The taxi rounded the statue of the inventor of the semaphore engaged in doing same, and turned up the Boulevard Raspail, and I sat back to let that part of the ride pass. The Boulevard Raspail always made dull riding. It was like a certain stretch on the P.L.M. between Fontainebleau and Montereau that always made me feel bored and dead and dull until it was over.
I suppose it is some association of ideas that makes those dead places in a journey. There are other streets in Paris as ugly as the Boulevard Raspail. It is a street I do not mind walking down at all. But I cannot stand to ride along it. Perhaps I had read something about it once. That was the way Robert Cohn was about all of Paris. I wondered where Cohn got that incapacity to enjoy Paris. Possibly from Mencken. Mencken hates Paris, I believe. So many young men get their likes and dislikes from Mencken.
The taxi stopped in front of the Rotonde. No matter what café in Montparnasse you ask a taxi-driver to bring you to from the right bank of the river, they always take you to the Rotonde. Ten years from now it will probably be the Dôme. It was near enough, anyway. I walked past the sad tables of the Rotonde to the Select. There were a few people inside at the bar, and outside, alone, sat Harvey Stone. He had a pile of saucers in front of him, and he needed a shave.
‘Sit down,’ said Harvey, ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing? Just looking for you.’
‘Been out to the races?’
‘No. Not since Sunday.’
‘What do you hear from the States?’
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know. I’m through with them. I’m absolutely through with them.’
He leaned forward and looked me in the eye.
‘Do you want to know something, Jake?’
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t had anything to eat for five days.’
I figured rapidly back in my mind. It was three days ago that Harvey had won two hundred francs from me shaking poker dice in the New York Bar.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘No money. Money hasn’t come,’ he paused. ‘I tell you it’s strange, Jake. When I’m like this I just want to be alone. I want to stay in my own room. I’m like a cat.’
I felt in my pocket.
‘Would a hundred help you any, Harvey?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come on. Let’s go and eat.’
‘There’s no hurry. Have a drink.’
‘Better eat.’
‘No. When I get like this I don’t care whether I eat or not.’
We had a drink. Harvey added my saucer to his own pile.
‘Do you know Mencken, Harvey?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘What’s he like?’
‘He’s all right. He says some pretty funny things. Last time I had dinner with him we talked about Hoffenheimer. “The trouble is,” he said, “he’s a garter snapper.” That’s not bad.’
‘That’s not bad.’
‘He’s through now,’ Harvey went on. ‘He’s written about all the things he knows, and now he’s on all the things he doesn’t know.’
‘I guess he’s all right,’ I said. ‘I just can’t read him.’
‘Oh, nobody reads him now,’ Harvey said, ‘except the people that used to read the Alexander Hamilton Institute.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘That was a good thing, too.’
‘Sure,’ said Harvey. So we sat and thought deeply for a while.
‘Have another port?’
‘All right,’ said Harvey.
‘There comes Cohn,’ I said. Robert Cohn was crossing the street.
‘That moron,’ said Harvey. Cohn came up to our table.
‘Hello, you bums,’ he said.
‘Hello, Robert,’ Harvey said. ‘I was just telling Jake here that you’re a moron.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Tell us right off. Don’t think. What would you rather do if you could do anything you wanted?’
Cohn started to consider.
‘Don’t think. Bring it right out.’
‘I don’t know,’ Cohn said. ‘What’s it all about, anyway?’
‘I mean what would you rather do. What comes into your head first. No matter how silly it is.’
‘I don’t know,’ Cohn said. ‘I think I’d rather play football again with what I know about handling myself, now.’
‘I misjudged you,’ Harvey said. ‘You’re not a moron. You’re only a case of arrested development.’
‘You’re awfully funny, Harvey,’ Cohn said. ‘Some day somebody will push your face in.’
Harvey Stone laughed. ‘You think so. They won’t, though. Because it wouldn’t make any difference to me. I’m not a fighter.’
‘It would make a difference to you if anybody did it.’
‘No, it wouldn’t. That’s where you make your big mistake. Because you’re not intelligent.’
‘Cut it out about me.’
‘Sure,’ said Harvey. ‘It doesn’t make any difference to me. You don’t mean anything to me.’
‘Come on, Harvey,’ I said. ‘Have another porto.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going up the street and eat. See you later, Jake.’
He walked out and up the street. I watched him crossing the street through the taxis, small, heavy, slowly sure of himself in the traffic.
‘He always gets me sore,’ Cohn said. ‘I can’t stand him.’
‘I like him,’ I said. ‘I’m fond of him. You don’t want to get sore at him.’
‘I know it,’ Cohn said. ‘He just gets on my nerves.’
‘Write this afternoon?’
‘No. I couldn’t get it going. It’s harder to do than my first book. I’m having a hard time handling it.’
The sort of healthy conceit that he had when he returned from America early in the spring was gone. Then he had been sure of his work, only with these personal longings for adventure. Now the sureness was gone. Somehow I feel I have not shown Robert Cohn clearly. The reason is that until he fell in love with Brett, I never heard him make one remark that would, in any way, detach him from other people. He was nice to watch on the tennis-court, he had a good body, and he kept it in shape; he handled his cards well at bridge, and he had a funny sort of undergraduate quality about him.
If he were in a crowd nothing he said stood out. He wore what used to be called polo shirts at school, and may be called that still, but he was not professionally youthful. I do not believe he thought about his clothes much. Externally he had been formed at Princeton. Internally he had been moulded by the two women who had trained him. He had a nice, boyish sort of cheerfulness that had never been trained out of him, and I probably have not brought it out. He loved to win at tennis. He probably loved to win as much as Lenglen, for instance. On the other hand, he was not angry at being beaten. When he fell in love with Brett his tennis game went all to pieces. People beat him who had never had a chance with him. He was very nice about it.
Anyhow, we were sitting on the terrace of the Café Select, and Harvey Stone had just crossed the street.
‘Come on up to the Lilas,’ I said.
‘I have a date.’
‘What time?’
‘Frances is coming here at seven-fifteen.’
‘There she is.’
Frances Clyne was coming toward us from across the street. She was a very tall girl who walked with a great deal of movement. She waved and smiled. We watched her cross the street.
‘Hello,’ she said, ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Jake. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.’
‘Hello, Frances,’ said Cohn. He smiled.
‘Why, hello, Robert. Are you here?’ She went on, talking rapidly. ‘I’ve had the darndest time. This one’—shaking her head at Cohn—‘didn’t come home for lunch.’
‘I wasn’t supposed to.’
‘Oh, I know. But you didn’t say anything about it to the cook. Then I had a date myself, and Paula wasn’t at her office. I went to the Ritz and waited for her, and she never came, and of course I didn’t have enough money to lunch at the Ritz—’
‘What did you do?’
‘Oh, went out, of course.’ She spoke in a sort of imitation joyful manner. ‘I always keep my appointments. No one keeps theirs, nowadays. I ought to know better. How are you, Jake, anyway?’
‘Fine.’
‘That was a fine girl you had at the dance, and then went off with that Brett one.’
‘Don’t you like her?’ Cohn asked.
‘I think she’s perfectly charming. Don’t you?’
Cohn said nothing.
‘Look, Jake. I want to talk with you. Would you come over with me to the Dôme? You’ll stay here, won’t you, Robert? Come on, Jake.’
We crossed the Boulevard Montparnasse and sat down at a table. A boy came up with the Paris Times, and I bought one and opened it.
‘What’s the matter, Frances?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ she said, ‘except that he wants to leave me.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Oh, he told everyone that we were going to be married, and I told my mother and everyone, and now he doesn’t want to do it.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘He’s decided he hasn’t lived enough. I knew it would happen when he went to New York.’
She looked up, very bright-eyed and trying to talk inconsequentially.
‘I wouldn’t marry him if he doesn’t want to. Of course I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t marry him now for anything. But it does seem to me to be a little late now, after we’ve waited three years, and I’ve just gotten my divorce.’
I said nothing.
‘We were going to celebrate so, and instead we’ve just had scenes. It’s so childish. We have dreadful scenes, and he cries and begs me to be reasonable, but he says he just can’t do it.’
‘It’s rotten luck.’
‘I should say it is rotten luck. I’ve wasted two years and a half on him now. And I don’t know now if any man will ever want to marry me. Two years ago I could have married anybody I wanted, down
