Quiet Days in Clichy

  “That’s really crazy!” I exclaimed.

  He made no answer. He walked along with head down, silent for a few minutes. “What puzzles me,” he said, looking up, “is this—why did she forget about the revolver so quickly? And why didn’t she look in her bag for the money when you lied to her? I think she knew that the revolver was gone, and the money too. I think she was frightened of us. And now I’m getting frightened again myself. I think we’d better take a hotel for the night. Tomorrow you take a little trip somewhere . . . stay away a few days.”

  We turned without another word and started walking rapidly towards Montmartre. We were panic-stricken . . .

  This little incident precipitated our flight to Luxembourg. But I am months ahead of my story. Let me go back to our ménage à trois.

  Colette, the homeless waif, soon became a combination of Cinderella, concubine and cook. We had to teach her everything, including the art of brushing her teeth. She was at the awkward age, always dropping things, stumbling, getting lost, and so on. Now and then she would disappear for a couple of days at a stretch. What she did in these intervals it was impossible to discover. The more we questioned her the more torpid and blank she became. Sometimes she would go out for a walk in the morning and return at midnight with a stray cat or a pup she had found in the street. Once we followed her for a whole afternoon, just to see how she passed the time. It was like following a sleep-walker. All she did was to ramble from one street to another, aimlessly, listlessly, stopping to peer through shop windows, rest on a bench, feed the birds, buy herself a lollypop, stand for minutes on end as if in a trance, then striking out again in the same aimless, listless fashion. We followed her for five hours to discover nothing than that we had a child on our hands.

  Carl was touched by her simple-mindedness. He was also getting worn out from the heavy sexual diet. And a little irritated because she was eating up all his spare time. He had given up all thought of writing, first because the machine was in hock, and second because he no longer had a minute to himself. Colette, poor soul, had absolutely no idea what to do with herself. She could lie in bed the whole afternoon, fucking her brains out, and be ready for more when Carl arrived from work. Carl usually came home about three in the morning. Often he would not get out of bed until seven in the evening, just in time to eat and rush to work. After a siege of it he would beg me to take a stab at her. “I’m fucked dry,” he would say. “The halfwit, she’s got all her brains in her cunt.”

  But Colette had no attraction for me. I was in love with Nys, who was still hanging out at the Café Wepler. We had become good friends. No question of money any more. True, I would bring her little gifts, but that was different somehow. Now and then I would induce her to take the afternoon off. We would go to little places along the Seine, or take a train to some nearby forest, where we would lie in the grass and fuck to our heart’s content. I never pumped her about her past. It was always about the future that we talked. At least she did. Like so many French women, her dream was to find a little house in the country, somewhere in the Midi, preferably. She didn’t care much for Paris. It was unhealthy, she would say.

  “And what would you do with yourself to pass the time away?” I once asked.

  “What would I do?” she repeated in astonishment. “I would do nothing. I would just live.”

  What an idea! What a sane idea! I envied her her phlegm, her indolence, her insouciance. I would urge her to talk about it at length, about doing nothing, I mean. It was an ideal I had never flirted with. To accomplish it one must have an empty mind, or else a full rich one. It would be better, I used to think, to have an empty mind.

  Just to watch Nys eat was inspiring. She enjoyed every morsel of her food, which she selected with great care. By care I don’t mean concern about calories and vitamins. No, she was careful to choose the things she liked, and which agreed with her, because she relished them. She could drag the meal out interminably, her good humor constantly augmenting, her indolence becoming more and more seductive, her spirit growing keener, livelier, brighter. A good meal, a good talk, a good fuck—what better way to pass the day? There were no worms devouring her conscience, no cares which she couldn’t throw off. Floating with the tide, nothing more. She would produce no children, contribute nothing to the welfare of the community, leave no mark upon the world in going. But wherever she went she would make life easier, more attractive, more fragrant. And that is no little thing. Every time I left her I had the feeling of a day well spent. I wished that I too could take life in that same easy, natural way. Sometimes I wished I were a female, like her, possessing nothing more than an attractive cunt. How wonderful to put one’s cunt to work and use one’s brains for pleasure! To fall in love with happiness! To become as useless as possible! To develop a conscience tough as a crocodile’s skin! And when old and no longer attractive, to buy a fuck, if needs be. Or buy a dog and train him to do what’s what. Die, when the time came, naked and alone, without guilt, without regret, without remorse . . .

  That’s how I would dream after spending a day with Nys in the open.

  What a pleasure it would be to steal a fat sum and hand it to her just as she was taking off. Or accompany her part of the way, as far as Orange, say, or Avignon. Piss away a month or two, like a vagrant, basking in her warm indolence. Wait on her hand and foot, just to enjoy her enjoyment.

  Nights when I couldn’t see her—when she was taken—I would wander around by myself, stopping off at little bars in the side streets, or at subterranean dives, where other girls plied their trade in stupid, senseless fashion. Sometimes, out of sheer boredom, I would take one on, even though it left the taste of ashes.

  Often, on returning to the house, Colette would still be up and prowling about in that ridiculous Japanese shift which Carl had picked up at a bazaar. Somehow we never seemed able to raise the money to buy her a pair of pajamas. Usually I found her just about to have a little bite. Trying to keep awake, poor kid, in order to greet Carl upon his return from work. I would sit down and have a bite with her. We would talk, in desultory fashion. She never had anything to say worth listening to. She had no aspirations, no dreams, no desires. She was as cheerful as a cow, obedient as a slave, attractive as a doll. She was not stupid, she was dumb. Dumb the way a beast is. Nys, on the other hand, was not unintelligent. Lazy, yes. Lazy as sin. Everything Nys spoke about was interesting, even when it was about nothing. A gift which I prize far above the ability to talk intelligently. In fact, such talk seems to me to be of the first order. It contributes to life, whereas the other, the cultivated jargon, saps one’s strength, makes everything sterile, futile, meaningless. But Colette, as I say, had only the dull-wittedness of a heifer. When you touched her you felt a cool, uninspired flesh, like jello. You could caress her buttocks as she poured your coffee, but it was like fondling a door-knob. Her modesty was more that of an animal than of a human being. She held her hand over her cunt as if to conceal something ugly, not something dangerous. She would hide her cunt and leave her boobies exposed. If she came to the bathroom and found me taking a leak, she would stand in the doorway and converse with me in a matter of fact way. It didn’t excite her to see a man urinating; she got excited only when you got on top of her and pissed inside her.

  One night, arriving home rather late, I found I had forgotten my key. I knocked loudly but there was no answer. I thought perhaps she had gone off again on one of her innocent peregrinations. There was nothing to do but walk slowly towards Montmartre and catch Carl on his way home from work. About half-way to the Place Clichy I ran into him; I told him that Colette had probably flown the coop. Back at the house we found the lights on full blast. Colette was not there however, nor had she taken any of her belongings. It looked as though she had simply gone for a walk. That very morning Carl had been saying that he would marry her as soon as she came of age. I had a good laugh at their antics, she hanging out the bedroom window and he out the kitchen window, bellowing so that all the neighbors could
hear: “Bonjour, Madame Oursel, comment ça va ce matin?”

  Now he was depressed. He was certain the police had come and taken her away. “They’ll be calling for me soon,” he said. “This is the end.”

  We decided to go out, make a night of it. It was a little after three in the morning. The Place Clichy was dead except for a few bars which stayed open all night. The whore with the wooden leg was still at her post opposite the Gaumont Palace; she had her own faithful little clientele which kept her busy. We had a bite near the Place Pigalle, amid a group of early morning vultures. We looked in at the little dance place where our friend, the hat check girl, was posted, but they were just closing the joint. We zigzagged up the hill towards the Sacré Cœur. At the foot of the cathedral we rested a while, gazing out over the sea of twinkling lights. At night Paris becomes magnified. The illumination, softer from above, lessens the cruelty and sordidness of the streets. At night, from Montmartre, Paris is truly magical; it lies in the hollow of a bowl like an enormous splintered gem.

  With the dawn Montmartre becomes indescribably lovely. A pink flush suffuses the mild-white walls. The huge advertisements, painted in brilliant reds and blues on the pale walls, stand out with a freshness which is nothing short of voluptuous. Coming around the side of the hill we ran into a group of young nuns looking so pure and virginal, so thoroughly rested, so calm and dignified, that we felt ashamed of ourselves. A little farther along we stumbled on a flock of goats picking their way erratically down the precipitous slope; behind them a full-blown cretin followed leisurely, blowing a few strange notes now and then. The atmosphere was one of utter tranquillity, utter peace; it might have been a morning of the fourteenth century.

  We slept until almost evening that day. Still no sign of Colette, still no visit from the police. The next morning, however, towards noon, there was an ominous knock at the door. I was in my room, typing. Carl answered the door. I heard Colette’s voice, and then the voice of a man. Presently I heard a woman’s voice also. I continued typing. I wrote whatever came into my head, just to maintain the pretense of being occupied.

  Presently Carl appeared, looking harried and distraught. “Did she leave her watch here?” he asked. “They’re looking for the watch.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Her mother is here . . . I don’t know who the man is. A detective, maybe. Come in a minute, I’ll introduce you.”

  The mother was a beautiful-looking creature of middle age, well groomed, almost distinguished-looking. The man, who was soberly and sedately dressed, looked like a barrister. Everyone spoke in low tones, as if a death had just occurred.

  I sensed immediately that my presence was not without effect.

  “Are you also a writer?” It was the man who spoke.

  I answered politely that I was.

  “Do you write in French?” he asked.

  To this I made a very tactful, flattering reply, bemoaning the fact that, although I had been in France some five or six years and was conversant with French literature, even translating now and then, my native inadequacies had prevented me from mastering his beautiful language sufficiently to express myself as I wished.

  I had summoned all my resources to phrase this flubdub eloquently and correctly. It seemed to me that it went straight to the target.

  As for the mother, she was studying the titles of the books which were piled on Carl’s work table. Impulsively she singled one out and handed it to the man. It was the last volume of Proust’s celebrated work. The man turned from the book to survey Carl with new eyes. There was a fleeting, grudging deference in his expression. Carl, somewhat embarrassed, explained that he was at work on an essay intended to show the relation between Proust’s metaphysic and the occult tradition, particularly the doctrine of Hermes Trismegistus, whom he was enamored of.

  “Tiens, tiens,” said the man, raising an eyebrow significantly, and fixing us both with a severe yet not wholly condemnatory gaze. “Would you be so kind as to leave us alone with your friend for a few minutes?” he said, turning to me.

  “Most certainly,” I said, and went back to my room, where I resumed my hit or miss typing.

  They were closeted in Carl’s room for a good half-hour, it seemed to me. I had written some eight or ten pages of sheer babble, which not even the wildest Surrealist could make head or tail of, by the time they came to my room to say goodbye. I bade farewell to Colette as if she were a little orphan whom we had rescued and whom we were now returning safely to her long-lost parents. I inquired if they had found the watch. They had not, but they hoped that we would. It was a little keepsake, they explained.

  As soon as the door had closed on them, Carl rushed into the room and put his arms around me. “Joey, I think you saved my life. Or maybe it was Proust. That sour-faced bastard was certainly impressed. Literature! So French, that. Even the police are literary-minded here. And your being an American—a famous writer, I said—that raised our stock enormously. You know what he told me when you left the room? That he was Colette’s legal guardian. She’s fifteen, by the way, but she’s run away from home before. Anyway, he said it would be a ten year sentence, if he were to bring me to court. He asked me did I know that. I said yes. I guess he was surprised that I made no attempt to defend myself. But what surprised him more was to find out that we were writers. The French have a great respect for writers, you know that. A writer is never an ordinary criminal. He had expected to find a couple of Apaches, I guess. Or blackmailers. When he saw you he weakened. He asked me afterwards what kind of books you wrote, and if any of them had been translated. I told him you were a philosopher, and that you were rather difficult to translate . . .”

  “That was a fantastic line you gave him about Hermes Trismegistus,” I said. “How did you happen to think that up?”

  “I didn’t,” said Carl. “I was so damned scared, I said whatever came into my head . . . By the way, another thing that impressed him was Faust—because it was in German. There were some English books too—Lawrence, Blake, Shakespeare. I could almost hear him saying to himself, “These fellows can’t be so very bad. The child might have fallen into worse hands.’”

  “But what did the mother have to say?”

  “The mother! Did you have a good look at her? She was not only beautiful, she was divine. Joey, the moment I set eyes on her I fell in love with her. She hardly said a word the whole time. At the end she said to me: ‘Monsieur, we will not press the case against you, on condition that you promise us never to attempt to see Colette again. Is that understood?’ I hardly heard what she said, I was so confused. I blushed and stammered like a boy. If she had said, ‘Monsieur, you will please come with us to the police station,’ I would have said, ‘Oui, Madame, à vos ordres’ I was going to kiss her hand, but then I thought that might be going too far. Did you notice the perfume she used? That was . . .” He reeled off some marque with a number, as if I should be impressed. “You don’t know anything about perfumes, I forgot. Listen, only women of breeding use perfumes like that. She could have been a duchess or a marquise. Too bad it wasn’t the mother I picked up. By the way, this will make a good ending for my book, what?”

  A very good ending, I thought to myself. As a matter of fact, he did write the story some months later, and it was one of the best things he ever did, especially the passage about Proust and Faust. All the time he was writing it he raved about the mother. He seemed to have forgotten about Colette completely.

  Well, this episode was hardly over when the English girls appeared on the scene, and then the grocery girl who was crazy to learn English, and then Jeanne, and between times the hat check girl, and now and then a tart from the impasse just behind the Café Wepler—from the trap, as we called it, because to get by that little alley at night on the way home was like running the gauntlet.

  And then came the somnambulist with the revolver, which had us on tenterhooks for a few days.

  Early one morning, after we had sat up all night polishing off
some Algerian wine, Carl broached the idea of taking a hurried vacation for a few days. There was a large map of Europe hanging on my wall which we examined feverishly to see how far we might go with the limited funds at our disposal. We thought at first of going to Brussels, but on second thoughts we abandoned the idea. The Belgians were uninteresting, we agreed. For about the same fare we could go to Luxembourg. We were quite drunk, and Luxembourg seemed like just the right place to go to at six o’clock in the morning. We didn’t pack any valises; all we needed were our tooth-brushes, which we forgot in the scramble to catch the train.

  A few hours later we crossed the border and stepped into the lacquered, upholstered train which was to take us to the opéra bouffe country which I for one was very eager to see. We arrived towards noon, sleepy and dazed. We had a heavy lunch, washed down with the wine of the country, and tumbled into bed. About six o’clock we roused ourselves and ambled outdoors. It was a peaceful, fat, easy-going land, with sounds of German music everywhere; the faces of the inhabitants were stamped with a sort of cow-like bliss.

  It was no time before we had made friends with Snow White, the leading attraction of a cabaret near the station. Snow White was about thirty-five, with long flaxen hair and animated blue eyes. She had been there only a week and was already bored. We had a couple of highballs with her, waltzed her around a few times, treated the orchestra to drinks, all of which came to a phenomenally ridiculous sum, and then we invited her to dinner. A good dinner in a good hotel came to something like seven or eight francs apiece. Snow White, being Swiss, was too dumb, or too good-natured, to hold out for money. She had only one thought in mind—to get back to work on time. It was dark when we left the restaurant. We wandered instinctively towards the edge of the town and soon found an embankment, where we tumbled her over and gave her what’s what. She took it like a cocktail, begging us to call for her later in the evening; she would dig up a friend whom she thought we would find attractive. We escorted her back to the cabaret, then set out to explore the town more thoroughly.