Bliss, and other stories
how one can live without money. . . . I have quantities of good
clothes, silk underwear, two evening suits, four pairs of patent
leather boots with light uppers, all sorts of little things, like
gloves and powder boxes and a manicure set, perfumes, very good soap,
and nothing is paid for. If I find myself in need of right-down
cash—well, there’s always an African laundress and an outhouse, and I
am very frank and _bon enfant_ about plenty of sugar on the little
fried cake afterwards. . . .
And here I should like to put something on record. Not from any
strutting conceit, but rather with a mild sense of wonder. I’ve never
yet made the first advances to any woman. It isn’t as though I’ve known
only one class of woman—not by any means. But from little prostitutes
and kept women and elderly widows and shop girls and wives of
respectable men, and even advanced modern literary ladies at the most
select dinners and soirées (I’ve been there), I’ve met invariably with
not only the same readiness, but with the same positive invitation. It
surprised me at first. I used to look across the table and think “Is
that very distinguished young lady, discussing _le Kipling_ with the
gentleman with the brown beard, really pressing my foot?” And I was
never really certain until I had pressed hers.
Curious, isn’t it? I don’t look at all like a maiden’s dream. . . .
I am little and light with an olive skin, black eyes with long lashes,
black silky hair cut short, tiny square teeth that show when I smile.
My hands are supple and small. A woman in a bread shop once said to me:
“You have the hands for making fine little pastries.” I confess,
without any clothes I am rather charming. Plump, almost like a girl,
with smooth shoulders, and I wear a thin gold bracelet above my left
elbow.
But, wait! Isn’t it strange I should have written all that about my
body and so on? It’s the result of my bad life, my submerged life. I am
like a little woman in a café who has to introduce herself with a
handful of photographs. “Me in my chemise, coming out of an eggshell. .
. . Me upside down in a swing, with a frilly behind like a cauliflower.
. . .” You know the things.
If you think what I’ve written is merely superficial and impudent and
cheap you’re wrong. I’ll admit it does sound so, but then it is not
all. If it were, how could I have experienced what I did when I read
that stale little phrase written in green ink, in the writing-pad? That
proves there’s more in me and that I really am important, doesn’t it?
Anything a fraction less than that moment of anguish I might have put
on. But no! That was real.
“Waiter, a whisky.”
I hate whisky. Every time I take it into my mouth my stomach rises
against it, and the stuff they keep here is sure to be particularly
vile. I only ordered it because I am going to write about an
Englishman. We French are incredibly old-fashioned and out of date
still in some ways. I wonder I didn’t ask him at the same time for a
pair of tweed knickerbockers, a pipe, some long teeth and a set of
ginger whiskers.
“Thanks, _mon vieux._ You haven’t got perhaps a set of ginger
whiskers?”
“No, monsieur,” he answers sadly. “We don’t sell American drinks.”
And having smeared a corner of the table he goes back to have another
couple of dozen taken by artificial light.
Ugh! The smell of it! And the sickly sensation when one’s throat
contracts.
“It’s bad stuff to get drunk on,” says Dick Harmon, turning his little
glass in his fingers and smiling his slow, dreaming smile. So he gets
drunk on it slowly and dreamily and at a certain moment begins to sing
very low, very low, about a man who walks up and down trying to find a
place where he can get some dinner.
Ah! how I loved that song, and how I loved the way he sang it, slowly,
slowly, in a dark, soft voice:
There was a man
Walked up and down
To get a dinner in the town . . .
It seemed to hold, in its gravity and muffled measure, all those tall
grey buildings, those fogs, those endless streets, those sharp shadows
of policemen that mean England.
And then—the subject! The lean, starved creature walking up and down
with every house barred against him because he had no “home.” How
extraordinarily English that is. . . . I remember that it ended where
he did at last “find a place” and ordered a little cake of fish, but
when he asked for bread the waiter cried contemptuously, in a loud
voice: “We don’t serve bread with one fish ball.”
What more do you want? How profound those songs are! There is the whole
psychology of a people; and how un-French—how un-French!
“Once more, Deeck, once more!” I would plead, clasping my hands and
making a pretty mouth at him. He was perfectly content to sing it for
ever.
There again. Even with Dick. It was he who made the first advances.
I met him at an evening party given by the editor of a new review. It
was a very select, very fashionable affair. One or two of the older men
were there and the ladies were extremely _comme il faut._ They sat on
cubist sofas in full evening dress and allowed us to hand them thimbles
of cherry brandy and to talk to them about their poetry. For, as far as
I can remember, they were all poetesses.
It was impossible not to notice Dick. He was the only Englishman
present, and instead of circulating gracefully round the room as we all
did, he stayed in one place leaning against the wall, his hands in his
pockets, that dreamy half smile on his lips, and replying in excellent
French in his low, soft voice to anybody who spoke to him.
“Who is he?”
“An Englishman. From London. A writer. And he is making a special study
of modern French literature.”
That was enough for me. My little book, _False Coins_ had just been
published. I was a young serious writer who was making a special study
of modern English literature.
But I really had not time to fling my line before he said, giving
himself a soft shake, coming right out of the water after the bait, as
it were: “Won’t you come and see me at my hotel? Come about five
o’clock and we can have a talk before going out to dinner.”
“Enchanted!”
I was so deeply, deeply flattered that I had to leave him then and
there to preen and preen myself before the cubist sofas. What a catch!
An Englishman, reserved, serious, making a special study of French
literature. . . .
That same night a copy of _False Coins_ with a carefully cordial
inscription was posted off, and a day or two later we did dine together
and spent the evening talking.
Talking—but not only of literature. I discovered to my relief that it
wasn’t necessary to keep to the tendency of the modern novel, the need
of a new form, or the reason why our young men appeared to be just
missing it. Now and again, as if by accident, I threw in a card that
seemed to have nothing to do with the game, just to see how he’d take
it. But each time he gathered it into his hands with his dreamy look
and smile unchanged. Perhaps he murmured: “That’s very curious.” But
not as if it were curious at all.
That calm acceptance went to my head at last. It fascinated me. It led
me on and on till I threw every card that I possessed at him and sat
back and watched him arrange them in his hand.
“Very curious and interesting. . . .”
By that time we were both fairly drunk, and he began to sing his song
very soft, very low, about the man who walked up and down seeking his
dinner.
But I was quite breathless at the thought of what I had done. I had
shown somebody both sides of my life. Told him everything as sincerely
and truthfully as I could. Taken immense pains to explain things about
my submerged life that really were disgusting and never could possibly
see the light of literary day. On the whole I had made myself out far
worse than I was—more boastful, more cynical, more calculating.
And there sat the man I had confided in, singing to himself and
smiling. . . . It moved me so that real tears came into my eyes. I saw
them glittering on my long silky lashes—so charming.
After that I took Dick about with me everywhere, and he came to my
flat, and sat in the arm-chair, very indolent, playing with the
paper-knife. I cannot think why his indolence and dreaminess always
gave me the impression he had been to sea. And all his leisurely slow
ways seemed to be allowing for the movement of the ship. This
impression was so strong that often when we were together and he got up
and left a little woman just when she did not expect him to get up and
leave her, but quite the contrary, I would explain: “He can’t help it,
Baby. He has to go back to his ship.” And I believed it far more than
she did.
All the while we were together Dick never went with a woman. I
sometimes wondered whether he wasn’t completely innocent. Why didn’t I
ask him? Because I never did ask him anything about himself. But late
one night he took out his pocket-book and a photograph dropped out of
it. I picked it up and glanced at it before I gave it to him. It was of
a woman. Not quite young. Dark, handsome, wild-looking, but so full in
every line of a kind of haggard pride that even if Dick had not
stretched out so quickly I wouldn’t have looked longer.
“Out of my sight, you little perfumed fox-terrier of a Frenchman,” said
she.
(In my very worst moments my nose reminds me of a fox-terrier’s.)
“That is my Mother,” said Dick, putting up the pocket-book.
But if he had not been Dick I should have been tempted to cross myself,
just for fun.
This is how we parted. As we stood outside his hotel one night waiting
for the concierge to release the catch of the outer door, he said,
looking up at the sky: “I hope it will be fine to-morrow. I am leaving
for England in the morning.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Perfectly. I have to get back. I’ve some work to do that I can’t
manage here.”
“But—but have you made all your preparations?”
“Preparations?” He almost grinned. “I’ve none to make.”
“But—_enfin_, Dick, England is not the other side of the boulevard.”
“It isn’t much farther off,” said he. “Only a few hours, you know.” The
door cracked open.
“Ah, I wish I’d known at the beginning of the evening!”
I felt hurt. I felt as a woman must feel when a man takes out his watch
and remembers an appointment that cannot possibly concern her, except
that its claim is the stronger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He put out his hand and stood, lightly swaying upon the step as though
the whole hotel were his ship, and the anchor weighed.
“I forgot. Truly I did. But you’ll write, won’t you? Good night, old
chap. I’ll be over again one of these days.”
And then I stood on the shore alone, more like a little fox-terrier
than ever. . . .
“But after all it was you who whistled to me, you who asked me to come!
What a spectacle I’ve cut wagging my tail and leaping round you, only
to be left like this while the boat sails off in its slow, dreamy way.
. . . Curse these English! No, this is too insolent altogether. Who do
you imagine I am? A little paid guide to the night pleasures of Paris?
. . . No, monsieur. I am a young writer, very serious, and extremely
interested in modern English literature. And I have been
insulted—insulted.”
Two days after came a long, charming letter from him, written in French
that was a shade too French, but saying how he missed me and counted on
our friendship, on keeping in touch.
I read it standing in front of the (unpaid for) wardrobe mirror. It was
early morning. I wore a blue kimono embroidered with white birds and my
hair was still wet; it lay on my forehead, wet and gleaming.
“Portrait of Madame Butterfly,” said I, “on hearing of the arrival of
_ce cher Pinkerton_.”
According to the books I should have felt immensely relieved and