The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [12]
I drew myself to attention, trying to look alert, composed, above all trustworthy, and I said, “I should like to go to Europe very much, Uncle Roger. Could you write to my school and explain that you’ve decided to send me away?”
“Good God, this is impossible!” exclaimed my uncle, horrified. “See here, young lady, the world may be very wide, but you also are very young and don’t you forget it. Now then,” he said, and he took me by the elbows and looked earnestly into my eyes, “I have a proposition to make to you. The more I see of the world the more I realize how much we are haunted by our childhood dreams. We have been having a serious conversation just now, whether you know it or not. I want you to remember every word. And when you’ve graduated from college——”
“Oh no!”
“——graduated from college, and if you haven’t run away in the meantime, I’ll give you your freedom. Two years of it. Upon graduation you’ll receive in monthly sums enough money for you to go anywhere you like and do anything you like during that period. No strings. I don’t even want to hear of you in those two years. Afterwards come back and tell me what it was like.…”
When I first arrived in Paris I got sick. Then I got well and began walking everywhere round and round and round, crossing and recrossing the river, hardly knowing where I was going or where I’d been. Hardly caring, it all seemed so fine.
And then one day, one memorable day in the early evening, I stumbled across the Champs Élysées. I know it seems crazy to say, but before I actually stepped onto it (at what turned out to be the Étoile) I had not even been aware of its existence. No, I swear it. I’d heard the words “Champs Élysées,” of course, but I thought it was a park or something. I mean that’s what it sounds like, doesn’t it? All at once I found myself standing there gazing down that enchanted boulevard in the blue, blue evening. Everything seemed to fall into place. Here was all the gaiety and glory and sparkle I knew was going to be life if I could just grasp it.
I began floating down those Elysian Fields three inches off the ground, as easily as a Cocteau character floats through Hell. Luxury and order seemed to be shining from every street lamp along the Avenue; shining from every window of its toyshops and dress-shops and carshops; shining from its cafés and cinemas and theaters; from its bonbonneries and parfumeries and nighteries.… Talk about seeing Eternity in a Grain of Sand and Heaven in a Wild Flower; I really think I was having some sort of mystic revelation then. The whole thing seemed like a memory from the womb. It seemed to have been waiting there for me.
For some people history is a Beach or a Tower or a Graveyard. For me it was this giant primordial Toyshop with all its windows gloriously ablaze. It contained everything I’ve ever wanted that money can buy. It was an enormous Christmas present wrapped in silver and blue tissue paper tied with satin ribbons and bells. Inside would be something to adorn, to amuse, and to dazzle me forever. It was my present for being alive.
As I say, I’d started at the Étoile and was working my way down to the Place de la Concorde. Somewhere around the Rond-Point I floated off the curb and into an oncoming car. The scream of brakes that had at first seemed so dim and irrelevant was now screeching into my ears. All in all it was a very near miss. The driver leaped out of the car and rushed over to the lamppost against which I was limply draped. “Are you all right?” he asked anxiously. I could have kissed him for not yelling why the hell hadn’t I looked where I was going. I nodded and started to leave but found that it was quite impossible to put one foot in front of the other. The upshot of the matter was that this extremely charming man, his arm firmly