shop there. The window was flying with canaries and java sparrows and green love-birds and white doves and parrots. Outside the shop two little girls were standing, their arms round each other's necks. One had rings in her ears and the other wore a bangle. They were watching the birds and eating an orange between them, quarter by quarter. The bird-seller was a dark young man with long black moustaches and narrow eyes…. I don't know why, but I had a curious sensation that I was in a dream and that I had seen all this years and ages ago.
Finally, it poured so with rain that I hunted and I hollered and found a café—very poor—the people eating, chauffeurs and rag bags of people. But a woman came in, skinny, enceinte, but very alive, and a curious rough boy followed her. They were so wet that the woman said “faut danser.” And they danced. As far as I could make out this is what they sang as they turned round and round. The people who ate banged with their bread on the table and the plates clattered.
S'il en reste un bout, ce sera pour la servante.
S'il en reste pas du tout, elle se tapera sur l'ventre.
Et zon zon zon Lisette, ma Lisette.
Et zon zon zon Lisette, ma Lison.
All the while my hat dripped over the table. I kept taking it off and shaking it on the floor. But when the boy was greeted by a very smart young friend who came to my table and said “Je veux manger une belle fricassée avec vous, ma fleur,” I paid and ran away.
Sunday evening — May 23, 1915
Sunday evening
May 23, 1915
INSTEAD of having dinner to-day I ate some bread and drank some wine at home and went to a cinema. It was almost too good. A detective drama, so well acted and so sharp and cruel, with a horrible décor—the environs of Calais. Wickedness triumphed to everyone's great relief, for the hero, an apache called ‘l'Fantôme,’ was an admirable actor. And there was a girl there, mistress of ‘Bébé’ and ‘le faux curé,’ two other apaches. I wish you could have seen that girl act. She was very still, and then her gestures sprang from her. Pale, you know. A little round head and a black dress. All the while the orchestra played a tango that we have heard before, a very ‘troubling’ tune.
Before going in I walked up to the Luxembourg Gardens. But the Sunday crowd … the women mincing in their high boots like fowls in the wet, and the shopwalker men, and the “Ah, c'est beau!” “Dis—c'est joli,” “C'est très, très joli,” “Tout à fait beau.” I felt exactly as if I were dead.
It is very beautiful outside the window this afternoon. The wind shakes the trees so.
There was a great excitement a few minutes ago. I saw the policeman before the station below suddenly stiffen, and then at the bottom of the steps that lead on to the quai—you know where I mean, below here?—there came a grey little frog squirming in the grip of two gendarmes. They were evidently hurting him, but my policeman flew to their aid. He got behind the man and suddenly thrust his hand between the man's legs. You should have heard the yell he gave and you should have seen the jerk that sent him forward. Life is a funny business.
Now there are birds wheeling and flying in the air and the sky is pink. It is evening. I have not spoken to anyone since Wednesday except to say “Combien ça fait?” or to say “Oui, c'est bien terrible,” to the concierge. It is curious for one who has been much alone—this sinking back into silence.
Café Baird, Rue de Rivoli. Midi — May 24, 1915
Café Baird, Rue de Rivoli. Midi
May 24, 1915
HERE is the history of my lunch. I decided I could never go to the Brasserie again because there was a black cat that frightened me there, so to-day I sought pastures new. All were impudently full, so I fell back on Chartier. I wanted something cheap, so I ordered pied de veau. My strike! … I had that removed, but still hungry I ordered risotto milanais and got a lump of rice originally covered in tomato sauce, but the sauce had run on to some one else's crême d'Isigny in transit. Then I ordered compôte de rhubarbe. “C'est fini.” And looking down at that moment I saw on my thumb an immense BUG in all possible comfort and half full already. That was the limit. I fled here—and this coffee is just like squeezed wet flannel.
I wonder if it is the war that has made the people here so hideous, or if I am out of joint. They appear to me a nation of concierges. And the women look such drabs in their ugly mourning. I wish I had some new shoes and a straw hat. My head and my feet are always hot—but these are minor things. It is a brilliant day fine. Everything shines.
How terrible it is that waiters must have flat feet! These are shuffling about—sweaty—ugly. If they were turned out of their cafés what would they do? Plainly nothing.
My book marche bien. I feel I could write it anywhere, it goes so easily, and I know it so well. It will be a funny book.
Now I've finished my coffee. I am going.
Tuesday morning — May 25, 1915
Tuesday morning
May 25, 1915
YESTERDAY was simply hellish for me. My work went very well, but all the same, I suffered abominably. I felt so alien and so far away, and everybody cheated me, everybody was ugly and beyond words cruel. I finally got to such a state that I could go nowhere to eat because of the people and I could hardly speak. At half past ten I shut up shop and went to bed, but not to sleep. The three apaches of the cinema, l'Fantôme, Bébé and le faux curé, tried the key of the door all night and tip-toed on the landing. Finally through the shutters there came two chinks of day. Do I sound foolish and cowardly? Oh, but yesterday was simply hell. In the evening (I'd gone out to get a lamp glass. The concierge, with relish, had smashed mine) I sat in a little garden by a laburnum tree, I felt the dark dropping over me and the shadows enfolding me, and I died and came to life “time and time again” as Mrs. C. used to say. I went to buy bread at a funny shop. The woman hadn't got a nose and her mouth had been sewn up and then opened again at the side of her face. She had a wall eye. When she came into the lamp-light with the bread I nearly screamed; but she clapped her poor hand to her head and smiled at me. I cannot forget it.
This morning things are better. It is such a fine day. But I could not stand a month of yesterdays. I'd come home in a coffin.
[Note added by J. Middleton Murry:]
K. M. returned to London from Paris at the end of May. In November we left together for the South of France. I came back to England in December, leaving K. M. in Bandol. At the end of the year I returned to Bandol, and we lived for three months at the Villa Pauline.
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