Three Novellas, page 8
For our Andreas had no less than nine hundred and eighty francs in his pocket.
And that is a not inconsiderable sum.
8
However, before he had even left the cinema, it occurred to him that there was actually no compelling reason why he should wait till tomorrow morning to find out the address of his friend and classmate; particularly in view of the rather large sum he had in his pocket.
Having so much money left had given Andreas such confidence that he decided to begin his inquiries for the address of his friend, the celebrated footballer Kanjak, right away, at the cashier’s desk. He imagined he might perhaps have to go to the cinema manager to get an answer. But no! There was no one in all Paris so well known as the footballer Kanjak! Even the doorman knew where he lived. He lived in a hotel on the Champs-Élysées. The doorman gave him its name; and our Andreas immediately set off there.
It was a small, quiet, distinguished hotel, just the sort of hotel where footballers and boxers, the elite of our time, like to live. Andreas felt rather odd as he stood in the foyer, and in the eyes of the hotel staff, he looked rather odd too. Still, they told him that the celebrated footballer Kanjak was at home, and was prepared to come down to the foyer straightaway.
And come down he did, a couple of minutes later, and the two of them recognized each other right away. They began exchanging old memories of their schooldays even as they stood there, and then they went out to eat together, and there was great merriment between them. They went out to eat together, and it so happened that the celebrated footballer asked his dissolute friend: “Why are you looking so dissolute, and what are those rags you’re wearing?”
“It would be a terrible thing,” replied Andreas, “if I were to tell you how that came to pass. And it would greatly impair our mutual joy at this happy reunion of ours. So don’t let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about more cheerful matters instead.”
“I’ve got an awful lot of suits,” said the celebrated footballer Kanjak, “and I would be only too glad to let you have one of them. We shared a bench at school, and you let me copy your answers. What’s a suit, compared to that! Where shall I have it sent?”
“You can’t,” replied Andreas, “because I haven’t got an address. For some time now, I’ve been living under the bridges on the banks of the Seine.”
“Very well,” said the footballer Kanjak, “in that case we’ll rent a room for you, expressly so that I can give you a suit. Come along!”
When they had eaten, they went along, and the footballer Kanjak rented a room, and the price of it was twenty-five francs per day, and it was situated near the marvelous church in Paris that goes by the name of “Madeleine.”
9
The room was on the fifth floor, and Andreas and the footballer had to take the lift up. Of course, Andreas had no luggage, but neither the porter nor the lift-boy nor anyone else on the hotel staff expressed any surprise at that. The whole thing was simply a miracle, and the nuts and bolts of a miracle have nothing miraculous about them. When they were both up in the room, the footballer Kanjak said to his former neighbor in class Andreas: “I expect you need some soap.”
“Oh,” replied Andreas, “I can get by without soap. I plan to stay here for a week without soap, but I’ll still wash. But what I would like is for us to order something to drink, in honor of the room.”
And the footballer called for a bottle of cognac, which they emptied between them. Then they left the room, and took a taxi up to Montmartre, to the café where the girls sat, and which Andreas had only lately visited by himself. After sitting there for a couple of hours, exchanging memories of their schooldays, the footballer took Andreas home, that is, to the hotel room he had rented for him, and he said: “It’s late now. I’ll leave you to yourself. Tomorrow I’ll send you two suits. And—do you need money?”
“No,” said Andreas, “I’ve got nine hundred and eighty francs, and that’s a sizeable sum. You go home!”
“I’ll drop round in a day or two,” said the footballer, his friend.
10
The room in which Andreas now found himself staying was number eighty-nine. As soon as he was alone, he sat down in the comfortable armchair, which was covered in pink rep, and began to take stock of his surroundings. First he looked at the red silk wall-covering, with its pattern of pale gold parrots’ heads, then the door with three ivory doorknobs on its right hand side, the bedside table and the reading lamp on it with its dark green shade, and a second door which had a white door knob, that seemed to have something mysterious behind it, or mysterious at any rate to Andreas. In addition there was a black telephone by the bed, so handily placed that one could lie on the bed and reach across to pick up the receiver quite comfortably. After studying the room for a long time, intent on acquainting himself with it, Andreas suddenly felt a keen curiosity. The second door with the white door knob irritated him, and in spite of his timidity and the fact that he was unaccustomed to the ways of hotel rooms, he got up, determined to see what it might open on to. He had naturally assumed it would be locked. How surprised he was to find that it opened easily, almost invitingly!
He saw before him a bathroom with gleaming tiles, and a tub white and shimmering, and a toilet, and, in short, what might have been termed in his circles a convenience.
At that moment he felt a pressing need to wash, and he turned on both the taps and filled the tub with hot and cold water. As he undressed to get into it, he regretted that he didn’t have a change of shirt, because when he took off his shirt he saw that it was exceedingly dirty, and he already dreaded the moment when he would have to get out of the bath and back into his shirt.
He climbed into the bath, conscious of what a long time it was since he had last washed. He bathed gleefully, got out, got into his clothes, and then didn’t know what to do with himself. More out of perplexity than curiosity, he opened the door of his room, went out into the corridor, and saw a woman on the point of leaving her room, as he had just done. She was young and beautiful. Indeed, she reminded him of the sales girl in the shop where he had bought his wallet, and also slightly of Caroline, and so he said hello to her and bowed, and when she nodded back to him, he felt emboldened and said to her straight out: “I think you’re beautiful.”
“I like you as well,” she replied, “but now you must excuse me! Perhaps we’ll see each other tomorrow.” And she disappeared down the dark corridor. He, though, suddenly in need of love, looked to see what the number was on her door.
It was number eighty-seven. He made a note of it in his heart.
11
He returned to his room and waited and listened. He felt absolutely determined not to wait till the morning to see the beautiful girl again. The almost uninterrupted stream of miracles of the last few days had convinced him that he must be in a state of grace; but by that same token, he believed himself entitled to a little excess of zeal on his own behalf, and he rather thought he would pre-empt grace, out of deference to it, as it were, and without causing it the slightest offense. So when he thought he could hear the quiet footfall of the girl from room eighty-seven in the corridor, he carefully opened the door of his room by a handbreadth, and saw that it really was her, going back into her room. What he had failed to realize, though, as a consequence of long years of desuetude, was the by no means unimportant circumstance that the beautiful girl had observed his little act of espionage. Consequently, as profession and experience had taught her to do, she quickly produced a semblance of order in her room, switched off the main overhead light, lay down on the bed and picked up a book and began reading it; unfortunately it was a book she had already read long ago.
A few moments later, as expected, she heard a quiet knock on her door, and Andreas stepped into her room. He remained standing by the door, merely awaiting the invitation to step a little closer which he was sure would not be long in coming. However, the pretty girl didn’t move; she didn’t even put her book aside, she only asked: “And what brings you here?”
Andreas, his confidence boosted by bath, soap, armchair, wall-covering, parrot’s heads and suit, replied: “I couldn’t wait till tomorrow to see you again, my dear.”
The girl made no reply.
Andreas moved a little nearer, asked what she was reading and observed with frankness: “Books don’t interest me.”
“I’m passing through,” said the girl on the bed, “I’m only staying till Sunday. On Monday I have to appear in Cannes.”
“As what?” asked Andreas.
“I dance in a night-club. I’m Gabby. Haven’t you ever heard of me?”
“Of course, I’ve seen your name in the newspapers,” lied Andreas—and he was even going to add: the newspapers I sleep in. But he didn’t.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, and the pretty girl didn’t object. She eventually put away her book, and Andreas stayed in room eighty-seven till morning.
12
On the Saturday morning, he awoke with the firm resolve not to leave the beautiful girl until it was time for her to go. Yes, and the fragrant thought bloomed in his mind that he might even travel down to Cannes with her, because, like all poor people (and more especially, like all poor people who also drink), he was inclined to take the small sums of money in his pocket for large ones. So, in the morning, he counted up his nine hundred and eighty francs. And since they were in a wallet, and the wallet was in a new suit, the sum seemed to him to be ten times what it actually was. As a result, he wasn’t at all put out, when, an hour after he’d left her, the pretty girl walked straight into his room without knocking, and, when she asked him how they would spend their Saturday together, he said, at a venture, “Fontainebleau.” It was like a name he had heard in a dream. He had no idea how and why it came to trip off his tongue now.
So they took a taxi and drove out to Fontainebleau, and it turned out that the beautiful girl knew of a good restaurant, where they served good food and fine wines. And the waiter there knew her, and she was on first name terms with him. And if our Andreas had been of a jealous disposition, it might have made him angry. But he wasn’t jealous, and so he didn’t get angry. They spent some time eating and drinking, and then they drove back to Paris, again in a taxi, and suddenly they saw the glittering expanse of the evening in Paris ahead of them, and they didn’t know what to do with it, and they were just two people who didn’t belong together, whom fate had simply thrown together. The night stretched out ahead of them like an empty desert.
And they were at a loss what to do together, having rather frivolously squandered the principal experience that a man and woman may have together. And so they decided to avail themselves of the facility reserved to people in our own century when they don’t know what to do—they went to the cinema. And they sat there, and it wasn’t pitch-black, it wasn’t even dark, in fact it could barely be called half-dark. And they held hands, the girl and our friend Andreas. But his hand felt noncommittal, and it embarrassed him. His own hand. When the interval came, he decided to take the beautiful girl out into the foyer for a drink, and they went out and they drank. And he had no interest whatever in the film any more. They went back to their hotel feeling awkward and constrained.
The following morning, the Sunday, Andreas woke up fully aware of his obligation to repay the money. He got up rather more quickly than he had done on the previous morning, with such alacrity in fact that the beautiful girl was startled out of her sleep, and asked, “Why the hurry, Andreas?”
“I have a debt to repay,” said Andreas.
“What? Today? On a Sunday?” asked the beautiful girl.
“Yes, today, Sunday,” replied Andreas.
“Is it a man or a woman you owe money to?”
“A woman,” said Andreas, a little hesitantly.
“What’s her name?”
“Thérèse.”
Thereupon the beautiful girl leapt out of bed, clenched both her fists and started pummeling Andreas with them.
He fled the room, left the hotel, and, without any further deviation, made straight for Sainte Marie des Batignolles, completely confident that today at last he would be able to repay little Thérèse her two hundred francs.
13
Now, as providence would have it—or, as less devout people would say, luck—Andreas once more arrived just too late for the ten o’clock Mass. And, not unnaturally, he once again caught sight of the bistro across the square, where he had gone to drink on the previous occasion, and it was there that he went this time as well.
He ordered a drink. But, canny man that he was, as all the poor people in the world are canny, even after they have been showered with one miracle after another, he first checked the state of his wallet, and took it out of his breast pocket. And he saw that his nine hundred and eighty francs were almost completely gone.
He had only two hundred and fifty left. He thought awhile, and realized that the beautiful girl in the hotel must have taken his money. But our Andreas wasn’t at all upset by that. He told himself that enjoyment had to be paid for, that he had enjoyed himself, and that he therefore had had to pay.
He wanted to wait here until he heard the bells, the church bells ringing people to Mass, before crossing the square and settling his debt to the little saint. But until then he wanted to drink, and he ordered something to drink. He drank. The bells began to ring, summoning people to Mass, and he called, “Waiter, the bill please!” and he paid, got up, went out, and just outside the door he collided with a very tall broad-shouldered man. “Wojtech!” he cried instantly. And the other, just as quickly: “Andreas!” They fell into one another’s arms, because they had been miners together in Quebecque, both of them working in the same pit.
“Why don’t you wait here till I come back,” said Andreas, “I’ll be twenty minutes, just as long as Mass takes, not a moment longer!”
“Not a bit of it,” said Wojtech. “When did you start going to Mass anyway? If there’s anyone I hate more than priests, it’s the people who go to them.”
“But I’m going to little Thérèse,” said Andreas, “I owe her some money.
“Do you mean little St Thérèse?” asked Wojtech.
“Yes, her,” replied Andreas.
“How much do you owe her?” asked Wojtech.
“Two hundred francs!” said Andreas.
“In that case I’ll go with you!” said Wojtech.
The bells were still ringing. They went into the church and as they stood in the aisle, and Mass was just beginning, Wojtech hissed: “Give me a hundred francs, will you! I’ve just remembered that there’s someone waiting for me outside, otherwise he’ll have me put away!”
Andreas immediately handed over both of the hundred-franc notes he had, and said: “I’ll see you out there in a minute.”
But when it dawned on him that he no longer had the money with which to repay Thérèse, it seemed pointless to him to spend any more time at Mass. Forbearance alone kept him there for another five minutes, then he went back over to the bistro where he found Wojtech waiting for him.
From that moment on, as they assured one another, they were best mates.
In fact, Wojtech didn’t have a friend waiting outside, to whom he owed money. He took one of the two hundred-franc notes that Andreas had lent him, and carefully wrapped it in his handkerchief and knotted it up. With the other one, he bought him a drink, and another, and another, and in the evening they went to the house where the obliging girls roosted, and they holed up there for three days, and when they emerged again, it was Tuesday, and Wojtech took leave of Andreas with the words: “Let’s meet up again on Sunday, same time, same place.”
“See you then!” said Andreas.
“See you!” said Wojtech, and vanished.
14
It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon, and the rain was so heavy that, a moment later, Wojtech had actually vanished. Or at least so it seemed to Andreas. It seemed to him that he had lost his friend in the rain, just as he had chanced to bump into him earlier, and since he only had thirty-five francs left, and believing himself to be fortune’s spoilt darling, and fully confident of further miracles, he decided, like all poor men and habitual drinkers, to entrust himself to god, to the only god he believed in. So he went back down the familiar steps, back down to the Seine, to the home of all the homeless vagrants.
There he bumped into a man who was just about to go up the steps, and who struck him as familiar. Accordingly, Andreas greeted him with great politeness. The elderly, spruce gentleman stopped, looked closely at Andreas and finally asked: “My dear chap, do you need any money?”
Andreas recognized the voice of the gentleman he had met three weeks previously in the same place. So he replied: “I know full well I still owe you money, and I promised to take it along to St Thérèse. But you see, things kept cropping up. In fact, I’ve already made three attempts to pay the money back.”
“There must be some mistake,” said the elderly, well-dressed gentleman, “I don’t have the honor of your acquaintance. You must have mistaken me for someone else, but it looks to me as though you’re in a spot of difficulty. Now, you mentioned St Thérèse, and you must know that I am personally so devoted to her that I am naturally prepared to advance you whatever sum you owe her. What is the sum, if you please?”
“Two hundred francs,” replied Andreas, “but honestly, you don’t know me! I’m a man of my word, and you’ll hardly be able to send me a bill. I have my honor, but I have no address. Each night I sleep under one of these bridges.”
“Oh, that’s all right!” said the gentleman. “That’s where I sleep too. In accepting this money from me, you’ll be doing me a favor for which I shan’t be able to thank you enough. Because I too am so beholden to little Thérèse!”
“In that case,” said Andreas, “consider me at your disposal.”
He took the money, waited till the gentleman had climbed the steps, and then he climbed up to the quay himself and went directly to the Rue des Quatre Vents, to his old haunt, the Russian-Armenian restaurant Tari-Bari, where he stayed until Saturday night. He then remembered that the following day was Sunday, and that he had an assignation at the church of Sainte Marie des Batignolles.
