That Summer in Paris

by Callaghan, Morley;

  The line has often come back to me, bringing the little street scene back vividly.

  “Where do you go roller skating around here?” I asked.

  “We can find a place. Don’t you want to go roller skating, Loretto?”

  “I’ll go. I’m game.”

  “And you?” Zelda asked me.

  “I’ve only roller skated two or three times,” I said, half laughing. “I’ll go along though, if you want to.”

  But Scott, who had been demurring politely, and who had, perhaps, counted on my saying I had no desire to roller skate, muttered impatiently the thing was to go no further. Suddenly he grabbed Zelda by the wrist. “I’m putting you into a taxi. You go home now and go to bed,” he said. His peremptory tone on the shadowed street startled us. If I had grabbed my own wife by the wrist and told her I was putting her in a taxi, her eyes would have flashed; there would have been some kind of a struggle. Zelda’s face was half hidden, yet her whole manner changed; it was as if she knew he had command over her; she agreed meekly. I could not know then that Zelda had begun to show many signs of her impending breakdown, and that Scott was having perhaps secret and painful difficulty with her. From the way she had spoken, her restless air on the street, Scott must have recognized some symp-tom. We were getting our first glimpse at the beginning of the tragedy of his life. Yet he had sounded so commanding; he did have this extraordinary authority over her. A taxi came along and he put her in it. And suddenly she had said good night like a small girl and was whisked away from us – and Scott dismissed the little scene almost brusquely.

  “Zelda has to get up early in the morning. She’s taking those ballet lesson,” and he pointed out that girls as a rule started studying ballet when they were about twelve! Zelda had started when she was over thirty and it was hard for her; it was all very tiring. I asked him why she wanted to take up ballet dancing at her age. It was quite understandable, Scott said; she wanted to have something for herself, be something herself. I recalled her sudden aggressive assertion at dinner that she too was a good writer. Was she bent on competing with Scott for the limelight? Of course, that was it. How unlucky for Scott. And I remember taking Loretto’s arm and looking at her, hoping she would never feel driven to jockey with me publicly for attention.

  Scott was walking along with us, talking easily now as if nothing of particular interest had happened. He told us we really ought to visit the big cafés.

  He suggested that we should walk along and sit at the Dôme. It was a place we ought to visit, he said. We wondered where he thought we had been all this time. Yet walking along to the Dôme, we held our peace. Why hadn’t we told him we had been in the Trianon with the Joyces, and now that we sat every night at the Sélect near the Dôme? Because of his eager enthusiasm, the pleasure he got out of offering a new experience he thought would please you. I always had the inclination when with him to keep quiet and not spoil his fun. Sitting at the brightly lit Dôme terrace, so crowded with tourists, he explained, like a man slumming, that the Dôme had been just a little zinc bar. All the tourists were there, he was sure, because they had readThe Sun Also Rises. I can still see him there on the terrace, all his wonderful availability in his quick conversation, his smile, his unspoilt eagerness to find goodwill and friendship in those he liked. Then suddenly he asked, “Couldn’t we all have dinner together? Couldn’t we get the Hemingways? Couldn’t you suggest it to Ernest, Morley?”

  I certainly would suggest it, I agreed. We went on with the conversation. Neighborhood characters were passing, our drunken poet in his Pernod trance; the two bright boys with that handsome girl who looked like a Turk; why did they keep together even with her? Were they inseparable in everything? But while I watched I was pondering over the paradoxical relationships between men. I asked myself, Why doesn’t Scott speak to Ernest himself? Why pick on me? I had been assuming that Scott was Ernest’s intimate friend. I did not feel that I was in the little circle of Hemingway’s close friends; there would have to be others he saw in Paris, close old friends he would go to for companionship when he was in trouble. Who these people were I didn’t know. I had thought that Scott for sure was one of them. What if there wasn’t such a group?

  How unlike the French writers we were. Breton, Soupault, Aragon, Eluard, got together, got excitement out of talking about writing. Sometimes I had wondered if Ernest and I would see much of each other if we didn’t go boxing. Who knows? Maybe Ernest didn’t see much of anybody. Yet Scott, the devoted old friend, seemed to believe that I was the one Ernest was seeing. It was complicated. Perhaps Scott knew that Ernest now avoided the close friendship of other writers unless he had something in common with them aside from the writing. But like every man in the world who has a hero and imagines there is someone much closer to his hero than he is, Scott asked me to speak to Ernest and I was touched.

  CHAPTER 20

  It was in the back of my mind the next afternoon when I called for Ernest. He was waiting, and he had a friend with him, Joan Miró, the great Spanish surrealist painter. At that time Miró was at the beginning of his great international reputation. He looked to be about the same age as Ernest and he was small enough in stature to make me feel like a big man. He was about the size of Napoleon.

  He wore a neat dark business suit, and the kind of a shirt I hadn’t seen for a long time; it had a stiffly starched front with stripes running crosswise. His hair was clipped close, and he had a quick warm smile and lively eager eyes. Unfortunately for me, he couldn’t speak a word of English. Ernest said that Miró was coming with us to act as timekeeper. Miró beamed proudly. Outside, walking over to the American Club, we must have presented a strange spectacle: big Ernest over six feet and heavy, me, four or five inches shorter, and Miró, who might have been a little over five feet. Steps and stairs on the Paris street! And to make it a better picture, Miró not only had that stiff cross-stripes shirt, he wore one of those hard black bowler hats!

  Taking advantage of the fact that Miró had no English, I told Ernest that Scott had called for us and we had dinner with him and Zelda and I now liked Scott very much. I remember the little conversation. About the proposition that we all get together he made no comment.

  “You didn’t tell Scott where I live, did you?” he said after a moment’s reflection.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “If you’re going to be seeing a lot of Scott, don’t tell him where we live, eh?”

  “Why not? What’s the matter?”

  “The Fitzgeralds will come walking in on us at all hours.”

  “Can’t you tell them there’s a baby in the house? Tell them Pauline has to get some sleep.”

  “It won’t stop them,” and then he shrugged. “And besides, Zelda is crazy.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “She’s just crazy. You’ll find out.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  At the time I thought he meant that Zelda wasn’t predictable in the sense that Scott wasn’t predictable either when a little drunk. Yet I felt troubled. A man as sensitive as Ernest would know beyond a doubt of Scott’s admiration for him, and his liking too. Scott apparently had some need of the kind of close friendship he thought he could get from Ernest. It seemed to me Scott wanted to offer incredible loyalty to him. Look what had happened when Scott had believed I wasn’t sufficiently impressed by that passage from A Farewell to Arms. Yet Ernest, for some reason I couldn’t understand, some ridiculous scene between them, no doubt, or some series of irritations, or maybe because of some view he had of Scott and Scott’s work, simply didn’t want to be bothered with him. Yet they lived only a few blocks from each other. Scott didn’t know it, and I was not to tell him.

  Due, no doubt, to Miró’s presence, it was one of our best boxing afternoons. At other times in our boxing Ernest and I would laugh and kid each other. Miró added a touch of solemn Spanish dignity to the affairs. Taking off his neat coat, he carefully folded it. Moving with brusque efficiency, he studied his watch so he
could call out accurately the beginning of the three-minute round and the minute rest. All his movements became precise, stern, polite and yet dominating. Never had I had a timekeeper so immersed in a match, and so commanding with his splendid dignified earnestness. To have laughed or not been workmanlike in our boxing would have been an insult to his dignity; he would have been disappointed in us. So it was a good afternoon. We were all happy and satisfied, and I thought that Miró, especially had enjoyed himself.

  Miró was having dinner with the Hemingways, but after the boxing I told them I was meeting Loretto at the Sélect. And here again was the charm of Hemingway. I didn’t have to say to him, “Loretto, I know, would like to meet Miró.” He simply said, “We’ll walk up with you.” When we got to the café there was Loretto, and Hemingway introduced Miró and they sat down with us for a few minutes.

  I remember it was a dull gray day, but not dark enough to promise rain. Along the other side of the street passed those two boys, “the clever little devils,” whom I had got to like by this time. Their bland superiority and their awareness of what was going on in the Quarter was often amusing. Now they sat down across the street at the Coupole. By the way they were staring over at us I knew they had recognized Hemingway, whom they had never seen at the cafés.

  “Did you read that ‘Confessions of a Young Man’ piece?” I asked Ernest. The piece had appeared in This Quarter. It must have been written when the boy was eighteen or nineteen. “Well, the fellow who wrote it,” I said, “is sitting over there looking at us.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one on the right.”

  “It was a very funny piece,” Hemingway said, laughing. “You tell McAlmon that if he’ll publish it I’ll buy ten copies to give to my friends.”

  When they were leaving, Miró picked up the bag containing the boxing gloves. He seemed to like carrying that bag. They went slowly along the street, big Ernest, little Miró in his bowler hat and neatly pressed dark suit, erect, precise in his step.

  When Miró and Ernest had got only fifty feet beyond the café, the two boys, who had been watching carefully, came hurrying across the street.

  “Wasn’t that Hemingway?” Graeme asked.

  “Yes, that was Hemingway.”

  “And the other one,” Buffy said blandly, watching the two retreating figures. “His butler, I presume? Does he really bring his butler along with him now to carry his bag?”

  Their little snicker, in view of the picture Hemingway and Miró made, was perfect. The remark indeed was bright. I let them enjoy their mirth for a moment. Knowing I was going to leave them feeling they had committed the most terrible of sins around the Quarter, the sin of unawareness of what was going on, I said quietly, “No, that’s Miró.”

  “Miró! The Spanish painter?”

  “Yes. Not Hemingway’s butler.”

  “Oh,” and their faces fell, and they took a couple of quick steps out to the sidewalk so they could see the hard hat and the neat square shoulders of the little man carrying the bag, in an entirely different light. Then somewhat embarrassed, they sauntered away.

  Sitting there by ourselves I told Loretto we had a situation on our hands; there was to be no getting together with the Hemingways and the Fitzgeralds. Ernest had warned me not to give Scott his address. Naturally we wondered, speculated, tried to come to some conclusion about who had put out the story that they were great and good friends. Come to think of it, I had never heard Ernest praise a book of Scott’s. Yet Scott was still fiercely devoted to him. Was there something in Ernest’s nature that made him want to slough off anyone who had affection for him? I wondered. On the other hand, aside from the impression I had got from Max Perkins, was there any evidence they had ever been as close as Scott wanted them to be?

  “There’s something about all this that doesn’t make sense,” Loretto said suddenly.

  “What doesn’t make sense?”

  “Ernest doesn’t see Scott because Scott is a drunk. Right?”

  “And would upset his life and his work. That’s right.”

  “But look, Morley. What about that manuscript copy of A Farewell to Arms Scott showed us? Where would Scott get it?”

  “Probably from Ernest.”

  “Exactly. Well, you don’t go handing out manuscripts to people you want to hide from, do you? So the decision that Scott is a nuisance must have been made pretty recently. A drunk! Are you sure that’s all there is to it? You know it can’t be. What goes on between them, anyway? Will Ernest ever tell us? Will Scott go on pretending he doesn’t know?”

  By this time Hemingway and Miró, far along the street, were just about out of sight, but I craned my neck, taking a last look at them. I was sure Scott would keep pushing away till he came along some afternoon with Ernest and me, came into that little area of interest and friendship that had nothing to do with our being writers.

  CHAPTER 21

  At this time – it comes into my memory as being in the middle of the week – Loretto reminded me that the priest we had met on the boat, who had been so sure we would forget all about him, ought to be coming through Paris now on his return from his Mediterranean tour. That night we walked over to the Right Bank hotel, where we had parted from him on our first day in Paris. Since that first day, which now seemed so long ago, how rapidly the Quarter life had swirled around us.

  The desk clerk said that indeed the priest’s party did have a reservation at the hotel, a large touring party was booked into the hotel for the end of the week. We left a note for the priest – just our name and the address, and a few joking words – I thought we were supposed to forget you. Two days later, coming home from boxing, I heard voices in the apartment. Someone was laughing loudly. When I entered there was the priest with Loretto, and they were both laughing hilariously. On the floor were two champagne bottles. Other bottles were on a little table by the window. Jumping up, the priest embraced me. I was embarrassed by the warmth of his embrace and his emotion. No one could have called me his old and dear friend. My awkward laugh, my embarrassment, only made Loretto giggle. “He’s just glad we were here,” she said. “Just happy he knew someone in Paris.” And Father Tom beamed at me.

  Still giggling, she told me that his touring party had been made up of middle-aged Methodist women; in Italy they had watched him closely and disapprovingly; they had gossiped; furthermore they had been full of blue-nosed malice. And why? Because he had liked to consume the wine of the country. Every time he had sat with them at dinner he could tell by their sly, knowing glances they had been gossiping about him. Whenever he went off on his own, they took their little digs at him. On his return they would practically smell his breath, convinced he would be reeking of liquor. He had wanted to express his contempt for them, yet couldn’t. He was stuck with them till the tour’s bitter end.

  “For the last week,” he cut in, a smile of beautiful contentment on his face, “I kept saying to myself, ‘If only those Callaghans look me up I won’t be alone. I’ll have at least one night when I can break away.’”

  Now there were actually tears in his eyes. The poor man, this prison chaplain who had walked to the gallows with sixteen men, and whose only boast was that not one of these criminals entrusted to him had died in terror, and who, suffering from some fever that might be killing him, had been told to go to the Mediterranean and try and be happy, had in fact landed in a more depressing prison than the one he had left. You would have thought, looking at him now, that he had just jumped over the wall. My wife cut in to say he had asked immediately where they could buy something to drink and they had gone out together. Here they were now. Everything was fine. Then I noticed he was not wearing the priest-ly Roman collar. In France, he said, a clerical collar was taken as the mark of a Protestant minister. Therefore, an American priest had a choice between the soutane of the French priest, or the conventional white collar of the American businessman.

  “Morley’s been boxing,” Loretto said. “Show him your shoulders. Oh, go
on. Show him your shoulders.” And then she explained to the priest, “If there are no marks on his face I know his shoulders will be all black and blue. Go on, Morley, don’t be silly,” and I had to take off my shirt. As usual, there were heavy welts on my shoulders. Shaking his head sadly, the big, rawboned, sandy-haired priest stood up. “If you were boxing with me those welts wouldn’t be on your shoulders, they’d be on your jaw,” he said. “I’d break you in two.” “Would you now?” I said, thinking in his happiness he was going to lunge at me. “Ah, you’re just a little guy,” he said. But my wife had filled our glasses again.

  It was twilight when we went out to eat. The priest, walking between us, his arms around us, chuckled to himself. At this hour his ladies would be wondering what he was doing, he said. But he had left a note for them; he had told them he knew a writer in Montparnasse, living among all the wild free artists, and the writer had a lovely wife, and he, himself, would be dining with them, spending the evening in the Latin Quarter. The note would put them in a terrible tizzy. They would be sure he was off somewhere giving himself to the devil in the most dissolute company.

  “What do you want to do?” we asked.

  “Now, what would you be doing yourselves tonight?”

  “Nothing. Just hanging around the Quarter.”

  “Could I just hang around with you, just be a part of your life tonight?”

  Opposite the Dôme was the restaurant that had trays of hors d’oeuvres, more hors d’oeuvres than any restaurant in the neighborhood. Why shouldn’t he have a chance to gorge himself? So we ate in this restaurant. Afterwards we moved down to the Coupole. On the street the girls loafed by. At nearby tables little groups argued; other patrons stared impassively at the other side of the street. But nobody was in a hurry. The whole bright corner under the Paris summer night sky must have suggested to the prison priest an oasis of warmth, unhurried, careless conviviality. As he looked around he had an enchanted smile. Here at least no one would care what he did.