Then, pressing my hand, she amended her speech. Tell her that everything is forgotten, she murmured.
Spoken like a mother, I thought. But hollow just the same.
I circumnavigated the neighborhood on my way to the L station. Things had changed since we last made the rounds here, Mona and I. I had difficulty locating the house where I once stood her up against the wall. The vacant lot, where we had fucked our heads off in the mud, was no longer a vacant lot. New buildings, new streets, everywhere. Still I kept milling around. This time it was with another Mona—the fifteen year old tragedienne whose photo I had seen for the first time a few minutes ago. How striking she was, even at that awkward age! What purity in her gaze! So frank, so searching, so commanding!
I thought of the Mona I had waited for outside the dance hall. I tried to put the two together. I couldn’t. I wandered through the dismal streets with one on either arm. Neither of them existed any longer. Nor did I perhaps.
10
It was obvious, even to a deluded fool like myself, that the three of us would never arrive in Paris together. When, therefore, I received a letter from Tony Marella saying that I should report for work in a few days I took the opportunity to set them straight about my end of it. In a heart to heart talk such as we hadn’t enjoyed for some time I suggested that it might be wiser for them to make the jump as soon as funds permitted and let me follow later. Now that the job had materialized I could go and live with the folks and thereby put aside money for my own passage. Or, if the necessity arose, I could send them a little dough. In my own mind I didn’t visualize any of us leaving for Europe within the next few months. Maybe never.
It didn’t take a mind reader to see how relieved they were that I wasn’t to accompany them. Mona of course tried to urge me not to go live with my parents. If I had to go anywhere she thought I ought to camp out on Ulric. I pretended that I would think about it.
Anyway, our little heart to heart talk seemed to give them a new lease of life. Every night now they brought back nothing but good reports. All their friends, as well as the suckers, had promised to chip in to raise the passage money. Stasia had purchased a little book of conversational French; I was the willing dummy on whom she practised her idiotic expressions.
Madame, avez-vous une chambre a louer? A quel prix, s’il vous plait? Y a-t-il de l’eau courante? Et du chauffage central? Oui? C’est chic. Merci bien, madame! And so on. Or she would ask me if I knew the difference between une facture and l’addition? L’oeil was singular for eye, les yeux plural. Queer, what! And if the adjective sacre came before the noun it had quite another meaning than if it came after the noun. What do you know about that? Very interesting indeed, wasn’t it? But I didn’t give a shit about these subtleties. I’d learn when the time came, and in my own way.
In the back of the street directory which she had bought was a map of the Metro lines. This fascinated me. She showed me where Montmartre was and Montparnasse. They would probably go to Montparnasse first, because that’s where most of the Americans congregated. She also pointed out the Eiffel Tower, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the flea market, the abattoirs and the Louvre.
Where’s the Moulin Rouge? I asked.
She had to look it up in the index.
And the guillotine—where do they keep that?
She couldn’t answer that one.
I couldn’t help observing how many streets were named after writers. Alone I would spread out the map and trace the streets named after the famous ones: Rabelais, Dante, Balzac, Cervantes, Victor Hugo, Villon, Verlaine, Heine … Then the philosophers, the historians, the scientists, the painters, the musicians—and finally the great warriors. No end to the historical names. What an education, I thought to myself, merely to take a stroll in such a city! Imagine coming upon a street or place or impasse. was it? named after Vercingetorix! (In America I had never happened on a street named after Daniel Boone, though maybe one existed in a place like South Dakota.) There was one street Stasia had pointed out which stuck in my crop; it was the street on which the Beaux Arts was located. (She hoped to study there one day, she said.) The name of this street was Bonaparte. (Little did I realize then that this would be the first street I would inhabit on arriving in Paris.) On a side street just off it—the rue Visconti—Balzac once had a publishing house, a venture which ruined him for years to come. On another side street, also leading off the rue Bonaparte, Oscar Wilde had once lived.
The day came to report for work. It was a long, long ride to the office of the Park Department. Tony was waiting for me with open arms.
You don’t have to kill yourself, he said, meaning in my capacity as grave-digger. Just make a stab at it. Nobody’s going to keep tabs on you. He gave me a hearty slap on the back. You’re strong enough to handle a shovel, aren’t you? Or wheel a load of dirt?
Sure, said I. Sure I am.
He introduced me to the foreman, told him not to work me too hard, and ambled back to the office. In a week, he said, I would be working beside him, in the Commissioner’s own office.
The men were kind to me, probably because of my soft hands. They gave me only the lightest sort of work to do. A boy could have done the job as well.
That first day I enjoyed immensely. Manual work, how good it was! And the fresh air, the smell of dirt, the birds caroling away. A new approach to death. How must it feel to dig one’s own grave? A pity, I thought, that we weren’t all obliged to do just that at some point or other in our lives. One might feel more comfortable in a grave dug with one’s own hands.
What an appetite I had when I got home from work that evening I Not that I had ever been deficient in this respect. Strange to come home from work, like any Tom, Dick or Harry, and find a good meal waiting to be devoured. There were flowers on the table as well as a bottle of most excellent French wine. Few were the grave-diggers who came home to such a spread. A grave-digger emeritus, that’s what I was. A Shakespearean digger. Prosit!
Naturally it was the first and last meal of its kind. Still, it was a good gesture. After all, I deserved no signal respect or attention for the honorable work I was performing.
Each day the work grew a little tougher. The great moment came when I stood at the bottom of the hole swinging shovelsful of dirt over my shoulder. A beautiful piece of work.
A hole in the ground? There are holes and holes. This was a consecrated hole. A special, from Adam Cadmus to Adam Omega.
I was all in the day I got to the bottom. I had been the digger and the dug. Yes, it was at the bottom of the grave, shovel in hand, that I realized there was something symbolic about my efforts. Though another man’s body would occupy this hole nevertheless I felt as if it were my own funeral. (J’aurai un bel enterrement.) It was a droll book, this I’ll have a fine funeral. But it wasn’t droll standing in the bottomless pit seized by a sense of foreboding. Maybe I was digging my own grave, symbolically speaking. Well, another day or two and my initiation would be finished. I could stand it. Besides, soon I would be touching my first pay. What an event! Not that it represented a great sum. No, but I had earned it by the sweat of the brow.
It was now Thursday. Then Friday. Then payday.
Thursday, this day of foreboding, the atmosphere at home seemed permeated with a new element. I couldn’t say what it was precisely that disturbed me so. Certainly not because they were preternaturally gay. They often had such streaks. They were over expectant, that’s the only way I can put it. But of what? And the way they smiled upon me—the sort of smile one gives a child who is impatient to know. Smiles which said—Just wait, you’ll find out soon enough! The most disturbing thing was that nothing I said irritated them. They were un-shakably complacent.
The next evening, Friday, they came home with berets. What’s come over them? I said to myself. Do they think they’re in Paris already? They lingered inordinately over their ablutions. And they were singing again, singing like mad—one in the tub, the other under the shower. Let me call you sweet-heart, I’m in love … ooo—oo—oo. Followed by Tipperary. Right jolly it was. How they laughed and giggled! Brimming over with happiness, bless their little hearts!
I couldn’t resist taking a peek at them. There was Stasia standing up in the tub scrubbing her pussy. She didn’t scream or even say Oh! As
