CHAPTER 26
Happy Thanksgiving,” said Carlotta’s husband James Briggs, holding up a glass of Bordeaux in their sunny apartment in the sixteenth, where Sylvia and Adrienne had been celebrating this American holiday for the past three years, since her dear childhood friend Carlotta Welles had finally decided to marry. Waiting to find the right match had been wise. James was lovely, and Carlotta was clearly in love with him, a widowed banker with a strong sense of joie de vivre who’d managed to keep his fortune despite the paroxysms of the market. He was well-read and enjoyed theater and travel, and together they’d taken up residence in Paris—which was more than a consolation to Sylvia as so many of her other American friends seemed to be leaving.
Carlotta had always adored Thanksgiving, and even in Paris she managed to find the right ingredients for a traditional turkey and stuffing feast. Ever excited to try new dishes, Adrienne, too, had come to love this day that was all about food and gratitude. Thus she’d become an enthusiastic participant in the American holiday, contributing her own decidedly French version of sweet potatoes, whipped practically into a mousse with butter and dark sugar. Her favorite item on the buffet was the pumpkin pie, which she never offered to make herself—the ultimate compliment to Carlotta’s cooking.
“Let us give thanks to Kentucky, the thirty-third state to ratify the Twenty-First Amendment,” James went on, and glasses clinked all around.
“How many more of your states need to agree for the law to pass?” Adrienne asked.
“Three more for a total of thirty-six,” Carlotta answered, “Which is three-quarters of our forty-eight states.”
“I’ve heard Pennsylvania will be next,” said James with eyebrows raised and his glass in the air.
“Then this absurdly titled Great Experiment will be over,” said Sylvia.
“Indeed. The number of people who have died as a result of this ill-conceived Prohibition is staggering,” said James grimly.
“I admire your country for attempting to make such lofty ideals the law,” said Adrienne, “even if in this case it didn’t work. And then, to be able to admit one is wrong . . . that is a difficult thing for any one person to do, let alone a whole country.”
“You are a great apologist for our nation,” said James warmly. “You almost make me want to live there again, but then you would not be there.”
“Cyprian actually suggested that we move to California,” laughed Sylvia.
“Not until we move back as well! Which we have no plans to do,” said Carlotta in a warning tone.
“Don’t worry,” assured Sylvia. “France is our home. I haven’t even set foot in America in close to twenty years.” She remembered that long-ago conversation with Cyprian, who had encouraged her to visit, but once their mother was gone and Carlotta had moved to France . . . any impulse she might have felt to cross the ocean evaporated.
“California sounds as exotic as China to me!” Adrienne said.
“What, ‘The Jumping-Off Place’?” hooted James, referring to Edmund Wilson’s recent essay about San Diego as the nation’s leading city of suicides. Sylvia, too, had devoured the essay, and it had made her think in new ways about her mother. After all, Pasadena wasn’t that far from San Diego. Was the commercialism and desolate, sublime beauty of the landscape really and ironically conducive to thoughts of ending one’s life?
“Oh, darling, you’re such an eastern snob,” Carlotta said with an affectionate hand on his arm.
“I suppose I am,” he said, kissing her on the lips.
Sylvia looked away from them, and from Adrienne. After a long—too long—celibate period, they had tried to be more amorous recently, but something wasn’t working. It wasn’t easy, thrilling, and comforting all at the same time, as it had been when they were younger. She couldn’t figure out why. Surely after so long together, intimacy should at least have been comforting. But what Adrienne’s body needed seemed to have changed, and Sylvia didn’t know how to please her any longer; she had the sense that Adrienne might want to try new things, but Sylvia didn’t have the energy or inclination. Though her facial neuralgia had improved, her migraines were worse, and lately her period seemed to last for weeks and leave her weak and sleepy. The best antidote was time outdoors, gardening and chopping wood in Les Déserts or Rocfoin.
She didn’t want to think about any of that today, however. Today she wanted to wallow in the embrace of friendship and familiar foods.
“Aren’t you waiting on another decision from America?” Carlotta’s question interrupted her thoughts.
“Yes,” said Sylvia. “Judge Woolsey just heard the case for Ulysses, and he’s taking the week to deliberate.”
“Woolsey’s a good man,” said James. “I took a class he taught at Columbia. Always struck me as fair-minded and liberal without being reckless. He’ll make the right call.”
“How do you feel about it?” Leave it to an old friend like Carlotta to ask the hard question.
“Of course I want the book to succeed. And if Judge Woolsey rules in its favor, doors will open for others. D. H. Lawrence, for instance. And Radclyffe Hall. And this young Henry Miller who’s become quite a regular in the store.”
“I’ll be amazed if the ban isn’t lifted,” said Carlotta. “All that hand-wringing censorship from twenty-one seems positively quaint now.”
Sylvia nodded. “Ulysses hasn’t even been seized in years. In fact, Bennett Cerf’s lawyer, Morris Ernst, actually had to go down to the New York customs office himself to request that the officers impound a copy of my edition, in order to trigger the legal events that would bring the novel back to the courts.”
“Oh, this?” Adrienne frowned with mock disdain as she picked up a nearby paperback, pretending to be the border official talking to Ernst—a little show she often put on for friends when they told this story. “This book comes through all the time. We don’t pay it any mind.” Then she flung the book over her shoulder as everyone laughed.
“But it is bittersweet,” Sylvia admitted. “I love the book, and I have such fond memories of working with Joyce to publish it. But my life seems . . . calmer . . . without it.” Drawing in a fortifying breath and smiling at Adrienne, she added, “And Adrienne was right all those years when she told me the store would do better without it.”
“You worked very hard to make sure of it,” Adrienne said, putting a warm hand on Sylvia’s.
It was true: she had worked hard, and she was proud of what she’d accomplished in two years: doubling her library memberships and increasing her sales with a little extra advertising. To her surprise, traffic didn’t decrease without Ulysses and its writer, who had stayed well away from Odeonia since his return to Paris from London. In fact, Shakespeare and Company’s reputation as the hub of expatriate literary life in Paris had only grown, and some friends like Gertrude and Alice—who’d long ago taken to inviting Sylvia and Adrienne to the rue de Fleurus but rarely attended events on the rue de l’Odéon—had begun frequenting the store again. But the real boon, financially at least, was that Sylvia no longer advanced Joyce any funds or forgave any of his loans. Shakespeare and Company was solvent and secure without its Crooked Jesus.
Still, though, part of her pined for those early days of the 1920s when everything felt like a thrilling new adventure.
Apparently sensing her friend’s complicated tangle of emotions, Carlotta said, “There are many memories yet to be made.”
“Many,” Adrienne agreed.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she replied. They had to be.
If new memories were to be made, it would be in part because Paris itself was being remade by a whole new kind of artist in the Left Bank. These days, instead of running into ten Americans she knew when she went for coffee or a glass of wine at the Dôme, Sylvia was much more likely to sit down and talk about Spain or Germany with one of the many refugee artists from those countries who were fleeing Franco or the increasingly draconian Reich—in particular the anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism that made so many, like their new friends Walter Benjamin and Gisèle Freund, feel unsafe.
Benjamin and Gisèle were in many ways the epitome of the rue de l’Odéon crowd: he a philosopher and writer, she a photographer and teacher. Even the fact that they were in self-imposed exile from their own countries made them like the Americans of the 1920s. But the America of 1920 or even 1927, however conservative and isolationist, was not menacing in the way that the Germany of 1933 had become. Calvin Coolidge was hardly Adolf Hitler, and John Sumner was nothing compared to this Joseph Goebbels who was controlling the German media. Americans had been escaping to drink and write and love freely, and they frequently returned to their homeland; in fact, they were going home in droves these days. These German artists were escaping persecution and assumed they would never return to the country of their birth. They despaired of seeing sisters, brothers, cousins, and parents ever again.
These new expatriates’ eyes were rimmed with the violet of worried, sleepless nights, whereas the Americans’ had been red and bloodshot from hangovers—nothing some baguette, coffee, and a glass of juice with champagne couldn’t cure. This difference imparted a new darkness to the cafés and shops and parties in the Latin Quarter and Montparnasse. And yet these political exiles seemed determined to live life to its fullest—in true Whitmanian form, Sylvia liked to think to herself. She and Adrienne attended dinner parties and readings, concerts and lectures as often as they ever had.
Adrienne was in her element as a hostess, assembling guest lists for dinners with maximum intellectual stimulation, then trying all manner of recipes from a fresh batch of cookbooks, as well as experimenting with ingredients and methods for exotic dishes she’d learned at other homes. Truly, the meals they ate in the tiniest apartments these days were as astonishing as the stories of their hosts—goulash, spaetzle, stuffed cabbage, and fresh yogurt with honey to accompany tales of public ridicule, store closures, and vandalized temples.
But after a few weeks’ long cycle of work and socializing, Sylvia would feel an intense need to escape. Most of the time, Adrienne accompanied Sylvia to Les Déserts, but something in her had also become more vibrant in the presence of so much restlessness and need. It was more than the cooking. Sylvia wished the new Paris could bring them together, but instead it made them crave different kinds of comforts. She wanted to eschew some of the socializing and take more long walks or even classes with Adrienne—the horticultural courses in the Jardin du Luxembourg that she’d heard about sounded appealing, but when she mentioned them to Adrienne, she’d laughed. “I’d sooner butcher a side of beef than plant pots of flowers,” she replied.
“I don’t just want to spend time outdoors,” Sylvia said, “I need to. The fresh air and exertion have done wonders for my headaches and neuralgia.”
“That is wonderful, and I hope you continue to do it,” said Adrienne, taking up a carrot and beginning to peel it. “We don’t need to do everything together.”
But we always have. Sylvia picked at a loose thread on a napkin.
“Take the gardening class! I’ll love having you bring home beautiful flowers.” Adrienne punctuated her statement with a kiss on Sylvia’s cheek before going back to her carrots.
“All right, I will,” Sylvia said.
When she did, she was surprised to find she didn’t miss Adrienne as she memorized the names and uses of various native plants, learning how to coax delicate green life from tiny brown seeds buried in dirt.