Tropic of Cancer (28 page)

She flared up at this, got theatrical about it. And after a lot of gushing she commenced to whine and slobber. “I’m crazy,” she blubbered. “And you’re crazy too. You want me to sleep with you, and I don’t want to sleep with you.” And then she began to rave about her lover, the movie director whom she had seen on the dance floor. That’s why she had to run away from the place. That’s why she took drugs and got drunk every night. That’s why she threw herself in the Seine. She babbled on this way about how crazy she was and then suddenly she had an idea. “Let’s go to Bricktop’s!” There was a man there whom she knew… he had promised her a job once. She was certain he would help her.

“What’s it going to cost?” asked Fillmore cautiously.

It would cost a lot, she let him know that immediately. “But listen, if you take me to Bricktop’s, I promise to go home with you.” She was honest enough to add that it might cost him five or six hundred francs. “But I’m worth it! You don’t know what a woman I am. There isn’t another woman like me in all Paris… “

“That’s what
you
think!” His Yankee blood was coming to the fore. “But I don’t see it. I don’t see that you’re worth anything. You’re just a poor crazy son-of-a-bitch. Frankly, I’d rather give fifty francs to some poor French girl; at least they give you something in return.”

She hit the ceiling when he mentioned the French girls. “Don’t talk to me about those women! I hate them! They’re stupid… they’re ugly… they’re mercenary. Stop it, I tell you!”

In a moment she had subsided again. She was on a new tack. “Darling,” she murmured, “you don’t know what I look like when I’m undressed. I’m
beautiful
!” And she held her breasts with her two hands.

But Fillmore remained unimpressed. “You’re a bitch!” he said coldly. “I wouldn’t mind spending a few hundred francs on you, but you’re crazy. You haven’t even washed your face. Your breath stinks. I don’t give a damn whether you’re a princess or not… I don’t want any of your high-assed Russian variety. You ought to get out in the street and hustle for it. You’re no better than any little French girl. You’re not as good. I wouldn’t piss away another sou on you. You ought to go to America—that’s the place for a bloodsucking leech like you…”

She didn’t seem to be at all put out by this speech. “I think you’re just a little afraid of me,” she said.

“Afraid of you? Of
you?
”

“You’re just a little boy,” she said. “You have no manners. When you know me better you will talk differently… Why don’t you try to be nice? If you don’t want to go with me tonight, very well. I will be at the Rond-Point tomorrow between five and seven. I like you.”

“I don’t intend to be at the Rond-Point tomorrow, or any other night! I don’t want to see you again… ever. I’m through with you. I’m going out and find myself a nice little French girl. You can go to hell!”

She looked at him and smiled wearily. “That’s what you say now. But wait! Wait until you’ve slept with me. You don’t know yet what a beautiful body I have. You think the French girls know how to make love… wait! I will make you crazy about me. I like you. Only you’re uncivilized. You’re just a boy. You talk too much…”

“You’re crazy,” said Fillmore. “I wouldn’t fall for you if you were the last woman on earth. Go home and wash your face.” He walked off without paying for the drinks.

In a few days, however, the princess was installed. She’s a genuine princess, of that we’re pretty certain. But she has the clap. Anyway, life is far from dull here. Fillmore has bronchitis, the princess, as I was saying, has the clap, and I have the piles. Just exchanged six empty bottles at the Russian
épicerie
across the way. Not a drop went down my gullet. No meat, no wine, no rich game, no women. Only fruit and paraffin oil, arnica drops and adrenalin ointment. And not a chair in the joint that’s comfortable enough. Right now, looking at the princess, I’m propped up like a pasha. Pasha! That reminds me of her name: Macha. Doesn’t sound so damned aristocratic to me. Reminds me of
The Living Corpse.

At first I thought it was going to be embarrassing, a
ménage à
trois,
but not at all. I thought when I saw her move in that it was all up with me again, that I should have to find another place, but Fillmore soon gave me to understand that he was only putting her up until she got on her feet. With a woman like her I don’t know what an expression like that means; as far as I can see she’s been standing on her head all her life. She says the revolution drove her out of Russia, but I’m sure if it hadn’t been the revolution it would have been something else. She’s under the impression that she’s a great actress, we never contradict her in anything she says because it’s time wasted. Fillmore finds her amusing. When he leaves for the office in the morning he drops ten francs on her pillow and ten francs on mine; at night the three of us go to the Russian restaurant down below. The neighborhood is full of Russians and Macha has already found a place where she can run up a little credit. Naturally ten francs a day isn’t anything for a princess; she wants caviar now and then and champagne, and she needs a complete new wardrobe in order to get a job in the movies again. She has nothing to do now except to kill time. She’s putting on fat.

This morning I had quite a fright. After I had washed my face I grabbed her towel by mistake. We can’t seem to train her to put her towel on the right hook. And when I bawled her out for it she answered smoothly: “My dear, if one can become blind from that I would have been blind years ago.”

And then there’s the toilet, which we all have to use. I try speaking to her in a fatherly way about the toilet seat. “Oh zut!” she says. “If you are so afraid I’ll go to a café.” But it’s not necessary to do that, I explain. Just use ordinary precautions. “Tut tut!” she says, “I won’t sit down then… I’ll stand up.”

Everything is cockeyed with her around. First she wouldn’t come across because she had the monthlies. For eight days that lasted. We were beginning to think she was faking it. But no, she wasn’t faking. One day, when I was trying to put the place in order, I found some cotton batting under the bed and it was stained with blood. With her everything goes under the bed: orange peel, wadding, corks, empty bottles, scissors, used condoms, books, pillows… She makes the bed only when it’s time to retire. Most of the time she lies abed reading her Russian papers. “My dear,” she says to me, “if it weren’t for my papers I wouldn’t get out of bed at all.” That’s it precisely! Nothing but Russian newspapers. Not a scratch of toilet paper around—nothing but Russian newspapers with which to wipe your ass.

Anyway, speaking of her idiosyncrasies, after the menstrual flow was over, after she had rested properly and put a nice layer of fat around her belt, still she wouldn’t come across. Pretended that she only liked women. To take on a man she had to first be properly stimulated. Wanted us to take her to a bawdy house where they put on the dog and man act. Or better still, she said, would be Leda and the swan: the flapping of the wings excited her terribly.

One night, to test her out, we accompanied her to a place that she suggested. But before we had a chance to broach the subject to the madam, a drunken Englishman, who was sitting at the next table, fell into a conversation with us. He had already been upstairs twice but he wanted another try at it. He had only about twenty francs in his pocket, and not knowing any French, he asked us if we would help him to bargain with the girl he had his eye on. Happened she was a Negress, a powerful wench from Martinique, and beautiful as a panther. Had a lovely disposition too. In order to persuade her to accept the Englishman’s remaining sous, Fillmore had to promise to go with her himself soon as she got through with the Englishman. The princess looked on, heard everything that was said, and then got on her high horse. She was insulted. “Well,” said Fillmore, “you wanted some excitement—you can watch me do it!” She didn’t want to watch him—she wanted to watch a drake. “Well, by Jesus,” he said, “I’m as good as a drake any day… maybe a little better.” Like that, one word led to another, and finally the only way we could appease her was to call one of the girls over and let them tickle each other… When Fillmore came back with the Negress her eyes were smoldering. I could see from the way Fillmore looked at her that she must have given an unusual performance and I began to feel lecherous myself. Fillmore must have sensed how I felt, and what an ordeal it was to sit and look on all night, for suddenly he pulled a hundred franc note out of his pocket and slapping it in front of me, he said: “Look here, you probably need a lay more than any of us. Take that and pick someone out for yourself.” Somehow that gesture endeared him more to me than anything he had ever done for me, and he had done considerable. I accepted the money in the spirit it was given and promptly signaled to the Negress to get ready for another lay. That enraged the princess more than anything, it appeared. She wanted to know if there wasn’t anyone in the place good enough for us except this Negress. I told her bluntly NO. And it was so—the Negress was the queen of the harem. You had only to look at her to get an erection. Her eyes seemed to be swimming in sperm. She was drunk with all the demands made upon her. She couldn’t walk straight any more—at least it seemed that way to me. Going up the narrow winding stairs behind her I couldn’t resist the temptation to slide my hand up her crotch; we continued up the stairs that way, she looking back at me with a cheerful smile and wiggling her ass a bit when it tickled her too much.

It was a good session all around. Everyone was happy. Macha seemed to be in a good mood too. And so the next evening, after she had had her ration of champagne and caviar, after she had given us another chapter out of the history of her life, Fillmore went to work on her. It seemed as though he was going to get his reward at last. She had ceased to put up a fight any more. She lay back with her legs apart and she let him fool around and fool around and then, just as he was climbing over her, just as he was going to slip it in, she informs him nonchalantly that she has a dose of clap. He rolled off her like a log. I heard him fumbling around in the kitchen for the black soap he used on special occasions, and in a few moments he was standing by my bed with a towel in his hands and saying—”can you beat that? that son-of-a-bitch of a princess has the clap!” He seemed pretty well scared about it. The princess meanwhile was munching an apple and calling for her Russian newspapers. It was quite a joke to her. “There are worse things than that,” she said, lying there in her bed and talking to us through the open door. Finally Fillmore began to see it as a joke too and opening another bottle of Anjou he poured out a drink for himself and quaffed it down. It was only about one in the morning and so he sat there talking to me for a while. He wasn’t going to be put off by a thing like that, he told me. Of course, he had to be careful… there was the old dose which had come on in Le Havre. He couldn’t remember any more how that happened. Sometimes when he got drunk he forgot to wash himself. It wasn’t anything very terrible, but you never knew what might develop later. He didn’t want any one massaging his prostate gland. No, that he didn’t relish. The first dose he ever got was at college. Didn’t know whether the girl had given it to him or he to the girl; there was so much funny work going on about the campus you didn’t know whom to believe. Nearly all the coeds had been knocked up some time or other. Too damned ignorant… even the profs were ignorant. One of the profs had himself castrated, so the rumor went…

Anyway, the next night he decided to risk it—with a condom. Not much risk in that, unless it breaks. He had bought himself some of the long fish skin variety—they were the most reliable, he assured me. But then, that didn’t work either. She was too tight. “Jesus, there’s nothing abnormal about me,” he said. “How do you make that out? Somebody got inside her all right to give her that dose. He must have been abnormally small.”

So, one thing after another failing, he just gave it up altogether. They lie there now like brother and sister, with incestuous dreams. Says Macha, in her philosophic way: “In Russia it often happens that a man sleeps with a woman without touching her. They can go on that way for weeks and weeks and never think anything about it. Until paff! once he touches her… paff! paff! After that it’s paff, paff, paff!”

All efforts are concentrated now on getting Macha into shape. Fillmore thinks if he cures her of the clap she may loosen up. A strange idea. So he’s bought her a douche bag, a stock of permanganate, a whirling syringe and other little things which were recommended to him by a Hungarian doctor, a little quack of an abortionist over near the Place d’Aligre. It seems his boss had knocked up a sixteen-year-old girl once and she had introduced him to the Hungarian; and then after that the boss had a beautiful chancre and it was the Hungarian again. That’s how one gets acquainted in Paris—genito-urinary friendships. Anyway, under our strict supervision, Macha is taking care of herself. The other night, though, we were in a quandary for a while. She stuck the suppository inside her and then she couldn’t find the string attached to it. “My God!” she was yelling, “where is that string? My God! I can’t find the string!”

“Did you look under the bed?” said Fillmore.

Finally she quieted down. But only for a few minutes. The next thing was: “My God! I’m bleeding again. I just had my period and now there are
gouttes
again. It must be that cheap champagne you buy. My God, do you want me to bleed to death?” She comes out with a kimono on and a towel stuck between her legs, trying to look dignified as usual. “My whole life is just like that,” she says. “I’m a neurasthenic. The whole day running around and at night I’m drunk again. When I came to Paris I was still an innocent girl. I read only Villon and Baudelaire. But as I had then 300,000 Swiss francs in the bank I was crazy to enjoy myself, because in Russia they were always strict with me. And as I was even more beautiful then than I am now, I had all the men falling at my feet.” Here she hitched up the slack which had accumulated around her belt. “You mustn’t think I had a stomach like that when I came here… that’s from all the poison I was given to drink… those horrible
apéritifs
which the French are so crazy to drink… So then I met my movie director and he wanted that I should play a part for him. He said I was the most gorgeous creature in the world and he was begging me to sleep with him every night. I was a foolish young virgin and so I permitted him to rape me one night. I wanted to be a great actress and I didn’t know he was full of poison. So he gave me the clap… and now I want that he should have it back again. It’s his fault that I committed suicide in the Seine… Why are you laughing? Don’t you believe that I committed suicide? I can show you the newspapers… there is my picture in all the papers. I will show you the Russian papers some day… they wrote about me wonderfully… But darling, you know that first I must have a new dress. I can’t vamp this man with these dirty rags I am in. Besides, I still owe my dressmaker 12,000 francs…”