Marjorie Morningstar (95 page)

… Candles, black cats, dancing cows, harlequins, pirates, palm trees, white nudes,
Negro nudes, South Sea nudes, coconuts, red lanterns, green lanterns, blue lanterns…
it went on and on and on, an eternity of trudging and drinking and singing and smoking
and more trudging…

Noel was having a whale of a time. The effect really was cumulative for him. He drank
more and more, became gayer and gayer, threw his arms around the proprietors as he
came into the boites, sprang to the piano sometimes and played, hugged waiters who
greeted him by his first name, embraced the girl singers and bawled duets with them.
He knew the special liquors that each boite featured. A wink and a whisper to the
waiter, and out came the special bottle with the special ambrosia—a famous old wine,
an unobtainable purple Turkish brandy, an incredibly rare liqueur made of wild strawberries
and flavored with mushrooms, an obscure Bulgarian drink, murky brown, with grass floating
in it—he was the connoisseur of connoisseurs. The more his eyes flashed, the wider
his smile and the gayer his laugh became, the farther the gulf opened between himself
and Marjorie, but he was unaware of it. “I daresay you’re beginning to see what I
like about this miserable old town. Let’s face it, it’s the top of the world, in its
trivial pleasure-loving way. Even if we all must say goodbye to it one sad day, eh
Margie?”

It was past two in the morning when they came to the summit of Montmartre, a cobblestone
square surrounded by crazy old houses, each of which seemed to have a boite in the
ground floor. Cabs were crawling in a jam on the square, backing, turning, honking,
and there were a lot of laughing and singing drifters on the sidewalks. The drizzle
had almost stopped. A half-moon shone weakly through rolling black clouds, making
irregular blue patches on the wet stones. Noel stood with his hands on his hips, looking
around the square. His hair was tumbled every which way; his eyes glittered. Marjorie
had merely sipped all the marvelous liquors, but he had had plenty to drink. “Well
now, the question is, how much pep have you left?” he said. “This can go on all night
and then some. But I recognize that you’re a neophyte, so—”

“Is there a good place to eat up here?” Marjorie said. “Some food might revive me.
I’m dimming out, a bit.”

“At least four, my love, one better than the next.” He looked closely at her, laughed,
and threw his arm around her shoulder. “I see. Well, I’ll have pity on you. We’ll
do Les Amants Rieurs, that’s all, and then home to the little brown bed. Fair enough?
It won’t even be three o’clock. That’s high noon in Montmartre.”

“Les Amants Rieurs,” Marjorie said. “The laughing lovers, eh? Sounds good.”

“Go to the head of the French class. The laughing lovers. Just the place, what?” He
took her arm in his and they cut across the square. Marjorie turned her ankle on one
of the wet cobblestones and almost fell; he caught her in both arms, guffawing. “Hey!
Honey, have you had that much? I didn’t think so.”

“Don’t laugh, it hurts like hell,” Marjorie said, limping. She rubbed the ankle. “That’s
the one I turned years ago when I fell off a horse. It’s been weak ever since. Damn,
it really hurts.”

He put his arm under her knees and picked her up, staggering a little. “Shall I carry
you, my queen?”

“Put me down, you idiot! You’re in no condition for chivalry—That’s better—”

He set her on her feet, puffing. “Have you gained weight?”

“Tons. Where’s Les Amants Rieurs?”

She hesitated at the door, under the cut-out wooden sign of two laughing faces, a
girl and a boy in berets. “Why, it looks perfectly awful,” she said, peering inside.
“There isn’t a soul here.”

“Probably not,” Noel said. “No music, no apaches, nothing to attract the dopes. Just
the best wine and steaks on the face of the earth. Practically nobody knows about
it. If anyone is here in a dark corner, it’s apt to be Gertrude Stein, or Marlene
Dietrich, or the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The proprietor pays the guidebooks
not
to mention the place. He’s a wonderful man. Come on.”

It was the darkest place Marjorie had been in yet; she could hardly see where she
was going. There were perhaps half a dozen flickering candles at eye level around
the black walls, nothing more. A chilly draft blew through the room, so that the flames
barely clung to the wicks, and the candles were all melted down sideways. A waiter
in a white apron came out of the gloom, an unusually tall, almost skeletal bent man
with a drooping gray mustache. “Mais c’est Monsieur Airman,” he said with a sad smile.
“Ve no see you long time, monsieur. Monsieur Bertie vill be glad, yes sair.” He led
them to a table in the middle of the rear wall and lit two candles in smoky glass
chimneys on the table. “I call Monsieur Bertie, monsieur?”

“All right, Marcel, and let’s have a little cognac to warm us up, meantime.”

“Justement, monsieur.”

Her eyes a little more used to the gloom, Marjorie looked around at the disorderly
empty chairs and tables. In the far corners were shadowy customers hunched over candles,
three other couples in all. Noel pointed up at the wall beside them. “Can you make
it out? Brillac did it. He committed suicide at nineteen. They say he’d have been
another Picasso. Got full of absinthe and killed himself over a lousy little whore
of a waitress.”

In the overlapping curves of yellow light from the two chimneys she could see a cubistic
pair of laughing lovers, with pustular green-and-yellow eyes, and toothy purple mouths
twisted up near their ears. “Not very pretty.”

“Not at all. Disturbing’s the word,” Noel said. “Of course that’s the intention. Brilliant
little bastard, he must have been—”

A hand fell on his shoulder. “Mon ami. Mon cher ami.”

Noel covered the hand with his, looking up. “Bertie! Marjorie, Monsieur Bertie.”

The proprietor looked like any other middle-aged Frenchman, roly-poly, shrewd, sadly
ironic, mustached. “Mademoiselle Marjorie, how do you do, and welcome. Alors, mon
ami—et Mam’selle Elaine? Et Monsieur Bob? Et Madame Mildred?”

Noel and Monsieur Bertie talked in French until the cognac came. There was much sighing,
with eloquent shrugs and shakes of the head, by both.

“Well,” said Monsieur Bertie, as they drank the cognac, which was very good, “Mam’selle
is a little hungry, maybe? A little bifteck, Monsieur Noel?”

“Two biftecks, what else, Bertie? A little salad, the usual, Madame’s dressing,” Noel
said. “Champagne meantime, yes? Is there any of the Dom Perignon ’11 left? I guess
not—”

“There is not, monsieur,” Bertie said. His eyes twinkled. “But for you maybe a bottle
turns up, maybe we overlooked a bottle, hm?” He put his hand on Noel’s shoulder and
said to Marjorie, “He is one of the true people. There are not many of the true people
left.” He went away, sighing.

Noel told her all about Monsieur Bertie. He had been a flier in the World War. He
was a poet. Several of the great French actresses had been his mistress at one time
or another. He was an intimate of cabinet ministers, and of the leading modern painters.

Then he stopped talking and just looked at her. He looked straight at her for a long
time, with a meaningful little smile. He played affectionately with her fingers. He
lit two cigarettes at a chimney and handed her one without asking whether she wanted
it. He kept looking at her face, as though trying to assure himself that she was really
there opposite him. The little smile, the narrow-eyed purposeful look, never left
his face.

Marjorie, though thrilled by the look, was also disturbed and a bit panicky. She could
hardly doubt what was coming and she was unsure of herself. After five years, at the
end of the long, long road, she was still in a quandary about Noel Airman! She was
stimulated, quite waked up, by the tightness of the moment; yet she also felt somewhat
trapped, almost as she had at the Villa Marlene with George Drobes so many many years
ago, in the instant before he had pulled out the two rings.

And now Noel’s hand was going to his pocket! In a half-thrilled, half-alarmed instant
she thought she was going to be confronted with a ring again; instead, he brought
out an envelope, and passed it to her. “I think you ought to read this letter—if you
can, in this sepulchral light.”

The envelope bore the address of the J. Walter Thompson company. She took out the
letter, held it awkwardly sideways so the candlelight fell directly on it, and read
it, squinting. It was from Noel’s former superior at the advertising agency:

She slipped the letter back in the envelope and handed it to Noel. He said, “How do
you like them apples, sister?”

“This time you’re serious, Noel, aren’t you?”

“This time I’m serious. Yes indeed.”

The waiter brought champagne, and served it with grave ceremony. When he was gone
Noel held his glass up to the candlelight, and gently swirled the wine. “Well, this
is the best champagne left in our disintegrating civilization. The one fit wine, I
think, for the toast I’m about to make.” He raised the glass. “It’s come, my darling,
it’s really come, hasn’t it? To Mr. and Mrs. Noel Airman. Long life, and every happiness.”

He put the glass to his lips. Marjorie hesitated. Still holding her glass, smiling
nervously, she said, “Who’s the lucky woman, Noel?”

His grin was confident and lively. He set down his glass, reached across the table,
and took her hand. “Fair enough. You’ll teach me yet not to take you for granted!
I haven’t proposed, have I? Well, Marjorie, the lady in question is the lady I’m with—the
only girl I’ve ever really loved, the girl I want from now on—the only girl who holds
any interest for me, my darling—now, henceforth, and forever. Marjorie, will you marry
me?”

For five years she had waited to hear those words spoken by this man. She had dreamed
of them, daydreamed of them, prayed for them, despaired of them. Now they were spoken
at last, in a dark Paris bistro, by the light of two smoky candles, with all the sincerity
and earnestness of which Noel Airman was capable. The picture was complete. And now,
and not a moment before, Marjorie knew beyond any possible doubt what the answer was.

She was a little scared. But she withdrew her hand with gentleness, and the words
came clearly and calmly. “I hope you’ll believe, Noel, that I wasn’t being coy. On
my word of honor, I had to hear you say it to be absolutely sure. The answer is no,
Noel. I won’t marry you. It’s impossible. I’m terribly sorry.”

The cab ride to the hotel was an ordeal of silence. He slumped all the way down in
the seat, his thighs sticking bonily forward, his coat open and dragging. Once, with
a faint echo of his usual sardonic gaiety, he roused himself and said, “An old English
proverb keeps running through my head, do you know?

Not knowing what to answer, she said nothing.

He got out first, and helped her alight. He held her hand, peering into her face by
the dim light of the bulb over the hotel entrance. “You should have come a week later,
Marjorie.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered, Noel, honestly.”

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Leaving Paris.”

“How? Plane, train?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I’ll see you off.”

“No. Thank you, but don’t.”

“I’m not giving up, you know, Marjorie. I’m coming home after you.”

“Don’t, Noel, don’t. That’s all I can say. Don’t. Good night.”

He bent to kiss her mouth. She thought of turning her cheek to him, then she accepted
the kiss on the mouth. He looked hard at her, his face rather angry. She returned
the look steadily. His right arm came up, and he hugged his deformed elbow. The anger
faded from his face. A faint bitter grin broke through, and he nodded. “Good night,
Marjorie Morgenstern.” He turned and got into the cab. His voice sounded jaunty, if
anything, as he told the driver, “Quarante deux, Rue des Sts. Pères.”

The fat desk clerk was slumped asleep in a chair in the lobby under a red light. Marjorie
went up in the squealing cage to her room, undressed and tumbled into the high ancient
brass bed, and slept like a child.

When Marjorie finally did get married, it happened fast.

Not that she was expecting it, or looking for it, when it came to pass. Quite the
contrary, she was in another time of dull despair, worse in a way than what had gone
before, because there was no dream of recapturing Noel to brighten the future.

Yet she never regretted refusing Noel. Once that tooth was out, the hole rapidly healed.
He sent her a lot of eloquent letters after she returned from Europe. Some she read,
some she tore up without reading. She answered none, and after a month or so they
stopped coming.

Mike Eden filled her thoughts during the homeward voyage, and for a long time afterward.
She nurtured a hope that he would somehow turn up again, and she even took a volunteer
job with a Jewish refugee-aid committee; partly influenced by all that Mike had told
her, but partly in the selfish hope that she might pick up news of him. Months passed.
The hope began to fade, and she kept on with the work for its own sake. Most of what
she did was routine typing and mimeographing. Now and then she helped a family find
a place to live, or guided girls to jobs. She didn’t exactly enjoy the work, but the
emptiness at her heart went unnoticed while she was doing it; and at night she slept,
untroubled by the sense of exasperated futility that had broken her rest during her
years of haunting Broadway and battling with Noel.