U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [314]
"Al right, I think Nice is just too tiresome anyway."
J.W. cal ed to the chauffeur to go back to Nice. He dropped her at her hotel and saying he'd cal for her at ninethirty in the morning and that she must get a good night's sleep. She felt terribly let down after he'd gone; had a cup of tea that was cold and tasted of soap sent to
-313-her room; and went to bed. She lay in bed thinking that she was acting like a nasty little bitch; but it was too late to go back now. She couldn't sleep, her whole body felt jangled and twitching. This way she'd look like a wreck tomorrow, she got up and rustled around in her bag until she found some aspirin. She took a lot of the aspirin and got back in bed again and lay perfectly stil but she kept seeing faces that would grow clear out of the blur of a half-dream and then fade again, and her ears buzzed with long cadences of senseless talk. Sometimes it was Jerry Burn-ham's face that would bud out of the mists changing slowly into Mr. Rasmussen's or Edgar Robbins' or Paul Johnson's or Freddy Seargeant's. She got up and walked shivering up and down the room for a long time. Then she got into bed again and fel asleep and didn't wake up until the chambermaid knocked on the door saying that a gentleman was waiting for her.
When she got down J.W. was pacing up and down in
the sun outside the hotel door. A long lowslung Italian car was standing under the palms beside the geranium bed. They had coffee together without saying much at a little iron table outside the hotel. J.W. said he'd had a miserable room in a hotel where the service was poor.
As soon as Eveline got her bag down they started off at sixty miles an hour. The chauffeur drove like a fiend through a howling north wind that increased as they went down the coast. They were in Marseil es stiff and dust-caked in time for a late lunch at a fish restaurant on the edge of the old harbor. Eveline's head was whirling again, with speed and lashing wind and dust and vines and olive-trees and grey rock mountains whirling past and now and then a piece of slateblue sea cut out with a jigsaw.
"After al , J.W., the war was terrible," said Eveline.
"But it's a great time to be alive. Things are happening at last." J.W. muttered something about a surge of idealism between his teeth and went on eating his bouil abaisse. He
-314-didn't seem to be very talkative today. "Now at home," he said, "they wouldn't have left al the bones in the fish this way." "Wel , what do you think is going to happen about the oil situation?" Eveline started again. "Blamed if I know," said J.W. "We'd better be starting if we're going to make that place before nightfal ."
J.W. had sent the chauffeur to buy an extra rug and they wrapped themselves up tight under the little hood in the back of the car. J.W. put his arm around Eveline and tucked her in. "Now we're snug as a bug in a rug," he said. They giggled cosily together. The mistral got so strong the poplars were al bent double on the dusty plains before the car started to climb the winding road to Les Baux. Bucking the wind cut down their speed. It was dark when they got into the ruined town.
They were the only people in the hotel. It was cold there and the knots of olivewood burning in the grates didn't give any heat, only puffs of grey smoke when a gust of wind came down the chimney, but they had an excel ent dinner and hot spiced wine that made them feel much better. They had to put on their overcoats to go up to their bedroom. Climbing the stairs J.W. kissed her under the ear and whispered, "Eveline, dear little girl, you make me feel like a boy again."
Long after J.W. had gone to sleep Eveline lay awake beside him listening to the wind rattling the shutters, yel -ing around the corners of the roof, howling over