John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

Annabelle didn’t like it in London where the dark streets were dismal in a continual drizzle of sleet, so they only stayed a week at the Cecil before crossing to Paris. Ward was sick again on the boat from Folkestone to Boulogne and couldn’t keep track of Annabelle whom he found in the dining saloon drinking brandy and soda with an English army officer when the boat reached the calm water between the long jetties of Boulogne harbor. It wasn’t so bad as he expected being in a country where he didn’t know the language and Annabelle spoke French very adequately and they had a firstclass compartment and a basket with a cold chicken and sandwiches in it and some sweet wine that Ward drank for the first time — when in Rome do as the Romans do — and they were quite the honeymoon couple on the train going down to Paris. They drove in a cab from the station to the Hotel Wagram, with only their handbaggage because the hotel porter took care of the rest, through streets shimmering with green gaslight on wet pavements. The horse’s hoofs rang sharp on the asphalt and the rubbertired wheels of the cab spun smoothly and the streets were crowded in spite of the fact that it was a rainy winter night and there were people sitting out at little marbletop tables round little stoves in front of cafés and there were smells in the air of coffee and wine and browning butter and baking bread. Annabelle’s eyes caught all the lights; she looked very pretty, kept nudging him to show him things and patting his thigh with one hand. Annabelle had written to the hotel, where she had stayed before with her father, and they found a white bedroom and parlor waiting for them and a roundfaced manager who was very elegant and very affable to bow them into it and a fire in the grate. They had a bottle of champagne and some paté de fois gras before going to bed and Ward felt like a king. She took off her traveling clothes and put on a negligee and he put on a smoking jacket that she had given him and that he hadn’t worn and all his bitter feelings of the last month melted away.

They sat a long time looking into the fire smoking Muratti cigarettes out of a tin box. She kept fondling his hair and rubbing her hand round his shoulders and neck. “Why aren’t you more affectionate, Ward?” she said in low gruff tones. “I’m the sort of woman likes to be carried off her feet… Take care… You may lose me… Over here the men know how to make love to a woman.”

“Gimme a chance, won’t you?… First thing I’m going to get a job with some American firm or other. I think Mr. Oppenheimer’ll help me do that. I’ll start in taking French lessons right away. This’ll be a great opportunity for me.” “You funny boy.” “You don’t think I’m going to run after you like a poodledog, do you, without making any money of my own?… Nosiree, bobby.” He got up and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go to bed.”

Ward went regularly to the Berlitz school for his French lessons and went round to see Notre Dame and Napoleon’s tomb and the Louvre with old Mr. Oppenheimer and his wife. Annabelle, who said that museums gave her a headache, spent her days shopping and having fittings with dressmakers. There were not many American firms in Paris so the only job Ward could get, even with the help of Mr. Oppenheimer who knew everyone, was on Gordon Bennett’s newspaper, the Paris edition of The New York Herald. The job consisted of keeping track of arriving American business men, interviewing them on the beauties of Paris and on international relations. This was his meat and enabled him to make many valuable contacts. Annabelle thought it was all too boring and refused to be told anything about it. She made him put on a dress suit every evening and take her to the opera and theatres. This he was quite willing to do as it was good for his French.

She went to a very famous specialist for women’s diseases who agreed that on no account should she have a baby at this time. An immediate operation was necessary and would be a little dangerous as the baby was so far along. She didn’t tell Ward and only sent word from the hospital when it was over. It was Christmas day. He went immediately to see her. He heard the details in chilly horror. He’d gotten used to the idea of having a baby and thought it would have a steadying effect on Annabelle. She lay looking very pale in the bed in the private sanatorium and he stood beside the bed with his fists clenched without saying anything. At length the nurse said to him that he was tiring madame and he went away. When Annabelle came back from the hospital after four or five days announcing gaily that she was fit as a fiddle and was going to the south of France, he said nothing. She got ready to go, taking it for granted that he was coming, but the day she left on the train to Nice he told her that he was going to stay on in Paris. She looked at him sharply and then said with a laugh, “You’re turning me loose, are you?” “I have my business and you have your pleasure,” he said. “All right, young man, it’s a go.” He took her to the station and put her on the train, gave the conductor five francs to take care of her and came away from the station on foot. He’d had enough of the smell of musk and perfume for a while.

Paris was better than Wilmington but Ward didn’t like it. So much leisure and the sight of so many people sitting round eating and drinking got on his nerves. He felt very homesick the day the Ocean City booklet arrived inclosed with an enthusiastic letter from Colonel Wedgewood. Things were moving at last, the Colonel said; as for himself he was putting every cent he could scrape up, beg or borrow, into options. He even suggested that Ward send him a little money to invest for him, now that he was in a position to risk a stake on the surety of a big turnover; risk wasn’t the word because the whole situation was sewed up in a bag; nothing to do but shake the tree and let the fruit fall into their mouths. Ward went down the steps from the office of Morgan Harjes where he got his mail and out onto Boulevard Haussmann. The heavy coated paper felt good to his fingers. He put the letter in his pocket and walked down the boulevard with the honk of horns and the ring of horse’s hoofs and the shuffle of steps in his ears, now and then reading a phrase. Why, it almost made him want to go back to Ocean City (Maryland) himself. A little ruddy sunlight was warming the winter gray of the streets. A smell of roasting coffee came from somewhere; Ward thought of the white crackling sunlight of windswept days at home; days that lashed you full of energy and hope; the Strenuous Life. He had a date to lunch with Mr. Oppenheimer at a very select little restaurant down in the slums somewhere called the Tour d’Argent. When he got into a red-wheeled taximeter cab it made him feel good again that the driver understood his directions. After all it was educational, made up for those years of college he had missed. He had read through the booklet for the third time when he reached the restaurant.

He got out at the restaurant and was just paying the taxi when he saw Mr. Oppenheimer and another man arriving down the quai on foot. Mr. Oppenheimer wore a gray overcoat and a gray derby of the same pearly color as his moustaches; the other man was a steelgray individual with a thin nose and chin. When he saw them Ward decided that he must be more careful about his clothes in the future.

They ate lunch for a long time and a great many courses, although the steelgray man, whose name was McGill — he was manager of one of Jones and Laughlin’s steel plants in Pittsburgh — said his stomach wouldn’t stand anything but a chop and a baked potato and drank whisky and soda instead of wine. Mr. Oppenheimer enjoyed his food enormously and kept having long consultations about it with the head waiter. “Gentlemen, you must indulge me a little… this for me is a debauch,” he said. “Then, not being under the watchful eye of my wife, I can take certain liberties with my digestion… My wife has entered the sacred precincts of a fitting at her corsetière’s and is not to be disturbed… You, Ward, are not old enough to realize the possibilities of food.” Ward looked embarrassed and boyish and said he was enjoying the duck very much. “Food,” went on Mr. Oppenheimer, “is the last pleasure of an old man.”