Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [90]
were flaning, and the dogs were barking down at the steps where people try to persuade them to swim in the Seine. How strangely it excites people to see their dogs swimming! Beyond the green trees the towers of Notre-Dame rose tenderly like lovers rising from the grass. 'Paris,' I said aloud. Once more something had slipped through my fingers. Only this time I knew very well what it was. Money. The heart of reality. The rejection of reality the only crime. I was a dreamer, a criminal. I wrung my hands. As I reached the left bank I began madly to want to drink; and at the same instant I realized that I had hardly any cash. I had thrust into my pocket as I was leaving the few notes which I had left over from my last trip. I had intended to borrow something from Madge. But no one with any aesthetic sensibility would have tried to borrow five thousand francs off somebody from whom he had just refused to accept twelve hundred pounds. And anyway I didn't think of it. I cursed. I walked as far as the Boulevard Saint-Germain wondering what to do. Then a second need, equally expensive, began to make itself felt: the need to communicate my sorrow to some other person. I balanced the two needs against my assets and against each other. The need for communication was the more profound. I made for the post office in the Rue du Four and addressed a wire to Messrs Gellman and O'Finney which ran as follows. Just definitely refused minimum sum of twelve hundred pounds. Jake. Then I went to the Reine Blanche and ordered a pernod, which although it is not the cheapest of aperitifs is the one with the highest alcohol content. I felt very slightly better. I sat there for a long time. At first I kept thinking about the money. I brooded on every aspect of it. I turned it into francs. I turned it into dollars. I shifted it around from one European capital to another. I invested it avariciously at high rates of interest. I spent it riotously on chateau wines and chateau women. I bought the very latest make of Aston Martin. I rented a flat overlooking Hyde Park and filled it with works of the lesser-known Dutch masters. I lay on a striped divan beside a pale-green telephone while the princes of the film world poured fawning, supplication, and praise along the wire. The exquisite star, the idol of three continents, who lay like a panther at my feet, poured me out another glass of champagne. It's H. K.,' I murmured to her, putting my hand over the mouthpiece; 'what a perfect bore!' I tossed her an orchid which lay on the table; and clasping my body with her sinuous hands she began to pull herself up to lie beside me, as I told H. K. that I was in conference and that if he would contact my secretary in a day or two no doubt a meeting might be arranged. When I was tired of this I began to think about Madge, and to wonder who it was who had installed her in the Hotel Prince de Cl�s and whose unseen presence had hovered in the background of our interview. Was it the man who had owned ships or something in Indo-China? I pictured him, white-haired and heavy, battered by winds and stained by the oriental sun, with power and intelligence breaking through the lines of his face of an old Frenchman who had seen, in his time, many things. I liked him. He was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. The years which had passed since he had pursued money with passion could now be counted by the score. He had had his fill of money: he had loved it, struggled with it, suffered for it and made others suffer; he had bathed in it until it had filled his head and eyes with gold; finally he had tired of it, and cast it from him fortune by fortune. But money will never leave a man who has endured enough for its sake. He had become weary, he had consented. He lived with it now as with an aged wife. He was come back to France, tired and detached, with the detachment of one who has gratified every wish and found every gratification equally transitory. He would watch with a gentle indifference the launching of his film company, in a scene where every actor except himself was driven