Of Time and the River (115 page)

“Et pour monsieur?—Aprčs le poisson?”

“Donnez-moi un Chateaubriand garni,” he said.

And again Ann, whose head had been turned sullenly down towards the card, looked up suddenly and laughed, with that short and almost angry laugh that seemed to illuminate with accumulating but instant radiance all of the dark and noble beauty of her face.

“God!” she said. “I knew it!—If it’s not mendiants, it’s Chateaubriand garni.”

“Don’t forget the Nuits St. Georges,” said Starwick with his bubbling laugh, “that’s still to come.”

“When he gets through,” she said, “there won’t be a steak or raisin left in France.”

And she looked at Eugene for a moment, her face of noble and tender beauty transfigured by its radiant smile. But almost immediately, she dropped her head again in its customary expression that was heavy and almost sullen, and that suggested something dumb, furious, and silent locked up in her, for which she could find no release.

He looked at her for a moment with scowling, half-resentful eyes, and all of a sudden, flesh, blood, and brain, and heart, and spirit, his life went numb with love for her.

“And now, my children,” Elinor was saying gaily, as she looked at the menu—“what kind of salad is it going—“she looked up swiftly and caught Starwick’s eye, and instantly their gaze turned upon their two companions. The young woman was still staring down with her sullen, dark, and dumbly silent look, and the boy was devouring her with a look from which the world was lost, and which had no place in it for time or memory.

Dark Helen in my heart for ever burning.

“L’écrevisse,” Eugene said, staring at the menu. “What does that mean, Elinor?”

“Well, darling, I’ll tell you,” she said with a grave light gaiety of tone. “An écrevisse is a kind of crayfish they have over here— a delicious little crab—but MUCH, MUCH better than anything we have.”

“Then the name of the place really means The Crab?” he asked.

“STOP him!” she shrieked faintly. “You barbarian, you!” she went on with mild reproach. “It’s not at ALL the same.”

“It’s really not, you know,” said Starwick, turning to him seriously. “The whole quality of the thing is different. It really is. . . . Isn’t it astonishing,” he went on with an air of quiet frankness, “the genius they have for names? I mean, even in the simplest words they manage to get the whole spirit of the race. I mean, this square here, even,” he gestured briefly, “La Place des Martyrs. The whole thing’s there. It’s really quite incredible, when you think of it,” he said somewhat mysteriously. “It really is.”

“Quite!” said Elinor. “And, oh, my children, if it were only spring and I could take you down the Seine to an adorable place called La Pęche Miraculeuse.”

“What does that mean, Elinor?” Eugene asked again.

“Well, darling,” she said with an air of patient resignation, “if you MUST have a translation I suppose you’d call it The Miraculous Catch—a fishing catch, you know. Only it DOESN’T mean that. It would be sacrilege to call it that. It means La Pęche Miraculeuse and nothing else—it’s QUITE untranslatable—it really is.”

“YES,” cried Starwick enthusiastically, “and even their simplest names—their names of streets and towns and places: L’Etoile, for example—how grand and simple that is!” he said quietly, “and how perfect—the whole design and spatial grandeur of the thing is in it,” he concluded earnestly. “It really is, you know.”

“Oh, absolutely!” Elinor agreed. “You couldn’t call it The Star, you know. That means nothing. But L’Etoile is perfect—it simply COULDN’T be anything else.”

“QUITE!” Starwick said concisely, and then, turning to Eugene with his air of sad instructive earnestness, he continued: “—And that woman at Le Jockey Club last night—the one who sang the songs—you know?” he said with grave malicious inquiry, his voice trembling a little and his face flushing as he spoke—“the one you kept wanting to find out about—what she was saying?—” Quiet ruddy laughter shook him.

“PERFECTLY vile, of course!” cried Elinor with gay horror. “And all the time, poor dear, he kept wanting to know what it meant. . . . I was going to throw something at you if you kept on—if I’d had to translate THAT I think I should simply have passed out on the spot—”

“I know,” said Starwick, burbling with laughter—“I caught the look in your eye—it was really QUITE murderous! And TERRIBLY amusing!” he added. Turning to his friend, he went on seriously: “But really, Gene, it IS rather stupid to keep asking for the meaning of everything. It IS, you know. And it’s so extraordinary,” he said protestingly, “that a person of your quality—your KIND of understanding—should be so dull about it! It really is.”

“Why?” the other said bluntly, and rather sullenly. “What’s wrong with wanting to find out what’s being said when you don’t understand the language? If I don’t ask, how am I going to find out?”

“But not at ALL!” Starwick protested impatiently. “That’s not the point at all: you can find out nothing that way. Really you can’t,” he said reproachfully. “The whole point about that song last night was not the words—the meaning of the thing. If you tried to translate it into English, you’d lose the spirit of the whole thing. Don’t you see,” he went on earnestly, “—it’s not the MEANING of the thing—you can’t translate a thing like that, you really can’t—if you tried to translate it, you’d have nothing but a filthy and disgusting jingle—”

“But so long as it’s French it’s beautiful?” the other said sarcastically.

“But QUITE!” said Starwick impatiently. “And it’s very stupid of you not to understand that, Gene. It really is. The whole spirit and quality of the thing are SO French—so UTTERLY French!” he said in a high and rather womanish tone—“that the moment you translate it you lose everything. . . . There’s nothing disgusting about the song in French—the words mean nothing, you pay no attention to the words; the extraordinary thing is that you forget the words. . . . It’s the whole design of the thing, the TONE, the QUALITY. . . . In a way,” he added deeply, “the thing has an ENORMOUS innocence— it really has, you know. . . . And it’s so disappointing that you fail to see this. . . . Really, Gene, these questions you keep asking about names and meanings are becoming tiresome. They really are. . . . And all these books you keep buying and trying to translate with the help of a dictionary . . . as if you’re ever going to understand anything—I mean, REALLY understand,” he said profoundly, “in that way.”

“You may get to understand the language that way,” the other said.

“But not at ALL!” cried Starwick. “That’s just the point—you really find out nothing: you miss the whole spirit of the thing— just as you missed the spirit of that song, and just as you missed the point when you asked Elinor to translate La Pęche Miraculeuse for you. . . . It’s extraordinary that you fail to see this. . . . The next thing you know,” he concluded sarcastically, a burble of malicious laughter appearing as he spoke, “you will have enrolled for a course of lessons—” he choked suddenly, his ruddy face flushing deeply with his merriment—“for a course of lectures at the Berlitz language school.”

“Oh, but he’s entirely capable of it!” cried Elinor, with gay conviction. “I wouldn’t put it past him for a moment. . . . My DEAR,” she said drolly, turning toward him, “I have never known such a glutton for knowledge. It’s simply amazing. . . . Why, the child wants to know the meaning of everything!” she said with an astonished look about her—“the confidence he has in my knowledge is rather touching—it really is—and I’m so unworthy of it, darling,” she said, a trifle maliciously. “I don’t deserve it at all!”

“I’m sorry if I’ve bored you with a lot of questions, Elinor,” he said.

“But you HAVEN’T!” she protested. “Darling, you HAVEN’T for a moment! I LOVE to answer them! It’s only that I feel SO—so INCOMPETENT. . . . But listen, Gene,” she went on coaxingly, “couldn’t you try to forget it for a while—just sort of forget all about these words and meanings and enter into the spirit of the thing? . . . Couldn’t you, dear?” she said gently, and even as he looked at her with a flushed face, unable to find a ready answer to her deft irony, she put her hand out swiftly, patted him on the arm, and nodding her head with an air of swift satisfied finality, said:

“Good! I knew you would! . . . He’s really a darling when he wants to be, isn’t he?”

Starwick burbled with malicious laughter at sight of Eugene’s glowering and resentful face; then went on seriously:

“—But their genius for names is quite astonishing!—I mean, even in the names of their towns you get the whole thing. . . . What could be more like Paris,” he said quietly, “than the name of Paris? . . . The whole quality of the place is in the name. Or Dijon, for example. Or Rheims. Or Carcassonne. The whole spirit of Provence is in the word: what name could more perfectly express Aries than the name it has—it gives you the whole place, its life, its people, its peculiar fragrance. . . . And how different we are from them in that respect. . . . I mean,” his voice rose on a note of passionate conviction, “you could almost say that the whole difference between us—the thing we lack, the thing they have—the whole thing that is wrong with us, is evident in our names. . . . It really is, you know,” he said earnestly, turning toward his friend again. “The whole thing’s most important. . . . How harsh and meaningless most names in America are, Eugene,” he went on quietly. “Like addresses printed on a thousand envelopes at once by a stamping machine—labels by which a place may be identified but without meaning. . . . Tell me,” he said quietly, after a brief pause, “what was the name of that little village your father came from? You told me one time—I remember, because the whole thing I’m talking about—the thing that’s wrong with us—was in that name. What was it?”

“Brant’s Mill,” the other young man answered.

“Quite!” said Starwick with weary concision. “A man named Brant had a mill, and so they called the place Brant’s Mill.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Oh, nothing, I suppose,” said Starwick quietly. “The whole thing’s quite perfect. . . . BRANT’S Mill,” there was a note of bitterness in his voice and he made the name almost deliberately rasping as he pronounced it. “It’s a name—something to call a place by—if you write it on a letter it will get there. . . . I suppose that’s what a name is for. . . . Gettysburg—I suppose a man named Gettys had a house or a farm, and so they named the town after him. . . . And your mother? What was the name of the place she came from?”

“It was a place called Yancey County.”

“Quite,” said Starwick as before—“and the name of the town?”

“There wasn’t any town, Frank. It was a kind of cross-roads settlement called The Forks of Ivy.”

“No!” Elinor’s light Bostonian accent of astounded merriment rang gaily forth. “Not REALLY! You KNOW it wasn’t!”

“But not at ALL!” said Starwick in a tone of mild and serious disagreement. “The Forks of Ivy is not bad. It’s really surprisingly good, when you consider most of the other names. It even has,” he paused, and considered carefully, “a kind of quality. . . . But Yancey,” he paused again, the burble of sudden laughter came welling up, and for a moment his pleasant ruddy face was flushed with laughter—”YA-A-ANCEY County”—with deliberate malice he brought the word out in a rasping countrified tone—“God!” he said frankly, turning to the other boy, “isn’t it awful! . . . How harsh! How stupid! How banal! . . . And what are some of the names, where you come from, Gene?” he went on quietly after a brief pause. “I’m sure you haven’t yet done your worst,” he said. “There must be others just as sweet as Ya-a-ancey.”

“Well, yes,” the boy said grinning, “we’ve got some good ones: there’s Sandy Mush, and Hooper’s Bald, and Little Hominy. And we have names like Beaverdam and Balsam, and Chimney Rock and Craggy and Pisgah and The Rat. We have names like Old Fort, Hickory, and Bryson City; we have Clingman’s Dome and Little Switzerland; we have Paint Rock and Saluda Mountain and the Frying Pan Gap—”

“Stop!” shrieked Elinor, covering her ears with her shocked fingers—“The Frying Pan Gap! Oh, but that’s HORRIBLE!”

“But how perfect!” Starwick quietly replied. “The whole thing’s there. And in the great and noble region where I come from—” the note of weary bitterness in his tone grew deeper—“out where the tall caw-r-n grows we have Keokuk and Cairo and Peoria.” He paused, his grave eyes fixed in a serious and reflective stare: for a moment his pleasant ruddy face was contorted by the old bestial grimace of anguish and confusion. When he spoke again, his voice was weary with a quiet bitterness of scorn. “I was born,” he said, “in the great and noble town of Bloomington, but—” the note of savage irony deepened—“at a very tender age I was taken to Moline. And now, thank God, I am in Paris”; he was silent a moment longer, and then continued in a quiet and almost lifeless tone: “Paris, Dijon, Provence, Aries . . . Yancey, Brant’s Mill, Bloomington.” He turned his quiet eyes upon the other boy. “You see what I mean, don’t you? The whole thing’s there.”

“Yes,” the boy replied, “I guess you’re right.”

LXXVIII

They were sitting at a table in one of the night places of Montmartre. The place was close and hot, full of gilt and glitter, heavy with that unwholesome and seductive fragrance of the night that comes from perfumery, wine, brandy and the erotic intoxication of a night-time pleasure place. Over everything there was a bright yet golden blaze of light that wrought on all it touched—gilt, tinsel, table linen, the natural hue and colouring of the people, the faces of men, and the flesh of the women—an evil but strangely thrilling transformation.

The orchestra had just finished playing a piece that everyone in Paris was singing that year. It was a gay jigging little tune that Mistinguette had made famous; its name was “Ca, c’est Paris,” and one heard it everywhere. One heard lonely wayfarers whistling it as they walked home late at night through the silent narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, and one heard it hummed by taxi-drivers, waiters, and by women in cafés. It was played constantly to the tune of flutes and violins by dance orchestras in the night-clubs of Montmartre and Montparnasse. And, accompanied by the swelling rhythms of the accordion, one heard it at big dance-halls like the Bal Bullier, and in the little dives and stews and café-brothel- dancing places along noisome alleyways near the markets and the Boulevard de Sébastopol.