John Passos - 1919

Next evening when she got back to her apartment Paul was waiting for her, wearing a new uniform and with a resplendent shine on his knobtoed shoes. “Why, Paul, you look as if you’d been through a washing machine.” “A friend of mine’s a sergeant in the quartermaster’s stores… coughed up a new outfit.” “You look too beautiful for words.” “You mean you do, Eveline.”

They went over to the boulevards and had dinner on the salmon-colored plush seats among the Pompeian columns at Noël Peters’ to the accompaniment of slithery violinmusic. Paul had his month’s pay and commutation of rations in his pocket and felt fine. They talked about what they’d do when they got back to America. Paul said his dad wanted him to go into a grain broker’s office in Minneapolis, but he wanted to try his luck in New York. He thought a young feller ought to try a lot of things before he settled down at a business so that he could find out what he was fitted for. Eveline said she didn’t know what she wanted to do. She didn’t want to do anything she’d done before, she knew that, maybe she’d like to live in Paris.

“I didn’t like it much in Paris before,” Paul said, “but like this, goin’ out with you, I like it fine.” Eveline teased him, “Oh, I don’t think you like me much, you never act as if you did.” “But jeeze, Eveline, you know so much and you’ve been around so much. It’s mighty nice of you to let me come around at all, honestly I’ll appreciate it all my life.”

“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t be like that… I hate people to be humble,” Eveline broke out angrily.

They went on eating in silence. They were eating asparagus with grated cheese on it. Paul took several gulps of wine and looked at her in a hurt dumb way she hated. “Oh, I feel like a party tonight,” she said a little later. “I’ve been so miserable all day, Paul… I’ll tell you about it sometime… you know the kind of feeling when everything you’ve wanted crumbles in your fingers as you grasp it.” “All right, Eveline,” Paul said, banging with his fist on the table, “let’s cheer up and have a big time.”

When they were drinking coffee the orchestra began to play polkas and people began to dance among the table encouraged by cries of Ah Polkaah aaah from the violinist. It was a fine sight to see the middleaged diners whirling around under the beaming eyes of the stout Italian headwaiter who seemed to feel that la gaité was coming back to Paree at last. Paul and Eveline forgot themselves and tried to dance it too. Paul was very awkward, but having his arms around her made her feel better somehow, made her forget the scaring loneliness she felt.

When the polka had subsided a little Paul paid the fat check and they went out arm in arm, pressing close against each other like all the Paris lovers, to stroll on the boulevards in the May evening that smelt of wine and hot rolls and wild strawberries. They felt lightheaded. Eveline kept smiling. “Come on, let’s have a big time,” whispered Paul occasionally as if to keep his courage up. “I was just thinking what my friends ud think if they saw me walking up the boulevard arm in arm with a drunken doughboy,” Eveline said. “No, honest, I’m not drunk,” said Paul. “I can drink a lot more than you think. And I won’t be in the army much longer, not if this peace treaty goes through.” “Oh, I don’t care,” said Eveline, “I don’t care what happens.”

They heard music in another café and saw the shadows of dancers passing across the windows upstairs. “Let’s go up there,” said Eveline. They went in and upstairs to the dancehall that was a long room full of mirrors. There Eveline said she wanted to drink some Rhine wine. They studied the card a long while and finally with a funny sideways look at Paul, she suggested liebefraumilch. Paul got red, “I wish I had a liebe frau,” he said. “Why probably you have… one in every port,” said Eveline. He shook his head.

Next time they danced he held her very tight. He didn’t seem so awkward as he had before. “I feel pretty lonely myself, these days,” said Eveline when they sat down again. “You, lonely… with the whole of the Peace Conference running after you, and the A.E.F. too… Why, Don told me you’re a dangerous woman.” She shrugged her shoulders, “When did Don find that out? Maybe you could be dangerous too, Paul.”

Next time they danced she put her cheek against his. When the music stopped he looked as if he was going to kiss her, but he didn’t. “This is the most wonderful evening I ever had in my life,” he said, “I wish I was the kind of guy you really wanted to have take you out.” “Maybe you could get to be, Paul… you seem to be learning fast…. No, but we’re acting silly… I hate ogling and flirting around… I guess I want the moon… maybe I want to get married and have a baby.” Paul was embarrassed. They sat silent watching the other dancers. Eveline saw a young French soldier lean over and kiss the little girl he was dancing with on the lips; kissing, they kept on dancing. Eveline wished she was that girl. “Let’s have a little more wine,” she said to Paul. “Do you think we’d better? All right, what the hec, we’ve having a big time.”

Getting in the taxicab Paul was pretty drunk, laughing and hugging her. As soon as they were in the darkness of the back of the taxi they started kissing. Eveline held Paul off for a minute, “Let’s go to your place instead of mine,” she said. “I’m afraid of my concièrge.” “All right… it’s awful little,” said Paul, giggling. “But ish gebibbel, we should worry get a wrinkle.”

When they had gotten past the bitter eyes that sized them up of the old man who kept the keys at Paul’s hotel they staggered up a long chilly winding stair and into a little room that gave on a court. “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” said Paul, waving his arms after he’d locked and bolted the door. It had started to rain again and the rain made the sound of a waterfall on the glass roof at the bottom of the court. Paul threw his hat and tunic in the corner of the room and came towards her, his eyes shining.

They’d hardly gotten to bed when he fell asleep with his head on her shoulder. She slipped out of bed to turn the light off and open the window and then snuggled shivering against his body that was warm and relaxed like a child’s. Outside the rain poured down on the glass roof. There was a puppy shut up somewhere in the building that whined and yelped desperately without stopping. Eveline couldn’t get to sleep. Something shut up inside her was whining like the puppy. Through the window she began to see the dark peak of a roof and chimneypots against a fading purple sky. Finally she fell asleep.

Next day they spent together. She’d phoned in to the Red Cross that she was sick as usual and Paul forgot about the Sorbonne altogether. They sat all morning in the faint sunshine at a café near the Madeleine making plans about what they’d do. They’d get themselves sent back home as soon as they possibly could and get jobs in New York and get married. Paul was going to study engineering in his spare time. There was a firm of grain and feed merchants in Jersey City, friends of his father’s he knew he could get a job with. Eveline could start up her decorating business again. Paul was happy and confident and had lost his apologetic manner. Eveline kept telling herself that Paul had stuff in him, that she was in love with Paul, that something could be made out of Paul.

The rest of the month of May they were both a little lightheaded all the time. They spent all their pay the first few days so that they had to eat at little table d’hôte restaurants crowded with students and working people and poor clerks where they bought books of tickets that gave them a meal for two francs or two fifty. One Sunday in June they went out to St. Germain and walked through the forest. Eveline had spells of nausea and weakness and had to lie down on the grass several times. Paul looked worried sick. At last they got to a little settlement on the bank of the Seine. The Seine flowed fast streaked with green and lilac in the afternoon light, brimming the low banks bordered by ranks of huge poplars. They crossed a little ferry rowed by an old man that Eveline called Father Time. Halfway over she said to Paul, “Do you know what’s the matter with me, Paul? I’m going to have a baby.”