by Fannie Hurst
No use! No use. The spas were riddled with that type. The women in mended finery temporarily on their uppers. It took a something, to go find out these Americans visiting abroad, the very parents of the youngsters who were cutting their teeth at the boule tables, that she did not have in her makeup. She could no more, when it came right down to the doing, have presented to one of them her predicament! Why, the very words would have congealed upon her lips, and there was that fear, which was beginning to haunt her these days, that her head might begin to quiver. That would be terrible. Get your head set back square on your shoulders—then go!
The Babe had begun to regard her, when her head started to shake, with something a little mystified lying in his milky old eyes. Once or twice he tried to lick her cheeks. It was not pleasant, though, licking a cheek that was filled with tremor, because after each attempt he sat back and just looked his mystification.
“I won’t do it anymore, Baby. I know it is horrid. Lookie, darling. See. Muvver will wear the little jet aigret, and the minute it begins to bob, Muvver will know. Don’t mind Muvver when she nods, darling. Lots of people do it. Mrs. Winninger—healthy as anything, used to nod her head, too. Just that little nervous way. Horrid. I’ll quit.”
That was the beginning of a week that ended in a way for which, by all processes of deduction, she should have been prepared, and yet somehow, when it came, the breath was literally knocked out of her.
Literally that, because she had refused to so much as take stock of the dwindling contents of her purse. Something would happen. Something had to happen. Height of the season and all that. People did not remain in dilemmas like this. And then, when it came, this Saturday morning, to hurrying down the street for giblets to prepare for the Babe, there were exactly forty centimes in her purse when she opened it to dig for a franc. Literally, then, her heart missed its beat, or whatever anatomical hiatus is ascribable to the shock that takes place under such external stimulus. In the bright light of a faultless morning, an array of soiled, worthless-looking coins, such as one is in the habit of tossing to roadside youngsters, stared up from her palm.
“Encore—dix centimes,” said the chef of the restaurant, handing her the sackful of leavings and scraps. “Dix centimes,” and held up his ten bloody fingers.
“Chez moi. No more. Left money at home. Argent—chez—moi. Bring tomorrow,” she mouthed at him, with her lips folding back against her chilly teeth with all the amiability she could muster. “Next time.…”
Then something happened, which sickened, enraged her, so that she began to shout profane sentences which she did not know she harbored.
The chef opened the paper cornucopia, extracted three or four of the scraps of meat, tossed them into a refuse pail, and handed her the remainder.
“Dirty, stingy Frenchie! Wop! Piker! Stingy-gut! Damn dog! We Americans may be money-mad, but we’re not money-mean. Ugh, you dirty little sardine, you’re not worth canning!”
God, that was common. That was fishwife. The chef had yelled back at her, too, with an obscene gesture. That was fishwife! Hurrying along the street, the giblets beginning to dampen through the newspaper, reaction set in that continued to horrify her. How could I have? It’s all right for these fishwives around here. They’re forever hollering. But me. How could I have? The dirty little oily sardine. Taking those few scraps out of the mouth of the Babe. It isn’t that I care about those few scraps. There will be more and plenty. The Babe will eat better food before he dies than that old sardine ever saw! It’s just that it scares one that life can be mean, like that. Taking those scraps from the Babe. I should have thrown them back at him. Dared not—those scraps—
They boiled up though, with a warm well-flavored smell that permeated the room. Just as good, it struck her suddenly, as the general smells that permeated the hallways and courtyard of the pension. Americans were squeamish. Why, it was well known that in France, even before the war, the peasantry bought horse-meat, ate it, liked it. Just a matter of what you were accustomed to. A place on Vine Street, in Cincinnati, used to specialize in eels. Rather share of the Babe’s giblets, stewed up nicely with onion, than eat eels!
For her lunch, that day, she ate a portion of the giblets, helping it down with generous chews off a petit pain and plenty of hot sweetened coffee. It went down, and, as she put it, stayed down; and that afternoon, meticulously keeping the day to normal, and filling in every second of it with some chore of the hands, she bathed the Babe, rolled him dry, played an absurd game which he loved, of squatting on all fours and making lunges at him, combed up his front-hair into a pompon above his eyes, which she screwed with red ribbon, and, seating herself by the window to watch, sent him down, through the corridors, alone, to the courtyard.
It all happened so suddenly that trying fantastically to live it over, in its horror, in its terror, in its heartbreak, it seemed to her that instead of leaping out of his kennel where he had become unchained, Marchand, as she stood leaning out of the window, looking down, must have sprung from her own forehead, and landed straight, sure, and fanged, on top of the prowling little Babe, whose nose had been snooping along a fence edge.
All the world, as he landed there, became the delirium of barks. The short sharp terrified barkings of the Babe. The long tunnels of barkings from the wolf, Marchand. Their duet—ye-ye—woof—woof, and suddenly the distant bayings of the town’s dogs, everywhere. Her own voice shouting. Then the instantaneous miracle of many voices, many figures, her own cries streaming behind her like a waving banner, as she tore through the halls. Dust. A Babylonian moment of the Babe on his back, his mouth open, a red furnace flecked with white foam. The wolf-dog, whose teeth were fastened in the just-combed wool underneath the Babe’s throat, and who would not be beaten off by Ra-Ta-Plan with a broom!
“Coming, Baby!”
There was simply no end to the corridors; the stairs; the darkness which she knew inch by inch, flying up to try and impede her with the hallucination of steps and doors, where there were none. “Coming, Baby!”
There was quite a circle in the courtyard; and, of all people, the little hunchback tobacconist from next door, who could not have weighed ninety pounds, was standing, holding off the black Marchand, from whose jowls red spittle was dropping; and there in the center of the yard and the silence, with his head curled under him, and his body risen to a hump, the Babe!
“Tenez! Ne touche pas! Madame, do not touch! He eez in pain. He weel bite!”
“Not me. Let me go!”
“Madame!”
“Oh, my God, he snapped at me, didn’t he! That’s because—his throat—look—his throat—he has two mouths! That red is where his throat is ripped—his head is halfway off! It will drag if he walks. What makes him jump that way—like a chicken without its head! Baby—my sweet—let me go. God damn you—strangers you—you’d see him starve for ten sous. When he gets well, I’ll sick him on you—dirty bitch Marchand—do you hear—you all—I hate you—let me go—”
“Madame, you must compose yourself. It will be more merciful to keel—”
“Who are you? What do you want? What do you know about anything?”
“I am a guest in zee next pension. I have seen the black dog in the kennel jump—I follow—”
“Oh, my God! Something is wrong here. Some conspiracy among you. No, you don’t! No, you don’t! He’s mine. See, if you don’t believe me. Now you touch him, if you dare, the way I’m touching him. Bah—you—you all—enemies—strangers—skinflints—leave me alone—”
The Babe had not snapped this time, even as she scooped him, bloodred about the head, into her arms, and could feel through her lap, against her legs, against her breasts, against her arms, the quick warm wet of his blood.
But his head! His head kept dangling over the crook of her elbow, and the Babe had two mouths. His own gasping one with the lolling tongue, and the red gash across the throat, half-severing his head.
“Get me a doctor.” No one moved. They must have thoug
ht that was a frog croaking, from the way the voice in her felt, and so she tried to lift it, quite idiotically, she thought. “Get me a doctor—someone—”
“Madame, eet is no use. Eet is best he should be killed immédiatement. He suffers. Eef you will go away I will see to it that mercifully he eez—”
How you hated him. God, how you could have gored the little English-speaking skinny, even as the Babe had been gored. “Go away—you—go away, all you strange greedy faces—leave me alone—I will take him up—I will cure him.”
“Madame, you are not kind. Hear how he suffers—”
He’s bleating. He’s bleating like a little lamb. My lamb.…
“One merciful hit over the head will put him in peace.…”
You thought you were going to faint this time, sure, but the warm feeling of the blood pressing through your corsets was what revived you.
“Babe, don’t moan. They want to kill you for it. Babe, upstairs alone—you can moan. Not here. See now, you gapers! It’s all right. Everything is all right. Warm water and rags and—why, there weren’t so many gapers anymore. The wolf-dog, damn him, God damn him, was being bathed in a corner, and someone must have fainted, because there was another little knot of folk. But it’s all right—everything is coming all right. Here, you—skinny—see, I’ve got his head back on. I’m holding it on. I’ll hold it on until the doctor comes—sh-h-h, my lamb, don’t bleat. That is what will make them want to kill you. That’s what makes them faint. Don’t cry, Baby. Old man—you—the doctor—What is that?”
“This, madame, eef you will be so kind—it is a club that with one blow will put your little dog out of his misery. Madame, you must, eef you will be so kind—eef you will go—we will do this act of mercy—I myself will even do it, eef—”
“Go away! Go away! Oh, God, there was that head slipping again back into the hallucination it gave of the two mouths. Babe, do not scream so! Babe, look at me! You want them to kill you? Is the wound too terrible for you to live? Must I? No. No. No.—You see, that was a lick he gave me with his tongue! My dog licked me with his tongue. If anybody has to kill him after that, I do! Not you. Not strangers. If I do, he’ll know it’s all right. Not you! Babe, look at me. Do you understand? My darling. My black curly innocent, have no fear. No strange hand shall do it.… Give me that club! Babe—one for the money—two for the show—three to make ready, my darling, four for to—go—”
My, how many stairs—will I ever stop falling—
57
The shoes lay in the empty drawer, wrapped each in its canton flannel and with an expression to them as if they had features. The left one was more streaked with lines, like a human making a grimace of pain. “Ouch,” it seemed to say. That was practically true, because, when tired, it was characteristic of Walter to bear down on his right foot in order to relieve the chronic gouty twist that resided in his left.
The sending-along the shoes would ultimately have been the simple matter it deserved to be, except for that grimace. Of all the objects that one by one had gone the way of Anatole—the cufflinks, the watch, the wallet—the shoes continued to represent the peak of anguish. Perhaps because they were the last. With them would go the tie of every tangible thing that had been Walter’s. With them would go out of the house, out of the room, out of the days grown so tormentingly quiet, the last evidence of his almost breathing presence.
He would have been the first to laugh this off. An old pair of shoes. Don’t be ridiculous. You women—God-awful sentimentalists. There was undoubtedly that aspect. You were ridiculous, sitting there in the center of the silence, as it milled around, feeling the anguish of carrying those shoes to Anatole.
There was something funny and undignified and unpretty about shoes that had been worn. And these seemed to say, in the tone she had heard a hundred times over, when the wince came, “Ouch!”
It was hateful to sit there feeling ridiculous. For two days, now, she had held out against the tightening little knot that had ceased to be active hunger and lay in an area of chill against the pit of her stomach.
The thing to do, while waiting and gathering forces for the open-and-aboveboard presentation of her situation which was to be made to one of the Americans at the Europa or Astoria, was to realize on the shoes and tide over this inertia.
The death of the Babe had been the almost irretrievable setback. The days since had taught her the insanity of daring to let anything connected with that scene nest in her memory. Things were about to move along all right once more. Just a matter, now, of mustering up the strength to get past this supreme absurdity in her inability to sell the shoes. Plenty of Americans, indeed the average, once you had the strength back and the vitality to feel chic, would be glad to tide over a countryman. His throat had been ripped until it looked like a mouth, and above the two mouths were his eyes—stop it! Stop it! All this talk about the human mind being able to stand so much and no more, nonsense! I don’t intend to let mine go—what is it the American boys around the boule tables call it?—ga-ga! I don’t intend to go ga-ga. Not much.
What if one could sell one shoe and keep the other that was saying “Ouch”? There was comedy for you! Sell one shoe and keep the other that was saying “Ouch”! I can’t give them up. I can’t give them up. I can’t give them up in the morning. If you sang it like that, to the tune of “I can’t get them up, I can’t get them up, I can’t get them up in the morning”—there was a laugh in that.
It was not that she felt hungry; there was only the chilly knot. But one had to eat; all there was to it. For two days now, six meals in all, there had been only the milky water left over from boiled rice. Extraordinary to have thought to save that. Loathsome, as it went down, but undoubtedly nutritious. Or was starchy water bad for one? You dared not even think of it one way or another toward the third day, because of the feeling of the throat closing against it like a heavy door. Besides, it did not do to let that tinge of Chinese yellow creep into the eyeballs and against the skin.
Fool. Idiot. The shoes themselves, lying there in that drawer, in lieu of the good hot soup, the fromage, the petits pains, the sale would bring, must be crinkling with the laughter of ridicule.
At two o’clock of the fourth afternoon, because it seemed to her that what she had awakened out of, with her arms outstretched, and her head lying on the table into them, was more of a prolonged faint than a nap, she carried the shoes to Anatole who, two hours later, returned her six francs. Three francs each.
58
This was the first time in all her life that anything of such a nature had happened to her, and, please God, it would never happen again.
The affair with Anna and Anatole had made her nervous. Fancy their daring to jeer her out of the shop that way, when she protested at the six francs, and in the very face of the loiterers and drinkers at the tables in the buvette next door. That in itself was sufficiently shattering to cause to happen what did. That and those silly indigestible buns, with raisins poked in, that had caught her famished fancy as she passed the patisserie. The buns were heavy and made her feel sick, even as they went down, but now was not the time to be fastidious. The Americans to whom she intended appealing would be kinder if she looked a bit chic and well-nourished. Life was like that. The same way, you could hope for a handout of francs at the Casino, chiefly if you looked as if you did not need them.
Anyway, it was the combined nervousness and the indigestibility of the buns. At two o’clock, in the dead of night, she had awakened suddenly, and all on the instant realizing that the warm lump of the Babe was not at her feet, and that the drawer in the chest was now empty of the shoes, there had gone, curdling through the stilly decorum of Papatou’s, great spinning spirals of cries, one topping the other, thinner and higher, like mounting rope before it hurls out to become a lasso.
“Oh, my God,” she cried, sitting up in the dark and slapping her hand with great force against her mouth, “this is terrible. Stop! Stop!” And still she could not, and still the c
ries kept mounting, and with them horror of the self who was creating this perfectly dreadful commotion.
It was unthinkable to cry out like that in the strange night of a strange country, and worse to keep on, even after there were steps in the corridor, and, worst of all, she could not stop.…
“The banging against the door will help me,” she kept moaning in her mind, as the cries kept mounting and the banging sounding. They were like the slaps, those bangs, which you administer to a strangling infant, and presently, as the banging continued, the yells did subside. They were the most terrifying and confusing sounds, these, emanating from herself, she had ever heard. Even after they had subsided, it was as if she sat huddled there in bed in the midst of a silence that had been terribly shattered. Lunatic-sounding and resounding noises lay strewn about the place in a silence that was almost more unbearable than the ripping sound the cries had made as they left her head.
“What have I done? Oh, you—out there—it’s all right. Everything is all right. Very well, I’ll open the door. You must forgive it, please. You see, I dream sometimes. Won’t you come in?” This was terrible. They were seeing her with her face all toothless, and the old brown wrapper flung on over her nightgown was really by now quite a sight. When once taffeta silk begins to split …
There was Papatou in a night-rig of striped underwear and a pointed cap that was enough to wring a laugh out of even her horror, and the half-dressed figure of the boy who had always worried her so on the Babe’s account, a couple of dim figures from rooms down the hallway, and, holding a lamp so that it showed her stocky and enormously muscular figure, which was attired in a one-piece chemise of unbleached muslin, Madame Papatou.
My, she was terrific. Thewed like a short-necked ox, muscles coiled in the calves of her legs and the uppers of her arms, sixty-five if a day, the color and texture of red soil, rain-washed.
