The offstage villain of the play is named Eugene. He said, “Revenge!” We remained great friends. He was one of the ones who came to see me, all the way to New Jersey, where the boat sailed from.
It was what they called unscheduled, but they know within three days when they will sail. As I told the Italian girl, “I’m from the South. If you tell me unscheduled, I would think you didn’t know whether it was this year or ten years from now. But if you tell me within three days—in the South, that’s scheduled.” She laughed and said, “Well, for the Italians it is, too. But this is a Dutch freighter, so for them it’s an unscheduled sailing.” She said, “I will call you the day before. You have to be ready and have your papers filled out.”
So I had three days of leave-taking in that apartment waiting for her call. Every day Donald Ashwander would come in that apartment and say, “You’re not going. You’ll never make it. You’ll never raise the money. You’re not going to get on that boat. You’ll never go. You’re just dreaming. You’ve got to get a good job here in New York.” Finally I showed him the ticket, and he believed me.
Everybody said, “Oh, you are so courageous to go with only that bit of GI Bill. How will you get back?” I said, “We’ll see.…” But I hated when they said I was courageous, because I had many misgivings privately. Will the GI Bill be enough to live on? That was scholarship money for returning soldiers. The government paid tuition at the school and gave an allowance. I was going to the Alliance Franchise and then the Sorbonne. And I thought, Will that really be enough to live on in a capital city? I already knew I did not want to be a gypsy. I have never hitchhiked. Ever. It is not my style.
But I am really like old America: just get up and get in the covered wagon and go three thousand miles because you want fresh air. You know, most people analyze for all the wrong reasons. Some things you analyze. Some things you just hop. I think people hop at the wrong things, like safe investments. And analyze whether they should go to Alaska or not. It should be the other way around. Hop to Alaska. Analyze the safe investment.
With my friends, I was going in their stead. Most people really don’t take chances, you see. They wanted to go. But they didn’t have the—I don’t know what it is. It’s not courage. It’s not ambition. It’s cat and monkey spirit. Let’s see what’s over there. Let’s just have a look.
Part Four
Paris
Bonjour, You-All
The crossing took ten days. But the bar opened at seven-thirty in the morning, and Dutch gin was ten cents a glass. Then there was a Dutch breakfast. Then there was warm broth and little hot crunchies of some kind of cheese in the middle of the morning. Then there was this lunch of twenty-seven dishes. Then they had afternoon tea, echoes of England. And then they had dinner. The bar would open for ten minutes between any of these five meals. It was like an old-fashioned roll-front desk. It would roll up and they’d beat this gong, and everybody would rush to get their gin. They had every kind of Dutch gin. The brand that I’d never heard of before that I really liked was called Wine and Fucking. Wynand Fockink. It was nothing but Wine and Fucking for me all the way to Paris.
I felt at home in Paris instantly. I got off the train at the Gare du Nord and thought, I’m back home.
Bonjour,
you-all.
There was a smell of coffee roasting, like downtown Mobile, and there was a sense of hubbub in the streets. It wasn’t like New York at all. New York is
opéra serieux.
Mobile and Paris are opéra bouffe. And I just felt at home.
I knew that I wanted to be in the Latin Quarter, because it was an old, elegant, run-down quarter, mostly seventeenth and eighteenth century. I knew that Gertrude and Alice had lived in this quarter. I knew that Oscar Wilde had died in this quarter, that Molière had lived in this quarter. I mean, Gertrude and Alice, Oscar Wilde, and Molière were enough for me. That’s enough recommendation.
I had asked everybody on earth who had been to Paris since World War
II
about where to stay, and at least three people of widely varying backgrounds, tastes, and requirements had indicated this little hotel in the rue de Tournon called the Hôtel Helvétia. They said, You realize that the john is in the hall and you will share it with the other three rooms on your floor. But, they said, it’s scrupulously clean, because Mme. Jordan, who runs the Helvétia, is from the next-door neighbor to Switzerland, and they’re the scrubbers and sweepers. They said, It’s just in front of the Palais Luxembourg, and I knew that sat in the Luxembourg Gardens. And I knew there were fountains. And I knew there were trees. And I knew there were flowers. So I had written ahead and reserved a room.
What I had was a bedroom that had been divided into two rooms. I had a washbasin and a bidet. And a wardrobe and a bed and a sweet little eighteenth-century marble fireplace. There was steam heat, so I used the fireplace as a wine cellar.
Mme. Jordan brought my breakfast tray every morning at seven with croissants still hot from the bakery next door, unsalted butter from somewhere in the country, and coffee and milk that they had heated and frothed. Very soon, this orange tabby whom I had befriended in the hallway learned to come up with my breakfast and sit next to me on the bed as I had my meal. And to leave the room when I put the tray outside on the floor, because he knew he would get some warm milk and a butter pat. He came every morning and sat right at my left elbow as I ate. He was a charmer. And that was my breakfast.
From my window, I looked across the rue de Tournon, which, after a block or so, becomes the rue de Seine, which is more famous. I looked out at the garde républicain across the street. I could hear them in the early morning when they marched and drilled with a brass band in their courtyard. Next to that was a rare-book dealer, and next to that was the Café de Tournon.
It had once been sort of an eatery, but the owners realized that, being around the corner from that French literary review
La Table Ronde
, there would be people needing coffee, coffee, coffee. So they made it into a café and had very good coffee. You could smell that coffee early in the morning. It was a real pleasure to wake up and smell the Café de Tournon. M. Alezard, the proprietor, opened the place in the morning with Arnauld, his red Irish setter, who, with one enthusiastic lashing of the tail, could send whole trayfuls of drinks crashing off the little round tables on the sidewalk. Later, Mme. Alezard would turn up; she made excellent fried or scrambled eggs on a hot plate not much bigger than a silver dollar.
There were tables and chairs and tables and chairs and tables and chairs where you could sit inside and look out, and a bar along one side with a mirror and bottles of every known thing, and a cashier’s desk. Then around the back there were mirrors and a banquette that ran against the wall. In summer it had an awning that lowered and raised over the tables outside. I used to love to be there when the wagon pulled by the huge Percheron horses came by to deliver the ale and beer. They were big, shaggy, and very good-natured. You could almost say they smiled.
It was an all-Brazilian crowd when I first arrived, because the coffee was superior. And perhaps that is why it later became a literary café. The exchange of the franc and whatever was Brazilian was very favorable, so there were all these charming Brazilians, all coming because they wanted to learn French. French was still, even after the Second World War, the language of diplomacy and the language of literacy. Not for the Americans, but for everyone else French was still very necessary if you wanted to be a diplomat or in the State Department. A whole bevy of delightful Brazilians frequented the Café de Tournon. I loved them. I remember one song they sang in Portuguese: “The only way to live, ladies, is to try everything.…” One day the Brazilian currency was devalued, and one by one they vanished.
*
I started school the instant I was there. I got there, slept late the
next morning, went that afternoon to the admissions office, and got myself into the next week’s classes. I did it double, both morning classes and afternoon classes. I took the beginner’s class in the morning, and I went to the beginner’s class in the afternoon. Since the teachers were French, nothing was the same. I mean, Mme. Picard’s beginning French was nothing like Monsieur whatever in the afternoon. Because they were French, they were individualistic. They each had their own ideas on how to teach beginning French at the Alliance. And I went to French films and puzzled over French newspapers from the day I was there. I knew enough to say a few things and read a few words. So I started buying the daily paper and reading French newspapers with my coffee every morning, going to French films every night and just talking to ladies in the market. In other words, I dived into French. I drowned in French. I bathed in French. Everything French, and avoiding my fellow American tourists at first. Because I had to have French.
A Chanel Suit and Keds
It was early in the summer of ’51 that I arrived in Paris. About
two days before I’d left New York, I’d seen a copy of
Botteghe Oscure
in the Gotham Book Mart. I thought, Wow, look at this funny thing from Rome. The cover was this thick, buff-colored expensive, heavy bond paper which is almost cardboard, with little letters that said
Botteghe Oscure
, number so-and-so in roman numerals. Naturally since I didn’t know what it was, I pulled it off the shelf and looked at it. It had an English section, then an American section, then a French, then an Italian. Later a final section was added that alternated between Spanish and German. It was international, this little old League of Nations. And I thought, There are no notes. There are no introductions. There is no criticism. And no book reviews. There is just text, text, text. I’d gotten so bored with
Partisan Review
and
Sewanee Review
; they were so full of these professorial, long-winded things that as far as I could see added no clarification to any text. They only added a few dabs of mist for somebody else to decipher. And I didn’t like them. I died for somebody to point out why he or she liked and/or enjoyed somebody’s work. And show some depth or some hidden references or hidden forms that gave pleasure. Not that you had to take it apart to see whether the screws were oxidized or not oxidized. You know.
I recognized some of the writers in
Botteghe,
but I saw that there were a lot of obviously young writers. So I took the address of the publisher, the Princess Marguerite Caetani of Palazzo Caetani in Rome. When I got into the Hôtel Helvétia—like the first week I was there—I pulled out old Remington and copied some poems. I think I sent her six, and she took all six. I got this letter back. She answered everything in a free, very wild hand on blue notepaper. Thin blue envelope, blue notepaper, and a large, flowing hand. Not always legible, but most times so. It said: “Dear Mr. Walter, I like your poems. Who are you? Are you English or American? Do you wish to be paid in pounds or dollars? I am coming to Paris on such and such day. I shall expect you for lunch on June the so-and-so, at such and such a time.” She spent half the year in Paris, because she was free there. In Rome, she was very much the grand lady. If you were going to send a message to a countess across the street, you didn’t telephone. You wrote her a note, and your footman in uniform delivered it. That was Rome. So you see, when she went to Paris, she was just a thing let loose.
I thought, Wow, what have I gotten myself into this time? But you see, these are the kinds of things I pray for. God is so bored with people who pray to Him constantly for nasty little favors. He just wants them to have a good time. Now occasionally I have asked Him to help in moments of crisis. You know, “Gee, bubba, I’m having a rough time. Do what you can.” I call him Skybubba. “Hey, Skybubba, if you’re not too busy this weekend, see if the mail can get a check to my postbox.” But He’s grateful not to hear those stingy prayers all the time. Aristophanes did say it: God is a comic poet.
So I wrote back and I said, “I’m not English and I’m not American. I come from a country called the South. The dollar is our currency, since the Confederate dollar is devalued.” And I showed up for that luncheon.
When I rang the bell I expected to see this tall woman with black hair going gray, and I don’t know why I thought there’d be clanking gold jewelry. That was my idea. A great many of the Roman aristocrats are tall. I thought there’d be a bony nose and sharp black eyes and a humorous look with a wildly chic, underdressed style. Maybe a straight woolen dress with some sort of bolero or jacket or scarf. But clanking gold jewelry and heavy eye makeup. So I was trying to think what kind of smile I should wear. One-hundred-watt? Fifty-watt? I mustn’t overdo it, but I mustn’t underdo it. Then the door opened and glunk, my head fell because it was this tiny little thing with hair pulled back to a knot on the back of her neck. A very beautiful, obviously French suit and a silk blouse with some sort of froufrou at the neck and no jewelry at all except a very beautiful old Roman quartz set in gold, obviously antique, obviously either ancient or Renaissance. The Chanel suit was rust and gray and white wool with jaggy lines of those colors all mingled. Silk stockings. And good American Keds. I don’t mean the latest model. I mean white, 1930s, tennis-shoe Keds. Imagine a Chanel suit with Keds.