John Passos - 1919

Anne Elizabeth who was a great admirer of Wilson was annoyed at first by what he was saying. He was nervous and excited and went on talking and talking. For this once she broke her pledge and drank some hot rum with him, as the room was terribly chilly. In the light of the street lamps on the little corner of the Spanish Stairs they could see from Ed’s window, they could see the jumbled darkness of crowds continually passing and repassing. “By God, Anne Elizabeth, it’s terrible to think about it…. You don’t know the way people feel, people praying for him in peasants’ huts… oh, we don’t know anything and we’re grinding them all underfoot…. It’s the sack of Corinth… they think he’s going to give them peace, give them back the cosy beforethewar world. It makes you sick to hear all the speeches…. Oh, Christ, let’s stay human as long as we can… not get reptile’s eyes and stone faces and ink in our veins instead of blood…. I’m damned if I’ll be a Roman.”

“I know what you mean,” said Anne Elizabeth, ruffling up his hair. “You’re an artist, Dick, and I love you very much… you’re my poet, Dick.”

“To hell with them all,” said Dick, throwing his arms around her.

In spite of the hot rum, Dick was very nervous when he took his clothes off. She was trembling when he came to her on the bed. It was all right, but she bled a good deal and they didn’t have a very good time. At supper afterwards they couldn’t seem to find anything to say to each other. She went home early and Dick wandered desolately around the streets among the excited crowds and the flags and the illuminations and the uniforms. The Corso was packed; Dick went into a café and was greeted by a group of Italian officers who insisted on setting him up to drinks. One young fellow with an olive skin and very long black eyelashes, whose name was Carlo Hugobuoni, became his special friend and entertainer and took him around to all the tables introducing him as Il captain Salvaggio Ricardo. It was all asti spumante and Evviva gli americani and Italia irridenta and Meester Veelson who had saved civiltá and evviva la pace, and they ended by taking Dick to see the belle ragazze. To his great relief all the girls were busy at the house where they took him and Dick was able to slip away and go back to the hotel to bed.

The next morning when he came down to drink his coffee there was Carlo waiting for him in the hotel lobby. Carlo was very sleepy; he hadn’t been able to find a raggaza until five in the morning but now he was at the orders of his caro amico to show him round the town. All day Dick had him with him, in spite of his efforts to get rid of him without hurting his feelings. He waited while Dick went to get his orders from the military mission, had lunch with him and Ed Schuyler; it was all Ed could do to get him away so that Dick could go to Ed’s apartment to meet Anne Elizabeth. Ed was very funny about it, said that, as he’d lost Magda, he wouldn’t be able to do anything worthwhile there himself and was glad to have Dick using the room for venereal purposes. Then he linked his arm firmly in Carlo’s and carried him off to a café.

Dick and Anne Elizabeth were very tender and quiet. It was their last afternoon together. Dick was leaving for Paris that night, and Anne Elizabeth expected to be sent to Constantinople any day. Dick promised he’d get himself out to see her there. That night Anne Elizabeth went with him to the station. There they found Carlo waiting with a huge salami wrapped in silver paper and a bottle of chianti. The fellow that was going with him had brought the despatch cases, so there was nothing for Dick to do but get on the train. He couldn’t seem to think of anything to say and it was a relief when the train pulled out.

As soon as he reported to Colonel Edgecombe he was sent off again to Warsaw. Through Germany all the trains were late and people looked deathly pale and everybody talked of a bolshevik uprising. Dick was walking up and down the snowy platform, stamping to keep his feet warm, during an endless wait at a station in East Prussia, when he ran into Fred Summers. Fred was a guard on a Red Cross supply car and invited Dick to ride with him a couple of stations. Dick fetched his despatches and went along. Fred had the caboose fitted with an oilstove and a cot and a great store of wine, cognac and Baker’s chocolate. They rode all day together talking as the train joggled slowly across an endless grey frozen plain. “It’s not a peace,” said Fred Summers, “it’s a cockeyed massacre! Christ, you ought to see the pogroms.” Dick laughed and laughed. “Jerusalem, it makes me feel good to hear you, you old bum, Fred…. It’s like the old days of the grenadine guards.”

“Jez, that was a circus,” said Fred. “Out here it’s too damn hellish to be funny… everybody starved and crazy.”

“You were damn sensible not to get to be an officer… you have to be so damn careful about everything you say and do you can’t have any kind of good time.”

“Jez, you’re the last man I’d ever have expected to turn out a captain.”

“C’est la guerre,” said Dick.

They drank and talked and talked and drank so much that Dick could barely get back to his compartment with his despatch case. When they got into the Warsaw station Fred came running up with a package of chocolate bars. “Here’s a little relief, Dick,” he said. “It’s a fine for coucher avec. Ain’t a woman in Warsaw won’t coucher for all night for a chocolate bar.”

When he got back to Paris, Dick and Colonel Edgecombe went to tea at Miss Stoddard’s. Her drawingroom was tall and stately with Italian panels on the walls and yellow and orange damask hangings; through the heavy lace in the windows you could see the purple branches of the trees along the quai, the jade Seine and the tall stone lace of the apse of Notre Dame. “What a magnificent setting you have arranged for yourself, Miss Stoddard,” said Colonel Edgecombe, “and if you excuse the compliment, the gem is worthy of its setting.” “They were fine old rooms,” said Miss Stoddard, “all you need do with those old houses is to give them a chance.” She turned to Dick: “Young man, what did you do to Robbins that night we all had supper together? He talks about nothing else but what a bright fellow you are.” Dick blushed. “We had a glass of uncommonly good scotch together afterwards… It must have been that.” “Well, I’ll have to keep my eye on you… I don’t trust these bright young men.”

They drank tea sitting around an ancient wroughtiron stove. A fat major and a lanternjawed Standard Oil man named Rasmussen came in, and later a Miss Hutchins who looked very slender and welltailored in her Red Cross uniform. They talked about Chartres and about the devastated regions and the popular enthusiasm that was greeting Mr. Wilson everywhere and why Clemenceau always wore grey lisle gloves. Miss Hutchins said it was because he really had claws instead of hands and that was why they called him the tiger.

Miss Stoddard got Dick in the window: “I hear you’ve just come from Rome, Captain Savage… I’ve been in Rome a great deal since the war began… Tell me what you saw… tell me about everything… I like it better than anywhere.” “Do you like Tivoli?” “Yes, I suppose so; it’s rather a tourist place, though, don’t you think?” Dick told her the story of the fight at the Apollo without mentioning Ed’s name, and she was very much amused. They got along very well in the window watching the streetlamps come into greenish bloom along the river as they talked; Dick was wondering how old she was, la femme de trente ans.

As he and the Colonel were leaving they met Mr. Moorehouse in the hall. He shook hands warmly with Dick, said he was so glad to see him again and asked him to come by late some afternoon, his quarters were at the Crillon and there were often some interesting people there. Dick was curiously elated by the tea, although he’d expected to be bored. He began to think it was about time he got out of the service, and, on the way back to the office, where they had some work to clean up, asked the Colonel what steps he ought to take to get out of the service in France. He thought he might get a position of some kind in Paris. “Well, if you’re looking for that, this fellow Moorehouse is the man for you… I believe he’s to be in charge of some sort of publicity work for Standard Oil… Can you see yourself as a public relations counsel, Savage?” The Colonel laughed. “Well, I’ve got my mother to think of,” said Dick seriously.