Berthe woke him bringing a great bowl of chocolate, two golden
_croissants_ and a _brioche_. She pulled out the little cupboard in
which the _pot au chambre_ lived, placed the tray on its top, smiled
at him, her red cheeks bulging, and could not help glancing at the
_brioche_.
Had he slept well?
Very well, thank you. And he had dreamed.
Berthe leaned over the foot of his narrow green bed. She put her two
hands over her breasts swelling out roundly under her white waist and
took a deep breath.
One dreamed of one's girl friend, doubtless?
Flecker broke a _croissant_ in two and plunged one blunt end into the
chocolate. He took a hungry bite, scratching among his wild red locks.
"I dreamed of you." When he smiled one corner of his mouth went up
higher than the other, and his eyes became black slits. "I couldn't
tell you what it was I dreamed," he added, looking in his bowl.
The radiance on Berthe's round face suggested that he did not need to
tell her. She squeezed his foot, which stuck up naked from the edge of
the covers.
"Be still!" she rebuked him, "you are crazy!"
Even after she had gone Flecker felt her eyes on him, it had been such
a tropic glance.... He came leisurely to the _brioche_.
Now a _croissant_ is something like a crescent of rolled pie crust,
but a _brioche_ is brown on the outside and yellow inside. It is not a
cake, though the French act as if it were, but a very nice bun. It has
a toppled over appearance.
When one is living in the _Quartier_ on the ten-dollar bills
occasionally sent by one's uncle in Waterville, Minn., one may have
_croissants_ for breakfast and sometimes _brioches_ but never both at
once.
Flecker broke his _brioche_ and ate, refilled his cup from the
chocolate pitcher. He felt lazy and warm and almost full. When he had
finished the second half of the _brioche_ he was full. He sighed. What
was his nightmare about? Something ugly and familiar crawling through
his window.... He had forgotten the face was that of the witch!
As he pulled on his corduroy pants he decided the lie he had told
Berthe was white enough. It made her happy, gave her something to think
about--it would fill him another time with _brioches_, and his virtue,
such as it was, remained, corporeally, at least, none the worse....
Here was Wednesday going fast. There were only Thursday, Friday and
Saturday forenoon left!
The morning he spent at the _atelier_ next the skinny little English
girl who looked too often at him with her blue eyes; lunched alone,
dismally, expensively, at the _Café de Lilas_, hoping there to see the
witch; in the afternoon played pool with a Peruvian wood engraver and
made a sketch in the gardens; dined at his _pension_, opposite the
red-nosed priest,--in the evening spent two borrowed francs to see a
Hollywood comedy in a theater near the _Gare de Montparnasse_.
He saw Rosie in the café and Belash in the life class. Both were
cordial, both obviously abstained from mention of the witch story.
They looked at Flecker with a sad, doubtful expression that profoundly
irritated him.
In between and during the apparent activities of the day he thought
about the witch, and about wanting to be happy forever....
Happiness, he decided, did not mean content, or glee, or merriment,
or satisfaction. It did not mean joy. It might include any or all of
these, but it meant more than each and more than all....
Flecker played pool with the Peruvian. Red ball into the corner pocket.
Click. Roll on. Roll ON. If it had hit the cushion just a bit harder,
he said to himself, it would have gone pop into the pocket and then
the blue ball over there, and the yellow, and--well, sweep the table,
everybody in the _Café du Dome_ clustered around looking, mouths open,
eyebrows up in unanimous awe.
Play another game? There, he won the break. He moved around the table
with stiff, short steps, pulling his chin up from his collar, yawning.
Click. Click. Click!! While the Peruvian nervously watched, passing his
palm over and over his shining black hair, Flecker went on without a
miss.
The last was a long shot. Flecker drove his cue ball hard. It hopped
the cushion, shot through the air and struck the _patron_ (whom
Flecker owed thirty francs) on the head. He fell without genuflexion
like a tree, or a tower. Around him formed a crowd, from the dark
mass of which white faces turned to stare at Flecker. A _gendarme_
shouldered his way through the door....
Having scored six the Peruvian grounded his cue. It was Flecker's turn
again. He did not notice but stood staring into space, his blue eyes
wide open, fixed.
"_Assassin!_" shouted the imaginary _gendarme_.
"_Jouez!_" shouted the real Peruvian.
Flecker started awake and played and missed. The game bored him
suddenly.
Lighting a limp cigarette, salvaged from a corner of his pocket, he
puffed a cloud and asked: "What would you do if you were happy all the
time?"
"Smile," said the Peruvian. "But," he added cleverly, after a moment,
"a persistent smile is a grin."
"What would you say happiness is?"
"_Comment?_ I haven't even had my lunch and already you start talk like
that? How should I know?" He shot and missed. "I'll tell you what it
isn't! It isn't an onion!"
The game was on Flecker. When he smiled at the _patron_ for still
another extension of credit, and got it, he remembered how he had
imaginatively killed the generous fellow with the cue ball, and was
ashamed.
The sun was too bright. The noise of motor traffic in the boulevard was
deafening. They stopped at the curb under a young tree with leaves like
emeralds.
"Happiness," shouted the Peruvian wood engraver, as if the question had
just been put, "is having hope, and no pain, and hardly any----"
A taxi hooted in front of them and Flecker lost the word.
"What?" he yelled, "hardly any what?"
"Fear!"
Happiness is more than _that_, thought Flecker, walking away toward the
Gardens.
Setting his easel near a blossoming pear tree which stood crucified
fanwise against a lattice, Flecker's mind found and turned over a
strange idea.
Was _he_ happy?
With all his unfulfilled desires?
With holes in his shoes?
No hat?
No letter from Waterville?
Of course he was not. And yet there was something about his feeling of
being _in_, being a part of this high, wide, golden day.... He bent his
flaming head over his color-box, holding his breath, trying to be and
to realize in the same moment.
It would be strange if one wished for happiness and so remained as one
was! That would be a curious sort of disappointment!