Back in Paris we were faced with the delicate question whether Bob was going to live with us in the studio. We were all good friends by now but there was a feeling we would be a little crowded in one room. However, it turned out that old Monsieur Rouvely, the cabinet-maker next door, wanted to sublet his work-room as long as there would be no woman living in it.
‘I am only too happy to let you have my premises,’ he told Bob. ‘But mind, no permanent woman! Women are such extremely dirty types: always cooking. I’ve no objection to tarts, I am broadminded. But if you mean to install a regular mistress here the deal is off.’
The work-room was full of benches, band-saws, woodworking machinery, and unfinished chairs and sofas, and had the fine astringent smell of sawdust and carpenter’s glue. Bob rented a straw-stuffed bed from Madame Hernie, unpacked his single bag and his manuscripts, and settled in.
‘This will be a great place to work,’ he said. ‘It reminds me of Thoreau. This is the atelier of a craftsman, who works with his hands, not the hangout of some goddamn artistic dilettante. It’s the real thing, it’s ascetic, it’s genuine.’ Soon his typewriter was clacking away every morning.
He gave me two of his published books, A Companion Volume and Village. I found it hard to say what I thought of them. I would have liked to admire them but it was impossible. They were obviously literal transcripts of things set down simply because they had happened and were vividly recollected. There was neither invention nor subterfuge; when the recollections stopped, so did the story, and one had the impression of a shutter being pulled down over the writer’s memory as if in an act of self-defence against a dénouement either unformulated or too painful to remember. The only unifying feature they possessed was a central figure who was manifestly Bob himself: this man, variously named Fletcher Files, Harold Fletcher, Harold Files, and Files Fletcher, was a mysterious and exasperating character. He was the centre of everything; everyone asked his advice, his intercession, his opinion, and his absolution. He talked interminably, but to no effect or purpose for his ideas were not only negative and confused but expressed with such petulant incoherence they could hardly be taken seriously. There were occasional flashes of observation and understanding, even moments of grace; but the style and syntax revealed the genuine illiterate. I was soon to discover that Bob had in fact read absolutely nothing for over twenty years; he formed his critical opinions of books from reviews and personal contacts and his blanket condemnation of almost everything was mainly due to laziness and pique.
But although unable to write books, he had a genius for titles. Just then he was working on two great panoramic novels, The Politics of Existence and The Portrait of a Generation. However, the contents of these books were so like each other that he was constantly switching whole chapters from one book to the other and was even unsure whether he should exchange the titles themselves. When he asked me about this final change I was able to say it could make no difference—an opinion that delighted him.
In the meantime Graeme was once more planning The Flying Carpet and had resumed his affair with Caridad. For my part I was engaged on the project of seducing Diana Tree; she was the most intelligent woman I had ever known, and though we disagreed on all points of literature we laughed at the same things in life. My admiration of her was, however, confused rather than complemented by desire, and since she was still changing her lovers with bewildering rapidity I found myself simply waiting my turn.
As a youth of barely eighteen I was finding my passions a great problem. This is the age when one has an inexhaustible interest in sex and it seems the most important thing in life. Now, in the full heat of the Parisian summer, I was simmering. It was impossible to work on my memoirs and I spent a good deal of time pursuing casual loves in Montparnasse, where the expense and effort involved, while I did not begrudge them, were quite incommensurate with the results. My great mistake, I see now, was an unreasonable prejudice against prostitutes: at that time I looked on them as hardly women at all. But I was soon to be introduced to the most agreeable aspect of prostitution, and to taste the delights of that heaven-inspired convenience, that port and paradise of young men, the licensed Parisian brothel.
Nearby, on the rue de la Glaciére, lived the gigantic American painter Sidney Schooner. He had so far given little indication of his real genius, which had been dissipated in playing the trombone professionally, designing theatrical posters, and writing a book on the history of costume; for none of these activities, which required more patience than he possessed, was he truly qualified. His great talent was for society, and for the serious painting towards which he was then, in company with Pascin, Kisling, and Picabia, only groping his way. He was above all a lover of whores.
We had already met at the Dôme and were soon visiting each other. His studio was furnished with a profusion of black settees and chairs, Chinese screens, and wall-paintings; his bed, tented like the abode of a pasha, was the first I had seen fitted with sheets of black crêpe-de-chine. ‘It makes a good background for a fat, white-skinned woman,’ he explained, ‘and the roughness also tickles the skin very nicely. I’m not a sensualist but I like décor.’
I admired his painting but thought he was too consciously imitating the Douanier Rousseau. I also noticed in one corner of every picture a small baby-carriage. ‘It’s a curious compulsion I have,’ he explained. ‘I simply can’t keep that baby-carriage out. God knows I try hard enough. I go through agonies, tell myself it’s crazy, it destroys the composition, it will get me typed: it’s no use. I’m literally forced to put the damn thing in somewhere.’ He had been psychoanalysed, but it had done no good.
His regular mistress was a large, fat, wise-looking middle-aged Frenchwoman who worked as a pastrycook on the Right Bank. She had no interest in art and did not seem particularly fond of him; but, as he said, she was easily available and had always a wonderful smell of freshly-baked pie-crust. He was also, however, a great frequenter of brothels, and one evening when Bob was working on The Politics of Existence he suggested we accompany him to a place that he praised highly.
‘It’s very quiet, not at all chichi or expensive,’ he said. ‘Licensed and inspected, of course. It’s even historical: Edward VII used to go there incog., or so they say—anyway there’s an oil-painting of him over the bar. First we’ll have dinner down by the Porte Saint-Denis. I know a restaurant there that serves the finest snails in the city.’
Graeme had won 100 francs that afternoon throwing dice at the Dingo, so we agreed at once.
The restaurant was very dark, with mouldering tapestries on the walls, gas chandeliers, and tarnished mirrors; it was half filled with elderly, respectable, mottle-faced men, all bent over their plates, many of them wearing infants’ bibs to protect their shirts from the juices and sauces. Schooner ordered four dozen snails for us, to be followed by three broiled lobsters and a bottle of Chablis.
I had never tasted such snails; fat, tender and of marvellous flavour, they were swimming in a sauce of browned butter, parsley and garlic. Schooner ate more than half of them, and when the lobster came I was able to enjoy it too as it deserved.
Paris, Schooner told us, was full of restaurants like this, though they took a little finding. ‘The one thing to watch out for in a restaurant,’ he said, ‘is a head-waiter or a maître d’hôtel; as soon as you see one, turn round and walk out. Also, beware of chafing-dishes.’
‘But how can you tell a good restaurant?’ said Graeme.
‘I’ve found that three good signs are a small menu, darned tablecloths, and an old dog on the premises. Mostly, however, you go by instinct.’
‘How about the proprietor being dressed in a blue apron?’ I asked.
‘Why, that quaint garment is an indication the food may be good, or it may not, but the bill will certainly be far too high and probably added up wrong. No, the proprietor of a good restaurant wears shirtsleeves in summer and a woollen coat-sweater in winter. Also, oddly enough, the food is always better when he is thin, bald and depressed-looking. You may think all this fantastic, but I assure you I have compiled all these features of a good restaurant by using the same process Lombroso did in arriving at his rules for the physiognomy of a criminal. Lombroso, of course, was a scientist. But the painter’s eye, like the writer’s, records all these things subconsciously.’
We had coffee at a small café facing the Porte Saint-Denis. It was now almost eleven o’clock, and the July night was soft and perfumed; the sky had still the lingering traces of the violet light of evening; crowds of shopgirls in their long dresses and clerks in little bowler hats and tight jackets were strolling slowly along; up over Montmartre Bébé Cadum displayed her infantile, indecent grin. We had St James rum with our coffee and smoked the last of our American cigarettes. At last we rose to go to the brothel, for Schooner said this was the best time—when the girls were wide awake and still fresh and before the drunks arrived.
‘The place opens at six o’clock and closes sharp at four in the morning,’ he said. ‘By the way, have you got enough money?’
We had almost seven dollars left. ‘More than enough,’ said Schooner. ‘This is no de luxe trap.’
It was clear, as soon as we entered the tall narrow-fronted building at 15 rue St Apolline over which a pink light shone modestly, that the place was no stuffy abode of wealth and tedium. A narrow dark corridor led directly into a large red-lighted and red-papered room filled with low tables and plush-covered benches like those of the first-class Canadian railway-carriages of my childhood; drinks were being served to mixed couples by an elderly waiter in the usual black alpaca waistcoat and floor-length white apron, and it took a few moments to realize that all the women were young and completely nude. At the door was a raised cash-desk presided over by a neat little old sharp-featured lady in black silk, with steel-rimmed spectacles and grey hair drawn back in a tidy bun; at the far end of the room, under a large and smiling portrait of Edward VII, behind a long table covered with glasses of beer, lounged a dozen other naked beauties smoking and chatting. The informality was enchanting. We sat down at a corner table and ordered a bottle of iced mousseux. The old lady nodded politely to Schooner, gave Graeme and me a single penetrating glance, and raised a finger to the table of the beauties. At the sign they all rose, ran forward, and fell before our table in a torrent of flesh, wriggling their haunches, shaking their breasts, chattering obscenities, and sticking out their tongues.
‘Take your pick,’ said Schooner. ‘We have to buy three of them a drink anyway. Any girl we don’t want will take her drink back to the big table by herself.’ He studied them with a jovial but judicious air. ‘I rather like the big Norman girl in the middle,’ he said, crooking a finger at a splendid blonde with breasts like cantaloupes, who gave a cry of triumph and at once squeezed in beside him.
I had already made my choice: a jolly-looking little brunette with bobbed hair who had shaved in every strategic place and wore a rhinestone choker. She sat down and clasped my hand tightly. Graeme was undecided, and I believe his final choice was determined less by personal preference than by compassion: it was a beautiful but modest-looking mulattress who stood in the background, protruding a pair of superb pear-shaped breasts, with her hands clasped behind her head and eyes raised soulfully to the ceiling.
The girls ordered whatever harmless mixture they were supposed to drink: deep pink in colour, it was served in tall glasses and graced with a spoon.
‘This stuff,’ confided my brunette, ‘is only limonade and grenadine. But what can you do? Now I, I like to flush my kidneys with something that has some heart in it. Darling, when Madame Hibou isn’t looking sprinkle me a little mousseux in my glass for the love of God.’
This was not too easy. Madame Hibou seemed to have a dozen pairs of eyes in her head. However, when a solemn-looking client in rusty black rose from a bench and was led to the cash-desk by one of the girls, her attention was taken up by the business of making out a chit for the room and entering the transaction in a ledger. I took the opportunity of filling my friend’s half-empty glass with the pink mousseux, which she drank off immediately.
The conversation was refreshing though far from intellectual. After a while it became little more than a boasting-contest between the Norman girl and the brunette as they vaunted their abilities in bed: it seemed there was nothing they could not do. Graeme’s mulattress, who had recently arrived from Senegal and could speak no more than a few words of French, merely bared her magnificent teeth from time to time and rolled her eyes. ‘She is just a child of nature,’ said my brunette, ‘but she has a heart of gold.’
‘Well, I’m for bed,’ said Schooner as we finished the bottle of wine. ‘For your information the rooms cost fifteen francs and the girls twenty-five each, unless you’re staying the night, when it’s double—but that’s only for businessmen from out of town who want to save on a hotel bill.’ At the cash-desk we all paid for our rooms in advance; the girls were to be paid afterwards. Having received our chits from Madame Hibou, all six of us mounted the stairs, arm in arm, and were shown to three adjoining rooms by an elderly chambermaid with a hare-lip who took the chits and then suggested that if we wanted the doors unlocked between our rooms she would do so for an additional fifteen francs. ‘It will make for more variety,’ she said, ‘without any sacrifice of discretion.’
This seemed like a good idea. We paid the extra money and saw the rooms transformed into a suite.
‘Mind now,’ said the chambermaid, ‘you must be out of here in an hour from now when your tickets expire. And Arlette, my girl,’ she warned Schooner’s companion, ‘be sure you behave yourself. No unseemly noise! Good evening, gentlemen.’
We were soon engaged in the business of the evening. To me, this first experience of a French prostitute was a revelation. I had, quite simply, never enjoyed myself so much in my life, and I soon understood the source of Jeanne du Barry’s attraction for Louis XV and how well it was comprised in her own terse formula, ‘Je l’ai traité en simple putain.’ After a short rest Graeme switched to Arlette and Schooner to the brunette, while I took the mulattress. When it came to my turn with Arlette, however, I was in no condition to continue, and while Graeme and Schooner were running their third course she perched on the bidet and entertained me with the story of her life on the farm in Normandy, ‘where I hope to retire some day,’ she said, ‘and raise a big family and look after some nice geese. But for all this I need money, you know, so won’t you give me a little tip? Then I won’t tell your friends how tired you were.’
Having paid this piece of blackmail to the extent of five francs, for which she kissed me affectionately, I then brushed my hair and got dressed just as there was a loud rap on the hall door accompanied by the chambermaid’s voice hissing through her hare-lip: ‘C’est l’heure, messieurs. S’il vous plaît!’
Graeme and Schooner appeared a minute later and the six of us descended the stairs, once again arm in arm. Having settled our modest score with Madame Hibou, we all exchanged compliments with the girls, bade them good night, and sallied out into the velvety Paris night. The Saint-Denis quarter had never looked so beautiful and rosy, with the brilliantly lit cafés and shops and the constant passage of the streetwalkers in their light summer gowns. The sculptured archaic gate itself, standing like a grand portal from nowhere to nowhere, a kind of exquisitely unnecessary obstruction to the traffic, seemed to rise into the sky like a symbol of France. How happy and peaceful I felt!
Schooner was looking at his watch. ‘We’ve just time to catch the Métro back to the quarter,’ he said. ‘How about a Welsh rarebit at the Select?’
We reached Montparnasse soon after one o’clock and were enjoying those specialities of the house when Diana Tree suddenly descended from a taxi and swept up to the terrasse, draped in a dramatic midnight-blue cape.
‘Darlings,’ she cried, ‘I have wonderful news. Schooner, buy me a drink: whisky and water will do...’
Over her whisky she became eloquent. Her fourth or fifth novel had just appeared with great éclat in London, and she had just received an advance royalty of £100. ‘Enough to live on for a year!’ she cried. ‘Oh, I could sing for joy. What is it one of Goethe’s young men exclaims? “This kiss for the universe!”’ She threw her arms in the air and blew a kiss into the sky. ‘Well, what have you boys been doing?’
‘We have just eaten four dozen snails, among other things,’ said Schooner.
‘And now you’re eating Welsh rarebits. The inner man, by heaven.’ She gripped my knee with compelling force underneath the table and her gaze became melting. She had never looked so beautiful, nor had I ever admired her more: the lovely grey-blue eyes were swimming in ecstasy. ‘Take me to the toilet,’ she murmured in my ear. ‘I spent my last sou on the taxi.’
I accompanied her down the steep narrow staircase; on the little landing she put her arms around my neck. ‘Darling, let’s spend the night together, shall we?’ she whispered. ‘I am so happy.’
‘But where can we go? We have to consider Bob and Graeme—and—well, the truth is, I’m not feeling very well—It must have been the snails—’
She wheeled around in her cape and without a word disappeared into the ladies’ room. I put twenty-five centimes on the plate, nodded to the lavabos lady, and went back upstairs. The genius of Puritanism, with all its forefixed concatenation of misdeeds and punishments, had served me out properly.
We all went back to the rue Broca together in a taxi, dropping Diana and the indomitable Schooner at his studio. Momentarily saddened, I recovered my spirits somewhat with the help of a bottle of wine and fell asleep thinking of the brunette with the rhinestone choker.