Good Morning, Midnight (10 page)

'But have it, take it, all the same. I like you. I'll give it you as a present.'

'No, no. All I meant was that I can't pay you now.'

'Oh, that's all right. You can send me the money from London. I'll tell you what you can do for me - you can find some other idiots who'll buy my pictures.' When he says this, he smiles at me so gently, so disarmingly. The touch of the human hand....I'd forgotten what it was like, the touch of the human hand.

'I'm serious. I mean that. Take the picture and send me the money when you can.'

'I can let you have it tonight.'

We argue for some time as to where we shall meet.

'I can't stand Montparnasse now,' he says. "Those faces, those gueules! They make me sick. Somewhere in the Quartier Latin.'

We decide on the Capoulade at half past ten. He rolls up the picture in tissue paper, ties it round with a bit of sting and I take it under my arm. Then he gives my hand a long, hard shake and says 'Amis'.

When he shakes my hand like that and says 'Amis' I feel very happy....

We get out into the courtyard, Delmar and I. It is a very cold, clear night. The outer door is shut. Business with the concierge.

Now I am not thinking of the past at all. I am well in the present.

'Capoulade - half past ten....'

The pictures walk along with me. The misshapen dwarfs juggle with huge coloured balloons, the four breasted woman is exhibited, the old prostitute waits hopelessly outside the urinoir, the young one under the bec de gaz....

At ten twenty five - still fairly exalted - I am in the Capoulade. I wait for a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes. Nobody turns up....Bon, bien, that's what you get for being exalted, my girl. But the protective armour is functioning all right - I don't mind at all.

I am just worrying about the way I am going to give this man his money. I can't write, because I don't remember the number of the house. Shall I push it under the door of his studio and trust to luck?

As I am thinking this Delmar comes in. Correct, gloves in his left hand. 'Oh, I'm so sorry, so sorry. I waited at the studio for le peintre for half an hour and he never turned up. I didn't know what to do. I thought it was better to come here. I've been so worried about it.'

'That's all right. It doesn't matter at all.' I give him the envelope with the money.

Is there a closing of the eyes, a slightly relieved expression on his face? Yes, I think so. And why not? Have a heart. Why not?

However, he does seem annoyed - so far as he can be annoyed, which isn't very far. Here is someone who firmly believes in his own creed: 'I didn't ask to be born, I didn't ask to be put into the world, I didn't make myself, I didn't make the world as it is, I am a guiltless one. So I have the right,' etcetera, etcetera, etcetera....

'Le peintre!' he says. 'Il est fou, le peintre....Did you like him?'

'Yes, I liked him very much.'

He lays his gloves carefully down on the table. 'Will you have a coffee, madame?' 'No, I'll have a brandy, please.'

He looks anxious, orders the brandy and a coffee for himself. God, this is awful!

'Le peintre,' he says, 'he's mad. I don't know why he has been so impolite, but it's just what he would do.

Because he's mad. You know, two years ago, this man, he was living....Terible....La crasse, madame....I said to him: "You can't go on living like this." "Je m'en fous," he said....However, I talked to him and in the end he managed to get the money to give his exhibition. And his pictures were bought. Yes, they were bought....Eighteen thousand francs. C'est inoui', une somme pareille....And then he did move. He went to this beautiful, respectable room where you saw him....All the same he is mad.'

He goes on talking about le peintre. I gather that he is impressed but jealous. He can't see the attraction. Why, why?

'So you liked him?'

'Yes, I did. Very much.'

'Ah,' he says, gloomily, 'voila. All the same, I've had enough of these people of the extreme Left. They have bad manners. Moi, je suis monarchiste ....And, mind you, when he says he is of the extreme Left, it's all nonsense. He doesn't really care.'

'Of course he doesn't.'

'Yes, yes....Moi, je suis monarchiste. A queen, for instance, a princess - that must be something.'

If he feels like that, what's the use of arguing with him?....I agree with everything. A queen, a princess - that's something.

When he asks if I can meet him again: 'Well, I'll try,' I say. 'But I'm very much occupied.'

I can't stand this business of not being able to have what I want to drink, because he won't allow me to pay and certainly doesn't want to pay himself. It's too wearing.

'I'm leaving Paris next week. Sooner than I thought.'

Will I let him know when I am going, so that he can come to the Gare du Nord to see me of?

'Yes, please do. It would be so nice if you would. It's sad to go away from a place with nobody to tell you good-bye.'

When I am back in my room I start worrying about him and the money he has spent on me. And then I think: 'I bet he'll get his percentage on that six hundred francs. Or perhaps he won't hand the money over at all.' This idea makes me laugh all the time I am undressing.

Wandering about the narrow streets near the Pantheon.

It starts to rain.

I go into a tabac. The woman at the bar gives me one of those looks: What do you want here, you? We don't cater for tourists here, not our clientele....Well, dear madame, to tell you the truth, what I want here is a drink - I rather think two, perhaps three.

It is cold and dark outside, and everything has gone out of me except misery.

'A Pernod,' I say to the waiter.

He looks at me in a sly, amused way when he brings it.

God, it's funny, being a woman! And the other one - the one behind the bar - is she going to giggle or to say something about me in a voice loud enough for me to hear ? That's the way she's feeling.

No, she says nothing....But she says it all.

Well, that's OK, chere madame, and very nicely done too. You've said nothing but you've said it all. Never mind, her I am and here I'm going to stay.

Behind my table is a door. Toilette. - they needn't have said so. And then another, smaller door. Service. I hear noises of washing up going on behind this door.

After a while a girl comes out, with a tray piled with clean glasses. She leaves the door open. Inside, a sink, a tap and more dirty glasses and plates, waiting to be washed. There is just room for the girl to stand. An unbelievable smell comes from the sink.

Se passes me without looking at me. Bare, sturdy legs, felt slippers, a black dress, a filthy apron, thick, curly, untidy hair. I know her. This is the girl who does all the dirty work and gets paid little for it. Salut.

She goes into the room behind the bar, puts the glasses down, walks back to the cupboard and shuts herself in. How does she manage not to knock her elbows every time she moves? How can she stay in that coffin for five minutes without fainting?....Sorry for her? Why should I be sorry for her? Hasn't she got sturdy legs and curly hair? And don't her strong hands sing the Marseillaise? And when the revolution comes, won't those be the hands to be kissed? Well, so Monsieur Rimbaud says, doesn't he? I hope he's right. I wonder though, I wonder, I wonder....

I call the waiter, to pay. I give him a large tip. He looks at it, says 'Merci', and then 'Merci beacoup'. I ask him to tell me the way to the nearest cinema. This, of course, - arises from a cringing desire to explain my presence in the place. I only came in here to inquire the way to the nearest cinema. I am a respectable woman, une femme convenable, on her way to the nearest cinema. Faites comme les autres - that's been my motto all my life. Faites comme les autres, damn you.

And a lot he cares - I could have spared myself the trouble. But this is my attitude to life. Please, please, monsieur et madame, mister, missis and miss, I am trying so hard to be like you. I know I don't succeed, but look how hard I try. Three hours to choose a hat; every morning an hour and a half trying to make myself look like everybody else. Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, been tied up, weighted, chained? And, mind you, I know that with all this I don't succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well....But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think - and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt. Now the waiter has finished telling me how to get to the nearest cinema.

'Another Pernod,' I say.

He brings it. He fills my glass almost to the brim, perhaps in anticipation of another tip, perhaps because he wants to see me drunk as soon as possible, or perhaps because the bottle slipped.

The girl comes out with the last lot of glasses. I'm glad. It has just occurred to me that if I weren't here the door of her coffin might be kept open. Might be. Not that I would have gone away if it had occurred to me before. Why should I? The hands that sing the Marseillaise, the world that could be so different - what's all that to me? What can I do about it? Nothing. I don't deceive myself.

That's settled. I can start on the second Pernod.

Now the feeling of the room is different. They all know what I am. I'm a woman come in here to get drunk. That happens sometimes. They have a dink, these women, and then they have another and then they start crying silently. And then they go into the lavabo and then they come out - powdered, but with hollow eyes - and, head down, slink into the street.

'Poor woman, she has tears in her eyes.'

'What do you expect? Elle a bu.'

That's it, chere madame, I'm drunk. I have drunk. There's nothing to be done about it now. I have drunk. But otherwise quiet, fearful, tamed, prepared to give big tips. (I'll give a big tip if you'll leave me alone.) Bon, bien, bien, bon....

Sometimes somebody comes in for stamps, or a man for a drink. Then you can see outside into the street. And the street walks in. It is one of those streets - dark, powerful, magical....

'Oh, there you are,' it says, walking in at the door, 'there you are. Where have you been all this long time?'

Nobody else knows me, but the street knows me.

'And there you are,' I say, finishing my Pernod and rather drunk. 'Salut, salut!' (But sometimes it was sunny....Walking along in the sun in a gay dress, striped red and blue....i won't walk along that street again.)

The Cinema Danton. Watching a good young man trying to rescue his employer from a mercenary mistress. The employer is a gay, bad old boy who manufactures toilet articles. The good young man has the awkwardness, the smugness, the shyness, the pathos of good young men. He interrupts intimate conversations, knocking loudly, binging in letters and parcels, etcetera, etcetera. At last the lady, annoyed, gets up and sweeps away. She turns at the door to say: 'Alors, bien, je te laisse a tes suppositoires.' Everybody laughs loudly at this, and so do I. She said that well.

The film goes on and on. After many vicissitudes, the good young man is triumphant. He has permission to propose to his employer's daughter. He is waiting on the bank of a large pond, with a ring that he is going to offer her ready in his waistcoat pocket. He takes it out to make sure that he has it. Mad with happiness, he strides up and down the shores of the pond, gesticulating. He makes too wild a gesture. The ring lies from his hand into the middle of the pond. He takes of his trousers; he wades out. He has to get the ring back; he must get it back.

Exactly the sort of thing that happens to me. I laugh till the tears come into my eyes. However, the film shows no signs of stopping, so I get up and go out.

Another Pernod in the bar next door to the cinema. I sit at a corner table and sip it respectably, with lowered eyes. Je suis une femme convenable, just come out of the nearest cinema....Now I really am OK, chere madame. If I have a bottle of Bordeaux at dinner I'll be almost as drunk as I'd hoped to be.

There is a letter from le peintre at the hotel. He says he is very sorry he didn't turn up the other evening - il faut m'excuser. He says Delmar has handed over the six hundred francs, and he thanks me. He says that if I don't like the bonhomme, if I find him too sad, he will change him for one of the landscapes or for anything else I want and that he will try to get to the Gare du Nord to say au revoir to me (I bet he won't), and he is my friend, Serge Rubin.

Well, I'll have a whisky on that.

I unroll the picture and the man standing in the gutter, playing his banjo, stares at me. He is gentle, humble, resigned, mocking, a little mad. He stares at me. He is double-headed, double-faced. He is singing 'It has been', singing 'It will be'. Double-headed and with four arms....I stare back at him and think about being hungry, being cold, being hurt, being ridiculed, as if it were in another life than this.

This damned room - it's saturated with the pas....It's all the rooms I've ever slept in, all the streets I've ever walked in. Now the whole thing moves in an ordered, undulating procession past my eyes. Rooms, streets, streets, rooms....

PART THREE

....The room at the Steens'.

It was crowded with red plush furniture, the wood shining brightly. There were several vases of tulips and two cages with canaries, and there were two clocks, each trying to tick louder than the other. The windows were nearly always shut, but the room wasn't musty. When the door into the shop was open you could smell drugs and eau-de-Cologne. On a table at the back there was a big pot of tea over a spirit-lamp. The little blue light made it look like an altar.

In that room you couldn't think, you couldn't make plans. Just the way the clocks ticked, and outside the clean, narrow streets, and the others talking Dutch and I listening, not understanding. It was like being a child again, listening and thinking of something else and hear ing the voices - endless, inevitable and restful. Like Sunday afternoon.

Well, London....It has a fine sound, but what was London to me? It was a little room, smelling stuffy, with my stockings hanging to dry in front of a gas fire. Nothing in that room was ever clean; nothing was ever dirty, either. Things were always half and half. They changed one sheet at a time, so that the bed was never quite clean and never quite dirty.