A Moveable Feast (13 page)

In those days I had a very bad, quick temper, but by the time we were through Montereau it had quieted down and I was not too angry to watch and enjoy the countryside and at noon I had a good lunch in the dining-car and drank a bottle of St-Emilion and thought that even if I had been a damned fool to accept an invitation for a trip that was to be paid for by someone else, and was spending money on it that we needed to go to Spain, it was a good lesson for me. I had never before accepted an invitation to go on any trip that was paid for, instead of the cost split, and in this one I had insisted that we split the cost of the hotels and meals. But now I did not know whether Fitzgerald would even show up. While I had been angry I had demoted him from Scott to Fitzgerald. Later I was delighted that I had used up the anger at the start and got it over with. It was not a trip designed for a man easy to anger.

In Lyon I learned that Scott left Paris for Lyon but had left no word as to where he was staying. I confirmed my address there and the servant said she would let him know if he called. Madame was not well and was still sleeping. I called all the name hotels and left messages but could not locate Scott and then I went out to a cafe to have an aperitif and read the papers. At the cafe I met a man who ate fire for a living and also bent coins which he held in his toothless jaws with his thumb and forefinger. His gums were sore but firm to the eye as he exhibited them and he said it was not a bad
metier.
I asked him to have a drink and he was pleased. He had a fine dark face that glowed and shone when he ate the fire. He said there was no money in eating fire nor in feats of strength with fingers and jaws in Lyon False fire-eaters had ruined the
metier
and would continue to ruin it wherever they were allowed to practise. He had been eating fire all evening, he said, and did not have enough money on him to eat anything else that night. I asked him to have another drink, to wash away the petrol taste of the fire-eating, and said we could have dinner together if he knew a good place that was cheap enough. He said he knew an excellent place.

We ate very cheaply in an Algerian restaurant and I liked the food and the Algerian wine. The fire-eater was a nice man and it was interesting to see him eat, as he could chew with his gums as well as most people can with their teeth. He asked me what I did to make a living and I told him that I was starting in as a writer. He asked what sort of writing and I told him stories. He said he knew many stories, some of them more horrible and incredible than anything that had ever been written. He could tell them to me and I would write them and then if they made any money I would give him whatever I thought fair. Better still, we could go to North Africa together and he would take me to the country of the Blue Sultan where I could get stories such as no man had ever heard.

I asked him what sort of stories and he said battles, executions, tortures, violations, fearful customs, unbelievable practices, debaucheries; anything I needed. It was getting time for me to get back to the hotel and check on Scott again, so I paid for the meal and said we would certainly be running into each other again. He said he was working down towards Marseilles and I said sooner or later we would meet somewhere and it was a pleasure to have dined together. I left him straightening out bent coins and stacking them on the table and walked back to the hotel.

Lyon was not a very cheerful town at night. It was a big, heavy, solid-money town, probably fine if you had money and liked that sort of town. For years I had heard about the wonderful chicken in the restaurants there, but we had eaten mutton instead. The mutton had been excellent.

There was no word from Scott at the hotel and I went to bed in the unaccustomed luxury of the hotel and read a copy of the first volume of
A. Sportsman's Sketches
by Turgenev that I had borrowed from Sylvia Beach's library. I had not been in the luxury of a big hotel for three years and I opened the windows wide and rolled up the pillows under my shoulders and head and was happy being with Turgenev in Russia until I was asleep while still reading. I was shaving in the morning getting ready to go out for breakfast when they called from the desk saying a gentleman was downstairs to see me.

'Ask him to come up, please,' I said and went on shaving, listening to the town which had come heavily alive since early morning.

Scott did not come up and I met him down at the desk.

'I'm terribly sorry there was this mix-up,' he said. 'If I had only known what hotel you were going to it would have been simple.'

'That's all right,' I said. We were going to have a long ride and I was all for peace.

'What train did you come down on?'

'One not long after the one you took. It was a very comfortable train and we might just as well have come down together.'

'Have you had breakfast?'

'Not yet. I've been hunting all over the town for you.'

'That's a shame,' I said. 'Didn't they tell you at home that I was here?'

'No. Zelda wasn't feeling well and I probably shouldn't have come. The whole trip has been disastrous so far.'

'Let's get some breakfast and find the car and roll,' I said.

'That's fine. Should we have breakfast here?'

'It would be quicker in a cafe.'

'But we're sure to get a good breakfast here.'

'All right.'

It was a big American breakfast with ham and eggs and it was very good. But by the time we had ordered it, waited for it, eaten it, and waited to pay for it, close to an hour had been lost. It was not until the waiter came with the bill that Scott decided that we have the hotel make us a picnic lunch. I tried to argue him out of this as I was sure we could get a bottle of Macon in Macon and we could buy something to make sandwiches in a
charcuterie.
Or, if things were closed when we went through, there would be any number of restaurants where we could stop on our way. But he said I had told him that the chicken was wonderful in Lyon and that we should certainly take one with us. So the hotel made us a lunch that could not have cost us very much more than four or five times what it would have cost us if we had bought it ourselves.

Scott had obviously been drinking before I met him and, as he looked as though he needed a drink, I asked him if he did not want one in the bar before we set out. He told me he was not a morning drinker arid asked if I was. I told him it depended entirely on how I felt and what I had to do and he said that if I felt that I needed a drink, he would keep me company so I would not have to drink alone. So we had a whisky and Perrier in the bar while we waited for the lunch and both felt much better.

I paid for the hotel room and the bar, although Scott wanted to pay for everything.

Since the start of the trip I had felt a little complicated about it emotionally and I found I felt much better the more things I could pay for. I was using up the money we had saved for Spain, but I knew I had good credit with Sylvia Beach and could borrow and repay whatever I was wasting now.

At the garage where Scott had left the car, I was astonished to find that the small Renault had no top. The top had been damaged in unloading the car in Marseilles, or it had been damaged in Marseilles in some manner and Zelda had ordered it cut away and refused to have it replaced. His wife hated car tops, Scott told me, and without the top they had driven as far as Lyon where they were halted by the rain. The car was in fair shape otherwise and Scott paid the bill after disputing several charges for washing, greasing, and for adding two litres of oil. The garage man explained to me that the car needed new piston rings and had evidently been run without sufficient oil and water. He showed me how it had heated up and burned the paint off the motor. He said if I could persuade Monsieur to have a ring job done in Paris, the car, which was a good little car, would be able to give the service it was built for.

'Monsieur would not let me replace the top.'

'No?'

'One has an obligation to a vehicle.'

'One has.'

'You gentlemen have no waterproofs?'

'No,' I said. 'I did not know about the top.'

'Try and make Monsieur be serious,' he said pleadingly. 'At least about the vehicle.'

'Ah,' I said.

We were halted by rain about an hour north of Lyon.

In that day we were halted by rain possibly ten times. They were passing showers and some of them were longer than others. If we had had waterproof coats it would have been pleasant enough to drive in that spring rain. As it was we sought the shelter of trees or halted at cafes alongside the road. We had a marvellous lunch from the hotel at Lyon, an excellent truffled roast chicken, delicious bread and white Macon wine and Scott was very happy when we drank the white Maconnais at each of our stops. At Macon I had bought four more bottles of excellent wine which I uncorked as we needed them.

I am not sure Scott had ever drunk wine from a bottle before and it was exciting to him as though he were slumming or as a girl might be excited by going swimming for the first time without a bathing suit. But, by early afternoon, he had begun to worry about his health. He told me about two people who had died of congestion of the lungs recently.

Both of them had died in Italy and he had been deeply impressed.

I told him that congestion of the lungs was an old-fashioned term for pneumonia, and he told me that I knew nothing about it and was absolutely wrong. Congestion of the lungs was a malady which was indigenous to Europe and I could not possibly know anything about it even if I had read my father's medical books, since they dealt with diseases that were strictly American. I said that my father had studied in Europe too. But Scott explained that congestion of the lungs had only appeared in Europe recently and that my father could not possibly have known anything about it. He also explained that diseases were different in different parts of America, and if my father had practised medicine in New York instead of in the Middle West, he would have known an entirely different gamut of diseases. He used the word gamut.

I said he had a good point in the prevalence of certain diseases in one part of the United States and their absence in others and cited the amount of leprosy in New Orleans and its low incidence, then, in Chicago. But I said that doctors had a system of exchange of knowledge and information among themselves and now that I remembered it after he had brought it up, I had read the authoritative article on congestion of the lungs in Europe in the
Journal of the American Medical Association,
which traced its history back to Hippocrates himself. This held him for a while and I urged him to take another drink of Macon, since a good white wine, moderately full-bodied but with a low alcoholic content, was almost a specific against the disease.

Scott cheered a little after this but he began to fail again shortly and asked me if we would make a big town before the onset of the fever and delirium by which, I had told him, the true congestion of the lungs, European, announced itself. I was now translating from an article which I had read in a French medical journal on the same malady while waiting at the American Hospital in Neuilly to have my throat cauterized, I told him. A word like cauterized had a comforting effect on Scott. But he wanted to know when we would make the town. I said if we pushed on we should make it in twenty-five minutes to an hour.

Scott then asked me if I were afraid to die and I said more at some times than at others.

It now began to rain really heavily and we took refuge in the next village at a cafe. I cannot remember all the details of that afternoon but when we were finally in a hotel at what must have been Chalon-sur-Saone, it was so late that the drugstores were closed.

Scott had undressed and gone to bed as soon as we reached the hotel. He did not mind dying of congestion of the lungs, he said. It was only the question of who was to look after Zelda and young Scotty. I did not see very well how I could look after them since I was having a healthily rough time looking after my wife Hadley and young son Bumby, but I said I would do my best and Scott thanked me. I must see that Zelda did not drink and that Scotty should have an English governess.

We had sent our clothes to be dried and were in our pyjamas. It was still raining outside but it was cheerful in the room with the electric light on. Scott was lying in bed to conserve his strength for his battle against the disease. I had taken his pulse, which was seventy-two, and had felt his forehead, which was cool. I had listened to his chest and had him breathe deeply, and his chest sounded all right.

'Look, Scott,' I said. 'You're perfectly OK. If you want to do the best thing to keep from catching cold, just stay in bed and I'll order us each a lemonade and a whisky and you take an aspirin with yours and you'll feel fine and won't even get a cold in your head.'

"Those old wives' remedies,' Scott said.

'You haven't any temperature. How the hell are you going to have congestion of the lungs without a temperature?'

'Don't swear at me,' Scott said. 'How do you know I haven't a temperature?'

'Your pulse is normal and you haven't any fever to the touch.'

'To the touch,' Scott said bitterly. 'If you're a real friend, get me a thermometer.'

'I'm in pyjamas.'

'Send for one.'

I rang for the waiter. He didn't come and I rang again and then went down the hallway to look for him. Scott was lying with his eyes closed, breathing slowly and carefully and, with his waxy colour and his perfect features, he looked like a little dead crusader. I was getting tired of the literary life, if this was the literary life that I was leading, and already I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life. I was very tired of Scott and of this silly comedy, but I found the waiter and gave him money to buy a thermometer and a tube of aspirin, and ordered two
citrons presses
and two double whiskies. I tried to order a bottle of whisky but they would only sell it by the drink.

Back in the room Scott was still lying as though on his tomb, sculpted as a monument to himself, his eyes closed and breathing with exemplary dignity.