Читать книгу The Paris Herald - James Oliver Goldsborough - Страница 12

When Eddie Jones was younger, still in his fifties, he could leave the Herald at 10:40 and be at Harry’s Bar by midnight having hit every American hangout in Paris along the way. He was on a tight schedule because he had to be back by 12:30 to pick up the second edition and start out again. It wasn’t that the second edition was much different from the first – not much happens in the world in two hours and it was still too early to get in the baseball scores – but editors know how to fiddle with stories and headlines to make it seem like a new paper.

Eddie had his route, adjusting if one place seemed slow or another especially lively. He did a lot of walking, but for the big crosstown moves he hailed a cab, especially as he grew older. He stayed on the lookout for cabbies he knew and they looked out for him. Just as if you catch the 6:40 local to work every morning and the 5:40 home again you get to know the people, it’s the same at night. There aren’t that many cabs late at night and cabbies and riders get to know each other.

Leaving the Herald, Eddie worked the Champs Elysées and then caught a cab to Montparnasse. After hitting the Dôme, Sélect, Coupole, and Rotonde, he needed another ride to St.-Germain, which he used to walk but lately had been riding. From St.-Germain he caught another cab to Pigalle and another to Harry’s, where he did his best business. If he was low on newspapers, he told them he’d be back in a half hour with the second edition. He did his second run in the opposite direction, starting with Harry’s.

The midnight cabbies liked Eddie and didn’t charge him for he kept his pockets full of goodies he got through friends from the embassy PX. Eddie also made a special barbeque sauce for the annual Christmas party he gave in his rooms near Ternes, his one social event of the year. The French liked his sauce and so he bottled it and doled it out during the year. Most of the cabbies live in the workers’ suburbs where it’s easier to have a barbeque than in the posher districts. Eddie liked the barter system, which benefited everyone and saved him money.

He finished up at La Calavados, across from the Hotel George V, where Joe Turner played piano. Like most of the American Negroes in Paris, Turner had come back after the war. He played until two and Eddie would be there for the final set, sitting at the corner of the bar, eating whatever the cook left for him, having a nightcap with Joe before they closed up. Joe was from Baltimore, though told people he was from New York. When people asked him to sing “Kansas City” he’d smile and say he wasn’t Kansas City Joe Turner, he was stride piano – playing Joe Turner, but he’d still do “Kansas City” for them and even throw in the vocal. He preferred playing Fats Waller. Joe was proud that Oscar Peterson once called him “the greatest stride pianist.”

Lately Eddie was falling behind. It wasn’t that he walked slower or was having trouble catching cabs and it wasn’t that he was talking to people, for he’d never done much of that, not white people at any rate, except for Eric. The problem was he was lingering too long, accepting drinks he didn’t used to accept. He knew he should cut down his route. He’d saved enough money to retire, though knew he never would. He couldn’t imagine life without his route. What would he do?

“Right on time,” said Eric as Eddie crossed the room at the California. “You watch yourself tonight. It’s a hot one.”

“Move over, sonny, do you mind? I’m going to let Mr. Eric buy me one tonight.”

Instead of moving over, Archer stood up. Eddie dropped his newspaper bag and swung onto a barstool. Marcel, serving the tables, came back to the bar when he saw Eddie sit down. Eddie never sat down at the California.

“Un cognac, s’il te plait,” Eddie said.

“You feeling all right, old friend?” said Eric.

“Movin’ slow, Mr. Eric, movin’ slow.”

Eric knew better than to suggest he slow down. Like the mail, newspapers have to be delivered on time. When Eric was still in charge he’d hired a half dozen pretty girls, dressed them in tight yellow Herald sweaters, called them the “golden girls,” and sent them out on the streets. They took some business from Eddie, but Eric convinced him they were more for publicity than sales. The best publicity came when Jean-Luc Godard put a Herald sweater on sexy Jean Seberg for the movie A bout de souffle and even shot a scene at the Herald. The girls didn’t last because Eric didn’t pay them and soon Paris belonged to Eddie Jones again.

Marcel brought the cognac and Eddie shot in some seltzer. He finished it, set the snifter down, and looked at Archer. His face was a pale shade of brown, freckled and crisscrossed with lines and furrows like cracked earth. He was a man of medium height, large-boned with a big head and receding hairline that made it look even bigger. He had large hands with slender but strong-looking fingers and well-tended nails. A thin mustache filled in the large expanse between mouth and nose, a broad nose with half glasses perched on its tip and lashed around his neck with a thin leather cord. Peering over the half moons of his glasses, he studied Archer’s face.

“I’ve seen you, around, young man. A year or two – am I right?”

“You’re right.”

“Archer’s the Paris reporter,” said Eric. “Took Fleming’s place.”

“Ah,” said Eddie, his milky eyes fastened on Archer. “I remember Fleming. Pretty little wife.”

“Back in L.A.,” said Archer.

“I heard something about that.”

“Eddie hears something about everything,” said Eric. “Should have been a reporter – knows how to listen.”

Eddie flicked his finger against the snifter, and Marcel came back to fill it. Eddie was chuckling. “Knows how to listen but Mr. Eric didn’t think Eddie could write. Might have done a Paris column…like Buchwald.”

“Chubby little fellow in big glasses drifts one day. I didn’t hire him, went on vacation and they hired him anyway. A star is born. Wrote a column: ‘Paris After Dark.’”

“Or I could have done a sports column…like Sparrow.”

“Ahhh, the Sparrow,” said Hawkins. “Always wore a homburg. What a reporter! Stayed on after the Nazis came – sat in the little office by the elevator I use now. Came in every day to an empty building, typed his stories, shoved them in the desk and went home again. Dropped dead in June of forty-one. A year of the Nazis was all he could take. I found the stories when I came back in forty-four. Stood there crying. The Sparrow couldn’t stop writing – even without a newspaper.”

“I’ve seen you in some of the jazz spots,” Eddie said.

“I do a jazz column. Hitting some spots tonight.”

They watched him go, disappearing among the cars, trucks, and people overflowing street and sidewalk outside the Herald. Across the street, behind the plate glass window, they saw women in bandanas bent over long tables bundling newspapers that soon would be delivered across Europe. Horns sounded from blocked motorists who should have known better than to be on the rue de Berri at 10:30.

“How old is Eddie?” asked Archer.

“How old is Eddie Jones?” repeated Hawkins. “How old would you say he is?”

“I’d say in his seventies.”

Let’s say he’s seventy-five, which would make him fifty-three when the war ended – that sound right to you?”

“The army, right?”

“Sergeant Eddie Jones of the Five Hundred and Eighty-Second Dump Truck Company. Ask him about it.”