The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [66]
Otherwise things had changed very little in Montparnasse. Judy was out of the hospital and getting ready to accompany her brother on his tour, Dave Beckenfield had slunk off to Germany, and Crazy Eyes and his mono-dancing sister had apparently changed quartiers, or, at any rate, disappeared from ours. I did a bit of dubbing, a bit of radio, and got two offers from film companies, both of which fell through. From time to time I was fawned upon by the odd Stage-door Johnny, but if this was fame, it was keeping itself very quiet. Very quiet indeed.
Gradually it dawned on me that my passport was gone for good. I went through all my handbags, all my pockets, all my drawers. I went under the bed, on top of the wardrobe and back to the boites of the Opening Night. Then I went to the Etats-Unis. “I have lost my passport,” I told them, “I am a citizen of the world.”
“The hell you are,” said the Ancient. “You are a prisoner of the world. You’d better get yourself over to the American Embassy first thing in the morning or you’re going to be in some real trouble.”
The next morning turned out to be the coldest of the year. I had to put on practically all the clothes I owned before daring to go out into it. When I arrived at the Select for my morning coffee I saw Bradley Slater, that compulsive reader, waving me frantically over to his table with an old copy of the New Yorker. Word had got around that I was going to the Embassy, and he was eager to accompany me. He hadn’t been across the river in weeks—it would make a nice outing for him. By the time I’d finished my coffee I was surprised to find there were so many members of the Hard Core to whom the prospect of Crossing the Seine made a pleasant break in their otherwise strict routine of café sitting. Both Beards, I remember, went along.
“In rowdy high spirits,” is a good description of that gallant little band arriving at the Embassy in the teeth of a howling gale. It had been an eventful journey. We had lost our way a number of times, had boarded several false buses, had been practically blown and frozen to death, but in the end we had succeeded. The Canteen at Gander in a blizzard could hardly have been a more welcome sight to the rescued pilot and his crew than the reception room of the Embassy to us. We stomped about in our boots, exhaling streams of frozen breath, rubbing red hands together and clapping each other on the back. Had cups of hot chocolate been distributed, we would have been pleased but not surprised.
After thawing out a bit we were ready to confront—or rather I should say affront, since they all looked shocked—the Passport Section: a large room divided in half by a wooden railing with benches of huddled people on one side, and officials and their typists on the other. It was very, very quiet; even the typewriters seemed to have mutes. I leaned over the railing to the Official Side and told a muted typist that I had lost my passport. She whispered back that the Man in Charge would see me in my turn. I looked over to where she was pointing and smiled at a stern gray-haired man with pince-nez seated behind an enormous desk. He looked away. I went over to the benches and began huddling with my friends and the other huddlers. Judging by the number of them there before us, I was prepared to wait several hours. It was my turn much faster than I expected. Rather astonished, I set off toward the Man in Charge and then quite unaccountably somewhere between approaching his desk and actually getting there, my spirits sank. He was eying me steadily through those damn pince-nez. Rabbit to snake, I kept on walking toward him; he kept on eying me. What he was seeing so steadily and so whole, I suddenly realized, was probably not calculated to inspire confidence. Proofed against wind and weather, I was a bundle of old clothes topped in old coats and toed