March 26: monday morning: Paris
Eh bien! Quelle vie! I am here in Paris in a room at the Hotel Béarn just ready to move upstairs to a sunny attic room for 30 francs less a night; the people in the hotel are delightful and the croissons are moist & light and butter generous, so I shall stay, and consider myself lucky: scavenged a bit this morning for another cheaper place but they were all full for Easter holidays; it is a glorious blue day with all the freshness of the country and I skipped down the early morning streets feeling miraculously that I really belonged. It will be a fine stay. I can get along in my French; too. Remember Hotel de Valence: old woman was charming and although they were full, they have rooms for 400 francs.
Arrived in Paris early Saturday evening exhausted from sleepless holocaust night with Ted in London & thought at the end that the sweetly burbling Janet Drake with her big dark eyes and pointed white pixie face would drive me absolutely mad. Emmet;1 in his sailor costume & cuteness appealed much less than the former night when he had acted like a man and read aloud part of his book on James Larkin; Irish labor leader. I just wanted to get off alone and wash and go to bed. It was twilight when we found a room for me at this Hotel Béarn & I felt absolutely deserted. Overcome by a disastrous impulse to run to Sassoon as formerly; I took myself in leash & washed my battered face, smeared with a purple bruise from Ted and my neck raw and wounded too, and decided to walk out toward Richard’s and search for food on the way. Going downstairs, a nice-looking man in the telephone booth grinned at me, and I grinned back; well, after I got out & started walking (having stupidly left my map of Paris in Emmet’s car) I realized the guy was following me. He overtook me and smiled again & I came right out & said “J’ai oublié mon plan de Paris, ainsi je suis un peu perdue.” Well, that was all he needed; so we went back to the hotel & he got his map to loan me during my stay; eventually we ended up walking all along the Boulevard St. Germain & I had steak tartar & wine & meringue at a little brasserie with him. Two arty musicians came in to play while we ate, one with a violin & coronet of paper flowers; the other with a peculiar box that he ground like a coffee machine & tinny music came out. I decided to go to bed early & rest to be strong & see Sassoon in the morning. It was a big concession because I felt terribly alone.
The guy turned out to be, interestingly enough, the Paris correspondent for the newspaper Paese Sera in Rome: an Italian communist journalist; no less! Hence the olivetti which he loaned me for today. Well, in spite of the fact he spoke no English, we communicated magnificently, to my surprise; he is very cultured & we discussed communism in different countries (he is very idealistic & very much a humanist) and art: he admires Melville & Poe & TS Eliot (which he’d read in French: J Alfred Prufrock!) and I asked him about the French & Italian artists he wrote up for his paper. All most reassuring. Got courage from this & felt I could manage without Richard if necessary;
SUNDAY: I got up, still tired, and set out in the fresh morning air down the Rue du Bac past the Place des Invalides to Rue Duvivier, feeling chipper & quite gaie, preparing my opening speech.
I rang at No. 4 outside of which an old beggar woman was singing in a mournful monotone. The dark and suspicious concierge met me and blandly told me that Sassoon was not back nor would he be back probably until after Easter. I had been ready to bear a day or two alone, but this news shook me to the roots. I sat down in her livingroom and wrote an incoherent letter while the tears fell scalding and wet on the paper and her black poodle patted me with his paw and the radio blared: “Smile though your heart is breaking.” I wrote and wrote, thinking that by some miracle he might walk in the door. But he had left no address, no messages, and my letters begging him to return in time were lying there blue and unread. I was really amazed at my situation; never before had a man gone off to leave me to cry after. Dried tears, patted poodle & asked where could find restaurant; wandered through fruit stalls in Champs du Mars through flowers & crowds bearing palm sprays (not like ours but all green small sprigs of leaves) and found large Brasserie where, I realized after entering, Sassoon had taken Jane & me to eat that first night. Ordered Assiette Anglaise & coffee (which came black & sour) and read Anouilh’s Antigone, that magnificent part the chorus does about tragedy.
Gradually, amazingly, a calm stole over me. A feeling that I had as much right to take my time eating, to look around; to wander & sit in the sun in Paris as anyone; even more right. I felt downright happy when I ordered another cup of coffee with cream & it was much better. Paid bill & wandered off along Seine browsing in bookstalls & half hoping I’d meet Gary Haupt. Walked around Notre Dame to Marché aux Fleurs where hundreds of yellow, red & green birds chirped & skipped in cages: mille oiseau de toutes couleurs!
Then, inspired, I took my sketch book & squatted in the sun at the very end of the Ile de la Cité in a little green park of Henri 4 du Vert Galant & began to draw the vista through the Pont Neuf; it was a good composition with the arches of the bridge framing trees & another bridge, and I was aware of people standing all around me watching but I didn’t look at them – just hummed & went on sketching. It was not very good, too unsure & messily shaded, but I think I will do line drawings from now on in the easy style of Matisse. Felt I knew that view though, through the fiber of my hand.
Back to hotel where I lay down exhausted. Giovanni came by to take me out to little bar to meet two of his friends: Lucio, a handsome young journalist from Rome, also Paris correspondent for Paese Sera, & his lovely blonde German mistress Margo who was exquisitely clad in a black tweed suit, black jersey with red & white monogram & red earrings. All four of us took the bus to Place Voltaire where we had supper: felt very thirsty so had juicy tomato salad & celeri, sardines & a fine pear cold as honey for dessert. Giovanni was very nice & told me how cultured he thought I was after a detailed discussion about De Chirico. To bed to feverish sleep, perhaps reaction to wild destructive London night which makes me so sad, now I think of it, because of Michael Boddy2 coming in (I wouldn’t have minded just Luke) and now all Cambridge will be duly informed that I am Ted’s mistress or something equally absurd. He suggested we go to Jugoslavia; if only he knew me rightly! I foolishly did not give him time. I was so tired & so hungry. Such mistakes I make. Oh well, let them talk; I live in Whitstead & can ignore much.
Gray today, and chilly; the first clouded sky since arrival a week ago; so much has happened; now am un peu fatiguée because I washed hair last night and it was almost two until it dried. Life has been a combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning. I feel I could write and write if only I sat down alone for a few months and could let things come instead of always having such a short time; such moving about and problems with people. I have walked for miles and miles and seen much and wondered much.
Monday, March 26, continued: was walking along the Seine on the way to the American express when a good-looking but rather professional chap kept pace with me in the usual way, beside and slightly ahead, looking into my face and saying “charmante!” I never can look cold and as if I hadn’t heard, so I just burst out laughing and this encouraged him so he fell in step. He was pale with a Slavic bone-structure (or what I call that: prominent forehead and diagonal emphatic cheekbones with deepset eyes) and diabolic green eyes which he evidently knew were diabolic. I had time and so walked with him along the quai looking over at the Ile de la Cité and started talking in French; he was Greek and his name was Dimitri and he had a great deal to say about “les grandes surfaces” of life while I argued with him that it was the little details and idiosyncrasies that gave it special meaning; he drew a sketch then in a few lines in my notebook of the slanty trunks of the trees against the wall of the quai with house roofs & windows: rather good and pleasantly lyrical; I remarked how the water of the Seine ran through our shadows as we sat at the brink and made a metaphor about our lives imposing a certain line and order on the flux of time; also, how the water running by the opposite bank glittered and shone greenly in the sun while directly below us it was brown and dirty, full of orange peels and sodden paper and stains of oil slick. I think he got increasingly disappointed that I was going to philosophize instead of flirt; and I felt increasingly sure that he was all pose; he spoke of his wife Zara who was killed in the war and I began to stop believing him; he sang a song in Greek and walked along with me to the American Express staring diabolically into the store windows and muttering about how in this world “Il faut ětre měme sinistre!” But his having said “Allo dear” in English like a naughty little boy wanting to be patted made me feel he was very close to the gigolo and that professional slick disgusted me so I froze and was vague about my address when he asked me and left him at the Pam-Pam, which being an expensive Quartier, evidently served to scare him off. Ironically, when I first met him and he was tough and serious I toyed with the idea of sleeping with whomever took my fancy in the street in a kind of aesthetic fashion: there have been many handsome strong faces, probably some with sinewy minds. That kind of living for the mere delight of the moment, like eating an apple whole, is important, but there are ways and ways: the danger is that this can turn to mere hedonism and escape to blindness and irresponsibility, fear to link day to day, action to action. This must not be. I must be whole and learn to eat days like apples only after making as sure as possible that no plague therein will give me future indigestion. Oh foresight foresight.
I sat in the sun a bit and sketched from the right bank under the Pont Neuf a pleasant vista of bridge arches. A sweet little Jugoslavian boy and his two shy girl companions came to watch and while they hid behind my tree he asked if I would walk and let them show me Paris; I refused politely and later packed up and treked along the Seine to Avenue Diderot and left a note at Tony Gray’s hotel: I felt I should let as many people as possible know where I was to compensate for missing Sassoon. Tony had not yet come in but at least I got the hotel right (I am becoming increasingly proud of my sense of direction here and getting almost instinctive about some places;) my feet were very tired from walking since morning so I crossed the river to the Jardin des Plantes and sat in the gathering dusk watching the children play in the avenues and listening to the goats baa in the wooden chalet-type pens; there was also a little white lamb standing splay-legged milking at his gray wooly mother. I was really weary when I got back to the hotel about 6 and lay down on the yellow bedspread to rest. The next thing I knew, I heard a loud knocking and my name called; I staggered up out of a deep dark fresh moist sleep and opened the door to find Tony and a short plumpish girl who turned out to be his sister Sally; gradually my head cleared and I realized it was the same evening and we all went out to supper at a rather stuffy place, all tall pale green walls and moulding and chandeliers with grumpy looking middle-aged men here and there, like a middle-class professional men’s club. I was grateful for a good dinner and tried to be nice to Sally who was very serious and deadpan and who never walked because her feet hurt (looking at my paper-thin red ballerinas, she said somewhat resentfully: “I could never wear shoes like yours”). As if in chemical opposition to his dour sister who didn’t drink wine, Tony was fearfully bright and game and witty: the kind of English chap who would be all daisy-fresh at eight in the morning and leap over tennisnets in immaculate white shorts his blond hair shining in the early sun saying “Tennis anyone” in a fearfully Oxford accent. I found him a bit tedious and yet let it ride because I thought he might just be fun as an escort, and he had a slender boyish kind of good looks which was pleasant enough. Came back after dinner, washed hair and to bed. It was good to have some human rapport, however limited and not to have to run the gauntlet of the Paris streets at night where men are always at the elbow.
Tuesday: March 27: Up betimes feeling fresh and gay and luxuriating in croissons and morning coffee; talked briefly with Giovanni at doorway; he is so dear and warm and friendly; no problems there, so pleasant. Crossed early morning Seine singing into the Tuileries which were just open and fresh, the black trees against the light beige ground and the white marble statues everywhere on the greens; the fountain at the sailing pool was shimmering in the light and I could see up the vista of geometrical lines of trees to the obleisk in the place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe mistily beyond. My eye was caught right away by a quaint green citronnade stand which was just opening in among the trees, surrounded by bright orange umbrellas, so I rented a garden chair for 5 francs from a little wrinkled woman and began to sketch. I was doing the shading when I heard someone call “Sylvia” behind me and it was Tony and SAlly which really surprised me; I joined them for lemonade (sour) and a good little sponge cake at the stand and then decided to accompany them to the Eiffel Tower which I had ignored last time and caught myself looking forward to a lunch with them, they were really nice people and I was hungry for company.
We took a taxi at the Place because of Sally’s feet and the Tour Eiffel was another tourist center: the great pyramid of angled girders rose over head and on its four legs it resembled and kind of mechanical Martian monster about to take lumbering steps across the Seine and walk off. It cost 200 francs to climb to the 2nd floor and we got together into the little car railway. The view was fine and after I got over my perennial jelly-terror of approaching the railing or cracks where one can see down into an infernal machine of girders I enjoyed the gray-green crooks of the Seine, recognized the spires of Notre Dame and the gray-brown smutch which was the Bois de Boulogne; the white domes of Sacre Coeur dominated all from the hill of Montmartre, like a Byzantine wedding cake. Directly below the people moved in black dots on the green geometry of the park and the red and yellow sunshades on the apartment windows looked like the inspiration for a Mondrian. We entered the restaurant to eat dinner and I was appalled at the posh formal service and ridiculous high prices; I felt very uncomfortable because I knew I couldn’t afford to pay and would have to go without supper to make up for the extravagance which I didn’t even enjoy. While Tony and Sally ate several courses and wine, I just had a rather meager cold chicken with salad and water and coffee. I felt rather angry and resolved never to get in a situation like that again and felt terribly sensible and economical; we parted at the bridge and I went off to the Avenue Montaigne and got a very cheap ticket to Anouilh’s comedy “Ornifle” for the evening and felt extremely proud again at my independence and courage; just as I ate in the same restaurant my first day here as I did before with Sassoon, so I got a ticket to the very play in the theater where I had that ridiculous tantrum last winter about our seats not being side by side but one in front of the other which resulted in Sassoon’s sweetly humoring me and turning in the tickets (now that I look back, I am appalled at my spoiled demanding behavior then: my greatest flaw is the smug satisfaction that I am intuitively right because I change and grow and then my new vision always seems right because it has increased insight; the process of enlightenment is, however, continuous, so I must realize that even my certainties at the moment will be chastened and altered and mellowed by time). Walked then up affluent Avenue to the Champs, crossed the Place de la Concorde and browsed in the expensive shopwindows on the Rue Royale by the Parthenon-imitation Eglise Madeleine, up the Rue de la Paix, glancing at sparkling diamonds, red delicate shoes and orange and smoky blue shoes and gold shoes (if I were wealthy, my idea of extravagance would be to have a closet full of colored shoes – – – just one or two styles: simple princess opera pump with tiny curved heel – in all the shades of the rainbow.) American Express again and the boring “Pas de lettres”. Sat once more in Tuileries to finish sketch, then home to rest before theater. Dressed in black velvet and felt most chic in mackintosh, ironically, because of its swaggery cut; nonchalant, debonair, yet un peu triste because noone was there to chariot me. I walked fast along the dark deserted quais, amazed at the desertion by the Place; as I hurried along the Right Bank a lowslung black car passed and the driver turned to look; he evidently went round the block because he came back and oozed alongside while he begged me to come for a ride and I just walked faster; finally he got out and stopped, but I just kept on going; maybe he thought I was one of the more expensive Champs filles de joie? anyway he laughed when I said I was rushing to the theater & finally drove off:
I understood enough of the play to appreciate what was happening, but found Ornifle difficult often because of his fast river-current way of talking, and also his friend hard because of a vernacular accent. I also felt very much increasingly alone in the extreme right corner of the second balcony squeezed to the wall by several fat wheezy ugly women, aware that our balcony was mostly full of little groups of women and of all the couples in the orchestra. I walked out afterwards alone and feeling tragic as the crowds thinned, pairing up and off, and almost hoped that someone would accost me on the Champs and give me a sandwich, I was starving and a little faint from no supper. I talked aloud to myself and cried a little crossing the Place, blazing with lights and arush with deadly streams of cars; I gave up all idea of stopping on the Boulevard St. Germain for a snack and hurried down the Rue de Lille which I discovered was completely deserted, full of some kind of public arsenal-type buildings; a policeman was pacing his beat ahead and I hurried to keep near him until I got into the lighted hotel section; I cried and cursed Sassoon for leaving me thus open to jeopardy and missed him most that night; the moon was far off and sad over the dark cruel buildings and in my room I cried in black velvet on the yellow bedspread and wondered at my not having one to love; outside the roof shingles and chimney pots were misted magic and haunting in a blue wash of moonlight.
Wednesday: March 28: Lazed in bed this morning, weary from the late night and wrote a letter to mother which gave her the gay side; then pilgrimage without fruit to American express and indulged in real blast of hearty lunch at Pam-Pam to make up for my starvation & nobility yesterday: onion soup, rare chateaubriand steak, two glasses of red wine and apple tart. I felt much better; talked with rather boring man who lived in Montmartre & spoke English & claimed to know multitudes of languages & to have traveled partout: I find I am becoming much more practical and less impressionable; he left me his address and asked me to come see him (with friend) and promised that he could discuss all sorts of philosophy & literature; I nodded and said “Bien sûr” a few times until he finally left and I turned with joy to my apple tart, resolving never to take that invitation up; I am beginning to have a sense of what is questionable & what is not; when someone is vague about jobs and where money comes from and mentions painting or writing history books (this man was trying to prove something to contradict the encyclopedias about the discovery of India!) that is suspect: an attempt at coverup by arty arabesques. Probably Dmitri was a hairdresser & this man a waiter! Stopped by Seine in sun to sketch a harlequin-style kiosque which had taken my fancy near the Louvre: one of those round poster-stands in green with a mosque-like roof and colored pastel posters all around: talked with two dull Americans in army and a precocious little boy of fourteen named Bonalumi-Francis who was amazed that I wasn’t married and having babies at my age and who told me to be careful because a man with a car was waiting until he left to come approach me; at last I had enough of this bright little chap and was glad when he left after telling me he would be happy to come to England if I paid his way! I was turning back to finish my little sketch of which I was fonder than any I’d done when I heard a voice behind me saying “Isn’t that nice!” and whirled to see, of all people, blond blue-eyed solid Gary Haupt. I fell upon him with cries of joy, he seemed so honest and damn solid, and we crowed little exclamations about how we’d looked all over for each other; I’d just given up hope of meeting him that day, after endless walks along the Seine. I was so grateful for his simple presence & friendly escort, after wielding off men as dusk came. We had cognac on a windy corner with Joseph Shork & a friend of his, both of whom I disliked as dull heavy unintuitive plodding Americans on Fulbrights: no subtlety at all (and I don’t think this is because Gary said Joe judged me superficial & flighty on the ship: without having even met me!!!) Then we walked down the Boulevard Raspail, had dinner (good salmon and buttered spinach at a very bad-service restaurant called Lutetia or something where the side benches were slippery leather that made it almost impossible to sit up without shooting under the table) and went to an absorbing if oversimplified surrealist movie in technicolor at the small Studio Montparnasse: “Rěves a Vendre”: a sequence of dreams inspired by artists like Max Ernst, Man Ray, Ferdinand Léger, Calder and Marcel Duchamp: a mixture of droll (girl with the prefabricated heart sequence) and disturbing: blue man and ladders dissolving; smoking telephones and echo voices in red velvet baroque rooms. Fiery debate afterwards, by members of Film group; stayed a bit to watch & listen: where in America would there be such critical passion? Both mind and flame? I’m sure an American college audience would have gone out like contented cows, feeling comfortably avant garde without questions. Citron pressé in little modern bar nextdoor and métro home.
Thursday: March 29: Lovely elated day with Gary, very gay and light: walked to Ile de La Cité and sat on bench before the Palais de la Justice for hours in the gray chill air sketching the Tabac and café opposite: ironically, his sketch – light and whimsical and airy, and mine – heavy and structured in simple shaded geometric forms and designs: funny, but both reverted to deeper side of personality more outwardly suitable to the other; ate salad shell with cold salmon and mayonnaisse & ham & cheese & wine at Pam-Pam. Walked liltingly through Tuileries and bought the most lovely enormous brilliant-blue balloon from a brown wrinkled gypsy-woman in the park who reminded me of the one in Mary Poppins who sold balloons that had peoples names on them and took them flying through the air; There was only one blue one, and it was huge and round as the world; caught in a loose mesh of red string with little tri-color streamers and a long string; walked everywhere, along quias to Notre Dame and everybody looked and marveled and smiled; sat in park by Seine and watched children playing while eating icecream cones: they all looked up wide eyed and reached up and smiled and said “Ballon.” Orange Pressé (real one with orange squeezed in front of us) at café & dinner at “Sérail” on Rue de la Harpe; where I dined so often and happily with Richard right next to our hotel with the blue velvet room the color of my balloon; grew increasingly sad and tearful through shishkebab and wine supper and felt rather sorry for myself; left Gary at hotel and felt: what more can I do to conquer all the places we’ve been and make them mine and not just ours? I’d tried two restaurants and the play, all symbolic: at least I’ve got my own sunny yellow room full of rosebuds: it is mine and I am as complete in it as could be without a man; happy as could be without my man. I am riding the horses one by one and breaking them in.
Friday: March 30:
A strange day passing through ecstasy unto certain sorrow and the raining of questions sad and lonely on the dark rooftops. Met Gary early & walked to Pont Royal where I met Tony, feeling very chic in my white pleated skirt and aqua sweater & red shoes & red & white polka dotted hairscarf; citronnade at kiosque and he was gay and quite sweet; a little more subdued with his sister gone; we took the metro to Pigalle and got out in the hot sun by the honkeytonk square and began climbing the little narrow roads to the top of Montmartre; the shops were dark stenchful holes and reeked of garlic and cheap tobacco. In the sun there was a magic of decay: scabbed pastel posters, leprous umber walls, flowers sprouting out of filth. Climbed Rue Vieuville & series of steeply angled steps to Place du Tertre which was chock full of tourists and bad bad artists in various stances doing charcoal portraits or muddy paintings of the domes of Sacre Coeur; Tony and I walked about and looked at paintings until a small man asked if he could cut my silouhette “comme un cadeau”, so I stood in the middle of the square in the middle of Montmartre and gazed at the brilliant restaurants in the middle of a gathering crowd which ohed and ahed and which was just what the little man wanted to attract customers: so I got a free silhouette and by this time Tony was putting his arm around my waist when we walked and I could feel that bristling barbed wit mellowing: we stood in front of Sacré Coeur in the sun watching the tourist busses grunt up the hill, full of deadpan people sheltered by sunproof-windproof-bulletproof-glass domes; inside the church it was cool and dark as a well with red patches of light from the windows: Tony described Chartres a bit and some rather gratifying sensitivity came out. Had exquisite lunch just off commercial square where they were serving mobs under the trees and playing violin-lilty tunes, where the man with picture frame and paper flowers around his head was yelling and doing stunts. We avoided all this in the shady grove of the peaceful “Auberge du Coucou” and had fine salade de tomate, delectable veau sautéed in mushrooms and buttery potatoes and bottle of iced white wine which sent us floating into the afternoon like birds, all airy and gay; Tony bought me a bunch of violets and was increasingly attentive and I mellowed to fondness. I left all thought of the American Express in the pale gold aura of wine and felt most beautiful and slightly damned; Tony mentioned the Rue du Bac métro stop and I thought: well, so he comes back to the hotel; I felt that the day was like a shimmering shell of pearliness and must be treated lightly like a soap-bubble, so floated to the hotel and Tony showed no signs of farewell; so up the steps to the room where it was cool and we washed and lay down, he had grown more beautiful and golden to me all afternoon and I was only wishful and happy for this time with him for he was growing more rare and gentle, so we lay together and it was good and kissed gently and it was good and his skin was smooth and taut and his body was lean and sweetly put together, so shirt by slip we undressed and embraced until we were quite naked and I began to want him; but when I went off to the bathroom for a few minutes he reflected and later froze when I came back and it was I think partly because he felt I was compex and he lived in England and did not want involvings, and I was sorry a little because I had come so close to having him there in the dusk and his body was so right and lovely and strong and golden and he dawned gentle and sweet: I imagine he used to be like this when he was young, or when he played the piano; Oxford I think has ruined him, with that snob brash conceit and consciousness of going with the Rothschild girl and the “toast of Oxford”, Lady Tweedsmuir’s daughter Ann. So he dressed and with the layers put on his decorum. We walked out in the blue dusk along the wet misty Seine and had tea in a modern bar on the quai where a mysterious woman in little high creamy leather boots; slacks and a brilliant red shirt with enormous sleeves came for supper with the dearest girl in costume & mantilla with an enormous teddy bear and Spanish doll; then the métro to the Champs Elysees where we saw Grace Kelley in Hitchcock’s fine technicolor film/ “To Catch a Theif” which brought back Nice and the Riviera with bangs of color to mind: our winter vacation, Sassoon’s and mine. Another horse. Then Tony and I walked together back down the Champs past the circle of lighted fountains in the Rond Point to the miraculous blaze of the Place which was illuminated for the first time, with the Crillon & Marine buildings framing the Eglise Madeleine and the shining splashing dolphin fountains and the horses galloping that Richard sent me on his lovely winter postcard, and the sheer white shaft of the obelisk with the eyes and birds and heiroglyphs. On along the Seine and to the hotel where I knew it was the end, and he kissed my hand sweetly like the faint touch of the violet petals and I said nobly and integrally: “It has been a lovely day,” and left him. I am sure, with the gift of Englishmen, he will dismiss this as an “episode” which has no relation to the high society life. I do not think I would like his friends or his kind of Oxford; he is right, oddly enough, when he casually says he is a bitchy chap; he is all for appearances, what money can buy (ironically enough); and family name. I think I am almost lucky to remember him sweet and golden and honest, for he was dear and honest, although he will sheathe this day in the false decorum of his superficial ethic as he sheathed himself in shirt and tie. So it was goodbye. There is no more there.
And again I ask myself: why? I must be so careful, and am going back to Cambridge and that gossip. I shall not go to London to descend on Ted; he has not written; he can come to me, and call me Sylvia not Shirley. And I shall be chaste and subdued this term and mystify those gossipmongers by work and seriousness!
Thursday: April 5: Outside all morning the rain came down on the gray rooftops and I lay quiet and warm in the shaded room of greenish light dreaming and wondering on the workings of this machine infernale, how much is chance and accident, how much a combination of that working on the will and the will working back to hack out its own happenings and how much is the will attracting all events like iron filings to a magnet which some days is strong, some days weak. How many times in my dreams have I met my dark marauder on the stairs, at a turning of the street, waiting on my bright yellow bed, knocking at the door, sitting only in his coat and hat with a small smile on a park bench; already he has split into many men; even while we hope, the blind is drawn down and the people turned to shadows acting in a private room beyond our view. Decisions are being made as we sit here, isolated, with the foolish mistake about our mail, all the letters of death and rejection, or love and money gone flying home to England to mock and wait and leave us fumbling curious with the wormeaten questions. I must live in utter ignorance for a week; and last night, stopping to talk with Giovanni who had been waiting late with the poem in Italian which he translated then to French about the mounds of wheat and ice breaking, I realized – with what clarity, what fulness, – that I only want to go home now, to the home where I have hewn out my peace and my sanctuary: not America but my Whitstead, my gable and my garden: there I can rest and grow fresh as morning milk and find again my faith and innocence, that innocence which is faith, belief in the rightnesses of these encounters with other men and other monuments where one must take wrong turnings if only to find new ways; faugh, such nobility, such moralizing: try the concrete, name names.
Somehow last night it came over me with terror and a kind of deadness and despair that I did not want to go to Germany or to Italy with that kind bewildered and how lucky (ironic that, he comes to more and more fortune) boy beside me at the ballet: the ballet of Phèdre, my phèdre with her dark flame and that billowing cloak of scarlet which was blood offered and blood spilt: the blond and proud Hippolyte with his green-maned horses, the pink and white fay Aricie, the stylized Neptune with his pale face and trident, and all those blue-green waves: can I be good for a week? no acidity, or lemon looks for those laborious puns and endless family trees: oh my God, what is it what is it? Why does one not learn to love and live with the boring daily bread that is good for one, that is comfortable, convenient and available? like Brave New World. Ha. So one can suffer or become Shakespeare? Ironically, I suffer and do not become Shakespeare – and it is my life which is passing, my life which is smutched and battered and running, each heartbeat; each clocktick being a fatal subtraction from the total number I was allowed in the beginning: or, not being such a complete fatalist, from the variety of numbers I was allowed to work from: how fortunate that we are blind. And yet where is there to go? I would profit by a week alone, a week reading and writing: my God, at this moment I wonder if I could have gone to live with Ted, but that is London and no place to wash (oh who cares) and the Boddy might paunchily properly lurch up the stairs at any moment. And I do not know Ted enough to know how he talks, how he talks: one night when I return? I shall send the postcard of Rousseau’s Snakecharmer with a question. One night is not enough. I must think much; perhaps he will not answer and that will be simpler. But now I am a vagabond: I cannot wait for Richard longer, it has been two weeks, and he must have felt my strong will; London is Ted or too expensive.
So I leave early tomorrow morning with Gordon for Munich; can I make it good, without cursing myself for living off him? He wanted it this way, with me as a friend, and I must remember how the night before we met so accidentally and luckily in the American Express that I was too sick of small dark sleazy men at my elbow to venture out for supper; and Giovanni came then with his consolation and banana and drawers of dates and warm milk to comfort; how kind he has been. I considered sleeping with him even, but yesterday was in a way glad Gordon came, because Giovanni and I are so tender and kind to each other now that it is good; strange, how he and Lucio both have wives and children, and now they live here and with mistresses. With Whitstead barred, life has now become a rather terrible smorgasbord of different capitals and men who go with them: London and Ted, Paris and the dark absence of Richard and comfort and conversation of Giovanni, and Rome and the journey with Gordon/ And now having coldly discussed finances all morning with Gordon and with growing coldness having weighed in a frenzy of chill a sudden temptation to tell him I wasn’t going and discussed these things also over ham and eggs and red wine in a little cafe around the corner, too much has been done already to break away: I do want to see Venice and Florence and Rome even if only in five short days, for I shall know where and how I wish to return. How it cries inside me now, and the words of was it Verlaine sing over and over: “Il pleure sur les toits comme il pleure dans mon coeur.” And I would rather be alone with my typewriter than with Gordon, and his stupid stammering French and inability to make himself understood here, his utter lack of rapport, of that intuitive sensing of mood, disgusts me, yes, does. I feel the waiter in the bar smiling, charging too much and asking Gordon if he wants milk; I grinned sidewise at him for that one; with Gordon I am much more a worse kind of self; yet quoi faire?
Quoi faire? Is it some dread lack which makes my alternatives so deadly? Some feeble dependence on men which makes me throw myself on their protection and care and tenderness? Ha, but I have been alone in Pairs for two weeks, and there are no girls here, so except for Gary (whom I scrupulously said goodbye to and even gave up Chartres, because it would have been a kind of sacrilege without Richard or alone, for Gary even with his avowed sensitivity is so plodding in his manner that it kills nightingales) and Tony, whom I scared with my need and volcanic will, I have gone about alone; (Giovanni was a discovery and mine and a kind of triumph: it has been fine with him, just warm and tender enough and all that good talk in French and his friends and the little Epicerie where he took me after my tears for wonderful crush of human warmth and communion, and a soupplate of good stew and potatoes and cheese and red wine in the little crowded place.) – – – except for those dates and times which had two enchanting days (balloon and Don Camillo and Snow White with Gary; Montmartre and silouhette and Sacre Coeur and delectable veal and white wine with Tony) I have fought and conquered a desolate city. I think of him ever; is it because he is vanished that the dark image haunts me? Remember that time dancing in Nice – – – his slight undisciplined body: he can’t swim, he is weak in a certain sense, he will never play baseball or teach math: that orange juice and broiled chicken solidity is utterly lacking and it is what Gary has and Gordon has (in the story: Dark Marauder, there will be a great contrast between the delicate snail-and-wine taste of Richard and the plain steak-steak and potatoes-with-nothing-done-to-them taste of Gary). And so I have been alone here, really, and my room might be taken back by the vacationing student if I tried to stay, and Giovanni might become a little difficult; and Richard might never come, and it is cold and wet now.
Yes, all the auguries are for departure: the Paris air grows cold and I shiver always and my white lingerie slowly turns gray and there is no bathtub; all gathers and with cold edges and blunt corners urges me to go; the train and the view will be a kind of solace; if only if only I can be civil to Gordon: why not? there is all that mess and scorn between us, and no bitterness ever entirely vanishes between the rejector and the rejected. I paid my complete train-fare through from Paris to Rome in francs today and got that over; the plane ticket is formidable, and I shall pay part of that in England if he needs it. I feel used enough to having men pay for my food, and even hotels, and feel that Gordon chose to do this for my company, with the understanding it was to be merely friendly company; so that I am not in debt, except I shall try to rise above this heavy despair with my Richard deserting me and going and 3 weeks being long enough for a very dangerous woman or a few which he has found, and my not being really angry only sorrowful with those great dark tearbrimming eyes of reproach which I know I could not stand to look at if the position were reversed; at the ballet last night I saw us entertaining in a large room hung with chandeliers and he chucked a pretty little blonde pixie under the chin the way he did me that first time with an almost insulting appreciation and challenge; my God, if he would come today I would stay here with him. I see him now even, back in Paris, calmly reading my letters and thinking: poor hysterical wronged one, and living with his Swiss girl, or Spanish girl. Could he ever be faithful in the way I so desperately need? Ah, and could I ever be colossal enough to accept him if he weren’t without becoming a martyr or, worse, deliberately offering myself up to other men as a sacrifice in retaliation and desperation, a dive to destruction? Perhaps this is all in the cards, those cards with just so many kings and queens and just so many choices!
And now the alternatives revolve in a fatal dance and with the mailing of my postcards mother will know I am going to Rome and Ted will know I want to see him if only for one night (oh, I just want to be with him: he is the only one who can walk high as Richard and for that I even submit to all the Boddy pigeyes and sniveling gossip and talk and even Jane and the chosen ones knowing; for that I even let him call me Shirley the wrong name and know he does not know how much I could rip past her and be tender and wise, for now I am become too easy too soon and he will not bother to discover); shall I go to Jugoslavia with him? Or will I curse myself for deserting Elly and Spain? I miss a good woman; how could I dare think Elly was promiscuous in her attraction of the easy dark kind of men, when in fact I give with more to the strong clean lovely kinds; Ted can break walls; I could telegraph him tonight if I could come home to London and live there till Whitstead: the danger would be of his visitors, and he will perhaps have some, of his talk: “I tell you she just came and camped in my bed”; I lust for him, and in my mind I am ripped to bits by the words he welds and wields: oh; God; there is so little time; tonight all must happen; before 7 when I meet Gordon: he just now is the safest way: I would conquer two other countries (and however much I want to linger in Italy; is it not better to see five days and come back hungry to stay longer, having foraged first under a man’s protection, still off season, able to explore without pickups?) ah yes. If Richard would come back now: I could devour pride and go to his place and ask the concierge if there was word: he might be there, hiding. He might be coming tomorrow; there might be a message (all of which I shall find out about too late). I could stay a few days and go back to England from here.
It is the historic moment; all gathers and bids me to be gone from Paris. I forgot how Gordon was another kind of Gary, only a little better. If I stayed in Paris: and so in medis res, Giovanni walks in and hears all about these terrible sadistic urges to destruction and in the medias res of a very warm and tender time I hear footsteps and that is my fate and a gentle knock which should be if fate were kind which should be only isn’t isn’t isn’t and so my decision is sealed and the alternatives go revolving and snickering in their little whistling void with orange peels and blue Gauloise wrappers and it is decided and he says come on come on and so we come on.