Two M.P.'s passed outside the window. Andrews watched the yellow pigskin
revolver cases until they were out of sight. He felt joyfully secure
from them. The waiter, standing by the door with a napkin on his arm,
gave him a sense of security so intense it made him laugh. On the marble
table before him were a small glass of beer, a notebook full of ruled
sheets of paper and a couple of yellow pencils. The beer, the color of
topaz in the clear grey light that streamed in through the window, threw
a pale yellow glow with a bright center on the table. Outside was the
boulevard with a few people walking hurriedly. An empty market wagon
passed now and then, rumbling loud. On a bench a woman in a black
knitted shawl, with a bundle of newspapers in her knees, was counting
sous with loving concentration.
Andrews looked at his watch. He had an hour before going to the Schola
Cantorum.
He got to his feet, paid the waiter and strolled down the center of the
boulevard, thinking smilingly of pages he had written, of pages he was
going to write, filled with a sense of leisurely well-being. It was a
grey morning with a little yellowish fog in the air. The pavements were
damp, reflected women's dresses and men's legs and the angular
outlines of taxicabs. From a flower stand with violets and red and pink
carnations irregular blotches of color ran down into the brownish grey
of the pavement. Andrews caught a faint smell of violets in the smell
of the fog as he passed the flower stand and remembered suddenly that
spring was coming. He would not miss a moment of this spring, he told
himself; he would follow it step by step, from the first violets. Oh,
how fully he must live now to make up for all the years he had wasted in
his life.
He kept on walking along the boulevard. He was remembering how he
and the girl the soldier had called Jeanne had both kindled with
uncontrollable laughter when their eyes had met that night in the
restaurant. He wished he could go down the boulevard with a girl like
that, laughing through the foggy morning.
He wondered vaguely what part of Paris he was getting to, but was too
happy to care. How beautifully long the hours were in the early morning!
At a concert at the Salle Gaveau the day before he had heard Debussy's
Nocturnes and Les Sirenes. Rhythms from them were the warp of all his
thoughts. Against the background of the grey street and the brownish fog
that hung a veil at the end of every vista he began to imagine rhythms
of his own, modulations and phrases that grew brilliant and faded,
that flapped for a while like gaudy banners above his head through the
clatter of the street.
He noticed that he was passing a long building with blank rows of
windows, at the central door of which stood groups of American soldiers
smoking. Unconsciously he hastened his steps, for fear of meeting an
officer he would have to salute. He passed the men without looking at
them.
A voice detained him. “Say, Andrews.”
When he turned he saw that a short man with curly hair, whose face,
though familiar, he could not place, had left the group at the door and
was coming towards him. “Hello, Andrews.... Your name's Andrews, ain't
it?”
“Yes.” Andrews shook his hand, trying to remember.
“I'm Fuselli.... Remember? Last time I saw you you was goin' up to the
lines on a train with Chrisfield.... Chris we used to call him.... At
Cosne, don't you remember?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, what's happened to Chris?”
“He's a corporal now,” said Andrews.
“Gee he is.... I'll be goddamned.... They was goin' to make me a
corporal once.”
Fuselli wore stained olive-drab breeches and badly rolled puttees; his
shirt was open at the neck. From his blue denim jacket came a smell of
stale grease that Andrews recognised; the smell of army kitchens. He had
a momentary recollection of standing in line cold dark mornings and of
the sound the food made slopping into mess kits.
“Why didn't they make you a corporal, Fuselli?” Andrcws said, after a
pause, in a constrained voice.
“Hell, I got in wrong, I suppose.”
They were leaning against the dusty house wall. Andrews looked at his
feet. The mud of the pavement, splashing up on the wall, made an even
dado along the bottom, on which Andrews scraped the toe of his shoe up
and down.
“Well, how's everything?” Andrews asked looking up suddenly.
“I've been in a labor battalion. That's how everything is.”
“God, that's tough luck!”
Andrews wanted to go on. He had a sudden fear that he would be late. But
he did not know how to break away.
“I got sick,” said Fuselli grinning. “I guess I am yet, G. O. 42. It's a
hell of a note the way they treat a feller... like he was lower than the
dirt.”
“Were you at Cosne all the time? That's damned rough luck, Fuselli.”
“Cosne sure is a hell of a hole.... I guess you saw a lot of fighting.
God! you must have been glad not to be in the goddam medics.”
“I don't know that I'm glad I saw fighting.... Oh, yes, I suppose I am.”
“You see, I had it a hell of a time before they found out. Courtmartial
was damn stiff... after the armistice too.... Oh, God! why can't they let
a feller go home?”
A woman in a bright blue hat passed them. Andrews caught a glimpse of
a white over-powdered face; her hips trembled like jelly under the blue
skirt with each hard clack of her high heels on the pavement.
“Gee, that looks like Jenny.... I'm glad she didn't see me....” Fuselli
laughed. “Ought to 'a seen her one night last week. We were so dead
drunk we just couldn't move.”
“Isn't that bad for what's the matter with you?”
“I don't give a damn now; what's the use?”
“But God; man!” Andrews stopped himself suddenly. Then he said in a
different voice, “What outfit are you in now?”
“I'm on the permanent K.P. here,” Fuselli jerked his thumb towards the
door of the building. “Not a bad job, off two days a week; no drill,
good eats.... At least you get all you want.... But it surely has been
hell emptying ash cans and shovelling coal an' now all they've done is
dry me up.”
“But you'll be goin' home soon now, won't you? They can't discharge you
till they cure you.”
“Damned if I know.... Some guys say a guy never can be cured....”
“Don't you find K.P. work pretty damn dull?”
“No worse than anything else. What are you doin' in Paris?”
“School detachment.”
“What's that?”
“Men who wanted to study in the university, who managed to work it.”
“Gee, I'm glad I ain't goin' to school again.”
“Well, so long, Fuselli.”
“So long, Andrews.”
Fuselli turned and slouched back to the group of men at the door.
Andrews hurried away. As he turned the corner he had a glimpse of
Fuselli with his hands in his pockets and his legs crossed leaning
against the wall behind the door of the barracks.