John Passos - 1919

The taximan refused to take them any further, said it was late and that he was bound home to Noisy-le-sec and drove off. Robbins took hold of Dick’s arm. “Now for crissake let’s go and have a decent drink…. Boy, I’m sick of the bigwigs.” “All right,” said Dick, “where’ll we go?” Walking along the foggy quay, past the shadowly bulk of Nôtre Dâme, they talked scatteringly about Paris and how cold it was. Robbins was a short man with an impudent bossy look on his red face. In the café it was only a little less chilly than in the street. “This climate’s going to be the death of me,” said Robbins, snuggling his chin down in his overcoat. “Woolly underwear’s the only answer, that’s one thing I’ve learned in the army,” said Dick laughing.

They settled on a plush bench near the stove at the end of the cigarsmoky giltornamented room. Robbins ordered a bottle of Scotch whiskey, glasses, lemon, sugar and a lot of hot water. It took a long time to get the hot water, so Robbins poured them each a quarter of a tumbler of the whiskey straight. When he’d drunk his, his face that had been sagging and tired, smoothed out so that he looked ten years younger. “Only way to keep warm in this goddam town’s to keep stewed.” “Still I’m glad to be back in little old Paree,” said Dick, smiling and stretching his legs out under the table. “Only place in the world to be right at present,” said Robbins. “Paris is the hub of the world… unless it’s Moscow.”

At the word Moscow a Frenchman playing checkers at the next table brought his eyes up from the board and stared at the two Americans. Dick couldn’t make out what there was in his stare; it made him uneasy. The waiter came with the hot water. It wasn’t hot enough, so Robbins made a scene and sent it back. He poured out a couple of halftumblers of straight whiskey to drink while they were waiting. “Is the President going to recognize the soviets?” Dick found himself asking in a low voice.

“I’m betting on it… I believe he’s sending an unofficial mission. Depends a little on oil and manganese… it used to be King Coal, but now it’s Emperor Petroleum and Miss Manganese, queen consort of steel. That’s all in the pink republic of Georgia… I hope to get there soon, they say that they have the finest wine and the most beautiful women in the world. By God, I got to get there…. But the oil… God damn it, that’s what this damned idealist Wilson can’t understand, while they’re setting him up to big feeds at Buckingham palace the jolly old British army is occupying Mosul, the Karun River, Persia… now the latrine news has it that they’re in Baku… the future oil metropolis of the world.”

“I thought the Baku fields were running dry.”

“Don’t you believe it… I just talked to a fellow who’d been there… a funny fellow, Rasmussen, you ought to meet him.” Dick said hadn’t we got plenty of oil at home. Robbins banged his fist on the table.

“You never can have plenty of anything… that’s the first law of thermodynamics. I never have plenty of whiskey…. You’re a young fellow, do you ever have plenty of tail? Well, neither Standard Oil or the Royal Dutch-Shell can ever have plenty of crude oil.”

Dick blushed and laughed a little forcedly. He didn’t like this fellow Robbins. The waiter finally came back with boiling water and Robbins made them each a toddy. For a while neither of them said anything. The checkerplayers had gone. Suddenly Robbins turned to Dick and looked in his face with his hazy blue drunkard’s eyes: “Well, what do you boys think about it all? What do the fellers in the trenches think?”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t mean anything…. But if they thought the war was lousy wait till they see the peace… Oh, boy, wait till they see the peace.”

“Down at Tours I don’t think anybody thought much about it either way… however, I don’t think that anybody that’s seen it considers war the prize way of settling international difficulties… I don’t think Blackjack Pershing himself thinks that.”

“Oh, listen to him… can’t be more than twentyfive and he talks like a book by Woodrow Wilson… I’m a son of a bitch and I know it, but when I’m drunk I say what I goddam please.”

“I don’t see any good a lot of loud talk’s going to do. It’s a magnificent tragic show… the Paris fog smells of strawberries… the gods don’t love us but we’ll die young just the same…. Who said I was sober?”

They finished up a bottle. Dick taught Robbins a rhyme in French:

Les marionettes font font font

Trois petit tours etpuis’s’en vont

and when the café closed they went out arm in arm. Robbins was humming,

Cheer up, Napoleon, you’ll soon be dead

A short life and a gay one

and stopping to talk with all the petite femmes they met on the Boul’ Mich’. Dick finally left him talking to a cowlike woman in a flappy hat in front of the fountain on the Place St. Michel, and began the long walk home to his hotel that was opposite the Gare St. Lazare.

The broad asphalt streets were deserted under the pink arclights but here and there on benches along the quais, under the bare dripping trees along the bank of the Seine, in spite of the raw night couples were still sitting huddled together in the strangleholds of l’amour. At the corner of the boulevard Sébastopol a whitefaced young man who was walking the other way looked quickly into his face and stopped. Dick slackened his pace for a moment, but walked on past the string of marketcarts rumbling down the rue de Rivoli, taking deep breaths to clear the reek of whiskey out of his head. The long brightlylighted avenue that led to the opera was empty. In front of the opera there were a few people, a girl with a lovely complexion who was hanging on the arm of a poilu gave him a long smile. Almost at his hotel he ran face to face into a girl who seemed remarkably pretty, before he knew it he was asking her what she was doing out so late. She laughed, charmingly he thought, and said she was doing the same thing he was. He took her to a little hotel on the back street behind his own. They were shown into a chilly room that smelt of furniture polish. There was a big bed, a bidet, and a lot of heavy claretcolored hangings. The girl was older than he’d thought and very tired, but she had a beautiful figure and very pale skin; he was glad to see how clean her underwear was, with a pretty lace edging. They sat a little while on the edge of the bed talking low.

When he asked her what her name was, she shook her head and smiled, “Qu’est-ce que ça vous fait?”

“L’homme sans nom et la femme sans nom, vont faire l’amour a l’hotel du néant,” he said. “Oh qu’il est rigolo, celui-là,” she giggled. “Dis, tu n’est pas malade?” He shook his head. “Moi non plus,” she said, and started rubbing up against him like a kitten.

When they left the hotel they roamed around the dark streets until they found an earlymorning coffeebar. They ate coffee and croissants together in drowsy intimate quiet, leaning very close to each other as they stood against the bar. She left him to go up the hill towards Montmartre. He asked her if he couldn’t see her again sometime. She shrugged her shoulders. He gave her thirty francs and kissed her and whispered in her ear a parody of his little rhyme:

Les petites marionettes font font font

Un P’tit peu d’amour et puis s’en vont

She laughed and pinched his cheek and the last he heard of her was her gruff giggle and “Oh qu’il est rigolo, celui-là.”

He went back to his room feeling happy and sleepy and saying to himself: what’s the matter with my life is I haven’t got a woman of my own. He had just time to wash and shave and put on a clean shirt and to rush down to headquarters in order to be there when Colonel Edgecombe, who was a damnably early riser, got in. He found orders to leave for Rome that night.