It was about half-past five on an October afternoon when Marya Zelli
came out of the Café Lavenue, which is a dignified and comparatively
expensive establishment on the Boulevard du Montparnasse. She had been
sitting there for nearly an hour and a half, and during that time she
had drunk two glasses of black coffee, smoked six caporal cigarettes
and read the week’s _Candide_.
Marya was a blonde girl, not very tall, slender-waisted. Her face was
short, high cheek-boned, full-lipped; her long eyes slanted upwards
towards the temples and were gentle and oddly remote in expression.
Often on the Boulevards St Michel and Montparnasse shabby youths would
glide up to her and address her hopefully in unknown and spitting
tongues. When they were very shabby she would smile in a distant manner
and answer in English:
‘I’m very sorry; I don’t understand what you are saying.’
She crossed the boulevard and turned down the Rue de Rennes. As she
walked along she was thinking: ‘This street is very like the Tottenham
Court Road--own sister to the Tottenham Court Road.’
The idea depressed her, and to distract herself she stopped to look at
a red felt hat in a shop window. Someone behind her said:
‘Hello, Madam Zelli, what are you doing in this part of the world?’
Miss Esther De Solla, tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered, stood looking
downwards at her with a protective expression. When Marya answered:
‘Hello! Nothing. I was feeling melancholy, to tell you the truth,’ she
proposed:
‘Come along to my studio for a bit.’
Miss De Solla, who was a painter and ascetic to the point of
fanaticism, lived in a street at the back of the Lion de Belfort. Her
studio was hidden behind a grim building where the housewives of the
neighbourhood came to wash their clothes. It was a peaceful place,
white-walled, smelling strongly of decayed vegetables. The artist
explained that a _marchande des quatre saisons_ kept her stock in the
courtyard, and that as the woman was the concierge’s sister-in-law,
complaints were useless.
‘Though the smell’s pretty awful sometimes. Sit near the stove. It’s
cold today.’
She opened a massive cupboard and produced a bottle of gin, another of
vermouth, two glasses and a cardboard case containing drawings.
‘I bought these this morning. What do you think of them?’
Marya, helped by the alcohol, realized that the drawings were
beautiful. Groups of women. Masses of flesh arranged to form intricate
and absorbing patterns.
‘That man’s a Hungarian,’ explained Miss De Solla. ‘He’s just over
the way in the house where Trotzky used to live. He’s a discovery of
Heidler’s. You know Heidler, the English picture-dealer man, of course.’
Marya answered: ‘I don’t know any of the English people in Paris.’
‘Don’t you?’ said Miss De Solla, shocked. Then she added hastily: ‘How
perfectly lovely for you!’
‘D’you think so?’ asked Marya dubiously.
Miss De Solla assured her that it was.
‘I do think that one ought to make an effort to get away from the
Anglo-Saxons in Paris, or what on earth is the good of being here at
all? And it isn’t an easy thing to do, either. Not easy for a woman,
anyhow. But, of course, your husband’s French, isn’t he?’
‘No,’ said Marya. ‘He’s a Pole.’
The other looked across at her and thought: ‘Is she really married to
the Zelli man, I wonder? She’s a decorative little person--decorative
but strangely pathetic. I must get her to sit to me.’
She begun to argue that there was something unreal about most English
people.
‘They touch life with gloves on. They’re pretending about something
all the time. Pretending quite nice and decent things, of course. But
still....’
‘Everybody pretends,’ Marya was thinking. ‘French people pretend every
bit as much, only about different things and not so obviously. She’ll
know that when she’s been here as long as I have.’
‘As long as I have.’ The four years she had spent in Paris seemed to
stretch into infinity.
‘English people ...’ continued Miss De Solla in a dogmatic voice.
The drone of a concertina sounded from the courtyard of the studio. The
man was really trying to play ‘Yes, we have no bananas’. But it was an
unrecognizable version, and listening to it gave Marya the same feeling
of melancholy pleasure as she had when walking along the shadowed
side of one of those narrow streets full of shabby _parfumeries_,
second-hand book-stalls, cheap hat-shops, bars frequented by
gaily-painted ladies and loud-voiced men, midwives’ premises....
Montparnasse was full of these streets and they were often inordinately
long. You could walk for hours. The Rue Vaugirard, for instance. Marya
had never yet managed to reach the end of the Rue Vaugirard, which
was a very respectable thoroughfare on the whole. But if you went far
enough towards Grenelle and then turned down side streets....
Only the day before she had discovered, in this way, a most attractive
restaurant. There was no _patronne_, but the _patron_ was beautifully
made up. Crimson was where crimson should be, and rose-colour where
rose-colour. He talked with a lisp. The room was full of men in caps
who bawled intimacies at each other; a gramophone played without
ceasing; a beautiful white dog under the counter, which everybody
called Zaza and threw bones to, barked madly.
But Stephan objected with violence to these wanderings in sordid
streets. And though Marya considered that he was extremely
inconsistent, she generally gave way to his inconsistencies and spent
hours alone in the bedroom of the Hôtel de l’Univers. Not that she
objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven,
quantities of books. All sorts of books.
Still, there were moments when she realized that her existence, though
delightful, was haphazard. It lacked, as it were, solidity; it lacked
the necessary fixed background. A bedroom, balcony and _cabinet de
toilette_ in a cheap Montmartre hotel cannot possibly be called a
solid background.
Miss De Solla, who had by this time pretty well exhausted her
fascinating subject, stopped talking.
Marya said: ‘Yes, but it’s pretty lonely, not knowing any English
people.’
‘Well,’ Miss De Solla answered, ‘if that’s what you’re pining for.
What are you doing this evening? Come along to Lefranc’s and meet the
Heidlers. You must have heard of Heidler.’
‘Never.’
‘Hugh Heidler?’ protested Miss De Solla.
She proceeded to explain Mr Heidler, who was a very important person in
his way, it seemed. He made discoveries; he helped the young men, he
had a flair.
‘I believe they intend to settle in France for good now--Provence in
the winter and Montparnasse for the rest of the year--you know the sort
of thing. He’s had a kind of nervous breakdown. Of course, people say--’
Miss De Solla stopped.
‘I like Mrs Heidler anyway; she’s a very sensible woman; no nonsense
there. She’s one of the few people in Montparnasse whom I do like. Most
of them.... But abuse isn’t any good, and it’s better to be clean than
kind.’
‘Much better!’ agreed Marya.
‘Not that they are mad on baths or nailbrushes, either,’ said the
other. ‘Never mind.’ She got up and lit a cigarette. ‘Mrs Heidler
paints, too. It’s pretty awful to think of the hundreds of women round
here painting away, and all that, isn’t it?’
She looked round her austere studio, and the Jewess’s hunger for the
softness and warmth of life was naked in her eyes.
‘Well,’ said Marya, ‘I’d like to come, but I must telephone to Stephan,
to my husband. Where can I telephone from?’
‘From the Café Buffalo. Wait a minute, I’ve got to stand on a chair to
put my gas out. My shark of a landlady won’t put in electric light.
Mind you, I’m fond of this place, though the smell is really awful
sometimes. That head over there doesn’t look so bad in this light, does
it?’ said Miss De Solla, wistfully.
* * * * *
Lefranc’s is a small restaurant half-way up the Boulevard du
Montparnasse. It is much frequented by the Anglo-Saxons of the quarter,
and by a meagre sprinkling of Scandinavians and Dutch.
The _patron_ is provincial and affable. The _patronne_, who sits
beaming behind the counter, possesses a mildly robust expression and
the figure and coiffure of the nineties; her waist goes in, her hips
come out, her long black hair is coiled into a smooth bun on the top of
her round head. She is very restful to the tired eye.
The Heidlers were sitting at the table at the end of the room.
‘Good evening,’ said Mrs Heidler in the voice of a well-educated young
male. Her expression was non-committal.
‘_Encore deux vermouths-cassis!_’ said Mr Heidler to the waitress.
They were fresh, sturdy people. Mr Heidler, indeed, was so very sturdy
that it was difficult to imagine him suffering from a nervous breakdown
of any kind whatever. He looked as if nothing could break him down.
He was a tall, fair man of perhaps forty-five. His shoulders were
tremendous, his nose arrogant, his hands short, broad and so plump
that the knuckles were dimpled. The wooden expression of his face was
carefully striven for. His eyes were light blue and intelligent, but
with a curious underlying expression of obtuseness--even of brutality.
‘I expect he’s awfully fussy,’ thought Marya.
Mrs Heidler was a good deal younger than her husband, plump and dark,
country with a careful dash of Chelsea, and wore with assurance a
drooping felt hat which entirely hid the upper part of her face. She
sat in silence for some time listening to Miss De Solla’s conversation
about the dearth of studios, and then suddenly remarked to Marya:
‘H. J. and I have quite made up our minds that eating is the greatest
pleasure in life. Well, I mean, it is, isn’t it? At any rate, it’s one
of the few pleasures that never let you down.’
Her eyes were beautiful, clearly brown, the long lashes curving
upwards, but there was a suspicious, almost a deadened look in them.
‘I’m a well-behaved young woman,’ they said, ‘and you’re not going to
catch me out, so don’t think it.’ Or perhaps, thought Marya, she’s just
thoroughly enjoying her pilaff.
Miss De Solla, looking more ascetic than ever, agreed that eating was
jolly. They discussed eating, cooking, England and, finally, Marya,
whom they spoke of in the third person as if she were a strange animal
or at any rate a strayed animal--one not quite of the fold.
* * * * *
‘But you are English--or aren’t you?’ asked Heidler.
He was walking along the boulevard by her side, his head carefully
thrown back.
Marya assured him that she was. ‘But I left England four years ago.’
He asked: ‘And you’ve been all the time in Paris?’ Then, without
waiting for her to answer, he added fussily: ‘Where have Lois and Miss
De Solla got to? Oh, there they are! I’ll just go and see if Guy is in
here, Lois.’
He disappeared into the Café du Dôme.
‘It’s a dreadful place, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Heidler.
Marya, looking through the door at the mournful and tightly packed
assembly, agreed that it was rather dreadful.
Heidler emerged, puffing slightly, and announced in a worried tone:
‘He’s not here. We’ll sit on the terrace and wait for him.’
The terrace was empty and cold, but without argument they all sat down
and ordered coffee and liqueur brandies.
Marya, who was beginning to shiver, drank her brandy and found herself
staring eagerly and curiously at Mrs Heidler.
A strong, dark woman, her body would be duskily solid like her face.
There was something of the earth about her, something of the peasant.
Her mouth was large and thick-lipped, but not insensitive, and she had
an odd habit of wincing when Heidler spoke to her sharply. A tremor
would screw up one side of her face so that for an instant she looked
like a hurt animal.
‘I bet that man is a bit of brute sometimes,’ thought Marya. And as she
thought it, she felt his hand lying heavily on her knee.
He looked kind, peaceful and exceedingly healthy. His light, calm eyes
searched the faces of the people passing on the Boulevard Montparnasse,
and his huge hand lay possessively, heavy as lead, on her knee.
Ridiculous sort of thing to do. Ridiculous, not frightening. Why
frightening?
She made a cautious but decided movement and the hand was withdrawn.
‘It’s very cold here,’ said Heidler in his gentle voice. ‘Let’s go on
to the Select Bar, shall we?’
* * * * *
At a little after midnight Marya got back to the Hôtel de l’Univers,
Rue Cauchois. She mounted five flights of steep, uncarpeted stairs,
felt her way along an unlighted passage, flung her bedroom door open
and embraced her husband violently. He looked so thin after the
well-fed Heidlers.
‘_Tiens, Mado_,’ he said. ‘You’re very late.’
The room was large and low-ceilinged, the striped wallpaper faded to
inoffensiveness. A huge dark wardrobe faced a huge dark bed. The rest
of the furniture shrank away into corners, battered, and apologetic. A
narrow door on the left led into small, very dark dressing-room. There
was no carpet on the floor.
‘I’ve just this minute got back,’ remarked Stephan.
Marya said: ‘Well, was everything all right?’ And when he answered,
‘Yes,’ she asked no further questions.
Stephan disliked being questioned and, when closely pressed, he
lied. He just lied. Not plausibly or craftily, but impatiently and
absent-mindedly. So Marya had long ago stopped questioning. For she was
reckless, lazy, a vagabond by nature, and for the first time in her
life she was very near to being happy.