U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [124]
They stood around for a long time in front of the opera in the middle of swirling crowds. The streetlights were on; the grey outlines of the opera were edged along the cor--292nices with shimmering gas flames. They were jostled and pushed about. There were no busses, no automobiles; occa-sional y they passed a taxicab stranded in the crowd like a rock in a stream. At last on a side street they found them-selves alongside a Red Cross staffcar that had nobody in it. The driver, who wasn't too sober, said he was trying to get the car back to the garage and said he'd take them down to the quai de la Tournel e first.
Eveline was just climbing in when somehow she felt
it was just too tiresome and she couldn't. The next minute she was marching arm in arm with a little French sailor in a group of people mostly in Polish uniform who were fol owing a Greek flag and singing la Brabançonne.
A minute later she realized she'd lost the car and her friends and was scared. She couldn't recognize the streets even, in this new Paris ful of arclights and flags and bands and drunken people. She found herself dancing with the little sailor in the asphalt square in front of a church with two towers, then with a French colonial officer in a red cloak, then with a Polish legionaire who spoke a little English and had lived in Newark, New Jersey, and then suddenly some young French soldiers were dancing in a ring around her holding hands. The game was you had to kiss one of them to break the ring. When she caught on she kissed one of them and everybody clapped and cheered and cried Vive l'Amerique. Another bunch came and kept on and on dancing around her until she began to feel scared. Her head was beginning to whirl around when she caught sight of an American uniform on the outskirts of the crowd. She broke through the ring bowling over a little fat Frenchman and fel on the doughboy's neck and kissed him, and everybody laughed and cheered and cried encore. He looked embarrassed; the man with him was Paul Johnson, Don Stevens' friend. "You see I had to kiss somebody," Eveline said blushing. The doughboy laughed and looked pleased.
-293-"Oh, I hope you didn't mind, Miss Hutchins, I hope you don't mind this crowd and everything," apologized Paul Johnson.
People spun around them dancing and shouting and she had to kiss Paul Johnson too before they'd let them go. He apologized solemnly again and said, "Isn't it wonder-ful to be in Paris to see the armistice and everything, if you don't mind the crowd and everything . . . but hon-estly, Miss Hutchins, they're awful goodnatured. No fights or nothin'
. . . Say, Don's in this car."
Don was behind a little zinc bar in the entrance to the café shaking up cocktails for a big crowd of Canadian and Anzac officers al very drunk. "I can't get him out of there," whispered Paul. "He's had more than he ought." They got Don out from behind the bar. There seemed
to be nobody there to pay for the drinks. In the door he pul ed off his grey cap and cried,
"Vive les quakers . . . à bas la guerre," and everybody cheered. They roamed around aimlessly for a while, now and then they'd be stopped by a ring of people dancing around her and Don would kiss her. He was noisy drunk and she didn't like the way he acted as if she was his girl. She began to feel tired by the time they got to the place de la Concorde and suggested that they cross the river and try to get to her apartment where she had some cold veal and salad. Paul was embarrassedly saying perhaps he'd better not come, when Don ran off after a group of Alsatian girls who were hopping and skipping up the Champs Elysées.
"Now you've got to