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…»
From here on it’s a long story about the inheritance which she is trying to collect. She has a young lawyer, a Frenchman, who is rather timid, it seems, and he is trying to win back her fortune. From time to time he used to give her a hundred francs or so on account. «He’s stingy, like all the French people,» she says. «And I was so beautiful, too, that he couldn’t keep his eyes off me. He kept begging me always to fuck him. I got so sick and tired of listening to him that one night I said yes, just to keep him quiet, and so as I wouldn’t lose my hundred francs now and then.» She paused a moment to laugh hysterically. «My dear,» she continued, «it was too funny for words what happened to him. He calls me up on the phone one day and he says: ‘I must see you right away… it’s very important.’ And when I see him he shows me a paper from the doctor — and it’s gonorrhea! My dear, I laughed in his face. How should I know that I still had the clap? ‘You wanted to fuck me and so I fucked you!’ That made him quiet. That’s how it goes in life… you don’t suspect anything, and then all of a sudden paff, paff, paff! He was such a fool that he fell in love with me all over again. Only he begged me to behave myself and not run around Montparnasse all night drinking and fucking. He said I was driving him crazy. He wanted to marry me and then his family heard about me and they persuaded him to go to Indo-China…»
From this Macha calmly switches to an affair she had with a Lesbian. «It was very funny, my dear, how she picked me up one night. I was at the «Fétiche» and I was drunk as usual. She took me from one place to the other and she made love to me under the table all night until I couldn’t stand it any more. Then she cook me to her apartment and for two hundred francs I let her suck me off. She wanted me to live with her but I didn’t want to have her suck me off every night… it makes you too weak. Besides, I can tell you that I don’t care so much for Lesbians as I used to. I would rather sleep with a man even though it hurts me. When I get terribly excited I can’t hold myself back any more… three, four, five times… just like that! Paff, paff, paff! And then I bleed and that is very unhealthy for me because I am inclined to be anemic. So you see why once in a while I must let myself be sucked by a Lesbian…»

When the cold weather set in the princess disappeared. It was getting uncomfortable with just a little coal stove in the studio; the bedroom was like an icebox and the kitchen was hardly any better. There was just a little space around the stove where it was actually warm. So Macha had found herself a sculptor who was castrated. She told us about him before she left. After a few days she tried coming back to us, but Fillmore wouldn’t hear of it. She complained that the sculptor kept her awake all night kissing her. And then there was no hot water for her douches. But finally she decided that it was just as well she didn’t come back. «I won’t have that candlestick next to me