The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [319]
movies. We have an apartment on Rue Francois I", a pretty fancy section near the Hotel Georges V. It's the ornamental and luxury quarter, but the joint Stella and I rented was terrible. It belonged to an old Britisher and his French wife. They took off for Mentone to live off the high rent they soaked us, and here all winter the rain and fog never let up. I'd pass days trying to get used to this moldy though fancied-up apartment, somewhat obstinate, seeing that it was now my place. But there was no getting anywhere with the carpets and chairs, the lamps that looked as if grown on Coney Island, cat-house pictures, alabaster owls with electric eyes, books of Ouida and Marie Corelli in leather binding, smelling like spit. The old crook of a Britisher who was the locataire had something he called a study, which was a sort of closet with a nasty piece of carpet, a set of Larousse's encyclopedia from way back, and a green table. The drawers of this green felt table were full of pieces of paper covered with figures on conversion of pounds and francs, dollars, pesetas, schillings, marks, escudos, piasters, and even rubles. This old man, Ryehurst, practically dead, sat here in a suit like for burial, purple flannel without lapels or buttons or buttonholes, and he calculated about money and wrote letters to the papers on the Fall of France and how to get the peasants' gold out of hiding, or which passes to Italy were the best for motorists. In his youth he had broken the speed record from Turin to London. There was a photo of him in his racer. A little Irish terrier sat in the cockpit with him. The front rooms were bad enough, but the dining room was too much for me. Stella would leave early to be on the lot, and even though there was a bonne a tout faire to fix my breakfast I couldn't always bring myself to sit down at the yellow red-embroidered Turkestan cloth for my coffee. So I would go out to a little cafe for breakfast, and here one day I ran into my old friend Hooker Frazer. At this cafe, the Roseraie, which was a jazzy kind of place, there were round tables, wicker chairs, palms in brass tubs, candy-striped fiber carpet, red and white awnings, steam of a huge coffee machine of hundreds of gimmicks, cakes in cellophane, and all that kind of stuff. After I set up the coal stoves-- this maid, Jacqueline, was very nice but she didn't know a thing about getting coal to catch; I was an expert from way back--I'd go to breakfast. Thus one morning I was ordering coffee at the Roseraie. Old folks in slippers, as if in their own lace-veined parlors, walked in the street, with horsemeat and strawberries, etcetera, coming from the market on Place de 1'Alma. All at once Frazer came by. I hadn't seen him since my wedding day. "Frazcr, hey!" "Augie!" "What brings you to Paris, old pal?" "How are you? Same healthy color as always, and smiling away! Why, I'm working with the World Educational Fund. I think I've seen everyone I ever knew here during this past year. But what a surprise to run across you, Augie, in the City of Man!" He was feeling very grand, the place inspired him, and he sat down and gave me a sort of talk--pretty amazing!--about Paris and how nothing like it existed, the capital of the hope that Man could be free without the help of gods, clear of mind, civilized, wise, pleasant, and all of that. For a minute I felt rather insulted that he should laugh when he asked me what I was doing here. It might be incongruous, but if it was for Man why shouldn't it be for me too? If it wasn't, perhaps that wasn't one hundred per cent my fault. Which Man was it the City of? Some version again. It's always some version or other. But who could complain of this pert, pretty Paris when it revolved like a merry-go-round--the gold bridge-horses, the Greek Tuiieries heroes and stone beauties, the overloaded Opera, the racy show windows and dapper colors,. the maypole obelisk, the all-colors ice-cream, the gaudy package of the world. I don't suppose Frazer meant to hurt my feelings; he was merely surprised to see me here. "I've been over since