Hemingway, too, had left town. So had McAlmon. In August all the people one knew had gone to a watering place or into the mountains or south to a seashore. Titus too had gone to Nice with Helena Rubenstein. Before he left he asked us to move to his handsome apartment just around the corner from the Dôme. He was a book collector. He had one of the finest book collections in Europe. While he was away he liked to console himself with the thought that he had someone in his quarters who was reading the books, not stealing them. Late at night I would sit up reading the later novels of Henry James. That style of his in those later books! I began to hate it. Not layers of extra subtleness – just evasion from the task of knowing exactly what to say. Always the fancied fastidiousness of sensibility. Bright and sharp as he had been in the earlier books, the fact was that James had got vulgar – like a woman who was always calling attention to her fastidiousness.
When Titus returned, Loretto and I began to believe that we were the last of the immovable figures around the Quarter. One night our friend Whidney, From the Chicago suburb, talked about the Basque country. Suddenly we wanted to go there. We went with Whidney. We stayed in Bayonne, where we became honorary members of the Bayonne Tennis Club. In the mornings we would play tennis and in the evenings go to the Casino in Biarritz, and I remember that one night on the way home we wandered into an elegant house without noticing it had a red light over the door. A woman, surely the world’s most tolerant and cultivated madam, explained that my wife could not enter the room where her girls were, but if we would like it, two of her girls would come into our room and make a tableau for us. We had a drink and some sympathetic conversation with the madam, then my wife led the way out.
One weekend we crossed the border to San Sebastián and saw the bullfights. And then – well what could we see now that we hadn’t seen before, what could we do we hadn’t done before? That was the quest. There was Lourdes in the mountains. Lourdes and the miracles! So we took the train through the Pyrenees to Lourdes on the day of the Belgian National Pilgrimage to the shrine. The great mountain valleys were filled with mists and shadows, and mists lay on the peaks of the mountains. It was the kind of heavy lonely landscape that made me want to believe in angels as well as earthly creatures. It looked like a place of mysterious grandeur where men could trust their own visions. Peer Gynt could have come here, I thought, seeking something new that might finally satisfy him. And had I, too, just begun my own wandering from home?
Now I think that all of us in Montparnasse, McAlmon, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Titus and even that Pernod poet were Peer Gynts who knew in our hearts we would soon have to go home. No, not Ernest. Could he ever really go home? Or for him, committed as he was to the romantic enlargement of himself, did there have to be one adventure after another, until finally there was no home? And what could be left for Scott when the glamorous wandering was over? When “a primrose by a river’s brim, a yellow primrose was to him, and it was nothing more.” My old theme. Nothing more; the wonder of the thing in itself. Right for me. But not for Scott.
I turned out to be a bad pilgrim, or perhaps I was still a dis-satisfied Peer Gynt. I seemed to be able to notice nothing but vendors selling cakes and religious medals. And I muttered so often that I might as well be at a fairground, I’m sure I spoiled things for Loretto. In the grotto we saw all the weathered crutches. We were in the great square when it was time for the sick and the crippled to be wheeled there to wait for the terrible moment when the priest would hold aloft the Blessed Sacrament. The square, set down in the mountains, was jammed with the faithful and the sick in chairs, who gazed raptly at the Blessed Sacrament which was being carried by the priest in a slow procession. As he moved past those in wheelchairs in the front row, the sunlight glinted on the golden chalice containing the Host. The sun’s rays coming over the mountain peaks flooded the whole square in the valley. Finally the little procession turned back to the altar. Then there was utter silence. I had never before felt such a general tension within a silence. It was the moment of desperate prayer for the sick who were there waiting, the wild leap of faith.
Then I heard a cry, a moan. A cripple rose slowly out of a wheelchair, rapt, his face shining, and went staggering forward. He fell flat on his face. He sobbed. It was a terrible sound. In a chair beside me was a beautiful fair American girl who was trying to lift herself from her chair. Finally her head fell back, her eyes closed, and she wept but made no sound as the tears ran down her cheeks. All around us now was excited chatter broken with wild cries: “Un miracle, un miracle.” Wheeling, turning, groping, shoving, they were all trying to get close to a miracle. Groups formed around those who claimed to have been touched by healing light. And groups were around the comics, too, who basked in attention. A middle-aged woman who kept tapping her shoulder explained that the arm had been hopelessly crippled. She held it out proudly. But the wise Frenchmen around her were smirking behind her back. They understood that she had grabbed the center of the stage.
The whole crowd had been broken into these little groups, and in each group was someone insisting his prayers had been answered. Those in the chairs were being wheeled back to the hospital where doctors would examine them. As I watched their faces I thought of the fair American girl and how the tears streamed down her face. My little prayer that afternoon was that her tears might have been from hope and not despair, and that in her hospital bed that night she would still have hope, still have faith that she would be cured, still be dreaming of going home. As we wandered away from the square, darkness came quickly from the mountains. Soon the night and the hills were all one and we were on our way back to Bayonne. Two days later we were back in Montparnasse.
Having finished my novel and with the September days passing slowly, I noticed we were always looking around restlessly for something new to do. I missed the excitement, the pleasure and surprise I had got out of the company of Ernest and Scott. I would have been glad to see McAlmon coming along the street ready to create a difficult situation, or bringing some news of Joyce.
In the tennis games at Bayonne, Whidney, who had taken lessons from a good pro, had always beaten me, but he had hated himself for finding it so difficult. My form was bad and he had contempt for the way I could get the ball back over the net, and even greater contempt for himself for not being able to blast me off the court. He maintained I was so bad I was good. One night at the café I looked at Michael Arlen and knew beyond all doubt he would have taken tennis lessons from the best of pros. How was his tennis form? I asked. It was great, he assured me. Whereupon I bet Whidney money Arlen could beat him in a match. We were all to meet at the Coupole next day and go off to the tennis court.
Next morning my wife, having looked at my flannels, said they were soiled. We agreed that Arlen, who was so dapper himself, and from whom we expected great style in tennis, would be insulted if his partner did not show up in immaculate flannels. I took them down to a corner laundry. The laundress promised to have them cleaned and ironed in two hours. At the hour when I was supposed to be meeting Arlen, I was sitting in the laundry watching the laundress trying to iron my pants dry. Arlen and Whidney were kept waiting an hour and a half. After my silly apologies we all went to the tanbark court. Arlen did put on a very stylish performance against Whidney. But of course, Whidney beat him easily. With superb aplomb Arlen stood before me, his backer and sponsor, and as if he were holding a club he flicked his wrists. “I have been playing too much golf,” he explained. “It is a different motion of the wrists,” and he walked away grandly.
With the nights getting a little cooler I would notice, sitting at the café, that I seemed to be waiting for something. Gradually I began to figure out what was troubling me. We seemed to have come to a resting place in Montparnasse. Talking to Ernest I had said, “The Americans around here can’t be Frenchmen, no matter how well they speak the language. If we are going to stay here it means really we have to become Frenchmen.” And he had said, shrugging, “Who would want to stay?” Looking at him
, I had gathered he had no intention of settling down in France. But then where would he go next? It had been my absolute conviction that he would never return to America and write about his own people in their cities and towns as he had done once in his little Michigan stories.
At the Sélect one night with Loretto, I remembered this conversation. I told her that if I were to stay on in France I should now be soaking up French culture. I should want to be with French writers. If I didn’t want the French culture, then I was there in exile. Could the dream I had had for years of being in Paris been only a necessary fantasy? A place to fly to, a place that could give me some satisfactory view of myself? And she asked if Scott and Ernest too were in flight, and I said yes, they were. Ernest would never again write about his own country. And Scott, as long as possible, would go on drinking and rushing to the Riviera.
“It’s a kind of otherworldliness,” I said, laughing, yet meaning it. And indeed it was my conviction now that for most men there had to some kind of another more satisfactory world. (The primrose had to be anything but a primrose.) The saints, tormented by the anguish of the flesh, wanted to reject the human condition, the world they lived in. But whether saints or café friends there in Paris, weren’t they all involved in a flight from the pain of life – a pain they would feel more acutely at home? It struck me then too that the French literature we had so much admired from Mallarmé to the surrealists was simply a rejection of this world and the stuff of daily life. The French writers stayed at home and exiled themselves in their own dreams. Then what would my own fantasy be? Loretto asked, lightheartedly. And rather grandly, to mask my doubt and wonder, I said I might have to forge my own vision in secret spiritual isolation in my native city. Joyce in exile had gone deeply, too deeply, into himself. But what if he had stayed in Dublin?
A week later, looking around the café, Loretto said idly, “Paris is lovely. We’ve been so happy here. But doesn’t it strike you that this neighborhood is now like a small town for us?”
“Yes, the same faces always in the same places. And all the gossip. What do you say if we go to London?”
“Don’t you want to see Ernest or Scott?”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” I said slowly. “How do I know Ernest wants to see me?” I didn’t tell her I had a hunch Ernest was back in Paris. I had been nursing a suspicion that Ernest, brooding over the indignities he had endured in the last encounter with me and Scott, had decided it would be better to avoid me. Why be in the company of someone who could only remind him of embarrassing moments? If I had revealed this suspicion to Loretto she would have said to me, “If you think he’s back in town, for heaven’s sake, why don’t you look him up?” My egotism wouldn’t let me go looking for him again. I had told myself I would leave it to him. If he were back in town and wanted to see me, he knew where to find me.
We booked our passage to London. In three days we were to leave the Quarter.
That night at ten we had come along Montparnasse from the rue de la Santé. The October nights had got much cooler and a heavy dampness seemed to be in the air, and even at that hour we saw derelicts huddling near restaurant doors. Later, when the chairs were piled on the tables on some of the terraces, these derelicts would sleep in the corner by the wall. We went to the Falstaff where we sat by ourselves. Often now we did not need any company. When we had been there only fifteen minutes Loretto said, “Good heavens, there’s Ernest.” He was at the door, looking around rather shyly or self-consciously. Big and dark he loomed up there in the doorway. Waving to him, I stood up and I remember how he grinned coming toward us. His pleased warm friendly grin made me feel ashamed of my secret thoughts about this man who had meant so much to me. As he sat down he looked at my wife, shook his head and laughed, for she had had her hair cut short like a boy’s. Titus and McAlmon had persuaded her that a short haircut would accentuate her handsome profile. When she asked Ernest why he was laughing, he assured her he liked her haircut very much.
We talked like old good friends. We told him we were leaving town. Never had he been more sympathetic and charming. He asked us if we were leaving France without seeing the Cathedral of Chartres. We were? How foolish. But we had only two days more. Then take a day and go to Chartres, he said. It was incredible that we would depart without making this pilgrimage. When we demurred, finding obstacles, he told us that he, himself, would drive us to Chartres in the morning. All we had to do was get up early and be at his house at eight-thirty.
After he had left us I told Loretto how moved I had been to see Ernest come walking toward us. Our last trip anywhere in France should be with him, I said. And, of course, he was right. To have left France without seeing Chartres would have been criminal.
In the morning at the appointed hour we were at Hemingway’s place. Not in months had I been up at such an hour. Half asleep as I was, it was hard for me to be immediately charming and available. I went in to get Ernest. I remember that his sister, a tall dark girl, was there. As we came down the stairs, he stopped halfway down and asked how we would like to go to Longchamps? He had been given a hot tip on a horse, a really hot tip. Of course it was up to us, since he had offered to drive us to Chartres and had told us how important it was to see the Cathedral, but what did we think about us all going to the races? His boyish eagerness was usually irresistible, but now I looked at him blankly. “We’ll ask Loretto,” I said. Just last night he had convinced me that I was guilty of criminal negligence in not going to Chartres. Outside he said hopefully, “You’d like to go to the races, wouldn’t you, Loretto?”
But she had seen the expression on my face. “Whatever Morley wants to do,” she said hesitantly. “I think you convinced us last night we ought to see Chartres.”
But the races, if we could all go to the races, and he had thought – well... In the presence of our embarrassed silence he yielded. Leaving us he went back upstairs and spoke to his wife. My own wife whispered to me it was plain he was exasperated. Perhaps we had better go to the races. No, I said stubbornly. Who’s idea was it to go to Chartres? Then he came out and we got into his Ford.
With the three of us in the front seat the little struggle between Ernest and me seemed to have ended. Driving out into the country he didn’t mention the races again. He seemed to be splendidly himself. We talked and laughed. We were in such good humor I asked suddenly if he had heard from Scott. He hadn’t heard from him at all, he said. Trying to draw him out I went on talking about Scott, hoping he would show some awareness of Scott’s hurt feelings. He seemed to have forgotten the whole incident. Nothing about Scott was bothering him.
As we drove along I watched his face. It was incredible that he could be unaware that he had shattered our friend. Speeding on the highway, I tried to get him to say what he thought about Scott’s writing. I was no more successful than I had been five years ago in Toronto. I think now he rejected Scott’s whole view of the world.
And yet this strange warm beguiling man, who was there on the seat with Loretto between us, could have had another need, a need to believe that as an artist he had never been dependent on the help of anyone else. We had started talking with enjoyable malice about friends. We made some jokes about Ford. As I said before, his respect for Ford had gone. Yet Ford in the beginning had written that Ernest was “the best writer in America.” Then he explained McAlmon’s crazy life. The trouble with McAlmon was that he had had a brother, or a cousin, who had been an idolized football player, and McAlmon had been no good at games. Yet McAlmon, Ernest’s first publisher, had really helped him along the way. And Sherwood Anderson in the beginning had praised Ernest to the skies. And Scott! Hadn’t he gone to Scribner’s about Ernest’s work? For one reason or another Ernest had rejected all these old friends. Warm, likable and lovable as Ernest was, did he have some secret need to protect his ego from anyone who might have a minor claim on him?
Then he became very talkative about writing. He talked about style, and we were in happy splendid agreement. The dec
orative style, the baroque based on a literary adornment of perceptions, was an affectation in our time, he said. Only the clear direct stripped statement belonged to our time, and it wasn’t just a matter of what you could or couldn’t do. And another thing. If it came down to a question of scholarship about these matters, no one he knew had a more scholarly awareness of what was involved than John Dos Passos, and Dos agreed with him, he said.
And he had a little trick of conversation that amused and delighted me. He would say writers caught on because of their affectations, their tricks of style, a point of view; then would add, “But we know...” That “we” became fascinating. There were real writers, the “we”; the others were nothing in themselves. But we had come to Versailles. He was sure we would want to see the grounds and the Palace.
When we in the great Hall of Mirrors I noticed that Ernest, walking with Loretto, seemed to be in no hurry to have us get on our way. He would let me wander away, bemused by the seven-teenth-century love of perfect balance and form. Sometimes I would return for a few words, then go off by myself again. Finally Ernest looked at his watch as I joined them. “Loretto,” he said hopefully, “if we leave now we’ll have time to get back to Paris and see the races. What do you think yourself?” Her expression told me she was weakening. If she had only nodded her head to him the thing would have been settled. But then I realized that he had counted on the long stopover at Versailles satisfying us and again it was as if were boxing. Now he had feinted me out of position.
That Summer in Paris Page 19
