“Are you staying here with Rose?” asked Simon.
“No,” said Mark with a still youthful smile, “I’m a dated Montparnassian and faithful to my old haunts. I’m staying up on the Boulevard Raspail.”
“Well, why not come out and have a brandy with me? And Rose too of course,” said Simon. “Besides, she must profit by her grass-widowhood, must she not, Maître?”
Mark, still smiling, turned his dumb, bright eyes on his child. “Yes, yes,” he said, “I see she must. Have fun, my dear. Have a little fun. The rest comes soon enough.” He got heavily to his feet; a burly, workmanlike figure and yet a shell for all that. “I’m tired,” he said. “It’s exhausting to arrange an exhibit and that’s what I’m doing in town. I don’t know why, either. Any fool can buy a gallery these days, but I suppose it’s habit.”
It was significant that neither Rose, Simon nor Mark himself thought of the possibilities of Jouvence. Mark could have had his photograph there or that of one of his works. It would have been publicity, the desire of the age. But they did not think about it. Latham in any case had no desire other than that of returning to his hotel where, once asleep, he could be happy. They walked with him to the crossroads of Saint-Germain des Prés where he took a taxi. The evening was warm and a light still lingered in the sky. They watched the taxi lurching around the corner and disappearing unevenly in the haze of its exhaust. Then, with a look at the crowded café tables, they turned into the nearest bar.
“What would you be doing, Simon, if you weren’t being polite to me?” asked Rose when they were seated. “Would you be ‘living,’ as you put it?”
“I am living now,” said Simon, looking at himself in the mirror doors of the cloakroom. His bitter mouth moved uncertainly in its shadowy place like a hungry animal which fear chains to its lair. But his feverish eyes pleased him. He looked at their points of light as sharp as needles. Then, in the mirror, he caught Rose’s glance violet with unlived dreams. “Let’s have another drink to cheer us up,” he said. He rapped on the table with the back of his hand so as to make his signet ring resound. At this gesture his sharp looks took on an aristocratic severity which put him in another light.
As they drank, the bar began to fill and several people came over to greet him. The men shook hands, but the girls kissed him, their hair falling across his face. Rose was silent and perhaps these wild-haired young girls made her shy. They seemed to live more like boys than like girls, drifting into the bar alone and, if they saw no acquaintance free, drifting out again. Although carelessly, even offensively dressed in greasy pants and shirts they had a certain charm. Some of them were beautiful. The ungrateful age—that is, mid-teens—had skipped them. It was as though debauchery had said, “Pass on. I am here already.” And because they were so young, debauchery had made them beautiful, had rounded and softened their cheeks and their breasts which would have been hard as apples, had made their eyes heavy so that a glance full of premature knowledge was imprisoned in their lids. And in their walk there was the displacement, the loosened muscles of women long accustomed to men.
Simon, examining his companion, wondered what she had been like at that age; a prim child doubtless, who looked at the world without seeing it and whose dolls were still neatly arranged around the bed. A pang went through him, rising from some unused space inside his breast. What was there about Rose, he wondered, that could give him this pang? It made him resent her and he could not quite decide if he had felt it before.
“What do all those girls do?” she asked him.
Simon shrugged. “They come here, as you see. If they are lucky someone buys them a drink. If they are luckier still, someone with a bathtub asks them home to bed.” And he added, looking at Rose, “The sex doesn’t matter.” He was hoping almost fiercely that Rose would show some disgust or astonishment, but the straight, ivory mask of her face did not change nor her jewel eyes. She only blinked her lashes as people do to show polite attention when they have no comment to make. These lashes were so thick and black that in profile they had a life of their own. They were rather like overturned insects with black, shiny, innocent legs.
“Where are their families?” she asked after a moment.
“Oh, in the provinces or in some other country; and by the way, they will all tell you that they are actresses or singers or models. Sometimes it’s true and sometimes one of them blossoms into celebrity and leaves this quarter altogether.” To satisfy her curiosity he called one of them over. “Heidi, come here,” he commanded.
The girl was sitting at the bar, her legs mingled with those of the bar stool. She turned around, glanced at Simon and obeyed. Blond, with raggedly cut bangs over painted eyes and a pale little mouth, her small, exhausted face had barely emerged from childhood. No one had bothered to straighten her teeth. She slumped down beside Simon and held out a grimy hand to Rose.
“Sit up straight my girl and behave,” said Simon. “Madame Flamand is hardly impressed by bohemianism.” She made a face at him but did as he ordered. Her glance at Rose was brief and dispassionate. Such a woman was too respectable to bother about.
At this moment a little boy appeared in the open doorway of the bar. Standing alone with the night black behind him, he had a self-sufficient air. He might have been nine or ten years old and was dressed in shorts and a clean white shirt. His appearance, denoting a good mother at home, was made charming by his own fantasy; he had forked a bunch of cherries over each ear and their scarlet darkness made his eyes shine. He held three wooden bottles in his hand and now, smiling pleasantly, he advanced into the bar and started to juggle. The waiter tried to stop him.
“Hey, young man, you know that sort of thing’s not allowed.”
The child made no reply, but without stopping his act looked up smiling into the waiter’s face. Afterward he passed a plate around. Simon gave him twenty francs. He heard Rose ask in a low, eager voice:
“Will you take me to a bal musette?”
“Whatever for?” he demanded, genuinely surprised.
“I’ve never been to a popular ballroom,” she said.
“But they’re only tiresome,” protested Simon, feeling as he spoke that Rose had put her hand on his arm. The hand made its own plea and Simon had to force his muscles not to tense. Just the same a pulse beat in his cheek.
“There’s a good one in Montmartre,” she continued. “At least a friend of mine said there was.” Simon, who was staring at her, saw that the mention of this friend had made her blush, but she went on hastily, “It’s called the O.K.”
“Really? The O.K. How New World and up to date!” he said sarcastically. “I didn’t realize, Rose, that you had pretensions of being one of the people. It’s the most revolting snobbism.” Rose was silent at this, merely taking her hand off his sleeve. “Well if we must—” he said. “Come along, Heidi—and why don’t you change that sickening name—free drinks elsewhere.”
When they stepped out of the taxi at the Place Pigalle they found it ablaze with lights. It might have belonged to a different city altogether than Saint-Germain des Prés. Both were centers of activity and both teemed with life. The crowd sought pleasure in each, sought entertainment, drink, women, drugs and perversion. Perhaps the difference was simply that where Saint-Germain was amateur, Pigalle was professional. If Heidi would go to bed for a drink, her sister in Pigalle had her price in cash, had her beat and her protector.
Simon and his two charges stood for a few moments bewildered and disoriented. The journey had drained them of spirit and what they had come to do seemed worse than futile. Heidi’s small mouth drooped. She had not had enough to drink and now wished herself back in her own quarter. People looked at her tight jeans and laughed, remarking “Zazoo! Art bum!” and shrugging contemptuous shoulders. And they did look absurd here, emphasizing the pear-shaped bottom from which her thighs turned rapidly into a child’s thin shanks.
They found the bal with the aid of a policeman and climbed toward it in the twisting stairs and streets of the hill. The door of it was open to the warm air and in front of them a group of girls flocked in together like stocky little birds. These were not the professional beauties of the Place Pigalle below, but servants and workmen’s daughters who were set to enjoy a night out. Their faces were lit with enthusiasm. An innocent gaiety rendered them almost pretty despite their ugly clothes, their short, red, bare legs and clumsy shoes. But it struck the eye that the men were better looking than their partners on the whole, clearer featured and more finely made. Perhaps an absence of badly permanented curls helped, or perhaps it was only the physical drudgery which thickens women’s limbs but leaves a man’s slim loins intact.
They were shown to a table, however, by a man whose hips were enormous and who had the disturbing aura of one with a secret deformity.
“It’s going to be horrible,” said Simon, who now wished he had not given in to Rose’s whim. He noticed, however, that everybody was laughing at Heidi, and the quality of their laughter, filled with obscure jealousy and coarse intentions, put him back into humor. He watched Rose who was looking down at the table as though she were afraid to meet the eyes, curious or admiring, that were examining her. A musette waltz was making the dancers spin on the crowded floor. The uneasy motifs of the accordion were threading the music through, like a brook running over a troubled bed or like the voices of those animals who sound almost like men. Plaintive and hurried, it was the expression of the dancers themselves; their brief youth, the smallness of their desires and their taut nerves forever on the stretch.
A youth in a checked shirt came up and bent over Rose. At the same time he threw out a perfunctory, “May I?” at Simon. But before the latter could consent or refuse he saw Rose get up and move off in the stiff embrace of her partner. He watched ironically as they circled the room and saw them pause beneath the bandstand where the accordionist sat. Rose, with a gesture startling in its suddenness and grace, looked up at the player. Simon noticed the arch of her back, the swan curve of her throat from which the hair had fallen free. Then, above the music, her laugh rang out clear and fresh. Its mocking undertone made that curved throat palpitate. It transformed her entirely from the woman Simon knew.
“Your friend has met a friend,” said Heidi.
“Shut your mouth or I’ll throw this glass in your face.” Simon had a nasty expression in his eyes. His jaws felt knotted in his cheeks. He was furious with himself, with Heidi, with Rose and with Jason, whom he had recognized.
TWELVE
Journal:
You know how I said there was a thread, or that I thought there was a thread, for me to follow in all this? I only hoped for it then. It’s come out since, hasn’t it?
Now I’m going to tell about my evening with Simon because so many things happened that night which fitted, which spun out the thread. To begin with, I didn’t much want to go out with Simon. Pierre goes away on short trips fairly often and I’m not a bit lonely or afraid here by myself. But that time Mark was in town and he upsets me. We upset each other really because of Mother—the way she died. It seems so shameful—like a vice in us almost, although I don’t know if you’ll understand that. I get dizzy when I even think of torture, but she had to feel it and to live it and in the end it was all her life.
Well, as I was saying, she is always between Mark and myself and although at first it’s wonderful to see him, after a bit a shadow grows in his eyes and he casts it into mine. So I was glad to go out with Simon and I guess Mark was just as glad to go home to bed.
I swear I never thought of the O.K. ballroom before the juggler came into the bar. In fact I was planning to go home myself soon, especially as a young girl had joined us and I’m not very good with strangers. She made me feel funny, the young girl, I mean. She was so much younger than me and yet so much more used and there didn’t seem to be any meeting ground because being used was life to her and she neither knew nor cared about anything else. To her there was nothing else so that I didn’t even exist in her eyes. I could tell by the way she looked at me, just once briefly, and then wearily away.
How refreshing it was to see that child in the doorway! There I sat with those two exhausted creatures and then he appeared with his cherry earrings and his clean shirt. He smiled directly into my eyes and it was as though he said, “I’m glad you’re here.” His smile at the bartender who tried to stop him was something else; polite and tough and devil-may-care and all the time he was juggling away, never missing a catch. Everybody gave him money and I had some ready in my hand. But he didn’t pass the plate to me. He just smiled with his twinkling, manly eyes and I smiled back at him. Then I asked Simon to take me to Montmartre.
I suppose you want to know why. Do you? Well, I don’t know why. It was something to do with the child coming in but I can explain no further. Perhaps you can figure it out for yourself. Would you tell me if you did? Me, Rose. Rose with the blackening leaves, Rose blasted beneath a black sun, rooted in the waterless sand?
