Chasing Sylvia Beach

by Cynthia Morris

  When she arrived at the bookstore, it wasn’t open yet. Sitting on the steps munching a pain au chocolat, she imagined going back to the hotel that night, but then remembered that she had been kicked out. At least she didn’t have to sneak around, constantly worried about running into Paul’s mother.

  She mulled over possibilities of where she could stay. She didn’t know how long her money would last. A hotel would cost a lot. She didn’t even know where to start looking for a place. She could ask Paul for help, but when would she see him again? Going back to say good-bye meant she might encounter his mother again. The thought of never again seeing Paul brought up tears. But no. She knew where his classes were; she could try to find him at the Sorbonne to say good-bye and arrange to get her money back. But what about her writing?

  She’d have to figure out a way to see Paul, and a way to get her pages back before he saw them.

  The sound of the door being unbolted prompted Lily to her feet. She greeted Sylvia, who smiled slightly.

  “You got the bike, I see.”

  “I did, and I met Gertrude. She gave me advice on writing.”

  “Of course,” Sylvia replied. She eyed the bike. “No wonder she wanted to get rid of that. It’s in a fine state. Well, we can take it to the repair shop and see what can be done. Bring it in.”

  Sylvia stepped aside as Lily wheeled the bike through the stillness of the shop and stored it in the courtyard where the other bike had been. Returning to the shop, she noticed the tiny back room. She hadn’t paid much attention when Sylvia had shown it to her, but now the cot in the hallway could be a possible refuge. It sagged and the pillowcase was gray rather than white. Racks for magazines and stacks of boxes filled the space between the bathroom and the stairs. Perhaps she could stay here. Perhaps she wouldn’t be homeless after all. She took a deep breath and pushed past the curtain and into the shop.

  “Put the bin out, will you?” Sylvia gestured at a wooden box of books near the front door.

  Lily knelt at the box. She had done this at Capitol Books. Part of the morning ritual involved wheeling out the cart of books that people still bought for a quarter outside the store. An old man came almost every day and stooped over the cart, fingering the pages, his hooked nose dripping in the cold. He’d hold the books close to his face and peer at the words. Lily would watch him from inside and wonder how much he could see. He’d shuffle in with a stack of five books, because if you bought four you got one free. The man would unfurl a crumpled dollar bill and fish a few coins out for tax. She witnessed his whole life in those gestures. He carted the books home, most likely a tiny apartment in Capitol Hill crammed with other people’s unwanted books whose covers curled back on themselves. The smell of all that paper, the slight moldy scent that clung to the pages that had been sprinkled with rain, filled his home. His cat curled up in a musty chair and he inched his way around precarious stacks of books. He spent his entire day reading, eating Campbell’s soup for dinner. He was Borderline Homeless Guy.

  And now, so was Lily.

  “Right, then,” Sylvia prompted.

  “Right,” Lily echoed, snapping to. Picking up the heavy box, she nudged open the front door. Carefully, she tucked the loops on the box onto the hooks affixed to the wall. Back inside, Sylvia was at the desk, glasses perched on her nose, reading some papers. It was the perfect time to ask, but she didn’t. Instead, Lily went about her tasks, rehearsing her request in her mind. She flipped the Open sign, pulled the stepladder out front, and hoisted the heavy Shakespeare and Company sign to its rung. She dragged the ladder back in.

  “I need you to run this over to the library.” Sylvia held a book out to Lily, who responded with a questioning look.

  “The Maison des Amis des Livres. Across the street. And hurry back. I have some more books to package and ship today.”

  Lily crossed the street in the bright afternoon sun. She approached the French bookshop and paused to look in the windows. Small hardback volumes with gold trim were stacked in a spiral on green felt. The effect was very neat and proper, as a French bookstore should be. She pushed open the door. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the dark room. Bookcases lined the walls, and a few chairs held to the corners.

  “Bonjour,” came a voice from the back.

  “Bonjour,” Lily called out. She peered into the darkness. Adrienne sat behind a black lacquer desk. She was writing, her bosom pressed up against the desk. She was a large woman, even sitting down, with an incredibly delicate face. Lily approached Adrienne.

  “You’re Sylvia’s new assistant?” Adrienne said in French.

  “Yes,” Lily said. “It’s very kind of Sylvia to hire me.”

  “You were very helpful at the reading. We’ll see what you’re saying after a few weeks’ work. It’s not always easy chez Sylvia.”

  Lily put the book on the desk. “Here you go.”

  Adrienne pressed a piece of paper over her writing, blotting the thick ink. “Wait,” she said. “I’ll just give you this letter to take with you for when you go to the post.”

  As Adrienne folded the paper and tucked it into an envelope, Lily glanced around the tiny shop. It appeared more like someone’s private study than a bookshop. All the books were French. Lily studied a shelf of poetry, recognizing the big names—Baudelaire, Lamartine, Rimbaud—but most of the volumes were a mystery to her. If she didn’t find her way home, she’d be reading a lot more French. And German, too. The sound of a stamp pressed down on the desk brought her back to the room. She turned. Adrienne held out the envelope to her and returned to a small stack of books on the desk. She had already dismissed Lily, who lingered like a porter awaiting a tip. Adrienne glanced up without moving her head, her eyebrows neat lines across her brow.

  “Okay, au revoir.” Lily backed toward the door. Outside, she looked back. Adrienne had already returned to her books. Lily waved good-bye to the top of Adrienne’s head.

  As she made her way back across the street, Lily thought about the difference that seventy years of women’s liberation had made. Gertrude, Sylvia, Adrienne were all so tough, but Lily had developed her own veneer from working on Colfax Avenue in Denver. Still, she wanted their approval. What would it take to be recognized by them? Sylvia and Adrienne respected writers—and women writers above all. If she failed with Louise’s assignment, she might very well be stranded in Paris. How would she support herself? Perhaps she could sell articles to a newspaper back home, like Janet Flanner and Ernest Hemingway. She could start with simple observations, like the ones she’d been making in her notebook. Now that she had an in with Sylvia, maybe some of her contacts would help. Gertrude had given her advice. Maybe she could carve out a writer’s life in Paris.

  Back at Sylvia’s, Lily shelved books. Sylvia greeted the few people who stopped in. Teddy welcomed everyone with a thumping tail and spent most of the day lying near the desk. A man cleaned the windows and Sylvia paid him five francs. Everyone who entered the shop was a friend and not a customer, and Lily witnessed very little money pass into Sylvia’s hands. No wonder she had such a hard time doing business. Especially now, with so few Americans abroad.

  “Who buys books these days?” she asked Sylvia.

  Sylvia lit a cigarette and laughed wryly. “No one in Paris.”

  Lily was surprised to see her laughing. But perhaps she had long ago come to terms with the fact that her shop wasn’t a viable business, but a charity case supported by friends. Lily imagined that it might be a relief for Sylvia to close the shop, not to have to run the business while searching for food and getting by under the surveillance of the Nazis.

  “Yet you survive.”

  Sylvia blew smoke toward the ceiling. “Yet I survive. Thanks to the help I get. I’m glad you can lend a hand. Getting ready for this Exposition and running the shop is more than I can handle.”

  “It’s my pleasure.”
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  Sylvia asked her how long she planned to stay in Paris. This was Lily’s chance to ask about the cot in the back. Lily hedged this question, as she had with Paul. She spoke of how she loved Paris and said could stay here forever.

  Sylvia squinted at Lily. “You aren’t like those whooping Americans, here for a thrill. What would keep you here?”

  “There’s not a lot to take me back home,” she said. “I don’t really know what to do with myself there.”

  Sylvia smiled. “I understand that. That’s what drove me here in the first place. My family doesn’t understand.”

  “What did your family want for you?”

  Sylvia stubbed out her cigarette.“They knew better than to want a good marriage for me. They knew I wasn’t the sort to buckle under the regime of a man other than Father. Somehow they knew there was only one man for me: Father.” For a few seconds, she was lost in thought as if imagining a life back in Princeton with her father. Then she brought herself back to Lily. “What about you?” Sylvia asked. “What does your family expect of you? A nice husband, of course.”

  “I studied writing in school,” Lily said. “They think I should get a nice steady job at a newspaper. But news doesn’t really interest me.”

  “What does?”

  “Reading, and writing stories. Wandering around looking at things. I’m a bit of a dreamer, if the truth must be known.”

  “Then you are in perfect company at Shakespeare and Company. Dreamers abound there.”

  “Are you a dreamer?”

  Sylvia narrowed her eyes and looked at Lily. Lily was beginning to recognize this look. It was probably not designed to intimidate whoever was under the gaze, but that’s the effect it had on Lily.

  “I was a dreamer. But the years have beaten it out of me. You’ll see.” She pointed at Lily. “Time withers dreams. You see all those old people sitting on benches in the Luxembourg Garden? They’re replaying their early regrets, wishing they’d bought that bouquet of flowers, wishing they’d done something other than the correct and proper thing. Wishing.”

  “What do you wish you had done?”

  “Hmm . . .” Sylvia seemed to contemplate Lily’s question. “I can’t say. I think I’ve done everything I wanted to.”

  “Surely there’s something,” Lily prompted. Sylvia lit another cigarette and held the pack toward Lily. She wanted one, but refused to get lured into the habit again. She said no and Sylvia exhaled smoke before continuing.

  “Okay . . . I wish I had spoken up sooner to Mr. Joyce. Before things got so bad between us. There. I said it.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I told you that.”

  Lily smiled. “I’m glad you did.”

  “Why, so you can run out and spread gossip around the town?”

  “Of course not. Because now you have that off your chest. You can breathe easier.”

  Sylvia laughed, her chuckle turning into a cough. Lily waited until the spasm passed before asking another question.

  “How have you survived all these years here by yourself in a foreign country?”

  Sylvia’s cigarette perched like a parrot at the end of her fingers. “First,” she said, “I am not alone. I have Adrienne. And second, I don’t feel like I’m in a foreign country. America feels more foreign to me now. I’ve grown quite accustomed to France and her ways. I think I’ve become more frog than American.”

  Nothing dampened Sylvia’s determination. Maybe that’s how she had survived so many years teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. It was so different from Lily’s era, where if something didn’t work out or wasn’t comfortable—a marriage, a job—it could be swapped for a new one.

  Lily asked if Sylvia ever wanted to return home, but Sylvia insisted that Paris was her home.

  “I spent my childhood in the States,” she said, “but from my adolescence forward I lived in Europe. My friends are here, my family comes to visit, and this is where I can live in peace in my small way and share what I love the most—good literature.” She pronounced it “litrature,” with a British accent.

  Lily laughed. “Your bookshop is great. People sure love it, don’t they?”

  “Well, they used to, when there were people here with plenty of francs to spend. Now things just get worse and worse. Who knows what Hitler and Mussolini will be up to and what that will do to our little Odéonia.”

  The phone rang shrilly, ending their conversation. Sylvia chatted in French while Lily refreshed Teddy’s water bowl. It was getting easier to connect with Sylvia. Here was her chance to ask about staying. The longer she waited, the tenser she became. She checked the grandfather clock. She hadn’t made any progress toward finding the book Louise wanted. With Sylvia present, Lily didn’t feel comfortable snooping around.

  She wandered over to the window where the cat reclined alongside a stack of books. Two dead wasps cluttered the corners of the window box, and a thin layer of black cat hair carpeted the surface. Lily reached in and propped up a copy of Edith Wharton’s A Backward Glance that had fallen over. She spread the pages so that the book would stay up. She could fix this display up in a jiffy. A dusting and a good clearing out of the cobwebs would make a big difference. She could place a copy of Translation in, alongside the T.S. Eliot books. Then people would know that Eliot was in Translation and buy a copy. The racks at the sides of the case were half empty; she could replace them with new books and literary journals. She glanced at Sylvia, who was still chatting. Lily pretended to straighten up the books on the table while keeping an eye out for the title Louise had mentioned. But nothing related to Norse mythology.

  Sylvia hung up the phone and crushed out her cigarette. The ashtray was nearly full. I’ll have to empty that, Lily told herself. Sylvia caught Lily staring and resumed her stern look.

  “Sylvia?”

  “Mmm?”

  “I need to ask you a huge favor.”

  Sylvia frowned. “What now? You’ve lost the bike, now what? You want to take over the shop? Well, fine.” She waved her hand as if dismissing something. “I should hand it over to a young whippersnapper like you.”

  “No, of course not!”

  “Well, what is it, then?”

  “It’s . . . I . . . I need a place to stay. I can’t stay at the hotel anymore.”

  “Why not? Run out of sous?”

  “It’s not that—though, yes, I can’t really afford to stay there. It’s . . .” Lily wasn’t sure how Sylvia would respond to the news that she was involved with someone on the hotel staff. It did seem awfully quick, even to her modern sensibilities. “It’s the hotel keeper. She’s kicking me out. I have to find another place to stay. Today.”

  “Today? You waited this long to tell me this?”

  “Well, I didn’t really have a chance until now. I’m sorry to ask. I hate to impose. But I promise I won’t be a bother.”

  “Don’t fret,” she said. “You can stay on the cot in the back. There’s no heat there, but the days are getting warmer so that might help. I’ll warn you, though. Lucky will be very happy and will take it as an opportunity to use you as a hot water bottle.”

  The tension slid off Lily’s back. She hadn’t realized that she’d been scrunching her shoulders until she felt the release.

  “Thank you, Sylvia! I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “Your aunt can’t take you in?”

  Lily had forgotten her aunt lie. “She’s, she . . . her apartment is a mess, what with packing up and all. I can’t stay with her. Plus she’s busy saying good-bye to her friends, so . . .” Lily trailed off, hoping this was a good enough explanation for Sylvia. Sylvia just stared at Lily, her forehead creasing in a frown. Finally, she spoke.

  “The cot in the back room has sheltered many a writer, so why not you? Of course.” She returned to her papers, still frowning.
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br />   “Thank you, Sylvia. You’re the best.”

  Sylvia tsked. “Get to work, young lady. I’m feeling a headache coming on. Enough chatting.”

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Sylvia was at her desk going over an account ledger when she grimaced and let out a gasp.

  “Are you okay?” Lily asked.

  “It’s just a migraine,” Sylvia muttered. Her jaw was clenched and her eyes closed.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Can I help?”

  “There’s nothing to be done. Not that I haven’t tried. Best to rest it out.”

  Silence settled between them while Sylvia kept her eyes closed. Lily wished she could take away her pain. After a few minutes, she spoke quietly.

  “I’ve had migraines, too. They’re horrible.”

  Sylvia leaned her head back like she was trying to catch rain on her face. Her expression was gray and tight, her mouth twisted into an ironic grimace like she was about to say something funny but was holding back. “Yes, well, I have them nearly every day. Life at the bookshop has given me a regular pain in the head.”

  Lily asked what remedies she had tried. Putting her head down on the desk, Sylvia replied, “Everything. Ampoules, black coffee, dark rooms, goat’s milk, homeopathic treatments. Every remedy known to man. Nothing works. The only thing that ever got close was massage by an old doctor I saw. And the liver extract. That made me quite jouncy.”

  “I know of something that helps me. It might work for you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Well, can you try it at least?”

  Sylvia raised her head an inch. She peered at Lily from under a wave of hair, her mouth pursed.

  Lily sighed. “You’re not very eager to get rid of this migraine, are you?”

  Sylvia pushed off from the desk and sat back in her chair. “Fine. Try me.”