The Merry Month of May (48 page)

“Well, anyway, as you said, you’ve had a great experience,” I said.

He grinned. “Yeah. And especially with that Sam there in on it! — And at my age, at forty-four, you can’t expect too many lucky breaks like that.”

I noted that he had dropped a year off the accustomed 45 he was willing to own up to.

“What do you say we go over on St.-Germain and have a couple of burgers at the Wimpy’s?”

“Not tonight, Dave,” I said. “I’m feeling too depressed.”

He looked at me and there was a sudden sympathy and sensitivity on his small tough ageing Jewish face.

“How’s Louisa?”

“Not so good. Oh, her body seems to be recovering well enough. But it looks like the brain damage may be even more extensive than we imagined. It looks like she may come out of it a real vegetable.”

“Jesus God,” he said. He breathed it rather than said it, a sort of sigh.

“That’s how I feel about it,” I said.

“Well, I’ll be going,” he said. He paused. “But we’ll see each other. We’ll see each other soon. Won’t we?”

“Sure, Dave,” I said. “Would you like a last drink?”

“I guess not,” he said.

He left.

From the window I watched him legging it up the quai and across the bridge where the little black police vans still guarded our end of the Pont de la Tournelle.

Then I just stood, looking at the dark river.

In the afternoon addition of
Le Monde
that day there had been a small article saying the Government was preparing to announce strong economic aid measures to help injured and embattled French businessmen in surviving the month-long strike. So, it looked like the price for the Great Vacation was already adding itself together, getting ready to demand payment. I looked at the river.

I had been out to the American Hospital to see Louisa that afternoon. Afterwards, I talked with the American Hospital doctor and he was not at all encouraging. He was just the reverse. And after my visit with Louisa, I could not do anything but agree with him.

When the nurse brought me into the private room, it was plain Louisa did not recognize me. Her eyes were not glassy any more, but they were vague and wide, stary. Before, at the Hôtel-Dieu, she had been able to talk a little bit, however incoherently. Now she did not speak at all.

“She can talk a little French,” the nurse said quietly to me. “But her English seems to be almost gone.”

I nodded.

“You mustn’t be surprised if she doesn’t recognize you,” the nurse said.

I could only nod again.

“Go ahead,” the nurse said encouragingly, and smiled.

I nodded again and slipped over and sat in the chair beside the bed.

“Louisa? Louisa? How are you, Louisa? It’s Jack,” I said.

She turned her head and looked at me stary-eyed. They still had her all strapped down.

“Jack,” I said.

“Ja—” she said. “Ja—”

“That’s it. Jack. I just came by to see how you were, and to see if you got my roses.”

She stared at me.

I looked around the green-painted room. It was airy and sunny. My two dozen red roses were in a vase on the bureau beside the bed. The nurse nodded at them and smiled at me. They were nice enough. They were quite fine in fact. Louisa had neither seen nor smelled them.

“Well, Louisa, I’ll come back soon another time,” I said. “You try to get better.” I got up from the chair and left the room, trying not to run. Outside in the hall I stood leaning against the wall, my face in my hand. I was crying, and I could not help it.

The nurse followed me out. “I’m sorry, M. Hartley,” she said. “But, you know, it may do her good to just see you. We can’t tell just yet.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and got out my handkerchief. It seemed to me suddenly that I had been saying that same sentence all my life. Then I bolted, down the corridor and out of there, to a taxi in the sunny afternoon.

When I called the doctor later at his Avenue Hoche office, after the sunny taxi ride back home, he was less than encouraging.

“It seems to be worsening,” he said. “The tests all seem to be getting bleaker and bleaker. There isn’t anything we can do.”

“Some kind of operation?” I said, feebly.

“There isn’t that kind of operation. Not today. The electrical currents in the brain are just about the most subtle electric currents that man knows about. In surgery we don’t have that kind of electricians. We only have knives.”

“Then I suppose we must start arranging for a sanatorium.”

“Not just yet. I want to keep her here a few more days anyway. Maybe a little longer. We want to check her out as thoroughly as we can.”

“You better get hold of Edith,” I said.

“I will,” he said. “I did.”

After that, I called Edith. But she already knew about it all. She had talked to the doctor and had been out there herself.

After that I simply brooded until Weintraub rang the bell.

Now, after he had left, I simply stood, in the window, and stared at the river, the dark river.

Across the river there was still some fighting in the Quartier. Some tear-gas grenades popped, and some percussion grenades cracked. But not many.

And down on the corner of the bridge the two ugly little black bugs still waited patiently for whatever their destiny would be.

29

W
HEN I GOT BACK HOME
on Tuesday from the American Hospital, after another futile interview with Louisa, I found another telegram from Harry in my mailbox.

It said simply, FOUND HER.

My first impulse was to tear it up, savagely, and then to bite into the pieces. But I stopped myself, and took it upstairs. I figured it ought to go into the record. If you could call it that: a record.

Then, staring at the postmark date on the telegram, something thudded lightly in my head several times, like a light tap on a door. What day was today? Tuesday June 18th? Then McKenna’s birthday was on Thursday. McKenna was born on June 20th.

How could I ever have forgotten that? I called Edith immediately. Luckily, she was home. She had just come in.

“Great God!” she said in a shocked voice. “I totally forgot it, too. How could I ever have forgotten that?”

“When will she be home?” I asked.

“In about half an hour,” Edith said.

“I’ll be right out,” I said.

The taxi let me off in front of the old-fashioned porte-cochere and wrought-iron gate of Edith’s house out near the Avenue de la Grande Armée. There was a leafy garden with some big trees and the garage in it alongside the house. The suave, silent butler let me in without saying a word. He bowed. McKenna, I found, was already there ahead of me. She ran to me, and I grabbed her up in my arms.

“Aunt Edith and I want to give you a birthday party,” I said, and grinned. “Since Mommy is sick and Daddy has to be away.” I looked at Edith. “I thought maybe it might be fun if we invited all your little school chums, like we did that time we had the party at my house, your first year in school.”

McKenna stared up at me with her flat blue New England eyes. I had put her back down on her feet. “I’d rather not have them,” she said.

“You wouldn’t?” I said. “But we could have lots of fun. Like we did that time at my place.”

“Yes, darling!” Edith said. “We can have funny paper hats and prizes and lots of balloons and games. It would be great fun.”

“I’d rather not,” McKenna said.

It was thundering through my head, with a great question-mark attached to it, Does she know? How much does she know? I smiled. “All right, dear. If you say so. We’ll just have our own party. How’s that? How would you like it if I invited some of your grown-up friends? Some of the people that used to come to the apartment all during the Revolution?”

“No,” McKenna said.

“Oh, all right, then. We’ll just have our own party. Just the three of us. How would that be? But I just couldn’t let your birthday go by without giving you a party. I’d be unhappy forever.”

“All right,” she said. “I guess that would be best.” Then suddenly, she flew to me and grabbed me around the legs and buried her face against my thigh. “Oh, Uncle Jack!” she said.

“What is it, lover?” I said. “What is it? What’s the matter?” She didn’t answer. She gave my legs an enormous squeeze, and then stepped back and looked up at me. Her eyes were dry. “I think that would be the best,” she said gravely.

“Okay. Then I’ll arrange everything. I’ll wear a funny hat, and Aunt Edith will. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” McKenna said.

“You don’t have to, if you think it’s too childish. But you’ll laugh like Woody Woodpecker when you see your old Uncle Jack in a silly funny paper hat.”

Suddenly she grinned. I felt as though I had won a medal. Across from me Edith’s face was still.

“Don’t worry. And don’t you worry, Aunt Edith,” I said. “I’ll take care of everything. This is my party. After all, I am your Godfather.”

I kissed them both and took my leave, the butler bowing me out. I preferred to walk over to Grande Armée to find a cab. I felt I just could not wait there while they called me one.

I headed immediately for Paris’ ritziest toy store, the Nain Bleu.

Next day, I headed over to the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville.

So, we had our birthday party on Thursday June the 20th. During the festivities the butler arrived solemnly bearing a large box which contained a doll that did all sorts of things. Gravely he presented it to the “young miss”. Apparently he had bought it all on his own hook, without asking anyone. Apparently he thought a lot of her. Or did he know about the trouble?

Just as gravely, McKenna accepted it. “Thank you, Charles,” she said. Then she insisted that he put on a paper hat and blow a horn. He did, seriously, gravely. He was also enjoined to eat some of the ice cream and the cake, which he did, seriously and methodically.

After it was over I gave her a bearhug, squeezed Edith’s hand and left. I told the taxi to take me straight home. I was really hungry for a Scotch.

But as the taxi crossed the bridge of the Pont Louis-Philippe in the warm sunny summer air and went on in under the big trees I changed my mind. I leaned forward and told the driver to stop and let me off at the Brasserie. I paid him and went inside and had myself a big schooner of beer, the biggest they had, the “formidable”. The sun was streaming in through the open windows and the two doors, making gold bars on the sawdusted floor. It was a great day. As I watched, moisture beaded on the big mug and began to run down in rivulets. Madame Dupont, Mlle. Dupont, Marcel the brother-in-law, and the master himself with his bulldog grin were all there. All of them asked me about Madame Gallagher. I told them she was fine. They would not let me pay. When I had shaken hands all around and come outside, I heard the thin, piping sounds of penny whistles. I realized that I had been hearing it earlier, inside, through the open windows, but it had not registered.

It was coming from the vicinity of the old Bailey bridge of the Pont St. Louis and I walked over there. Two young men, neither over 20, with long hair, blue jeans and beards, students almost certainly, were sitting on the deck with their backs against the bridge wire playing in two-part harmony on cheap recorders a flock of old British and Scottish marching songs. The thin, brave, piping music spread itself up into the air and was carried to the Island and upriver in the breeze. On the deck between their outstretched legs was placed an old cap. Sometimes people crossing the bridge would drop a coin in it.

I stood and looked at them. It was over. It was really all over. Well, lots of things were over.

Yes, lots of things were over. Though those boys might not know it, I happened to know (because Madame Dupont had indignantly told me) that the old rusty green Bailey bridge was coming down and that the City of Paris was going to build a new modern four-lane, superhighway bridge there to take its place.

The Duponts had fought it hard apparently, as had other inhabitants of the Island, but they had lost and the bill to change the bridge had been voted in by the City Council.

So I stood and looked at them, the young recorder players. Then after a minute I climbed the steps and walked out onto the bridge to them. They were almost exactly in the middle. I dropped a ten franc note into the old cap, then changed my mind and added two more ten franc bills. The boys stopped playing and looked up at me in surprise.

“Are you boys students?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.

“I like your music,” I said in explanation, and shrugged.

They grinned. “Well, thank you, sir,” they said.

“Could I see some of the music?” I asked. They had a beat-up old portfolio with sheet music in it beside them, and were playing not from memory but from the sheets.

“Sure,” one said. “Take a look.”

They were songs I had vaguely heard somewhere but did not know the titles to. When I leafed through the frayed, faded, dog-eared sheets, I saw titles like
Lord Randal, Gude Wallace, The Bonnie House of Airlie, The Jolly Young Waterman, I Attempt from Love’s Sickness to Fly.

“Thank you,” I said. I put the sheets back carefully into the old portfolio and laid it down.

“Sure,” one of them said. They had already gone back to their playing.

I turned and walked off the bridge. The thin, incredibly brave, piping music followed me in the light breeze as I walked on home in the lengthening sunlight.

A Biography of James Jones

James Jones (1921—1977) was one of the preeminent American writers of the twentieth century. With a series of three novels written in the decades following World War II, he established himself as one of the foremost chroniclers of the modern soldier’s life.

Born in Illinois, Jones came of age during the Depression in a family that experienced poverty suddenly and brutally. He learned to box in high school, competing as a welterweight in several Golden Gloves tournaments. After graduation he had planned to go to college, but a lack of funds led him to enlist in the army instead.

Before war began he served in Hawaii, where he found himself in regular conflict with superior officers who rewarded Jones’s natural combativeness with latrine duty and time in the guardhouse. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, which Jones witnessed, he was sent to Guadalcanal, site of some of the deadliest jungle fighting of the Pacific Theater. He distinguished himself in battle, at one point killing an enemy soldier barehanded, and was awarded a bronze star for his bravery. He was shipped home in 1943 because of torn ligaments in his ankle, an old injury that was made much worse in the war. After a period of convalescence in Memphis, Jones requested a limited duty assignment and a short leave. When these were denied, he went AWOL.