U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [334]
"I don't see any good a lot of loud talk's going to do. It's a magnificent tragic show . . . the Paris fog smel s of strawberries . . . the gods don't love us but we'l die young just the same. . . . Who said I was sober?" They finished up a bottle. Dick taught Robbins a rhyme in French:
Les marionettes font font font
Trois petit tours et puis s'en vont
-360-and when the café closed they went out arm in arm. Rob-bins was humming, Cheer up, Napoleon, you'll soon be dead
A short life and a gay one
and stopping to talk with al the petite femmes they met on the Boul' Mich'. Dick final y left him talking to a cowlike woman in a flappy hat in front of the fountain on the Place St. Michel, and began the long walk home to his hotel that was opposite the Gare St. Lazare.
The broad asphalt streets were deserted under the pink arclights but here and there on benches along the quais, under the bare dripping trees along the bank of the Seine, in spite of the raw night couples were stil sitting huddled together in the strangleholds of l'amour. At the corner of the boulevard Sébastopol a whitefaced young man who was walking the other way looked quickly into his face and stopped. Dick slackened his pace for a moment, but walked on past the string of marketcarts rumbling down the rue de Rivoli, taking deep breaths to clear the reek of whiskey out of his head. The long brightlylighted avenue that led to the opera was empty. In front of the opera there were a few people, a girl with a lovely complexion who was hanging on the arm of a pol u gave him a long smile. Almost at his hotel he ran face to face into a girl who-seemed remarkably pretty, before he knew it he was asking her what she was doing out so late. She laughed, charm-ingly he thought, and said she was doing the same thing he was. He took her to a little hotel on the back street behind his own. They were shown into a chil y room that smelt of furniture polish. There was a big bed, a bidet, and a lot of heavy claretcolored hangings. The girl was older than he'd thought and very tired, but she had a beautiful figure and very pale skin; he was glad to see how clean her under-wear was, with a pretty lace edging. They sat a little while on the edge of the bed talking low.
-361-When he asked her what her name was, she shook her head and smiled, "Qu'est- ce que ça vous fait?"
"L'homme sans nom et la femme sans nom, vont faire l'amour a l'hotel du néant," he said. "Oh qu'il est rigolo, celui-là," she giggled. "Dis, tu n'est pas malade?" He shook his head. "Moi non plus," she said, and started rub-bing up against him like a kitten. When they left the hotel they roamed around the dark streets until they found an earlymorning coffeebar. They ate coffee and croissants together in drowsy intimate quiet, leaning very close to each other as they stood against the bar. She left him to go up the hil towards Montmartre. He asked her if he couldn't see her again sometime. She shrugged her shoulders. He gave her thirty francs and kissed her and whispered in her ear a parody of his little rhyme:
Les petites marionettes font font font
Un p'tit peu d'amour et puis s'en vont
She laughed and pinched his cheek and the last he heard of her was her gruff giggle and
"Oh qu'il est rigolo, celui-là."
He went back to his room feeling happy and sleepy and saying to himself: what's the matter with my life is I haven't got a woman of my own. He had just time to wash and shave and put on a clean shirt and to rush down to headquarters in order to be there when Colonel Edge-combe, who was a damnably early riser, got in. He found orders to leave for Rome that night.
By the time he got on the train his eyes were stinging with sleepiness. He and the sergeant who went with him had a compartment reserved at the end of a first class coach marked Paris-Brindisi. Outside of their compart-ment the train was packed; people were standing in the aisles. Dick had taken off his coat and Sam Browne belt and was loosening his puttees, planning to stretch out on