CHAPTER 6
At 8 rue Dupuytren, the early July sun needled her back as she unlocked the central door to her shop and then opened the shutters to reveal the books and magazines displayed in the large picture windows. She smiled to see her stalwart stack of Leaves of Grass, the new edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Sherwood Anderson’s collection Winesburg, Ohio alongside the journals. Her shop officially open, Sylvia busied herself by making her morning’s second pot of coffee—the first having been shared with Adrienne at breakfast—in the little room behind the shop. Then, steaming cup in hand and fresh cigarette lit, she settled into one of the church-sale chairs whose jade-green upholstery had gone nearly white and threadbare with use where her rear end now rested, ledger on her lap.
How she hated accounting. It was not her forte—especially because, well, if she was being honest, business was not exactly booming. She squeaked by, but she was nowhere near being able to repay her mother. Adrienne told her to be patient, that she hadn’t even been open a year yet, and her mother assured her over and over that she never even expected repayment, but Sylvia couldn’t help feeling nervous. She’d thought that Shakespeare and Company—a first of its kind!—would take Paris by storm. But after some initial fanfare, which had included announcements in most Paris newspapers and a few in New York and Boston, it had been more like a drizzle than a tornado.
She trudged through a few columns of sums, telling herself that if she finished, and everything was still quiet, she’d close up for an hour and visit Adrienne at La Maison. Tempting as this plan was, she was nonetheless thrilled when it was derailed by the arrival of Valery Larbaud. Jumping up from her chair and nearly knocking over her empty cup and full ashtray, she exclaimed, “Larbaud! I thought you were in Vichy until September!”
They embraced and kissed on both cheeks, and then Larbaud said, “I had to check on a few things at home, and thought I’d come in to see if you had Millay’s latest, or anything new by Williams?”
“I don’t have anything you haven’t read already,” she said, feeling that familiar buzz of satisfaction at knowing her trade, and flattery that someone like Larbaud should rely on her for reading advice. Much as she loved putting the exact right novel into the hands of a visiting stranger and then having that same person become a friend who returned for more books, it was a special pleasure to be the English-language reading concierge of Paris, as Ezra Pound had deemed her recently. Dear Ezra. He’d found his way to Shakespeare and Company as soon as he arrived from London, just a few weeks ago.
“Millay’s next book hasn’t reached me yet,” she went on. “A Few Figs from Thistles. I hope it will be here soon.”
“Do reserve a copy for me when it arrives,” Larbaud said, picking up the latest issue of Chapbook, thumbing through it, and then pausing to read one of the poems. He sighed, then set it down. “Speaking of writers from abroad, I’ve heard that James Joyce is in town.”
“How could you know that sooner than me?” said Sylvia, feigning horror. Though she did actually feel somewhat slighted. How could she not know this? And why hadn’t he stopped by the shop? But then, she’d heard that Joyce read and spoke many languages. Perhaps he was content to read in French while in France. But he hadn’t been to Adrienne’s shop, either.
Then she thought, What would I say if he did walk in that door?
“Now, Sylvia, be patient. You know it’s only a matter of time till he needs his own copy of Leaves of Grass,” Larbaud teased with a glint in his eye. She was learning that few people understood why she loved nineteenth-century Whitman as much as the very modern Joyce or Eliot or Pound, whose poems she was growing to love more for his visits to the store. Larbaud understood Whitman, though. Come to think of it, so did Pound himself.
“Maybe I should send him a copy, compliments of Shakespeare and Company?”
“No, I think you should let it be the beacon that lights his way,” he replied, and they both laughed.
Then, as if summoned by the sunlight itself, three more customers wandered in and began browsing, and it was time for her to don her shop owner’s cap and help them find the exact book they were looking for, the volume they had no idea they needed but that might just change their lives.
Michel stopped by on a hot summer Friday when Sylvia was pining for a glass of American iced tea in her stifling shop and looking forward to the next day when she’d close early and head to Rocfoin, where Adrienne’s parents lived in a charming cottage with a thatched roof. There, away from the noise and heat of the city, they could swim and pick wildflowers and read on patio chaises before sitting down to a delicious meal that was very often nothing more than foraged berries with a locally made fromage blanc, baguette, saucisson sec, and a strong red wine made by one of the neighbors. Maman and Papa Monnier had welcomed Sylvia like another daughter, and she was so grateful to be able to escape into a family that felt so comfortable and familiar.
“Bonjour,” Michel said with a broad smile on his face, which was streaked with sweat. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to reveal his tanned and hairy arms. “Sweetbreads,” he said as he set a brown paper package on Sylvia’s desk. He often brought by something for Adrienne to cook.
“Let me just pop it into the icebox,” she said, hoping there was enough of the frozen block left to keep the meat fresh until closing. It appeared there was, and she touched her hand to it for just a moment’s relief before hurrying back out to attend to Michel, who was flipping through her last copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise. It was flying off the shelves; she’d barely been able to keep it in stock since it came out in March.
“Is this good?” he asked her. “My sister asked me to get it if you had it.”
“It is,” Sylvia said hesitantly.
“You don’t sound convinced,” he replied.
“I am. It’s a masterful and promising first novel,” she said, more enthusiastically than was necessary—though it was, after all, true. “And I’ll be curious to hear what you and Genevieve think.” Which was true as well. But. Sylvia went to the Joyce section and plucked a copy of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man off the shelf and handed it to Michel. “I’ll be curious to see what you think of this one, too. Fitzgerald’s novel owes something to Joyce’s.”
He nodded. “Your recommendations have always been perfect, so I trust you.”
They chatted a bit about their weekend plans, and when he said evasively that he was doing rien, the bold words were out of her mouth before she could stop them: “Nothing? Michel, you should be taking out every pretty girl in the neighborhood!”
At this, the usual splotches of red in his face joined together for a hot, embarrassed blush.
“Oh, I see . . . you are taking them out!”
“Not every girl. Just one. Julie. She’s a ballerina I’ve admired for a long time, the younger sister of an old friend of mine. I finally got up the courage to ask her to dinner.”
Sylvia beamed. “Good for you. If she doesn’t like you, she’s a fool.”
Still blushing, Michel said, “It’s hard, you know. To find what you and Adrienne have.”
Sylvia was taken aback and felt goose bumps erupt on her neck. Her relationship with Adrienne was quietly accepted by everyone around them—so far as she knew, anyway. As with Gertrude and Alice, no one commented on them. Though she was aware that a casual observer might simply assume two women having dinner together were acquaintances or sisters, among their friends and local patrons who knew better, she’d yet to hear even a thoughtless slur.
But it was rarely acknowledged. Even her parents hadn’t asked a single question when she wrote that she’d moved in with Adrienne on the rue de l’Odéon “for the company and to save on rent.” But the embarrassment she felt before Michel was a pleasure. She felt seen.
“It is a rare thing,” she agreed. “And yet, it seems to happen every day. Good luck with the ballerina.”
“Thank you,” he said.
The following Sunday found her and Adrienne in the sixteenth holding a bottle of sweating Bordeaux blanc as they waited for André Spire or his wife to greet them at the door. It had been a long and hot journey on the metro, and beads of perspiration were trickling down Sylvia’s back under her linen shirt. She wished they were in Rocfoin instead.
André threw open the door and greeted them with hearty baisers and bienvenues, ushering them into his large, light-filled apartment.
“Come in, come in. The Pounds have already arrived, as has Paul Valéry and Romains, and,” he went on, dropping his voice to almost a whisper, “James Joyce and his family are here.”
Sylvia swallowed hard; she wasn’t supposed to meet Joyce here; he was supposed to find his way to her shop.
Adrienne, who must have sensed Sylvia tense up beside her, put a reassuring hand on Sylvia’s arm and exclaimed, “Merveilleux!”
A pack of children boisterously chased each other and a cat through the rooms, and before she could say anything, Sylvia was handed a glass of white wine in exchange for the bottle she was holding, and shown into the sitting room where the women were gathered on the couches and chairs, fanning themselves and drinking the cold wine. On their way from the entry hall to the living room where the wives sat, they passed the library and she glimpsed Ezra, Romains, and—was it?—James Joyce himself, all shadowy silhouettes against the early afternoon sun. Normally Sylvia was annoyed when parties separated into gendered factions, but today she was glad of an opportunity to gather herself. Ezra’s wife Dorothy introduced her and Adrienne to Joyce’s wife, a woman with an imposing physicality, like one of the nudes climbing out of Rodin’s marble. Except she was rosier, with a glorious mane of reddish hair haphazardly pinned up from her damp neck, and hooded eyes that had a sultry look to them.
“Mrs. Joyce,” Dorothy called her. Aren’t we all on formal terms today, reflected Sylvia as she lit a cigarette. Sylvia knew her name was still Nora Barnacle, as she and Joyce were not legally married. She’d heard that they had lived together as man and wife for years, but in an iconoclastic fashion that was in keeping with his writing, the couple had always refused to capitulate to social norms. Sylvia liked this about him, about them. After all, she and Adrienne could not marry even if they wanted to; she liked the idea of a couple who could get married flouting the convention.
Sylvia smoked silently while she listened to Mrs. Joyce effuse in her Irish twang about how glad she was to be among English speakers.
“I’m very happy to be in Paris, but of course we all speak better Italian than we do French.” Her voice was throaty and feminine at the same time. “Since we arrived, it feels I’ve only spoken to the children. And you know how that is. Clean your teeth, brush your hair, have you gotten enough exercise? I’m practicing at the markets, though honestly I don’t think it’s because of my poor attempts at French that the men at the stalls always gave me the finest peaches and apples.”
No, thought Sylvia, her eyes falling to Mrs. Joyce’s ample bosom, her milky skin, and delicate fingers, I don’t suppose it is. It was curious and refreshing, however, that the woman was so willing to admit it. Sylvia thought of the lustier passages in Joyce’s work and wondered how much of Mrs. Joyce might have inspired him.
Then, clearing her throat loudly, Mrs. Joyce changed the subject: “I beg you all to tell me what we can do while we’re here. And please, no literary events. I want Lucia and Giorgio to know there’s more to life than books.”
Curiouser and curiouser, thought Sylvia.
Dorothy and Adrienne launched into an impassioned list of theatrical ensembles, musical concerts, and art and sport lessons, and the men began to drift in, lured perhaps by the herbaceous and gamey scents of lunch coming from the kitchen. In a nearby room, a dining table had been beautifully set with silver, crystal, and low vases bursting with wildflowers.
Sylvia noticed Joyce wasn’t with André and Jules and the rest, and thought perhaps this was a moment to meet him without prying eyes. On her way to the library, she was waylaid by wild-haired Ezra, who gave her a tight, tipsy hug and grinned at her assurances that his journal The Dial was doing well at Shakespeare and Company.
“I’m glad to hear all the effort’s not wasted,” he said in his gruff voice. “And did you receive the latest of Anderson’s journal? I wondered if any copies made it out of the States alive.”
Sylvia nodded. “I did. Ten copies, in fact.”
“Excellent,” Ezra said, a Machiavellian smile on his lips. Dropping his voice and his lips so that only Sylvia could hear, he said, “You know, I edit some of the more worrying content out of James’s pages, but there’s only so much I can do. Can’t bleed all the life out of this movement just to keep John Sumner happy. Which is proving impossible anyway.”
Sylvia loved this about Ezra: his prophet’s willingness to state that he and his friends were in the vanguard of a movement, one that would set fire to everything and everyone that had gone before them and remake meaning from the ashes.
“Sumner does seem like an ogre,” said Sylvia. “Like Comstock before him. I’m glad to be shod of him and his ilk here.” Though was she really free of him? It occurred to her now that even in Paris she was affected by Anthony Comstock and his infamous act, which was responsible for censoring so much important writing, from Margaret Sanger’s book about birth control to James Joyce’s great novel. If the United States Postal Service, Sumner’s favorite weapon of suppression, incinerated The Little Review before it could reach Paris, weren’t she and her readers subject to the same censorship as those in New York? For Pete’s sake. Is there no stopping him?
“I just hope he doesn’t put Anderson and Heap in jail next time,” said Ezra.
“Jail?” Sylvia could hardly believe it. Of course, she knew of this theoretical consequence of violating the Comstock Act, but jail seemed terribly extreme.
“Sumner’s really frothing at the mouth this time, but he’s not going to terrorize us into stopping,” said Ezra, with equal parts glee and exasperation, though not a trace of actual fear. He sounded more like a general preparing to rally his troops.
“Bien sûr,” she agreed. “But jail?”
He shook his head confidently. “It’ll never happen. One of the best lawyers in New York is on our side. Remember the Armory Show? He helped put it together. He owns more Cézannes and Picassos than Stein, which is more impressive, really, because he’s just a lawyer, not an artist himself. John Quinn. Irish parents. He loves Joyce.”
“Sounds like you’re lucky to have him,” she said.
“We’re lucky to have you, Sylvia.” He smiled, and she saw the wine shining in his eyes again. “Keep stocking the hard stuff. I have a feeling more and more American writers will be finding their way to your store soon. It’s shit to be a real artist in America these days.”
Much as she enjoyed sparring with Ezra, she badly wanted to meet Joyce before lunch, so she told him she needed to find the loo before it was time to eat, and then hurried away.
There Joyce was, miraculously in the library, preternaturally still in a wooden chair. His long legs were crossed, and his large hands drooped from arms draped on the chair. Sylvia wondered if he’d ever played piano with those fingers, two of which had rings on them, on both hands. His head was almost perfectly egg shaped, and he was looking out the window at a leafy tree with two twittering goldfinches as if they contained the meaning of life.
Ignoring her nervous heartbeat, she stood just to the side of the window, cleared her throat, and said, “I understand you are the great James Joyce?”
Her words drew his interest, and she saw that the eyes behind his brass wire glasses were a glorious blue, except that the left iris was obscured by a milky film. Yet he didn’t squint or struggle to see her, and in fact he unnerved her further by devoting the same attention to her as he had to the birds and tree outside.
“I don’t know about great,” he replied. “But James Joyce is correct enough. And you are?”
“Sylvia Beach,” she said. “I have an English-language bookstore and lending library in the sixth. Shakespeare and Company.”
A burst of laughter erupted in the other room, startling her.
She held out her hand to shake his, and when he accepted, rising for a moment from the chair, she was surprised to find that his seemingly strong, beringed hand gave such a weak shake, limp at the wrist.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you Miss Beach. Your reputation precedes you, you know.” He gestured for her to sit in the chair that was the twin to his, a foot or so away.
Heart thudding wildly, she perched on the very edge of her chair. “Please, call me Sylvia. And I’m honored to know you’ve heard of my shop. I do hope you’ll visit soon.”
“I try to model the niceties for my children, Miss Beach. I hope you don’t mind.”
Sylvia smiled. So this was why Nora was Mrs. Joyce. The niceties. Somehow, it was hard to imagine this effete, languid gentleman in marital communion with the earthy, shapely woman in the other room—or, for that matter, writing the scaldingly frank passages that had kept her awake so many nights. The mystery of this contrast intrigued her, and she wondered why it was impossible not to imagine that it was unimaginable. But there was something so mismatched about Mr. and Mrs. Joyce.
“Tell me about this shop of yours. I have been meaning to get there,” he said, his tenor voice a lovely lilting mixture of educated Irish and Continental sophistication. Sotto voce.
“Well,” she began, not knowing where to start or what part of the history would most interest him. “We opened last fall, at the end of 1919, and . . .”
“We?” he interrupted.
“Well, I, I suppose,” she corrected herself, amazed he’d picked up on this pronoun. “Do you know Adrienne Monnier? Her store La Maison des Amis des Livres has been quite an inspiration to me, and she is such a help in mine, that I often think of Shakespeare and Company as our store.”
Mr. Joyce nodded. “I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting her store, but Messieurs Spire and Pound have already informed me that I must.”
“You must.”
“Then I shall,” he said with a puckish smile. Another surprise.
“You know, Ezra—er, Mr. Pound—was one of my first, and still one of my few, native English-speaking customers. And he did more than purchase books and procure a lending card. He fixed some of the ailing chairs I have for people to sit in. Nothing wobbles in Shakespeare and Company because of Ezra Pound,” she said with an amused smile of her own, for she liked to think about Ezra with a hammer in his capable hands.
“Dear Mr. Pound, always fixing something.”
“Has he mended anything of yours?”
“My life.”
“Goodness, that’s quite a statement.”
“It has the benefit of being entirely true. I’m published because of Mr. Pound. I’m here in Paris because of Mr. Pound. I am supported by patrons because of Mr. Pound. It’s a pity Mrs. Joyce has no patience for him because he’s a writer. Perhaps I should have introduced him as a carpenter.”
“It would have the benefit of being entirely true,” Sylvia said, and they smiled at each other, as if sharing a joke they’d been lobbing at each other since the nursery.
Before Joyce could reply, a dog barked from somewhere outside, an excited and friendly yapping that floated in through the open window. Joyce visibly winced.
“Are you all right?” Sylvia asked.
Laying a relieved hand on his chest, Joyce said, “As long as the beast is outside, as it seems to be. I was bitten by one, you see, when I was a boy.”
And you never got over it, marveled Sylvia to herself. It said something to her about the kind of writer he was.
Then suddenly Ezra was leaning in the doorway saying, “I’ve been dispatched to call you to lunch, though I’m extremely glad to see the two of you have met.”
“Moi aussi, Monsieur Pound, moi aussi,” said Joyce, leaning on his ashplant cane to help him out of his chair, as if he was a much older man, not Portrait’s or Ulysses’s young Stephen Dedalus who also went about with such a stick. He hardly used it as he walked to the dining room, however.
She could barely make herself move to follow him. James Joyce. Her brief exchange with one of her most favorite writers had left her feeling as if the two of them had known each other for years. Well, she supposed, I have known him for years—in a manner of speaking.
Conversation at lunch was lively, and it became a point of comedy that Ezra kept trying to fill Joyce’s glass with wine, and Joyce would reply, “Not before eight,” with a glance at Nora, who nodded her staunch approval and sipped her own cup of water.
As was always the case in the homes of Adrienne’s friends, it was a gathering of noisy equals, all the writers of varying nationalities unwilling to cede the floor but somehow all managing to have their say about the poems, stories, and essays in the recent journals. Sylvia marveled as she often did, at the strength with which Adrienne added her own voice to the conversation, and the respect with which everyone listened. In recent months, Sylvia had learned of herself that she was more comfortable discussing any topic, even books, in smaller groups; a few friends in her store was just right, whereas Adrienne was just as comfortable in front of a noisy, jostling mess of people. It was the unspoken reason they continued hosting readings at La Maison instead of Shakespeare.
Sylvia recognized a bit of herself in Joyce, though, who hung back and listened until he was asked to deliver an opinion. At which point, everyone paid close attention, which he clearly enjoyed; in fact, Sylvia thought perhaps he spoke with deliberate slowness to make sure every word he uttered was heard and understood, something she never would have done; she talked so fast, people often asked her to slow down.
After Joyce’s particularly astute commentary on the latest poems by Yeats, Ezra joked, “Well, I suppose such erudition is what comes of not drinking with one’s fowl.” He said it good-naturedly enough, but Sylvia could detect the drunken irritation. She and Adrienne exchanged raised eyebrows across the table, and Sylvia wondered what this lunch, this official introduction of James Joyce into the Odéon circle, portended. If the excited buzz in her veins was any indication, it was going to be big.
Later, over brandy and fruit in their own apartment, their legs tangled on the couch as they sipped and read, Adrienne set her book down and said, “He is a crooked Jesus, isn’t he?”
“Who?” Sylvia looked up and asked, genuinely confused, since Ezra—whom she’d often referred to as a prophet—wasn’t crooked in any way. You always knew where you stood with him.
“Monsieur Joyce.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, tales of his drinking are legendary, non? And yet he doesn’t drink before eight? And his writing is bawdy, but his demeanor is so bourgeoise. His wife, though, oh, là là! She is magnificent.”
“Adrienne!” Sylvia flushed hot to realize her lover had had the same kinds of thoughts about Joyce’s wife that she herself had earlier in the day. It felt illicit somehow.
“Don’t be jealous, chérie. You know how I love your petit corps. And anyway, Madame Joyce hates books. Another strange, crooked thing about him. How could a man of letters, a writer of his caliber, be married to someone who’s never read a word of his writing?”
“Not everyone wants to share what we share,” Sylvia said.
Adrienne rocked herself onto her hands and knees and moved forward like a cat so that she hovered above Sylvia, her face centimeters away. Dropping her voice she said, “And he is like Jesus because he seeks disciples. He was happiest when everyone was hanging on his every word.”
Adrienne was right, but Sylvia didn’t want to talk; she wanted the heat between them to make her lover forget the form of any other woman. Sylvia lifted her hands to Adrienne’s breasts, the opposite of her own in their abundance, and gently traced the nipples through her blouse with the backs of her fingers. Adrienne closed her eyes and kissed her hard and searchingly as she dropped her hips and pressed them against Sylvia’s. Like this, it was only the two of them in all the world.