Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (27 page)

Paris was the most remarkable place, even to a girl who’d spent a good deal of time enjoying everything fine and fun about New York City. Amid those cobblestone streets, the smells of roasting nuts and burning coal, the sculpted and carved stone façades that had witnessed Napoléon’s march, the 1870 Siege, the Great War’s miracle on the Marne, you felt that you were part of something, some
place
much greater than yourself. While I’d felt something similar in Rome, it seemed more personal in Paris. You didn’t just
see
the antiquity, the history; you felt it was ongoing. You inhabited it and it inhabited you.

Shortly upon our return, we spent an evening at Gerald and Sara’s Saint-Cloud house. Sara and I enlisted the children to help bake a belated “book-day cake” for Scott, which they smeared with blue icing in more or less the color of
Gatsby
’s wrapper. Scottie declared that she had to lay the buttercups around the base of the cake, saying, “It’s
my
daddy’s book-day,” while the Murphy offspring, Honoria and Patrick and Baoth, watched her with the fascination of children who’ve never had the opportunity to be selfish.

We took our cake and tea in the parlor. Now when I gazed at the art hung on the walls here, I understood that Sara admired Renoir’s work for its vivid and delicate humanity. Gerald’s choices—Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Juan Gris—expressed his modern taste and vision. I recognized the deliberation that had gone into each artist’s choices for the work. What was the focus? Where was the light source? How much black in the mix for that little girl’s hair? How much yellow in that sky?

In this setting, and maybe also owing to his depression, Scott was modest and subdued about the book. This was still early in our friendship with the Murphys, and Scott looked up to Gerald and Sara both; he wanted always to impress them and to win their high regard. The Murphys had this effect on everyone who knew them. We all endeavored to be our best selves because
they
were so excellent and genuine.

*   *   *

Our routine quickly became dominated by social gatherings with the people we knew already: we saw the Murphys and Porters and Myerses, we saw Dos Passos and Sherwood and met Ezra Pound. And just like in New York, then St. Paul, then Great Neck, our social circle expanded rapidly with every party; there were always new people to meet.

There would be no easing into the scene—when did Scott and I ever ease into anything? Even had I wanted to slow things down, Scott wanted to be everywhere with everyone, jovially encouraging his rise to the top of American letters. Every day had double the hours of days elsewhere in the world, yet at the same time I was half as aware of how I used all those hours—as if the Parisian air that heightened my other senses muddled my sense of time.

At first, my days were busy with lunch dates and shopping forays, and craft-making with Scottie, who’d become fascinated with beads. Nights were an endless succession of bars and cabarets, liquor and music and dancing. I came to adore a colored woman with vivid dyed-red hair whose name was Ada “Bricktop” Smith, after meeting her at one of Cole’s parties, where she’d been hired to teach us all the Black Bottom—which was now being called the Charleston.

She’d lined us up and announced the dance. “I learned this one when I was a girl,” I said, waving my arm in the air like the boisterous student I’d been.

Ada looked me over. “That was when, five minutes ago?”

“Feels more like five centuries, some days.”

She tsked and said, “Well, let it loose, girl!” So I did.

*   *   *

Before going out to a bar called Le Select one night at the end of April, we had dinner at home with Scottie, a light meal of her then-favorite foods, the sorts of things a three-and-a-half-year-old will eat: chicken legs, along with carrot disks and squares of little French cheeses, which we’d all eaten using toothpicks.

Scott had directed Lillian to begin teaching Scottie French—a sign that told me he believed France would be home for us, that he believed he could be at the top of the order here in a much more genuine way than he’d been in New York. I practiced my French with Scottie while we ate, naming the foods and then putting their names into silly sentences.

“Les carottes ne veulent pas être mangées ce soir,” I said.
The carrots do not want to be eaten tonight
. And Scottie said, “Les carottes mangent le soir.”

I laughed. “
The carrots eat the night
—I like that better than what I said.”

“Do another!”

“Les petits fromages sont prêts pour leur bain.”
The little cheeses are ready for their bath
.

“Les petits fromages
mangent
leur bain,” Scottie said, giggling.

“Oh, now we have cheeses eating the bath! Aren’t you just the cleverest little lambkin?”

“You know it’s useless for you to do this,” Scott said. “There’s too much Alabama in your voice, she’ll never get the pronunciation right.”

“You’re probably right—but we don’t care, do we, ma petite quintefeuille?”

Scottie had become engrossed in stacking carrots on a toothpick and ignored us.

“
You
could take a turn,” I said. “My French is mediocre, but yours is deplorable. You could use the practice even more than her.”

He waved away the suggestion. “As long as I can read a menu and settle a bill, that’s good enough for me.”

At the Select, we joined a group that included our beloved Alec, who was passing through Paris. There were maybe eight of us all told, four other men and a woman, all of whom were Scott’s newfound friends. The woman spoke no English. All of the men were writers, some still aspiring to any kind of publication, others having placed stories in small American-run Parisian journals. Writerly barnacles, they were, who’d drifted to Paris after the war and had attached themselves to the literary community’s pillars and anchors. Who knew whether they were decent writers?

Two hours in, Scott was on his fourth cocktail and was leaning forward, his hands pressing the tabletop, his face alight with impassioned enthusiasm for his subject.

“Tell me one name,” he was saying, “one man who understands and can represent the beating heart of the American experience better than I’ve done with my
Gatsby
. Don’t say Lewis, don’t say Boyd—the prairies and small towns and factories might be in the heart
land
but they aren’t America’s
heart
! They’re the somnolent feet, dragging along, depressing us with their bleak, bloodless prose.”

Was I the only one who noticed that he was talking just slightly out of alignment? Everyone watched him with expressions of rapt adoration on their faces; did they admire him so much already, or was it the absinthe?

Scott continued, “And none of those depressing wartime dramas either, American soldiers and their sordid, bloody tales—that’s the past. Zelda, darling, you’ve read
The Great Gatsby
—and she’s tremendously well-read in general—you tell them: Have I written the preeminent American novel, literature’s shining city on a hill?”

By this time I’d come to recognize the warning signs that said Scott would, if no one stopped him, tumble over the cliff. So, while I would have supported him anyway, I took the extra measure and said, “There’s no doubt about it. It’s
dazzling,
people. His best work yet, and better’n everybody’s out there. Now is there any chance we’ll have some music here tonight?” I looked around for signs of a jazz quartet, at least. “’Cause I’d really like to dance with a preeminent American novelist, if one happens to be around.”

30

At a Left Bank bar called the Dingo a day or two later, we had just taken a table when Ezra Pound spotted us and came strolling over. With his crazy, thick hair and his Spaniard’s mustache and the mad glint in his eyes, Pound was one of my favorites among the Paris crowd. Married to one woman and publicly involved with another, passionate about women and politics and art, he was lawless and profound and genuine in both his life and his poetry. Because of that, I—and everyone, really—accepted him fully.

He said, “Just my luck! I’ve got someone you need to meet.”

“Who’s that?” Scott asked.

Pound led us to the bar. A dark-haired, mustached man wearing what appeared to be two thick, gray sweaters was saying good-bye to a pair of women I’d later know as Duff and Kitty. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, same as me, strikingly attractive, his face suntanned—from skiing, we’d learn—his hair mussed and curling onto his forehead, his dark eyes keen and brooding.

Pound said, “Wem, meet Scott Fitzgerald. Scott, this pup’s named Ernest Hemingway. Can you imagine such a name? It’s ludicrous. You can call him Wem or Hem or Wemedge or Ernie—or anything you think suits.”

While Pound was speaking, the man’s face had lit up with a smile that, if directed toward a girl, would no doubt make her swoon. He grabbed Scott’s shoulders. “Damn glad to meet you. Saw your story in
American Mercury
—good stuff, true and moving, really fine writing.”

Scott bowed a little and then backed out of the embrace in order to turn toward me. “Meet my wife, Zelda.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Hemingway said, giving me the most charming, rakish look before gazing back at Scott. “To the victor go the spoils, eh?”

“So they say.”

“Um, pardon me,” I said in mock annoyance, hands on my hips. “I am not some prize.”

“I beg to differ.” Hemingway pulled out a chair. “Sit, please. Pound and I were just tiring of each other.”

“
I
was tiring of
you
. How are you, Fitz?”

I said, “He’s as fickle as the weather here, touchy as a feral cat—”

“I’ve been reading the latest opinions on my latest book,” Scott explained. “They correspond to the sales figures.”

“Neither are as bad as he’ll make you think,” I said. “It’s a marvelous book, everybody ought to buy ten copies.”

Scott smiled at this show of faith. “
I
would like to start with buying a drink.”

“Critics are all a bunch of goddamned eunuchs. What’s the book?” Hemingway asked.

“
The Great Gatsby
. It’s a novel—my third.”

“I’ve heard only good things,” Pound said. “Everything excellent. First-rate.”

“You, my friend, are a poor liar. No, look,” Scott told Hemingway, “the reception has been mixed—but wait,” he said, interrupting himself. “Hemingway! Bunny Wilson and Bob McAlmon talked you up so much that I went out and found your books. You’re good!”

Hemingway gave a crooked smile and scratched his scalp. “Yeah? Thanks. I’ve left McAlmon for Boni and Liveright, who’ve promised to take my novel—assuming I’ll have one to give them. I’m here in Paris to make a go of it.”

“Ah, I’m sorry for you then—talented as you are. It’s a hard-knock occupation.”

“How can you say that? You’re a celebrity by all accounts. I haven’t read your novels yet, but I sure have heard of ’em.”

“I get a lot of attention, no question. But if you stay in this godforsaken business, you’ll see that you only ever really believe the bad things they say.”

“Because they speak to your own fears.” Hemingway jabbed Scott’s chest. “Yet you’ve continued to write and to face down the devils, to surmount your fear. To my mind, that makes you strong and heroic and true.”

“Waiter!” Scott called while pointing at Hemingway. “Put this fellow’s drinks on my tab.”

Scott asked Hemingway where he was from, and when Hemingway told him Chicago and Michigan, they went about extolling the virtues of a Midwestern upbringing. Scott’s enthusiasms were all about growing up in a city like St. Paul, with its modest museums, libraries, concerts, plays; whereas Hemingway went into detail about the settings we’d seen in his stories—the rivers and forests where, he said, he’d spent as much time as he could steal from his overbearing family. “Nature tests you, and if it finds you worthy, it lets you live another day.”

The discussion went on into details about game and gear and survival techniques. Hemingway was enthusiastic and knowledgeable about his subjects, there was no doubt about that. And he had personality aplenty. He wowed you such that you could easily miss what, to me at least, was apparent in his writing: he was trying awfully hard to be a man’s man. Still, he seemed likable enough, and sufficiently interesting and different that Scott, with his boundless curiosity, was captivated.

I left them talking and went to find Pound, who’d gone over to the bar. “Dance with me, won’t you?”

He laughed. “There’s no band.”

“I’ll hum in your ear. Do you like a waltz—or maybe you’re game for a tango?”

“You hum, I’ll follow,” he said jovially.

“I’ll hum, but if you want to hang on to your masculine reputation in this town, you’d better lead.”

*   *   *

Scott and I walked through Montparnasse later, on our way to Les Folies Bobino to hear Georges Guibourg sing. This district was the pulsating center of Parisian life, with all its messy, joyous, tragic, fearful, heartening, disheartening ways. We edged along sidewalk cafés still crowded with men arguing or laughing or singing songs from their homelands. We passed fragrant flower and tobacco carts being packed up for the night, beggars in rags—fragrant in a less pleasant way, so we gave them a wide berth despite our sympathy.

A pair of sooty little boys in short pants ran up to us with their palms out. These boys tugged at my heart; why weren’t they home in bed? Did they have homes? Did they have childhoods? They deserved more—upbringings like I’d had or Scott had, or even Hemingway’s, with all its apparent masculine overemphasis. Anything but a life on the streets.

I put some coins in their hands while telling Scott, “That Hemingway just oozes manliness, doesn’t he? All that talk about fishing and hunting and skinning what you catch—”

“He’s an outdoorsman; that’s what outdoorsmen do.”

“Merci, madame! Merci, merci beaucoup, belle dame!”

“De rien. Rentrez chez vous. Au lit!” I told the boys. Scott and I walked on and I said, “I know … but I grew up with fellas who did all those things, and they didn’t sit around and
talk
about it all day, give it all that romantic minutiae the way Wem or Hem or whatever he goes by was doing back there. I mean, really, he’s a
writer
who lives in
Paris,
that’s what he is, just like all the rest of them, just like you.”