Giovanni's Room (5 page)

“Maybe,” I said, “it would look better if our glasses were empty.”

We finished our drinks. I set down my glass.

“Barman?” I called.

“The same?”

“Yes.” He started to turn away. “Barman,” I said, quickly, “we would like to offer you a drink, if we may.”

“
Eh
,
bien!
” said a voice behind us, “
c'est fort ća! Not
only have you finally—thank heaven!—corrupted this great American football player, you use him now to corrupt
my
barman.
Vraiment
, Jacques!
At your age!
”

It was Guillaume standing behind us, grinning like a movie star, and waving that long white handkerchief which he was never, in the bar at any rate, to be seen without. Jacques turned, hugely delighted to be accused of such rare seductiveness, and he and Guillaume fell into each other arms like old theatrical sisters.

“
Eh bien
,
ma chérie
,
comment vas-tu?
I have not seen you for a long time.”

“But I have been awfully busy,” said Jacques.

“I don't doubt it! Aren't you ashamed,
vieille folle?
”

“
Et toi?
You certainly don't seem to have been wasting your time.”

And Jacques threw a delighted look in the direction of Giovanni, rather as though Giovanni were a valuable racehorse or a rare bit of china. Guillaume followed the look and his voice dropped.

“
Ah
,
ça
,
mon cher
,
c'est strictement du business
,
comprends-tu?
”

They moved a little away. This left me surrounded, abruptly, with an awful silence. At last I raised my eyes and looked at Giovanni, who was watching me.

“I think you offered me a drink,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “I offered you a drink.”

“I drink no alcohol while I work, but I will take a Coca-Cola.” He picked up my glass. “And for you—it is the same?”

“The same.” I realized that I was quite happy to be talking with him and this realization made me shy. And I felt menaced since Jacques was no longer at my side. Then I realized that I would have to pay, for this round anyway; it was impossible to tug Jacques' sleeve for the money as though I were his ward. I coughed and put my ten thousand franc note on the bar.

“You are rich,” said Giovanni, and set my drink before me.

“But no. No. I simply have no change.”

He grinned. I could not tell whether he grinned because he thought I was lying or because he knew I was telling the truth. In silence he took the bill and rang it up and carefully counted out my change on the bar before me. Then he filled his glass and went back to his original position at the cash register. I felt a tightening in my chest.

“
À la votre
,” he said.

“
À la votre
.” We drank.

“You are an American?” he asked at last.

“Yes,” I said. “From New York.”

“Ah! I am told that New York is very beautiful. Is it more beautiful than Paris?”

“Oh, no,” I said, “
no
city is more beautiful than Paris—”

“It seems the very suggestion that one
could
be is enough to make you very angry,” grinned Giovanni. “Forgive me. I was not trying to be heretical.” Then, more soberly and as though to appease me, “You must like Paris very much.”

“I like New York, too,” I said, uncomfortably aware that my voice had a defensive ring, “but New York is very beautiful in a very different way.”

He frowned. “In what way?”

“No one,” I said, “who has never seen it can possibly imagine it. It's very high and new and electric—exciting.” I paused. “It's hard to describe. It's very—twentieth century.”

“You find that Paris is
not
of this century?” he asked with a smile.

His smile made me feel a little foolish. “Well,” I said, “Paris is
old
, is many centuries. You feel, in Paris, all the time gone by. That isn't what you feel in New York—” He was smiling. I stopped.

“What do you feel in New York?” he asked.

“Perhaps you feel,” I told him, “all the time to come. There's such power there, everything is in such movement. You can't help wondering—
I
can't help wondering—what it will all be like—many years from now.”

“Many years from now? When we are dead and New York is old?”

“Yes,” I said. “When everyone is tired, when the world—for Americans—is not so new.”

“I don't see why the world is so new for Americans,” said Giovanni. “After all, you are all merely emigrants. And you did not leave Europe so very long ago.”

“The ocean is very wide,” I said. “We have led different lives than you; things have happened to us there which have never happened here. Surely you can understand that this would make us a different people?”

“Ah! If it had only made you a different people!” he laughed. “But it seems to have turned you into another species. You are not, are you, on another planet? For I suppose that would explain everything.”

“I admit,” I said with some heat—for I do not like to be laughed at—“that we may sometimes give the impression that we think we are. But we are not on another planet, no. And neither, my friend, are you.”

He grinned again. “I will not,” he said, “argue that most unlucky fact.”

We were silent for a moment. Giovanni moved to serve several people at either end of the bar. Guillaume and Jacques were still talking. Guillaume seemed to be recounting one of his interminable anecdotes, anecdotes which invariably pivoted on the hazards of business or the hazards of love, and Jacques' mouth was stretched in a rather painful grin. I knew that he was dying to get back to the bar.

Giovanni placed himself before me again and began wiping the bar with a damp cloth. “The Americans are funny. You have a funny sense of time—or perhaps you have no sense of time at all, I can't tell. Time always sounds like a parade
chez vous
—a
triumphant
parade, like armies with banners entering a town. As though, with enough time, and that would not need to be so very much for Americans,
n'est-ce pas?
” and he smiled, giving me a mocking look, but I said nothing. “Well then,” he continued, “as though with enough time and all that fearful energy and virtue you people have, everything will be settled, solved, put in its place. And when I say everything,” he added, grimly, “I mean all the serious, dreadful things, like pain and death and love, in which you Americans do not believe.”

“What makes you think we don't? And what do you believe?”

“I don't believe in this nonsense about time. Time is just common, it's like water for a fish. Everybody's in this water, nobody
gets out of it, or if he does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That's all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn't care.”

“Oh, please,” I said. “I don't believe
that
. Time's hot water and we're not fish and you can choose to be eaten and also not to eat—not to eat,” I added quickly, turning a little red before his delighted and sardonic smile, “the little fish, of course.”

“To choose!” cried Giovanni, turning his face away from me and speaking, it appeared, to an invisible ally who had been eavesdropping on this conversation all along. “To
choose
!” He turned to me again. “Ah, you are really an American.
J'adore votre enthousiasme!
”

“I adore yours,” I said, politely, “though it seems to be a blacker brand than mine.”

“Anyway,” he said mildly, “I don't see what you can do with little fish except eat them. What else are they good for?”

“In my country,” I said, feeling a subtle war within me as I said it, “the little fish seem to have gotten together and are nibbling at the body of the whale.”

“That will not make them whales,” said Giovanni. “The only result of all that nibbling will be that there will no longer be any grandeur anywhere, not even at the bottom of the sea.”

“Is
that
what you have against us? That we're not grand?”

He smiled—smiled like someone who, faced with the total inadequacy of the opposition, is prepared to drop the argument. “
Peut-être.
”

“You people are impossible,” I said. “You're the ones who killed grandeur off, right here in this city, with paving stones. Talk about little fish—!” He was grinning. I stopped.

“Don't stop,” he said, still grinning. “I am listening.”

I finished my drink. “You people dumped all this
merde
on us,” I said, sullenly, “and now you say we're barbaric because we stink.”

My sullenness delighted him. “You're charming,” he said. “Do you always speak like this?”

“No,” I said, and looked down. “Almost never.”

There was something in him of the coquette. “I am flattered then,” he said, with a sudden, disconcerting gravity, which contained, nevertheless, the very faintest hint of mockery.

“And you,” I said, finally, “have you been here long? Do you like Paris?”

He hesitated a moment and then grinned, suddenly looking rather boyish and shy. “It's cold in the winter,” he said. “I don't like that. And Parisians—I do not find them so very friendly, do you?” He did not wait for my answer. “They are not like the people I knew when I was younger. In Italy we are friendly, we dance and sing and make love—but these people,” and he looked out over the bar, and then at me, and finished his Coca-Cola, “these people, they are cold, I do not understand them.”

“But the French say,” I teased, “that the Italians are too fluid, too volatile, have no sense of measure—”

“Measure!” cried Giovanni, “ah, these people and their measure! They measure the gram, the centimeter, these people, and they keep piling all the little scraps they save, one on top of the other, year in and year out, all in the stocking or under the bed—and what do they get out of all this measure? A country which is falling to pieces, measure by measure, before their eyes. Measure. I do not like to offend your ears by saying all the things I am sure these people measure before they permit themselves any act whatever. May I offer you a drink now,” he asked suddenly, “before the old man comes back? Who is he? Is he your uncle?”

I did not know whether the word “uncle” was being used euphemistically or not. I felt a very urgent desire to make my position clear but I did not know how to go about it. I laughed. “No,” I said, “he is not my uncle. He is just somebody I know.”

Giovanni looked at me. And this look made me feel that no one
in my life had ever looked at me directly before. “I hope he is not very dear to you,” he said, with a smile, “because I think he is silly. Not a bad man, you understand— just a little silly.”

“Perhaps,” I said, and at once felt like a traitor. “He's not bad,” I added quickly, “he's really a pretty nice guy.” That's not true, either, I thought, he's far from being a nice guy. “Anyway,” I said, “he's certainly not very dear to me,” and felt again, at once, this strange tightening in my chest and wondered at the sound of my voice.

Carefully now, Giovanni poured my drink. “
Vive l'Amérique
,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, and lifted my glass, “
vive le vieux continent
.”

We were silent for a moment.

“Do you come in here often?” asked Giovanni suddenly.

“No,” I said, “not very often.”

“But you will come,” he teased, with a wonderful, mocking light on his face, “more often
now
?”

I stammered: “Why?”

“Ah!” cried Giovanni. “Don't you know when you have made a friend?”

I knew I must look foolish and that my question was foolish too: “So soon?”

“Why no,” he said, reasonably, and looked at his watch, “we can wait another hour if you like. We can become friends then. Or we can wait until closing time. We can become friends
then
. Or we can wait until tomorrow, only that means that you must come in here tomorrow and perhaps you have something else to do.” He put his watch away and leaned both elbows on the bar. “Tell me,” he said, “what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. What are they waiting for?”

“Well,” I said, feeling myself being led by Giovanni into deep
and dangerous water, “I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel.”

“In order to make
sure
!” He turned again to that invisible ally and laughed again. I was beginning, perhaps, to find his phantom a little unnerving but the sound of his laughter in that airless tunnel was the most incredible sound. “It's clear that you are a true philosopher.” He pointed a finger at my heart. “And when you have waited—has it made you sure?”

For this I could simply summon no answer. From the dark, crowded center of the bar someone called “
Garçon!
” and he moved away from me, smiling. “You can wait now. And tell me how sure you have become when I return.”

And he took his round metal tray and moved out into the crowd. I watched him as he moved. And then I watched their faces, watching him. And then I was afraid. I knew that they were watching, had been watching both of us. They knew that they had witnessed a beginning and now they would not cease to watch until they saw the end. It had taken some time but the tables had been turned; now I was in the zoo, and they were watching.