U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [270]
"Good God, Ned, is that you?" Blake Wigglesworth threw back his head in the funny way he had and laughed.
"Garçon," he shouted, "un verre pour le monsieur."
"But how long were you in the Lafayette Escadril e?" stammered Dick.
"Not long . . . they wouldn't have me."
"And how about the Navy?"
"Threw me out too, the damn fools think I've got T.B.
. . . garçon, une bouteil e de champagne. . . . Where are you going?"
"I'l explain."
"Wel , I'm going home on the Touraine." Ned threw back his head laughing again and his lips formed the syl-lables blahblahblahblah. Dick noticed that although his face was very pale and thin his skin under his eyes and up onto the temples was flushed and his eyes looked a little too bright. "Wel , so am I," he heard himself say.
"I got into hot water," said Ned.
"Me too," said Dick. "Very."
They lifted their glasses and looked into each other's eyes and laughed. They sat in the diner al afternoon talk-ing and drinking and got to Bordeaux boiled as owls. Ned had spent al his money in Paris and Dick had very little left, so they had to sel their bedrol s and equipment to a couple of American lieutenants just arrived they met in the Café de Bordeaux. It was almost like old days in Boston going around from bar to bar and looking for places to get drinks after closing. They spent most of the night in an elegant maison publique al upholstered in pink satin, talking to the madam, a driedup woman with a long upper lip like a l ama's wearing a black spangled evening dress, who took a fancy to them and made them stay and eat onion soup with her. They were so busy
-212-talking they forgot about the girls. She'd been in the Transvaal during the Boer War and spoke a curious
brand of South African English. "Vous comprennez ve had very fine clientele, every man jack officers, very much elegance, decorum. These johnnies off the veldt . . . get the hel outen here . . . bloody select don't you know. Ve had two salons, one salon English officers, one salon Boer officers, very select, never in al the war make any bloody row, no fight. . . . Vos compatriotes les Americains ce n'est pas comme ça, mes amis. Beaucoup sonofabeetch, make drunk, make bloody row, make sick, naturel ement il y a aussi des gentils garçons comme vous, mes mignons, des veritables gentlemens," and she patted them both on the cheeks with her horny ringed hands. When they left she wanted to kiss them and went with them to the door saying, "Bonsoir mes jolis petits gentlemens." Al the crossing they were never sober after eleven in the morning; it was calm misty weather; they were very happy. One night when he was standing alone in the stern beside the smal gun, Dick was searching his pocket for a cigarette when his fingers felt something hard in the lining of his coat. It was the little compass he had bought to help him across the Spanish border. Guiltily, he fished it out and dropped it overboard.
NEWSREEL XXVII
HER WOUNDED HERO OF WAR A FRAUD
SAYS WIFE IN SUIT
Mid the wars great coise
Stands the red cross noise
She's the rose of no man's land
-213-according to the thousands who had assembled to see the launching and were eyewitnesses of the disaster the scaffold simply seemed to turn over like a gigantic turtle precipitating its occupants into twentyfive feet of water. This was exactly four minutes before the launching was scheduled
Oh that battle of Paree
It's making a bum out of me
BRITISH BEGIN OPERATION ON AFGHAN
FRONTIER
the leading part in world trade which the U.S. is now confidently expected to take, wil depend to a very great extent upon the intel igence and success with which its harbors are utilized and developed
I wanta go home I wanta go home
The bullets they whistle the cannons they roar
I dont want to go to the trenches no more
Oh ship me over the sea
Where the Allemand cant get at me
you have begun a crusade against toys, but if al the German toys were commandeered and destroyed the end of German importations would not yet have been reached HOLDS UP 20 DINERS IN CAFE
LAWHATING GATHERINGS NOT TO BE
ALLOWED