Back STreet (58 page)

It would have been comparatively a simple matter to go up to this youth and banter some francs out of him; so many of the cocottes, to say nothing of the crones, were constantly at him. One quickly learned to beg alms in the spirit of carnival, for fear the specter of need should show its head, offend your patron, and turn him away, cold.

The crones did it. The cocottes did it. Even the old men. But somehow, for the life of her, hovering there night after night, in the brown dress with the fresh malines scarf, the laid-on circles of her rouge that might have been placed on her cheekbones with a rubber stamp, the porcelain smile, the slightly palsied habit of her head to shake, the neckwattles held by a brown velvet ribbon, like pea-vines to their stick, she could not bring herself to out-and-out ask. Hover, yes! Hover, until the tables were half deserted and of weariness the lids hung over her eyes like bat-flesh.

The blond son of an Alabama patent-medicine king, said to be already keeping the gilt-haired danseuse of a Paris music hall, who played his stakes at the baccarat tables in the rooms where his youth forbade him, had a way, toward the end of an evening, of tossing a handful of coins straight up into the air, and laughing with his big, firm white teeth at the pecking crows.

It was part of the spirit of carnival to scramble for coins that would buy giblets.… One evening, in the tussle, a man’s heel came down on her thumb and caused the blood to spurt out. That was pretty bad. Not the wound, which healed rapidly, but somehow the picture she made to herself, on all fours, her back bare and with a ridge down its middle, which she could never quite reach with a powder puff, fingers groping among cuspidors and table legs and feet-of-the-evening, for rolling coins.

Ugh! That was somehow, in a remote and highly unpleasant manner, equivalent to the lapse she had allowed herself the day
she had actually permitted some neighbor children (it might easily have been Papatou) to see her pick chicken feet out of a refuse can. Simply must not let such things happen. Never again. The blond boy from Alabama could toss his coins. Let the others crawl in that horrible panorama of carnival.

The thing to do was to pull herself out of her dilemma. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and yet the days passed, and out of that dwindling four hundred francs from the cuff links and wallet, it was difficult to risk next day’s security by planting so much as another franc piece, the hand simply refusing to dig down for one, into the dilapidated finery of her evening bag.

Now, if only that sweet freckled American youngster over there, who always seemed to have so much spending money, and who played with the delight of a child, could even suspect that by staking her to a hundred francs he might be starting her on—Nonsense! How could he suspect? Merely because she stood across the table from him, smiling. He never smiled back, chiefly because he never looked.

Perhaps the reason youth no longer looked back was out of deference for the little habit she had taken on lately, of nodding her head. She had noticed it quite suddenly one day at the Casino, while standing opposite a long mirror. Why, her head was shaking! She was nodding at herself without meaning to nod at herself. Silly, quit it! But on she went nodding. Nervousness. Old Mrs. Winninger, on Baymiller Street, had been a great nodder. Palsy. Well, cut it out. Then for days she did not nod again, and suddenly, there she would be at it again, without knowing. She took to wearing a tiny jet ornament on the side of her hair. It was easier to tell when the nodding began, by the twinkling of the jet.

Well, anyway, if one of those nice kids, without her having to go up to him, would toss her a stake. You simply dared not go down into the narrowing wad in that old sequined evening bag. You dared not.…

Curious, though, how comparatively little frightened, deep down, she was! Walter had once told her the legend of a man lost in the snows of an Alpine pass, who had dared, within half a mile of a
lighted hut, to let himself become pleasantly sleepy, and, succumbing, had perished. The thing to be was frightened—unsleepy. The thing to keep yourself was frightened. Act! But how?

One day, sitting with the Babe in the sag of her skirt and looking from her steep window into the courtyard where moved all day and had their being, the strangers of that strange world down there, an idea did auger through into her mind.

Why not present herself in just the plain facts of her dilemma to the American consul? Silly, there would be no consul at a place like Aix. Well, better still, why not appeal to some of the dozens of Americans now registered, at the height of the season, at all the better hotels of the town? Not necessarily at the Bernasçon. God, not there, or even the Splendide, but there were dozens of wealthy Americans registered at the Europa or Astoria. Go to one of the well-fixed Americans, the man of the family if possible, or, if need be, his wife. Simple. To the point. I am an American woman, stranded abroad. A loan of two hundred dollars would put me on my feet in no time, and enable me to return to my home in the States. Even if I do not put it to you very desperately, I am in need. Will you help me?

Why, of course! Time and time again, to women at the track, to women in the flat building, she had given help on lesser provocation. Anybody would. An American who thought nothing of losing thrice that sum at a table would be quick to come to the aid of a countrywoman. Somewhere in Paris, or was it Berlin, there was an organization for just that purpose. If only one knew just where. But there was humiliation about that, and besides one needed credentials. Here, in a gaming resort, anyone was likely to find himself in a dilemma! The thing to do was to get into something chic, feel chic, be chic, and go boldly. Time and time again, she rehearsed it, aloud before the mirror, as Walter used to. I am an American woman, temporarily stranded abroad. Please forgive what may seem a presumption, but I know you will understand. A loan of a hundred or two—

No use! No use. The spas were riddled with that type. The women in mended finery temporarily on their uppers. It took a
something, to go find out these Americans visiting abroad, the very parents of the youngsters who were cutting their teeth at the
boule
tables, that she did not have in her makeup. She could no more, when it came right down to the doing, have presented to one of them her predicament! Why, the very words would have congealed upon her lips, and there was that fear, which was beginning to haunt her these days, that her head might begin to quiver. That would be terrible. Get your head set back square on your shoulders—then go!

The Babe had begun to regard her, when her head started to shake, with something a little mystified lying in his milky old eyes. Once or twice he tried to lick her cheeks. It was not pleasant, though, licking a cheek that was filled with tremor, because after each attempt he sat back and just looked his mystification.

“I won’t do it anymore, Baby. I know it is horrid. Lookie, darling. See. Muvver will wear the little jet aigret, and the minute it begins to bob, Muvver will know. Don’t mind Muvver when she nods, darling. Lots of people do it. Mrs. Winninger—healthy as anything, used to nod her head, too. Just that little nervous way. Horrid. I’ll quit.”

That was the beginning of a week that ended in a way for which, by all processes of deduction, she should have been prepared, and yet somehow, when it came, the breath was literally knocked out of her.

Literally that, because she had refused to so much as take stock of the dwindling contents of her purse. Something would happen. Something had to happen. Height of the season and all that. People did not remain in dilemmas like this. And then, when it came, this Saturday morning, to hurrying down the street for giblets to prepare for the Babe, there were exactly forty centimes in her purse when she opened it to dig for a franc. Literally, then, her heart missed its beat, or whatever anatomical hiatus is ascribable to the shock that takes place under such external stimulus. In the bright light of a faultless morning, an array of soiled, worthless-looking coins, such as one is in the habit of tossing to roadside youngsters, stared up from her palm.

“
Encore—dix centimes
,” said the chef of the restaurant, handing
her the sackful of leavings and scraps. “
Dix centimes,
” and held up his ten bloody fingers.

“
Chez moi
. No more. Left money at home.
Argent—chez—moi
. Bring tomorrow,” she mouthed at him, with her lips folding back against her chilly teeth with all the amiability she could muster. “Next time.…”

Then something happened, which sickened, enraged her, so that she began to shout profane sentences which she did not know she harbored.

The chef opened the paper cornucopia, extracted three or four of the scraps of meat, tossed them into a refuse pail, and handed her the remainder.

“Dirty, stingy Frenchie! Wop! Piker! Stingy-gut! Damn dog! We Americans may be money-mad, but we’re not money-mean. Ugh, you dirty little sardine, you’re not worth canning!”

God, that was common. That was fishwife. The chef had yelled back at her, too, with an obscene gesture. That was fishwife! Hurrying along the street, the giblets beginning to dampen through the newspaper, reaction set in that continued to horrify her. How could I have? It’s all right for these fishwives around here. They’re forever hollering. But me. How could I have? The dirty little oily sardine. Taking those few scraps out of the mouth of the Babe. It isn’t that I care about those few scraps. There will be more and plenty. The Babe will eat better food before he dies than that old sardine ever saw! It’s just that it scares one that life can be mean, like that. Taking those scraps from the Babe. I should have thrown them back at him. Dared not—those scraps—

They boiled up though, with a warm well-flavored smell that permeated the room. Just as good, it struck her suddenly, as the general smells that permeated the hallways and courtyard of the pension. Americans were squeamish. Why, it was well known that in France, even before the war, the peasantry bought horse-meat, ate it, liked it. Just a matter of what you were accustomed to. A place on Vine Street, in Cincinnati, used to specialize in eels. Rather share of the Babe’s giblets, stewed up nicely with onion, than eat eels!

For her lunch, that day, she ate a portion of the giblets, helping
it down with generous chews off a
petit pain
and plenty of hot sweetened coffee. It went down, and, as she put it, stayed down; and that afternoon, meticulously keeping the day to normal, and filling in every second of it with some chore of the hands, she bathed the Babe, rolled him dry, played an absurd game which he loved, of squatting on all fours and making lunges at him, combed up his front-hair into a pompon above his eyes, which she screwed with red ribbon, and, seating herself by the window to watch, sent him down, through the corridors, alone, to the courtyard.

It all happened so suddenly that trying fantastically to live it over, in its horror, in its terror, in its heartbreak, it seemed to her that instead of leaping out of his kennel where he had become unchained, Marchand, as she stood leaning out of the window, looking down, must have sprung from her own forehead, and landed straight, sure, and fanged, on top of the prowling little Babe, whose nose had been snooping along a fence edge.

All the world, as he landed there, became the delirium of barks. The short sharp terrified barkings of the Babe. The long tunnels of barkings from the wolf, Marchand. Their duet—
ye-ye—woof—woof
, and suddenly the distant bayings of the town’s dogs, everywhere. Her own voice shouting. Then the instantaneous miracle of many voices, many figures, her own cries streaming behind her like a waving banner, as she tore through the halls. Dust. A Babylonian moment of the Babe on his back, his mouth open, a red furnace flecked with white foam. The wolf-dog, whose teeth were fastened in the just-combed wool underneath the Babe’s throat, and who would not be beaten off by Ra-Ta-Plan with a broom!

“Coming, Baby!”

There was simply no end to the corridors; the stairs; the darkness which she knew inch by inch, flying up to try and impede her with the hallucination of steps and doors, where there were none. “Coming, Baby!”

There was quite a circle in the courtyard; and, of all people, the little hunchback tobacconist from next door, who could not have weighed ninety pounds, was standing, holding off the black
Marchand, from whose jowls red spittle was dropping; and there in the center of the yard and the silence, with his head curled under him, and his body risen to a hump, the Babe!

“
Tenez! Ne touche pas!
Madame, do not touch! He eez in pain. He weel bite!”

“Not me. Let me go!”

“Madame!”

“Oh, my God, he snapped at me, didn’t he! That’s because—his throat—look—his throat—he has two mouths! That red is where his throat is ripped—his head is halfway off! It will drag if he walks. What makes him jump that way—like a chicken without its head! Baby—my sweet—let me go. God damn you—strangers you—you’d see him starve for ten sous. When he gets well, I’ll sick him on you—dirty bitch Marchand—do you hear—you all—I hate you—let me go—”

“Madame, you must compose yourself. It will be more merciful to keel—”

“Who are you? What do you want? What do you know about anything?”

“I am a guest in zee next pension. I have seen the black dog in the kennel jump—I follow—”

“Oh, my God! Something is wrong here. Some conspiracy among you. No, you don’t! No, you don’t! He’s mine. See, if you don’t believe me. Now you touch him, if you dare, the way I’m touching him. Bah—you—you all—enemies—strangers—skinflints—leave me alone—”

The Babe had not snapped this time, even as she scooped him, bloodred about the head, into her arms, and could feel through her lap, against her legs, against her breasts, against her arms, the quick warm wet of his blood.

But his head! His head kept dangling over the crook of her elbow, and the Babe had two mouths. His own gasping one with the lolling tongue, and the red gash across the throat, half-severing his head.