Читать книгу A voyage to Pagany - William Carlos Williams - Страница 6

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Evans walked, though very tired, for several hours on the principal streets of the city, up the avenue de l’Opera, etc., seeing the famous dancers on the portico, all verdigris, and dirtied by the birds. Lit dimly from below he saw the lyre of Apollo featured at the peak of the opera façade and remembered the story: When the poet Verlaine had died and from his poverty-stricken room they were bearing his body up the avenue, a state funeral, to bury it, as they approached the Opera, suddenly the great golden lyre was seen to totter in its fastenings and fall!

He looked at the lyre, refastened in its place.

On the boulevard des Italiens, Evans admired the toy-like clocks in the windows of several jewelry stores, their tiny pendulums going, visibly, at a great pace back of a hole in the face—something he had not seen before. But he was filled with a strangeness inexplicable—satisfying—by it all. It was, as far as he could gather it, walking. How much one escapes by just being here, how much of lying, how much of stupidity!

He went for supper to a small place next to the Theater du Vieux Colombier. There the waiter brought his Chateaubriand, serving him a portion of it from the plate and putting the remainder of the steak aside, on a shelf—which Evans let him do, half-suspecting he was stealing it, which exactly, he was doing, and did.

A crier came in from the theater announcing the last act of the play.

Waking next morning at the Beausoir, Evans looked out of the window as three planes went by slowly overhead in flying goose formation. The sky was clear, the sun was shining. He flung open the window and saw an old fellow in baggy underwear walking about his room across the court.

Paris! He felt ridiculously delighted. He pried into every corner of his room, the small familiar violin-shaped bidet was there. This made him think of Mme. de Pompadour. He smiled contentedly.

Without ringing he dressed and went out. Brioche and coffee on the sidewalk at the corner. Fresh butter. A woman at the caisse, prim, neat, keen-eyed. Snappy.

On the street an old woman was selling mimosa from a bunch in her hand.

There was the usual morning market on the boulevard Raspail. Evans crossed over, watching the orderly line of people waiting for the bus, each pulling his serial ticket from the bunch fastened to the post, each waiting his turn. Orderly and intelligent. He needed some fresh collars. Walked over to the Bon Marché. They were having a white sale.

Collars, he said to a floor walker standing in frock coat and high collar facing the door.

To the right in the rear.

All about the floor were heaps of linen and cotton sheets, pillow cases, etc. Even at this hour the place was crowded with women in shawls, poker-faced housewives, going about from place to place. But the heaps of stuff were on the floor, the floor was dirty. Towels were being trampled, the edges of sheets were black here and there.

A wash cloth.—He had a devil of a time to remember what it was in French. Yes. He found what he wanted and found a girl to take it up for him.

Follow me, she said. He did so—delighted, grinning to himself.

She took him to the caisse. There they checked off the purchase, took his money and entered the transaction in longhand in a great ledger. He was amazed.

The boy who sold the collars asked him the size, which Evans could not, of course, give in centimeters—so they guessed at it. You have a neck a peu près the same as my own.

You have the damnedest way of selling things in this city, said Evans. I should think you’d pass out with all this running back and forth, to and from the cashier’s desk.

Yes, I’ve heard they do it better in New York. He smiled. I’d like to take that place in.

Why don’t you? said Evans.

Some day, perhaps, but what can you do?

He was a good-looking kid in a stiff collar and a frock coat. He certainly was earning his money.

And I suppose they—of course—they were balancing as they went.

What a country!

Then he went out with his collars, a wash cloth, a nail brush and a leather purse that smelled to be of goat’s hide, in a bundle in his hand.

Delight was his on this January morning. Everything seemed to function with economy and precision: the eggs in flat baskets in the stores, fruit, the neatly cut and tied bundles of meat, the children with blue jumpers over their clean clothes, going to school.

He stopped in at the Post Office on the rue de Rennes and sent a pneu to his sister: he had not—purposely—told her when he would arrive.

Then, going back to the hotel to rid himself of his bundle, he ran directly into his friend Jack, looking a little stouter, a good bit wiser, but dressed with the same engaging nonchalance as ever. The two friends, the older and the younger, greeted each other enthusiastically.

Never had Evans forgotten the balance of spirit, the distinguished attack upon life which had charmed him with Jack Murry from the moment of their first meeting in New York. The firm, thin-lipped lower face, jaw slightly thrust out, the cold blue eyes, the long, downward-pointing, slightly-hooked straight nose, the lithe, straight athletic build. The whole picture was there—almost intact.

How would it be inside? for they had had great plans together for rescuing life from the thicket where it is caught in America, the constant pounding on the head. They had worked hard to get to an expression—and Jack had left—to marry.

That night at 42nd Street when they had parted and Evans knew it was all up, tears had stood in their eyes. Jack had showed him his new clothes, they had spoken of continuing a scheme for publishing good writing—and Jack had sailed next day.

Oh well, that’s America, Evans had written down in his mind.

Now here was Jack. They shook hands a long time. Dropping the bundle at the hotel, they set out on foot talking as they strode.

You must meet—so and so and so. Van Cleve is not in Paris just now.

They stopped for a moment at the Dome while Evans told Jack his plans. Then they set out again walking and it was important. They went past La Closerie des Lilas.—There’s Harland, said Jack. We won’t stop now. See him later.

They were no business partners, no members of a cabinet, not even members of a team. How would they get on? How do men ever get on without some business together? Brothers never do. In the same ship, the same regiment—maybe. There is the Field Marshal, the General, the Major, the Colonel, the Captains, the Sergeants and the privates or it is on a ship. The order keeps them down. The order kills it all. But, as Walsh said, you can’t even get drunk with a guy any more without having the name pasted on you.

Evans thought of his English father. How the devil do you love a man anyway? Either you slop over or fight or else you avoid each other. He had admired his father, in some things; loved him—for a few things. But here in Paris, nothing to do—he felt uneasy with Jack.

To hell with what anybody else says, anyway. Evans loved his friend, as some one who brought over to him a section of life where he was weak to get at it, too shy, superstitious, too stately reverential.

He loved his younger friend for the bold style of his look at life. Often, when Jack demolished situations and people with one bark, Evans smiled to himself at the rudeness of it, the ruthlessness with which so much good had been mowed down. But he himself never could have done that. Jack struck at the false and, in the thicket of good where it lay, it perished—along with a number of other things. But when Jack ignorantly had smitten, he Evans freely could breathe.

God bless Jack, he had said to himself a thousand times, I love him. I stand for him.

But when it came to saying anything to Jack about it—nothing doing. They walked in together and through the Luxembourg gardens, down between the lines of chestnut trees toward 12 rue de l’Odéon, to get the mail.

Evans saw the French children of the better classes playing around the basin. He didn’t admire their dolled-up appearance. It isn’t the lack of births that keeps the French population down, it’s that so damned many of them die before they are five years old. The French are the worst people in the world for bringing up kids.

They went on past the gloomy buildings of the Senate.

If we had anything to do together—anything—

Already Jack was getting on his nerves.

Merely to walk and to talk—What?

The modern ideal is the prize ring. Men soaking men on the jaw. A gentlemanly art. That’s all.

But if you want to know a man, if you find him excellent, why you’ve got to have something to do together. You’ve got to work.

Why do you have to do anything? Why the hell do you have to work anyway?

Jack and Evans, wide apart as to ages, were not so far apart in general appearance. Evans needed Jack. Jack had rescued him in America, rescued him from much stupidity, from dullness, at a certain time when he needed just that. Evans thought he had aided Jack to get going.

What remained of all that now? One can’t go on just beating the air. Was it still there after these three years past?

Each knew the other’s antecedents pretty well. Perhaps there was nothing left.

Evans had begun to be depressed without knowing why, at first.

There was no mail at the bookshop. Coming out they hopped into a taxi.

What in God’s name did I come here for?

My generation has done one thing, Jack started off, it isn’t afraid to be called anything. It—they’re not going to be frightened into anything either, by a lot of spineless—just tell them to move along when they get too thick.

Evans didn’t know.

He was disturbed, avowedly. The connotations of his affection for Jack with nothing he could do about it—nothing to do—the slipping, slipping way the world has of getting out from under a difficulty and presenting the wrong face of an object, while it gives you, yes, perhaps what you ask, distressed him heavily.

They were lounging in the taxi. Evans looked out across the place St. Sulpice at the façade of the great church which had given the square its name.

How get in? Where was Jack? Why else then was he, Evans, a writer? He would do something about it, something at least.

Being a writer he could at least make it into a book, a poem, a novel. But he didn’t want to make it into anything. He wanted Jack and he did not want a makeshift. He wanted to be let in, he wanted to let Jack in.

He grew angry because as he thought, they wanted to make him do what he wasn’t even interested in doing, or if he didn’t do that, they wouldn’t let him speak to Jack.—You might as well pick up a sailor; but you can’t find this——

What was it he found in young Murry? What does anybody find in anybody? Something he can’t get except through that somebody. The luck of it gave that one the chance to look in and see; to look through.

Evans wanted to be let in.

Was it literature? To hell with literature. Was it to know the details of Jack’s life? Evans didn’t know he had any. Was it his soul? What the hell is that? It’s to get through something. To get down to it, or up to it. There wasn’t any act, that Evans knew, that would do any good for that. Not that he knew of.

Yes, you shouldn’t be afraid, but you shouldn’t let them hand you a sack of guts either—or kid you into thinking you want it. Some day, maybe he’d have to come to that but not yet a while, not while there was any chance of getting through whole.

Maybe Jack didn’t need him any longer.

A sudden coldness went over Evans. Jack suddenly faded far away. Evans looked at him coldly and asked himself what Jack had ever done to warrant his, Evans’, liking—except to be decorative, as he was.

But to get down to what? That was what it amounted to. What to do, not in desperation and whining self-pity but—whole. How are we going to get to know each other again? said he aloud.

What do you mean? said Jack. Then he went on, You’ve got to see a whole lot of things over here, people first. They all want to know you, they’ve read your stuff. Like it.

Evans had forgotten where they were going. Oh yes, to the bank. They stopped the taxi. Jack got his cash and they went on to sit for a while at the Café de la Paix.

Then as J. spoke of his plans for publishing, Evans’ mood began again to revive.

So it was the desire to get down to some sort of sense about writing, then, that was the cement for their friendship and there Evans decided to stop for to-day. Jack had a fresh mind on paper. He was distinguished—as a writer. It made no difference to Evans that he hadn’t done anything much as yet. Evans knew better than that he should fail—and that’s love. Yes, he still loved Jack.

That ended that. He got up positively—Let’s go. Jack liked that and they set off. They took another taxi, Evans improvising to himself on the streets, staring out.

Now they were coming back again to Montparnasse, and again Evans saw the façade of St. Sulpice with its severe front and wondered what in God’s name it signified. La Cathédrale Englouti—signified Debussy. He said that. But there, square stone blocks ornamented with carvings. What? You looked at it. Devout people were going in at the doors. Devout? What? Is it a poem? So is the grass. Leaves of Grass: America, because the people are common as grass—and as green; nothing showy; on the ground. True enough, but what of that? Does that help?

Love. Everybody talks about love. It’s the commonest thing in the world. There are no two kinds of love. Love is love. The moralist will tell you that. You love some one, that is all. If you love a girl, you want to have a baby. If you love a man, you want to have—what? If you love a girl, you don’t want to have a baby at all. You just have one. You love her and after a while you have a baby. He thought of Panurge and the lady of Paris—called her a name.

It’s love and how do these medieval church fortresses help? Love. Where is it on them? I don’t see any love. Yes, it’s one kind, a kind of official love, museums of love! That’s what churches are.

This amused him—Museums of love presided over by men to watch the cases so that you don’t take anything precious. I wonder if the jewels in the Louvre are real and if they still look as large as ever.—His mind flew off.

He looked out of the windows of the taxi, and wondered which of these old houses of the Latin Quarter it was in which his uncle had first slept soundly.

He saw the Musée du Luxembourg.—Paris is love, Paris is the living cathedral of the world. But what of to-day? He did not pray for help. He was interested and felt glad he was there.