Читать книгу The Paris Herald - James Oliver Goldsborough - Страница 10

Eric Hawkins hoisted all five feet two of his pink body onto the corner stool at the bar of the Hotel California and waited for Marcel to bring his gin and bitters. The hotel owner, Lucien Montsouris, had set out after the war to decorate the bar in authentic Californian, the problem being that Lucien had never set foot in California. The garden terrace, with its white iron tables, yellow umbrellas, and potted palms, was occasionally sunny enough to pass for California, but for Hawkins, who’d never been to the States despite working forty-five years for a U.S. newspaper, the bar had nothing of what he imagined California to be. For him, its high ceilings, deep red Morocco leather chairs, and ornate glass lamps along the walls were more Second Empire than anything else.

Not to complain. Since leaving the Herald, the California was his primary home, where he spent far more waking hours than in the cubicle they called an office across the street and nearly as many as in his flat off avenue Wagram. From his barstool he could look outside and see everything, from the magazine l’Express on one side of the Herald to the Berri Bar on the other. Above all he could see the Herald, making sure they kept to schedule – his schedule. Under Eric Hawkins, the Herald had never missed an edition – except for the second war, of course, something he couldn’t do anything about. It hadn’t been a problem in the first war because the Germans never got to Paris.

He’d not spent the entire forty-five years at 21 rue de Berri, but between December 8, 1930, when they moved from the rue du Louvre, and June 13, 1940, and the arrival of the Nazis, it was home. And between his return August 28, 1944, and September 10, 1960, when he was retired, it was home again. He knew those dates better than his birthday, which he tended to forget. He’d lived at the Herald so long he once talked to Lucien about taking a room at the California. Lucien just smiled and gave him another gin and bitters. He’d slept there a few nights as the Germans closed in. Later he joined a few million others on the roads south, slipped into Spain, crossed into Portugal, and sailed for England, a place he hadn’t been since arriving in Paris twenty-five years before. Despite what his passport said and his somewhat shaky command of the language, Eric Hawkins was a Parisian.

There were maybe a dozen other people in the bar, a smattering of journalists from l’Express and some German tourists at the tables, but Eric sat alone at the bar. It was a long bar but had only four barstools because Lucien, being French, didn’t believe in them. In French bars you stand up at the bar or sit at tables. Since Lucien didn’t want to attract the kind of people who stand up, he’d put in four large, swiveling barstools to occupy the space and force people to the tables where tips for unsalaried waiters like Marcel were better. Eric Hawkins was a special case. Eric had sat on that same barstool every night since his return to Paris in ’44.

Hawkins looked up from his France-Soir to see a young man come through the door and stand a moment surveying the large room. He remembered him from the newsroom the night Swart came down. Eric knew personally only the people he’d hired himself – Marder, Draper, Hallsberg, Mac the fat man, Martha Gates, the Brit proofreaders, a few others who were still around like Eddie Jones and Maurice the messenger and the copyboys, who weren’t boys at all. He’d turned down Art Buchwald when he came scrounging for a job in ’49, but that had worked out anyway. For him, the new Herald crowd was just a lot of strange faces he saw around the building. Sometimes they nodded, usually not. It was amazing to him. He’d been captain of that ship for forty years (with a few years out for the Nazis), and now most of them looked right past him. Damn maddening how they’d lost all sense of history – with a few exceptions, like Hallsberg and Al Lodge. Bennett would have known what to do with the rest.

“Mr. Hawkins. My name is Rupert Archer. I’m the new boy over there.”

“Eric will do, laddie.”

“I’ve heard enough about you.”

“Well, I hope you’re talking to the right people.” He was sizing him up, wondering if he would have hired him. “Where you from, Rupert?”

“California.”

“You don’t say. Well, you’ve come to the right place. First time at the California?”

“First time I’ve been off at 10:30. New boy gets the worst hours.” He hoisted himself onto the next barstool. “You know why I came here tonight? I came for a Canadian Club. Since about nine o’clock I’ve been thinking how good a Canadian and soda would taste. I like it with a twist of lemon.”

“There’s your bottle, right up there,” Eric said, pointing. “Why Canadian?”

Archer hadn’t made the connection but suddenly did, feeling the pain. But it wasn’t her at all. He’d always liked Canadian whiskey.

Eric turned to the tables. “Marcel, s’il te plait.”

“J’arrive, M. Eric, j’arrive.”

Suddenly the old gamin’s face came alive. “Listen – you hear that? The music has started.”

Archer heard nothing.

“That’s the presses, Rupert. You not only hear them, you feel them underground – low kind of rumble, like the troll under the bridge beating his drum.” He checked his watch. “In ten minutes Eddie Jones will push through that door with my Herald. You can set your watch by it – every night. Until then, you’ve got this to read.” He pushed across the France-Soir he’d been reading. “How’s your French?”

“Improving.”

“You can read that headline, I imagine.”

DE GAULLE CONTRE LBJ

It consumed most of the top half of the front page: “That I can read.”

Marcel fixed Eric another gin and bitters and got down the Canadian Club, pouring a stiff shot, dropping in ice, and passing Archer the seltzer bottle.

“How do you say twist in French, Eric?”

“Tweest. Un tweest de citron pour mon ami, Marcel, s’il te plait.”

At 10:40, Eddie Jones came in and handed Eric his newspaper.

“What are you hearing over there, Eddie?”

The old newsboy looked at him over his half moons, glanced at Archer, and then back to Eric. “Tonton’s been down to l’Humanité. He’s worried about this New York thing. Don’t know what transpired.”

“Eddie, do you know Rupert Archer?”

Archer put out his hand and Jones touched it lightly. “Gotta go.”

He turned and then turned back to them. “Funny rumor, Mr. Eric. Something about the Herald moving to Zurich. You know anything about that?”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“One of the pressmen.”

Archer watched Hawkins’s eyes move up and down the tall green neon HERALD sign across the street. “Tactics,” he said, “never happen.”

“I’m sure as hell not going to Zurich.”

They watched him shuffle away.

“Amazing man. Knows everything, says nothing. Hired him in forty-five, stayed on after the war, disappeared for a while. Never went home. Good man.”

“Zurich…?”

Eric shook his head. “Now tell me. What brings you to Paris?”

“I’d been wandering around Europe.”

“Where’d you work in the States?”

“San Francisco, Honolulu, Phoenix.”

“Never been to the States myself.”

“Well, I’d never been to Europe.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“Just after Kennedy’s murder.”

“That drove you to Europe?”

He was savoring the drink and his mind drifted. She’d told him to write her in care of Air Canada Toronto and he’d written two letters with no response. Little things would bring her to mind, which would short-circuit him for a while. He needed a way to shock her from his system. “That and the fact I was fired in Phoenix.”

Watching him in the mirror, Hawkins swung sideways to look closer. “So you know how it feels. How long had you worked there?”

“One year.”

“One year, ha! How’d you like to be fired after forty years?”

“After forty years you just call it retirement.”

Eric didn’t like that and turned away. “You tell Sonny you’d been fired?”

“No.”

“No disgrace, you know. Why’d they fire you?”

“It’s a long story. The short version is that I was the labor reporter in a right-to-work state. The publisher didn’t like what I wrote.”

Eric turned back to him. “You know, Rupert, you’ve just made an old man feel better. Allow me to buy you a drink.”

Marcel pulled France-Soir across the bar to read. He tapped the front page. “Le vieux cherche la bagarre,” he said as someone hailed him from a table.

“Bagarre?” said Archer.

“He said the old man is looking for a fight. De Gaulle hates the Vietnam War, which is why he’s throwing American troops out of France. Thinks Johnson is crazy – doesn’t want to cooperate with someone he doesn’t trust. Say, how come you’re not in Vietnam? You’re not a shirker, are you?”

The whiskey relaxed him, made him remember how much he missed it. “Drafted. I already served. I don’t know what I’d do if I was five years younger.” He held up his glass. “Maybe go up to the place where this stuff is made.” He stared at the glass. “No, come to think of it. I couldn’t do that.”

“It’s a new world, Rupert. No one shirked in the two wars, no one would have dared. This war’s different, like the French in Algeria. That’s why de Gaulle pulled out. It’s why the British got out of India. Colonialism’s had its day. You Yanks just haven’t gotten the word.”

“I don’t think I’d want to die for Vietnam.”

The little man stared into his drink. “You know, Rupert, I once asked Mr. Bennett if he thought Henry Stanley was ready to die for Livingstone. Bennett sent Stanley off to find Dr. Livingstone, you know. Imagine what it was like in the Congo in those days – savagery, disease, heart of darkness. I’ll never forget Mr. Bennett’s answer. Twirling his mustaches, he looks down at me and says, ‘Hawkins, if you believe in what you’re doing you never worry about dying.’ There was a man, James Gordon Bennett, Jr. They loved him, the French did, like one of their own. They’ve loved a few of you, you know – Ben Franklin, Pershing, Lindbergh, Kennedy. They loved Bennett as much as any Yank. Maybe more. Knew he was one of them. Wasn’t going home. Not like that today.”

In the mirror they watched some people shuffle in from the hotel lobby and noisily seat themselves at a table, Americans, fat, friendly, noisy, insecure, doing Europe on the strong dollar, homey in the California looking out on the Herald, nice rooms at $15 a day, American newspaper at breakfast. They were being bubbly to Marcel, who kept a fish eye on them, though he depended on their tips. Marcel was un homme sérieux, and one thing un homme sérieux does not do is get friendly with strangers. You are friendly with your friends – if that. Marcel spoke no English but knew the English words for every drink he’d ever been asked to make.

Eric caught Archer’s glance in the mirror and nodded his head back toward the Americans. “That’s what you’re sending over today. Rich tourists. Mind you, we can’t complain. They keep us in business. But Bennett, he came to stay. I came to stay. What about you, Rupert…you come to stay?”

Archer looked back at him in the mirror. “In Zurich?”

Hawkins ignored it. “Say, how would you like to meet Bennett?” He pulled closer and Archer smelled the sweet mixture of cologne, sweat, and bitters, noticing the white stubble sprouting in pink crevices of the old editor’s cheeks. “I think of him, you know.” He wore a gnomish smile on his lips. “Sometimes I talk to him.”

Archer eyed him in the mirror. Dotty? He pulled back from the smell. “How do you do that?”

“I visit him.”

It took a minute to catch the meaning. Ben Swart had mentioned the crypt in Passy Cemetery. “You go to the crypt?”

“Exactly so – been there many times, usually after hours when it’s private and we can talk. You work on the Herald you should visit the crypt. Like to go?”

Archer hesitated. “Sure…of course.”

“Let’s do it.” He grabbed the tabs. “Allow me to sign, Rupert. I get a price, you know.”

“Wait – you mean…?”

He signed, sprang to his feet, and grabbed his coat.

Archer stood up just as the door opened and in rushed Molly Fleming, breathless, looking around, approaching them when she saw no sign of Steve. Her long blond hair serpentined over one shoulder, tumbling almost to the bottom of the short leather coat that descended to a level just below her rump and showed no signs of anything under it, though there was probably a skirt down there somewhere.

Molly turned as Steve came in. “Some horrible little Frenchmen just goosed me – stuck his hand right up on the Metro and pinched.”

“Got you on the Metro, did ’e,” said Hawkins, dropping his h’s for the first time. “Must ’ave ’urt.” He chuckled as they pushed outside.

A taxi was just dropping people off and Hawkins had them in the door and on their way before Archer could protest. Soon they were whipping down avenue Kléber and pulling up outside high walls just off Trocadero. He produced a key and opened the gate onto a vast black space.

“You’ve got your own key?”

On little light feet, Hawkins was already down the path, pulling a penlight from his pocket to jet a small beam through the darkness. “Stay close,” he whispered. “Don’t want to lose you. Don’t step on anyone.” He chuckled again.

Veering off the path, nipping his way through a maze of tombstones, monuments, and mausoleums, suddenly he stopped. “There,” he whispered, pointing his light on a sculpted head, “Manet – you know your impressionists?”

Why was he whispering? He stopped again, shining the light on a black marble crypt. “Debussy,” he whispered. “Horrible death…almost there. Bennett wanted to be in the back. Modest for a great man. Can you believe that the only time his name appeared in the Herald was for his obituary, May 14, 1918. Same thing for the crypt.”

“What do you mean?”

He stopped. “Just this…”

The beam flashed onto the bust of a bird, bursting from the dreary night like Poe’s raven, perched on a pedestal above the entrance to the thanatorium.

“An owl…?”

“An owl it is, Rupert. It was his fetish, you know. Had owls everywhere – claimed it was the hoot of an owl that told him to start up the Paris Herald. Saw it one night at midnight. Like Napoleon’s star, a sign. Made it his signature. Look around, Rupert, you won’t find Bennett’s name anywhere in this crypt. Just the owl.” He took Archer by the arm. “Come along.”

Inside, the beam moved up the wall to a large stained glass window depicting a sleek yacht knifing her way through blue water. “The Lysistrata–his yacht – named for a Greek lady both beautiful and fast.”

Nowhere was anything written. How many people had come by this tomb, paused by the bird, and wondered who its mysterious inhabitant could be?

“He was different from the others, Rupert…knew right from wrong, he did – oh, maybe not in the little things. He was something of a rogue. Hated the Kaiser…blamed him for the war, for those thirty million dead…right, you know.”

His light fixed on the yacht, he was in full flight.

“The Lusitania–my God, it was my first night on the Herald if you can imagine it, up all night sorting out dispatches of survivors and missing. Horrible, it was. I was the grim reaper, sorting names, this one dead, this one alive. We ran dozens of little black boxes, like caskets, on the front page with just the words: ‘In Memoriam of the Men, Women and Children Lost on the Lusitania’…stayed up all night putting out new editions with the latest list of casualties…posted it in the window on the avenue de l’Opéra for the crowds outside. My God we hated the Kaiser that night.”

The old gnome was gone, transported from the Lysistrata to the Lusitania, reliving the night a half century before when he’d been thrown onto the news desk to do something never done before – a newspaper’s minute-by-minute accounting of the deaths of twelve hundred people. How do you forget something like that?

“Bennett wrote the unsigned editorial himself that night,” he said. “‘What a pity Mr. Roosevelt is not president,’ he wrote. ‘He would know what to do.’”