Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“How delightful! Where do you pick up these engaging trifles, Flod!”

“Solicit not thy thought with matters hid: leave them to Flod. I wonder if the mail’s come. I’m expecting a check for a thousand dollars from the Smart Set . If it’s come I’ll treat you to a dinner at the free lunch over the way.”

“What have you sold to the Smart Set ?”

“The usual cynical little triangle story. I turn them out by recipe. Take one sweet, tired, gingham wife in a Long Island village: one successful climbing husband, who wants to build him more stately mansions, O my soul, but finds his wife still feeding the chickens—come, chick, come, chick! add one deep-dyed chorus girl recuperating in the country from housemaid’s knee. Stir till thick. Separate them. Sprinkle with Belasco sauce. And there you are.… I cut all the descriptive passages out of the newspapers. Much easier than trying to grasp the contemporary style myself.”

He knocked out his pipe on the window-sill, humming. While Cooke was fastening his collar, Billington came in.

“I say, where are we going to hog it, tonight?… Shall we go to that new Chinese place in Sixth Avenue?… No, let’s go to Keen’s.… No, Schwartz’s would be better—pig’s knuckles and cold beer. No, I feel like something really subtle . What about Leveroni’s and a lobster?…”

He beamed, leaning on a massive walking-stick almost as long as himself: pirouetted around it, excited.

“One at a time, Steel-trap!”

“I don’t feel like eating at all,” said Cooke, jerking his striped tie.

“Cooky’s romantic,” laughed Flodden. “Waitah! Waitah! Bring me, please, the underdone uvula of a bat—and waitah, one moment, please—I’ll have just a half-portion, please, just a half-portion.”

“Dry up, Flod! You make me sick.”

“Well, if we’re going out in serious quest of food, I’ll have to take off my beautiful slippers.”

“Go barefoot, Flod,” said Billington, his black eyes glittering. “Wrap a sheet around you and carry a lily.”

“Tush,” said Flodden, and disappeared into the hall.

II.

On the way downtown, Cooke said little to his two companions, feeling that they irritated him. They were older than he. They were fairly successful hack-writers, knew the ropes, talked esoterically of the editors they knew. Certainly, they fascinated him. He liked living with them. But why the devil did they chatter so incessantly? How could they keep up, as they did, their clever patter? There seemed to be nothing serious in them—they were always laughing and smirking. Cooke, from the window of the elevated train, stared out, peered into all the house-windows. All those lives, in there! Secret, rich, mysterious. He liked to see the people moving there, inside, folding newspapers, taking pots from stoves, turning back bed covers, reaching up arms to light the gas. He liked the heavy Jewesses leaning out into the evening, apathetic, their massive breasts spread out on the cool stone, their faces like the faces of oxen. The street swarmed with children; children ragged and noisy. The vast multiplicity thrilled him and made him melancholy. There it was, so close to him, so immediate, yet he could do nothing with it! Some poison in his brain turned it all to dullness, to mud—no, worse than that, to a kind of lifeless simulacrum, a mechanical formula—as soon as he tried to touch it. Why was it? Oh, God, if he could only get hold of beauty! It was so simple a thing—this tawny evening light flung slantwise from the west through dirty streets—streets of wholesale warehouses strewn with broken crates and straw—ash cans and blown papers.

“Ah, Paree!!” Flodden exclaimed, as he stepped off the iron stairs and tapped the sidewalk with his malacca stick. Billington was laughing.

“No, seriously, Flod! How did you do it? You aren’t beautiful, you know.”

“Cookie, he says I’m not beautiful.… A thing of duty is a boy for ever. That’s the secret of my success.”

Billington took Cooke’s arm.

“He won’t tell me how he got his gallery of mistresses in Paris. You know, those photos in his room. ‘Votre Petite Amie, Dolorine.’ ‘To my dear little cabbage, with all my heart, from Goo Goo.’ And so forth.”

“Never-never!” cried Flodden. “Betray the little darlings? Grossly indelicate.”

They all laughed.

“All the same, Flod, I believe you bought the whole collection—of pictures, I mean—for a franc.”

“Half a franc. There was nothing indecent in them, so they went cheap.”

In the dark French restaurant, with its bare polished tables, its winy smell, and rows and rows of bottles and great casks, bottles tiered all the way to the ceiling, Flodden chuckled.

“My dear Bill, my poor Bill, I understand you perfectly, and sympathize with you deeply. Yes, you lack that something, that je ne sais quoi , which brings the bird to your hand. If you really want to know how I did it, it was like this. When I wanted a mistress, I went into the Magazin du Louvre, or the House of a Thousand Shirts, pretending to seek a hat for Madame—Madame Flodden. The hat girls are usually very pretty. Flirtations. Discreet innuendoes. Flattery. And there”—he snapped his fingers—“it was.”

Anchovies—crabmeat salad—Amer Picon—how romantic! thought Cooke. He was excited by the conversation between Billington and Flodden, but was ashamed to ask questions. He would have liked to know everything about it—everything. How unbearably hot it was in here. Electric fans whirled their colored ribbons of paper. Did Flod really do that? The photos on Flod’s bureau had agitated him—soiled and scented trophies of six months in Paris. Flod was lucky. Once or twice he had talked seriously about Dolorine, who had lived with him on Montmartre. They had been on a picnic together to some place near Paris where there were houses in trees. They sat in a sidewalk café drinking beer under a chestnut tree which was in bloom. Dolorine had a sad sensual face, was pale, had a habit of putting her elbows on the table and resting her chin on her hands. “Monsieur,” she said, “monsieur, monsieur.” How astonishing to climb the dark tenement stairs at night with Dolorine, a French girl. Dolorine struck a match, lit the gas, and squealed. Ah! those devils! they have forgotten my milk. Oh, Toto! Your poor coffee! You will have no coffee. She squealed again, when Toto—Flod—kissed her, tipping her hat to one side and getting a feather in his eye. The bed was by the window.

Billington was talking excitedly, as he always did, his eyes sparkling and darting about, never resting anywhere for long. “It’s perfectly true—I do lack something, I do. I don’t know what it is—I don’t really! I’m shy, but just the same women stimulate me simply extraordinarily, and I can talk to them—oh, infinitely better than I can with men. And yet I don’t make the slightest impression on them! Not the slightest. Now this afternoon I went to see Celia Daggert—you know, the miniature painter. She lives on Sixty-second Street. She attracts me very much, and I should like immensely to make her fall in love with me—in which case I’d fall in love with her. Well. This afternoon she had a terrific effect on me—absolutely terrific. She has a quick mind—she has a kind of tired prettiness, if you know what I mean. And really, she intoxicated me. I never talked so brilliantly before in my life. I talked like a genius—like a genius! I showered epigrams—I was a chandelier-tree, showering crystal. I was conscious of my power—I used it up to the last notch—I was like a magician, making strange and beautiful things come out of words. I was so excited that I couldn’t sit still. I stood in the middle of the floor and talked to her. Really, I’m not exaggerating at all—I’m quite detached about it. And Celia was amazed—and that was the end of it. Now how do you explain it? It’s most tiresome.”