I was planning it all out in detail: the places we’d stop at, the clothes she’d wear, what we’d talk about . . . everything . . . everything. She was Catholic, I supposed, but that didn’t matter a damn to me. In fact, I rather liked it. It was lots better going to church to hear mass than to study architecture and all that crap.
If she wanted, I’d become a Catholic too . . . what the hell I’d do anything she asked me to—if it gave her a kick. I began to wonder if she had a kid somewhere, as most of them have. Imagine, Claude’s kid!
Why I’d love that kid more than if it were my own. Yes, she must have a kid, Claude—I’m going to see about it. There’d be times, I knew, when we’d have a big room with a balcony, a room looking out on a river, and flowers on the windowsill and birds singing. (I could see myself coming back with a bird-cage on my arm. O. K. So long as it made her happy!) But the river—there must be rivers once in a while. I’m nuts about rivers.
Once, in Rotterdam, I remember— — —. The idea, though, of waking up in the morning, the sun streaming in the windows and a good, faithful whore beside you who loves you, who loves the guts out of you, the birds singing and the table all spread, and while she’s washing up and combing her hair all the men she’s been with and now you, just you, and barges going by, masts and hulls, the whole damned current of life flowing through you, through her, through all the guys before you and maybe after, the flowers and the birds and the sun streaming in and the fragrance of it choking you, annihilating you. O Christ! Give me a whore always, all the time!
I’ve asked Claude to live with me and she’s refused. This is a blow. I know it’s not because I’m poor—Claude knows all about my finances, about the book I’m writing, etc. No, there must be some other, deeper reason. But she won’t come out with it.
And then there’s another thing—I’ve begun to act like a saint. I take long walks alone, and what I’m writing now has nothing to do with my book. It seems as if I were alone in the universe, that my life is complete and separate, like a statue’s.
I have even forgotten the name of my creator. And I feel as if all my actions are inspired, as if I were meant to do nothing but good in this world. I ask for nobody’s approval.
I refuse to take any charity from Claude any more. I keep track of everything I owe her. She looks sad these days, Claude. Sometimes, when I pass her on the terrasse, I could swear that there are tears in her eyes.
She’s in love with me now, I know it. She loves me desperately. For hours and hours she sits there on the terrasse. I go with her sometimes because I can’t bear to see her miserable, to see her waiting, waiting, waiting. . . .
I have even spoken to some of my friends about her, tipped them off, as it were. Yes, anything is better than to see Claude sitting there waiting, waiting. What does she think about when she sits there all by herself?
I wonder what she would say if I walked up to her one day and slipped her a thousand franc note. Just walk up to her, when she’s got that melancholy look in her eyes, and say: “Voici quelque chose que j’ai oublié l’autre jour.”
Sometimes, when we lie together and there come those long brimming silences, she says to me: “Que pensez-vous maintenant?” And I always answer “Rien!” But what I’m really thinking to myself is—“Voici quelque chose que. . . .” This is the beautiful part of l’amour à credit.
When she takes leave of me the bells ring out wildly. She makes everything so right inside me. I lie back on the pillow and luxuriously enjoy the weak cigarette which she has left me. I don’t have to stir for a thing.
If I had a plate in my mouth I’m sure she wouldn’t forget to put it in the tumbler on the table beside my bed, together with the matches and the alarm clock and all the other junk. My trousers are carefully folded and my hat and coat are hanging on a peg near the door. Everything in its place. Marvelous! When you get a whore you get a jewel. . . .
And the best of it is, the fine feeling endures. A mystic feeling it is, and to become mystic is to feel the unity of life. I don’t care particularly any more whether I am a saint or not. A saint struggles too much. There is no struggle in me any longer.
I have become a mystic. I impart good, peace, serenity. I am getting more and more customers for Claude and she no longer has that sad look in her eyes when I pass her. We eat together most every day. She insists on taking me to expensive places, and I no longer demur. I enjoy every phase of life—the expensive places as well as the inexpensive places. If it makes Claude happy— — —.
Pourtant je pense à quelque chose. A little thing, to be sure, but lately it has grown more and more important in my mind. The first time I said nothing about it. An unwonted touch of delicacy, I thought to myself. Charming, in fact. The second time—was it delicacy, or just carelessness? However, rien à dire.
Between the second and third times I was unfaithful, so to speak. Yes, I was up on the Grands Boulevards one night, a little tight. After running the gauntlet all the way from the Place de la République to Le Matin, a big, scabby buzzard whom I ordinarily wouldn’t have pissed on grabbed me off.
A droll affair. Visitors knocking at our door every few minutes. Poor little ex-Folies girls who begged the kind monsieur to give them a little tip—thirty francs or so. For what, pray? Pour rien . . . . pour le plaisir. A very strange, and very funny night. A day or so later irritation. Worries. Hurried trip to the American Hospital. Visions of Ehrlich and his black cigars. Nothing wrong, however. Just worry.
When I broach the subject to Claude she looks at me in astonishment. “I know you have every confidence in me, Claude, but. . . .” Claude refuses to waste any time on such a subject. A man who would consciously, deliberately give a woman a disease is a criminal.
That’s how Claude looks upon it. “C’est vrai, n’est-ce pas?” she asks. It’s vrai all right. However. . . . But the subject is closed. Any man who would do that is a criminal.
Every morning now, when I take my paraffin oil—I always take it with an orange—I get to thinking about these criminals who give women diseases. The paraffin oil makes the spoon very sticky. It is necessary to wash it well.
I wash the knife and the spoon very carefully. I do everything carefully—it is my nature. After I have washed my face I look at the towel. The patron never gives out more than three towels a week; by Tuesday they are all soiled. I dry the knife and the spoon with a towel; for my face I use the bedspread. I don’t rub my face—I pat it gently with the edge of the bedspread, near the feet.
The Rue Hippolyte Mandron looks vile to me. I detest all the dirty, narrow, crooked streets with romantic names hereabouts. Paris looks to me like a big, ugly chancre. The streets are gangrened. Everybody has it—if it isn’t clap it’s syphilis.
All Europe is diseased, and it’s France who’s made it diseased. This is what comes of admiring Voltaire and Rabdais! I should have gone to Moscow, as I intended. Even if there are no Sundays in Russia, what difference does it make? Sunday is like any other day now, only the streets are more crowded, more victims walking about contaminating one another.
Mind you, it’s not Claude I’m raving against. Claude is a jewel, un ange, and no presque about it. There’s the bird-cage hanging outside the window, and flowers too—though it ain’t Madrid or Seville, no fountains, no pigeons.
No, it’s the clinic every day. She goes in one door and I in the other. No more expensive restaurants. Go to the movies every night and try to stop squirming. Can’t bear the sight of the Dôme or the Coupole any more. These bastards sitting around on the terrasse, looking so clean and healthy with their coats of tan, their starched shirts and their eau-de-cologne.
It wasn’t entirely Claude’s fault. I tried to warn her about these suave looking bastards. She was so damned confident of herself—the injections and all that business. And then, any man who would. . . . Well, that’s just how it happened.
Living with a whore—even the best whore in the world—isn’t a bed of roses. It isn’t the numbers of men, though that too gets under your skin sometimes, it’s the everlasting sanitation, the precautions, the irrigations, the examinations, the worry, the dread.
And then, in spite of it all—
