U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [126]
-296-get up and recite long poems about La Grand' route, La Misère, L'Assassinat or sing old French songs like Les Fil es de Nantes. If it went over everybody present would clap hands in unison. They cal ed that giving a bon. Freddy got to know them and would make a great fuss when they arrived, "Ah, les bel es Amèricaines." Robbins would sit there moodily drinking calvados after calvados, now and then letting out a crack about the day's happen-ings at the peace conference. He said that the place was a fake that the calvados was wretched and that Freddy was a dirty old bum, but for some reason he always wanted to go back.
J.W. went there a couple of times, and occasional y they'd take some delegate from the peace conference who'd be mightily impressed by their knowledge of the inner life of Paris. J.W. was enchanted by the old French songs, but he said the place made him feel itchy and that he thought there were fleas there. Eveline liked to watch him when he was listening to a song with his eyes half closed and his head thrown back. She felt that Robbins didn't appreciate the rich potentialities of his nature and always shut him up when he started to say something sarcastic about the big cheese, as he cal ed him. She thought it was disagreeable of Eleanor to laugh at things like that, espe-cial y when J.W. seemed so devoted to her. When Jerry Burnham came back from Armenia and found that Eveline was going around with J. Ward
Moorehouse al the time he was terribly upset. He took her out to lunch at the Medicis Gril on the left bank and talked and talked about it.
"Why, Eveline, I thought of you as a person who wouldn't be taken in by a big bluff like that. The guy's nothing but a goddam megaphone. . . . Honestly, Eve-line, it's not that I expect you to fal for me, I know very wel you don't give a damn about me and why should you? . . . But Christ, a damn publicity agent."
-297-"Now, Jerry," said Eveline with her mouth ful of hors d'oeuvres, "you know very wel I'm fond of you . . . It's just too tiresome of you to talk like that."
"You don't like me the way I'd like you to but to hel with that . . . Have wine or beer?"
"You pick out a nice Burgundy, Jerry, to warm us up a little. . . . But you wrote an article about J.W. your-self . . . I saw it reprinted in that column in the Herald. "
"Go ahead, rub it in . . . Christ, I swear, Eveline, I'm going to get out of this lousy trade and . . . that was al plain oldfashioned bushwa and I thought you'd have had the sense to see it. Gee, this is good sole."
"Delicious . . . but, Jerry, you're the one ought to have more sense."
"I dunno I thought you were different from other upperclass women, made your own living and al that."
"Let's not wrangle, Jerry, let's have some fun, here we are in Paris and the war's over and it's a fine wintry day and everybody's here. . . ."
"War over, my eye," said Jerry rudely. Eveline thought he was just too tiresome, and looked out the window at the ruddy winter sunlight and the old Medici fountain and the delicate violet lacework of the bare trees behind the high iron fence of the Luxemburg Garden. Then she
looked at Jerry's red intense face with the turnedup nose and the crisp boyishly curly hair that was beginning to turn a little grey; she leaned over and gave the back of his hand a couple of little pats.
"I understand, Jerry, you've seen things that I haven't imagined . . . I guess it's the corrupting influence of the Red Cross."
He smiled and poured her out some more wine and said with a sigh:
"You're the most damnably attractive woman I ever met, Eveline . . . but like al women what you worship is power, when money's the main thing it's money, when
-298-it's fame it's fame, when it's art, you're a goddamned art-lover . . . I guess I'm the same, only I kid myself more." Eveline pressed her lips together and didn't say any-thing. She suddenly felt cold and frightened and lonely and couldn't think of anything to say. Jerry gulped down a glass