John Passos - 1919

He was lying on his back staring at the ceiling that was livid with dawn when he heard Henry’s voice calling his name down in the street outside; he tiptoed down the cold tiled stairs and let him in.

“Why the hell did you let me go with that girl, Dick? I feel like a louse… Oh Christ… mind if I have half this bed, Dick? I’ll get me a room in the morning.” Dick found him a pair of pyjamas and made himself small on his side of the bed. “The trouble with you, Henry,” he said, yawning, “is that you’re just an old Puritan… you ought to be more continental.”

“I notice you didn’t go with any of those bitches yourself.”

“I haven’t got any morals but I’m finnicky, my dear, Epicurus’ owne sonne,” Dick drawled sleepily.

“S — t, I feel like a dirty dishrag,” whispered Henry. Dick closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Early in October Dick was sent to Brest with a despatch case that the Colonel said was too important to entrust to an enlisted man. At Rennes he had to wait two hours for the train, and was sitting eating in the restaurant when a doughboy with his arm in a sling came up to him saying, “Hello, Dick, for crying out loud.” It was Skinny Murray. “By gosh, Skinny, I’m glad to see you… it must be five or six years… Gee, we’re getting old. Look, sit down… no, I can’t do that.”

“I suppose I ought to have saluted, sir,” said Skinny stiffly.

“Can that, Skinny… but we’ve got to find a place to talk… got any time before your train? You see it’s me the M.P.’s would arrest if they saw me eating and drinking with an enlisted man…. Wait around till I’ve finished my lunch and we’ll find a ginmill across from the station. I’ll risk it.” “I’ve got an hour… I’m going to the Grenoble leave area.”

“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.