from six directions—Then I stepped off the curb and a car came around that curve all alone like the chaser running last in a Monaco race and right at me—I stepped back just in time—At the wheel a Frenchman completely convinced that no one else has a right to live or get to his mistress as fast as he does—As a New Yorker I run to dodge the free zipping roaring traffic of Paris but Parisians just stand and then stroll and leave it to the driver—And by God it works, I saw dozens of cars screech to a stop from 70 M.P.H. to let some stroller have his way!
I was going to the Opera also to eat in any restaurant that looked nice, it was one of my sober evenings dedicated to solitary studious walks, but O what grim rainy Gothic buildings and me walking well in the middle of those wide sidewalks so’s to avoid dark doorways—What vistas of Nowhere City Night and hats and umbrellas—I couldn’t even buy a newspaper—Thousands of people were coming out of some performance somewhere—I went to a crowded restaurant on Boulevard des Italiens and sat way at the end of the bar by myself on a high stool and watched, wet and helpless, as waiters mashed up raw hamburg with Worcestershire sauce and other things and other waiters rushed by holding up steaming trays of good food—The one sympathetic counterman brought menu and Alsatian beer I ordered and I told him to wait awhile—He didnt understand that, drinking without eating at once, because he is partner to the secret of charming French eaters:– they rush at the very beginning with hors d’oeuvres and bread, and then plunge into their entrees (this is practically always before even a slug of wine) and then they slow down and start lingering, now the wine to wash the mouth, now comes the talk, and now the second half of the meal, wine, dessert and coffee, something I cannae do.
In any case I’m drinking my second beer and reading the menu and notice an American guy is sitting five stools away but he is so mean looking in his absolute disgust with Paris I’m afraid to say “Hey, you American?”—He’s come to Paris expecting he woulda wound up under a cherry tree in blossom in the sun with pretty girls on his lap and people dancing around him, instead he’s been wandering the rainy streets alone in all that jargon, doesnt even know where the whore district is, or Notre Dame, or some small cafe they told him about back in Glennon’s bar on Third Avenue, nothing—When he pays for his sandwich he literally throws the money on the counter “You wouldnt help me figure what the real price is anyway, and besides shove it up your you-know-what I’m going back to my old mine nets in Norfolk and get drunk with Bill Eversole in the bookie joint and all the other things you dumb frogs dont know about,” and stalks out in poor misunderstood raincoat and disillusioned rubbers—
Then in come two American schoolteachers of Iowa, sisters on a big trip to Paris, they’ve apparently got a hotel room round the corner and aint left it except to ride the sightseeing buses which pick em up at the door, but they know this nearest restaurant and have just come down to buy a couple of oranges for tomorrow morning because the only oranges in France are apparently Valencias imported from Spain and too expensive for anything so avid as quick simple break of fast. So to my amazement I hear the first clear bell tones of American speech in a week:” “You got some oranges here?”
“Pardon?”—the counterman.
“There they are in that glass case,” says the other gal.
“Okay—see?” pointing, “two oranges,” and showing two fingers, and the counterman takes out the two oranges and puts em in a bag and says crisply thru his throat with those Arabic Parisian “r’s”:–
“Trois francs cinquante”. In other words, 35¢ an orange but the old gals dont care what it costs and besides they dont understand what he’s said.
“What’s that mean?”
“Pardon?”
“Alright, I’ll hold out my palm and take your kwok-kowk-kwark out of it, all we want’s the oranges” and the two ladies burst into peals of screaming laughter like on the porch and the cat politely removes three francs fifty centimes from her hand, leaving the change, and they walk out lucky they’re not alone like that American guy—
I ask my counterman what’s real good and he says Alsatian Choucroute which he brings—It’s just hotdogs, potatos and sauerkraut, but such hotdogs as chew like butter and have a flavor delicate as the scent of wine, butter and garlic all cooking together and floating out a cafe kitchen door—The sauerkraut no better’n Pennsylvania, potatos we got from Maine to San Jose, but O yes I forgot:–with it all, on top, is a weird soft strip of bacon which is really like ham and is the best bite of all.
I had come to France to do nothing but walk and eat and this was my first meal and my last, ten days.
But in referring back to what I said to Pascal, as I was leaving this restaurant (paid 24 francs, or almost $5 for this simple platter) I heard a howling in the rainy boulevard—A maniacal Algerian had gone mad and was shouting at everyone and everything and was holding something I couldnt see, very small knife or object or pointed ring or something—I had to stop in the door—People hurried by scared—I didn’t want to be seen by him hurrying away—The waiters came out and watched with me—He approached us stabbing outdoor wicker chairs as he came—The headwaiter and I looked calmly into each other’s eyes as tho to say “Are we together?”—But my counterman began talking to the mad Arab, who was actually light haired and probably half French half Algerian, and it became some sort of conversation and I walked around and went home in a now-driving rain, had to hail a cab.
Romantic raincoats.
14.
IN MY ROOM I LOOKED AT MY SUITCASE SO CLEVERLY packed for this big trip the idea of which began all the previous winter in Florida reading Voltaire, Chateaubriand, de Montherlant (whose latest book was even now displayed in the shop-windows of Paris, “The Man Who Travels Alone is a Devil”)—Studying maps, planning to walk all over, eat, find my ancestors’ home town in the Library and then go to Brittany where it was and where the sea undoubtedly washed the rocks—My plan being, after five days in Paris, go to that inn on the sea in Finistère and go out at midnight in raincoat, rain hat, with notebook and pencil and with large plastic bag to write inside of, i.e., stick hand, pencil and notebook into bag, and write dry, while rain falls on rest of me, write the sounds of the sea, part two of poem “Sea” to be entitled: “SEA, Part Two, the Sounds of the Atlantic at X, Brittany,” either at outside of Carnac, or Concarneau, or Pointe de Penmarch, or Douardenez, or Plouzaimedeau, or Brest, or St. Malo—There in my suitcase, the plastic bag, the two pencils, the extra leads, the notebook, the scarf, the sweater, the raincoat in the closet, and the warm shoes—
The warm shoes indeed, I’d also brought Florida air-conditioned shoes anticipating long hotsun walks in Paris and hadnt worn them once, the “warm shoes” were all I wore the whole blessed time—In the Paris papers people were complaining about the solid month of rain and cold throughout late-May and early-June France as being caused by scientists tampering with the weather.
And my first aid kit, and my mittens for the cold midnight musings on the Breton shore when the writing’s done, and all fancy sports shirts and extra socks I never even got to wear in Paris let alone London where I’d also planned to go, not to mention Amsterdam and Cologne afterwards.
I was already homesick.
Yet this book is to prove that no matter how you travel, how “successful” your tour, or foreshortened, you always learn something and learn to change your thoughts.
As usual I was simply concentrating everything in one intense but thousandéd “Ah-ha!”
15.
