 I've been looking to hell and gone for you, Andy," said Crisfield's voice in his ear, jerking him out of the reverie he had walked in. He could feel in his face Crisfield's breath, heavy with cognac. "'I'm going to Paris tomorrow, Cris,' said Andrews. "'I know it, boy, I know it. That's why I was that right smart to talk to you. You don't want to go to Paris? Why don't you come up to Germany with us? Tell me they live like kings up there.' "'All right,' said Andrews. Let's go to the back room at Babette's.' Crisfield hung on his shoulder, walking unsteadily beside him. At the hole in the hedge Crisfield stumbled and nearly pulled them both down. They laughed, and still laughing, staggered into the dark kitchen, where they found the red-faced woman with her baby sitting beside the fire with no other light than the flicker of the rare flames that shot up from a little mass of wood embers. The baby started crying shrilly when the two soldiers stamped in. The woman got up, and, talking automatically to the baby all the while, went off to get a light and wine. Andrews looked at Crisfield's face by the fire-light. His cheeks had lost the faint childish roundness they had had when Andrews had first talked to him, sweeping up cigarette butts off the walk in front of the barracks at the training camp. "'I tell you, boy, you ought to come with us to Germany, nothing but whores in Paris. The trouble is, Cris, that I don't want to live like a king or a sergeant or a major general. I want to live like John Andrews. What are you going to do in Paris, Andy?' Study music. I guess someday I'll go into a movie show and when they turn on the lights, who'll I see but my old friend Andy ragging the scales on the piano?' Huh, something like that. How do you like being a corporal, Cris? Oh, I don't know. Crisfield spat on the floor between his feet. "'It's funny, ain't it? You and me was right smart friends once. Guess it's me in a non-com.' Andrews did not answer. Crisfield sat silent with his eyes on the fire. "'Well, I got him. God, it was easy,' he said suddenly. "'What do you mean?' "'I got him, that's all.' "'You mean?' Crisfield nodded. "'Mm-hmm, in the Oregon forest,' he said.' Andrews said nothing. He felt suddenly very tired. He thought of the men he had seen in attitudes of death. "'I wouldn't have thought it had been so easy,' said Crisfield. The woman came through the door at the end of the kitchen with a candle in her hand. Crisfield stopped speaking suddenly. "'Tomorrow I'm going to Paris,' cried Andrews boisterously. "'It's the end of soldiering for me. I bet it'll be some sport in Germany, Andy.' Sarge says we'll be going up to Co-Ab—what's his name?' Co-Blence. Crisfield poured a glass of wine out and drank it off, smacking his lips after it and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "'Do you remember, Andy, we was both of us, brushing cigarette butts at that bloody training camp when we first met up with each other? Considerable water has run under the bridge since then. "'I reckon we won't meet up again, most likely. Hell, why not? They were both silent again, staring at the fading embers of the fire. In the dim edge of the candle-light, the woman stirred with her hands on her hips, looking at them fixedly. Reckon a fellow wouldn't know what to do with himself if he did get out of the army. Now would he, Andy? "'So long, Cris. I'm beating it,' said Andrews in a harsh voice, jumping to his feet. "'So long, Andy, old man. I'll pay for the drinks.' Crisfield was beckoning with his hand to the red-faced woman, who advanced slowly through the candle-light. "'Thanks, Cris.' Andrews strode away from the door. A cold, needle-like rain was falling. He pulled up his coat collar and ran down the muddy village street towards his quarters. In the opposite corner of the compartment, Andrews could see Walters, hunched up in an attitude of sleep, with his cap pulled down far over his eyes. His mouth was open, and his head wagged with the jolting of the train. The shade over the light plunged the compartment into dark blue obscurity, which made the night sky outside the window and the shapes of trees and houses evolving and pirouetting as they glided by seemed very near. Andrews felt no desire to sleep. He had sat a long time leaning his head against the frame of the window, looking out at the fleeting shadows and the occasional little red-green lights that darted by, and the glow of the stations that flared for a moment and were lost in dark silhouettes of unlighted houses, and skeleton trees and black hillsides. He was thinking how all the epochs in his life seem to have been marked out by railway rides at night. The jolting rumble of the wheels made the blood go faster through his veins, made him feel acutely the clattering of the train along the gleaming rails, spurning fields and trees and houses, piling up miles and miles between the past and future. The gusts of cold night air when he opened the window, and the faint whiffs of steam and coal gas that tingled in his nostrils excited him like a smile on a strange face seen for a moment in the crowded street. He did not think of what he had left behind. He was straining his eyes eagerly through the darkness towards the vivid life he was going to live. Boredom and a basement were over. He was free to work and hear music and make friends. He drew deep breaths. Warm waves of vigour seemed flowing constantly from his lungs and throat to his fingertips and down through his body and the muscles of his legs. He looked at his watch, one. In six hours he would be in Paris. For six hours he would sit there looking out at the fleeting shadows of the countryside, feeling in his blood the eager throb of the train, rejoicing in every mile the train carried him away from things past. Andrews still slept, slipping off the seat, with his mouth open and his overcoat bundled round his head. Andrews looked out of the window, feeling in his nostrils the tingle of steam and coal gas. A phrase out of some translation of the Iliad came to his head. Ambrosial night, night ambrosial unending. But better than sitting round a campfire drinking wine and water and listening to the boastful yarns of long-haired Achaeans was this hustling through the countryside away from the monotonous wine of past unhappiness towards joyousness and life. Andrews began to think of the men he had left behind. They were asleep at this time of night, in barns and barracks, or else standing on guard with cold, damp feet and cold hands which the icy rifle-barrel burned when they tended it. He might go far away out of sound of the tramp of marching, away from the smell of overcrowded barracks where men slept in rows like cattle, but he would still be one of them. He would not see an officer pass him without an unconscious movement of servility. He would not hear a bugle without feeling sick with hatred. If he could only express these thwarted lives, the miserable dullness of industrialized slaughter, it might have been almost worthwhile. For him, for the others, it would never be worthwhile. But you're talking as if you were out of the woods. You're a soldier still, John Andrews. The words formed themselves in his mind as vividly as if he had spoken them. He smiled bitterly and settled himself again to watch silhouettes of trees and hedges and houses and hillsides fleeing against the dark sky. When he awoke, the sky was gray. The train was moving slowly, clattering loudly over switches, through a town of wet slate roofs that rose in fantastic patterns of shadow above the blue mist. Walters was smoking a cigarette. God, these French trains are rotten, he said when he noticed that Andrews was awake. The most inefficient country I ever was in, anyway. Inefficiency be damned, broken Andrews, jumping up and stretching himself. He opened the window. The heating's too damned efficient. I think we're near Paris. The cold air, with a flavor of mist in it, poured into the stuffy compartment. Every breath was joy. Andrews felt a crazy buoyancy bubbling up in him. The rumbling clatter of the train wheels sang in his ears. He threw himself on his back on the dusty blue seat and kicked his heels in the air like a colt. Live and up for God's sake, man, he shouted, we're getting near Paris. We are lucky bastards, said Walters grinning with the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. I'm going to see if I can find the rest of the gang. Andrews, alone in his compartment, found himself singing at the top of his lungs. As the day brightened, the mist lifted off the flat linden-green fields intersected by rows of leafless poplars. Salmon-colored houses with blue roofs wore already a faintly citified air. They passed brick kilns and clay quarries, with reddish puddles of water in the bottom of them. Across the jade-green river were a long file of canal boats with bright paint on their prowes moved slowly. The engine whistled shrilly. They clattered through a small freight yard, and verose of suburban houses began to form. At first, chaotically in broad patches of garden land, and then in orderly ranks with streets between them and shops at the corners, a dark gray dripping wall rose up suddenly and blotted out the view. The train slowed down and went through several stations crowded with people on their way to work. Ordinary people in varied clothes, with only here and there a blue or khaki uniform. Then there was more dark gray wall and the obscurity of wide bridges under which dusty oil lamps burned orange and red, making a gleam on the wet wall above them and where the wheels clanged loudly. More freight yards and the train pulled slowly past other trains full of faces and silhouettes of people to stop with a jerk in a station. And Andrews was standing on the gray cement platform, sniffing smells of lumber and merchandise and steam. His ungainly pack and blanket roll he carried on his shoulder like a cross. He had left his rifle and cartridge belt carefully tucked out of sight under the seat. Walters and five other men straggled along the platform towards him, carrying or dragging their packs. There was a look of apprehension on Walters' face. What do we do now? He said. Do! cried Andrews and burst out laughing. Prostrate bodies in olive drab hid the patch of tender green grass by the roadside. The company was resting. Chris Fields sat on a stump morosely whittling at a stick with a pocket knife. Judkins was stretched out beside him. What the hell do they make us do this damn hiking for, Corp? Guess they're scared we'll forget how to walk. Well, ain't it better than loafing around your billets all day, thinking and cursing and wishing you was home? Spoke up the man who sat the other side, pounding down the tobacco in his pipe with a thick forefinger. It makes me sick, tramping round this way and ranks all day with the goddamn frogs staring at us. They're laughing at us, I bet, broken another voice. We'll be moving soon to the army occupation, said Chris Fields cheerfully. In Germany, you'll be a regular picnic. And do you know what that means? Burst out Judkins, sitting bolt upright. Do you know how long the troops is going to stay in Germany? 15 years. God, they couldn't keep us there that long, man. They can do anything they goddamn please with us. We're the guys as is getting the raw end of this deal. It ain't the same with an educated guy like Andrews or Sergeant Coffin or them. They can suck around after a Wyman and officers and get on the inside track. And all we can do is stand up and salute and say, yes, Lieutenant, or no, Lieutenant, and let them ride us all they goddamn please. Ain't that the gospel truth, Corporal? I guess you're right, Judky. We get the raw end of the stick. That damn yellow dog Andrews goes to Paris and gets schooling for free and all that. Hell, Andy weren't yellowed, Judkins. Well, why did he go belly aching around all the time like he knew more than the Lieutenant did? I reckon he did, said Chris Field. Anyway, you can't say that those guys who went to Paris did a goddamn thing more than any of the rest of us did. God, I ain't even had a leave yet. Well, it ain't no use crabbing. No, once we get home and folks know the way we've been treated, there'll be a great old investigation. I can tell you that, said one of the new men. It makes me mad, though, to have something like that put over on you. Think of them guys in Paris having a hell of a time with wine and women, and we stay out here and clean our guns and drill. God, I'd like to get even with some of them guys. The whistle blew. The patch of grass became unbroken green again as the men lined up along the side of the road. Fall in, called the Sergeant. Attention, right dress, front. God, you guys haven't got no snap in you. Stick your belly in you. You know better than to stand like that. Squads, right, march, hip, hip, hip. The company tramped off along the muddy road. Their steps were all the same length. Their arms swung in the same rhythm. Their faces were cowed into the same expression. Their thoughts were the same. The tramp, tramp of their steps died away along the road. Birds were sitting among the budding trees. The young grass by the roadside kept the marks of the soldier's bodies. Part five, the world outside. One, Andrews and six other men from his division sat at a table outside the cafe opposite the Garda last. He leaned back in his chair with a cup of coffee lifted, looking across it at the stone houses with many balconies. Steam, scented of milk and coffee, rose from the cup as he sipped it. His ears were full of a rumble of traffic and a clacking of heels as people walked briskly by along the damp pavements. For a while he did not hear what the men he was sitting with were saying. They talked and laughed, but he looked beyond their khaki uniforms and their boat-shaped hats unconsciously. He was taken up with the smell of the coffee and of the mist. A little rusty sunshine shone on the table of the cafe and on the thin varnish of wet mud that covered the asphalt pavement. Looking down the avenue, away from the station, the houses, dark gray tending to greenish in the shadow and to violet in the sun, faded into a soft haze of distance. Dull gilt lettering glittered along black balconies. In the foreground were men and women walking briskly, their cheeks whipped a little into color by the rawness of the morning. The sky was a faintly rosy-it gray. Walters was speaking. The first thing I want to see is the Eiffel Tower. Why do you want to see that? said the small sergeant with a black mustache and rings round his eyes like a monkey. Why, man, don't you know that everything begins from the Eiffel Tower? If it weren't for the Eiffel Tower, there wouldn't be any skyscrapers. Well, how about the Flatiron building in the Brooklyn Bridge? They were built before the Eiffel Tower, weren't they? interrupted the man from New York. The Eiffel Tower is the first piece of complete girder construction in the whole world, reiterated Walters dogmatically. First thing I'm going to do is go to the Foley Bird Jairs. Me for the W.W.'s. Better lay off the wild women, Bill, said Walters. I ain't going to look at a woman, said the sergeant with the black mustache. I guess I've seen enough women in my time anyway. The war's over anyway. You just wait, kid, till you fasten your lamps on a real Parisian, said a burly, unshaven man with the corporal stripes on his arm. Roaring with laughter. Andrews lost track of the talk again, staring dreamily through half-closed eyes down the long, straight street, where greens and violets and browns merged into a bluish-gray monochrome at a little distance. He wanted to be alone, to wander at random through the city, to stare dreamily at people and things, to talk by chance to men and women, to sink his life into the misty, sparkling life of the streets. The smell of the mist brought a memory to his mind. For a long while he groped for it, until suddenly he remembered his dinner with Henslow and the faces of the boy and girl he had talked to on the boot. He must find Henslow at once. A second's fierce resentment went through him against all these people about him. Christ, he must get away from them all. His freedom had been hard enough won. He must enjoy it to the uttermost. Say, I'm going to stick to you, Andy. Walters' voice broke into his reverie. I'm going to appoint you the core of interpreters. Andrews laughed. Do you know the way to the school headquarters? The RTO said, take the subway. I'm going to walk, said Andrews. You'll get lost, won't you? No danger, worse luck, said Andrews, getting to his feet. I'll see you fellas at the school headquarters, whatever those are. So long. Say, Andy, I'll wait for you there. Walters called after him. Andrews darted down a side street. He could hardly keep from shouting aloud when he found himself alone, free, with days and days ahead of him to work and think, gradually to rid his limbs of the stiff attitudes of the automaton. The smell of the streets and the mist indefinably poignant, rose-like incense smoke in fantastic spirals through his brain, making him hungry and dazzled, making his arms and legs feel lithe and as ready for delight as a crouching cat for a spring. His heavy shoes beat out a dance as they clattered on the wet pavements under his springy steps. He was walking very fast, stopping suddenly now and then to look at the greens and oranges and crimson of vegetables in a push cart, to catch a vista down intricate streets, to look into the rich brown obscurity of a small wine shop where a workman stood at the counter sipping white wine. Oval, delicate faces, bearded faces of men, slightly gaunt faces of young women, red cheeks of boys, wrinkled faces of old women, whose ugliness seemed to have hidden in it, stirringly, all the beauty of youth and the tragedy of lives that had been lived. The faces of the people he passed moved him like rhythms of an orchestra. After much walking, turning always down the street which looked pleasantest, he came to an oval with the statue of a pompous personage on a ramping horse. Plaste victoire, he read the name, which gave him a faint tinge of amusement. He looked quizzically at the heroic features of the Sun King and walked off laughing. I suppose they did it better in those days, the grand manner, he muttered. And his delight redoubled in rubbing shoulders with the people whose effigies would never appear, stried ramping-eared horses in squares built to commemorate victories. He came out on a broad, straight avenue, where there were many American officers he had to salute, and MPs and shops with wide plate-glass windows full of objects that had a shiny, expensive look. Another case of victories, he thought, as he went off into a side street, taking with him a glimpse of the bluish-gray pile of the opera, with its pompous windows and its naked bronze ladies holding lamps. He was in a narrow street full of hotels and fashionable barbershops, from which came an odor of cosmopolitan perfumery, of casinos and balloons and diplomatic perceptions, when he noticed an American officer coming towards him, reeling a little, a tall, elderly man with a red face and a bottle nose. He saluted. The officer stopped still, swaying from side to side, and said in a whining voice, Shani, do you know where Henry's bar is? No, I don't, Major, said Andrews, who felt himself enveloped in an odor of cocktails. You'll help me to find it, Shani, won't you? It's dreadful not to be able to find it. I've got to meet Lieutenant Travers in Henry's bar. The Major steadied himself by putting a hand on Andrews' shoulder. A civilian passed them. D. Donk shouted the Major after him. D. Donk launched here. Oh, a Henry's bar! The men walked on without answering. Now, is that just like a frog, not to understand his own language? said the Major. But there's Henry's bar. Right across the street, said Andrews suddenly. BONG! BONG! said the Major. They crossed the street and went in. At the bar, the Major, still clinging to Andrews' shoulder, whispered in his ear, I'm AWOL! She? She? Hold on, Mayor! Service is AWOL! Have a drink with me. You enlisted, man? Nobody cares here. War's over, sonny! Democracy is shave for the world! Andrews was just raising a champagne cocktail to his lips, looking with amusement at the crowd of American officers and civilians who crowded into the small mahogany bar room, when a voice behind him drawled out, I'll be damned! Andrews turned and saw Henslow's brown face and small silky moustache. He abandoned his Major to his fate. God, I'm glad to see you. I was afraid you hadn't been able to work it out, said Henslow slowly, stuttering a little. I am crazy! I'm about crazy, Henny, with delight! I just got in a couple of hours ago. Laughing, interrupting each other, they chattered in broken sentences. But how in the name of everything did you get here? With the Major, said Andrews, laughing. What, the devil? Yes, that Major, whispered Andrews in his friend's ear. Rather the worse for where, asked me to lead him to Henry's bar and just felt me a cocktail in the memory of democracy late defunct. But what are you doing here? It's not exactly exotic. I came to see a man who was going to tell me how I could get to Romania with the Red Cross. But that can wait. Let's get out of here. God, I was afraid you hadn't made it. I had to crawl on my belly and lick people's boots to do it. God, it was low. But here I am. They were out on the street again, walking and gesticulating. But Libertad, Libertad, alo, my fam, as Walt Whitman would have said, shouted Andrews. Ah, but it's one grand and glorious feeling. I've been here three days. My section's gone home, God bless them. But what do you have to do? Do nothing, cried Henslo, not a blooming bloody goddamn thing. In fact, it's no use trying. The whole thing is such a mess, you couldn't do anything if you wanted to. I want to go and talk to people at the Scola Cantorum. There'll be time for that. You'll never make anything out of music if you get serious minded about it. Then, last but not least, I've got to get some money from somewhere. Now you're talking! Henslo pulled a burnt leather pocketbook out of the inside of his tunic. Monaco, he said, tapping the pocketbook, which was engraved with a pattern of dull red flowers. He pursed his lips and pulled out some hundred frank notes, which he pushed into Andrews' hand. Give me one of them, said Andrews. All or none, they last about five minutes each. But it's so damn much to pay back. Pay it back, heavens! Here, take it and stop your talking. I probably won't have it again, so you'd better make hay this time. I warn you, it'll be spent by the end of the week. All right, I'm dead with hunger. Let's go sit down on the boulevard and think about where we'll have lunch to celebrate Miss Libertad. Oh, but let's not call her that. Sounds like Liverpool, Andy, a horrid place. How about Fryheight, said Andrews, as they sat down in basket chairs in the reddish-yellow sunlight? Treasonable! Off with your head! But think of it, man, said Andrews. The butchery's over, and you and I and everybody else will soon be human beings again. Human. All too human. No more than eighteen more's going, muttered Henslo. I haven't seen any papers for an age. How do you mean? People are fighting to beat the cats everywhere, except on the western fronts at Henslo. But that's where I come in. The Red Cross sends supply trains to keep them at it. I'm going to Russia if I can work it. But how about the Sorbonne? Oh, the Sorbonne can go to Ballyhack. But, Henny, I'm going to croak on your hands if you don't take me somewhere to get some food. Do you want a solemn place with red plush or with salmon pink brocade? Why have a solemn place at all? Because solemnity and good food go together. It's only a religious restaurant that has a proper devotion to the belly. No, I know. We'll go over to Brooklyn. Where? To the Reeve Gauche. I know a man who insists on calling it Brooklyn. Awfully funny, man. Never been sober in his life. You must meet him. Oh, I want to. It's a dog's age since I met anyone new, except you. I can't live without having a variegated crowd about, can you? You've got that right on this boulevard. Serbs, French, English, Americans, Australians, Romanians, Czechoslovaks. God, is there any uniform that isn't here? I tell you, Andy, the war's been a great thing for the people who knew how to take advantage of it. Just look at their patees. I guess they'll know how to make a good thing of the peace, too. Oh, that's going to be the best yet. Come along. Let's be little devils and take a taxi. This certainly is the main street of Cosmopolis. They threaded their way through the crowd, full of uniforms and glitter and bright colors that moved in two streams, up and down the wide sidewalk between the cafes and the bowls of the bare trees. They climbed into a taxi and lurched fast through the streets, where, in the misty sunlight, gray-green and gray violet mingled with blues and pale lights as the colors mingle in a pigeon's breast feathers. They passed the leafless gardens of the Tuileries on one side and the great inner courts of the Louvre, with their purple mansard roofs and their high chimneys on the other, and saw for a second the river, dull jade-green, and the plain trees splotched with brown and cream-color along the quay, before they were lost in the narrow brownish-gray streets of the old quarters. This is Paris. That was Cosmopolis, said Henslow. I'm not particular, just at present, cried Andrews Gailey. The square in front of the Odeon was a splash of white, and the colonnade a blur of darkness as the cabs swerved round the corner and along the edge of the Luxembourg, where, through the black iron fence, many brown and reddish colors in the intricate patterns of leafless twigs opened here and there on statues and balustrades and vistas of misty distances. The cabs stopped with a jerk. This is the Place de Medici, said Henslow. At the end of a slanting street looking very flat through the haze was the Dome of the Pontail. In the middle of the square between the yellow trams and the green, low buses was a quiet pool, where the shadow of horizontals of the housefronts was reflected. They sat beside the window, looking out at the square. Henslow ordered. Remember how sentimental history books used to talk about prisoners who were let out after years in dungeons not being able to stand it and going back to their cells? Do you like saumonnaire? Anything, or rather, everything. But take it from me, that's all rubbish. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been happier in my life. Do you know, Henslow, there's something in you that is afraid to be happy? Huh, don't be morbid. There's only one real evil in the world, being someone without being able to get away. I ordered beer. This is the only place in Paris where it's fit to drink. And I'm going to every Bloomin' concert, Cologne, La Merue on Sunday, I know that. The only evil in the world is not being able to hear music or make it. These oysters are fit for the Cullis. Why don't they fit for John Andrews and Bob Henslow, damn it? Why the ghosts of poor old dead Romans should be dragged in every time a man eats an oyster? I don't see. Where as fine specimens as they were? I swear, I shan't let any old turn-to-clay-loo Cullis outlive me, even if I've never eaten a lamprey. And why should you eat a lamp, chimney bob? Came a hoarse voice beside them. Andrews looked up into the round white face with large gray eyes hidden behind thick steel-rimmed spectacles. Except for the eyes, the face had a vaguely Chinese air. Hello, Heinz. Mr. Andrews, Mr. Heinemann, said Henslow. Glad to meet you, said Heinemann in a jovially hoarse voice. You guys seem to be overeating to reckon by the way things are piled up on the table. Through the hoarseness, Andrews could detect a faint Yankee twang in Heinemann's voice. You'd better sit down and help us, said Henslow. Sure. Do you know my name for this guy? He turned to Andrews. Sinbad. Sinbad was bad in Tokyo and Rome, and bad in Trinidad, and twice as bad at home. He sang the words loudly, waving a breadstick to keep time. Shut up, Heinz, or you'll get us run out of here the way you got us run out of the Olympia that night. They both laughed. And do you remember Mr. Leghi with his coat? Do I? God! They laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks. Heinemann took off his glasses and wiped them. He turned to Andrews. Oh, Paris is the best yet! First absurdity, the peace conference, and its 999 branches. Second absurdity, spies. Third, American officers, AWOL. Fourth, the Seven Sisters swore to slay. He broke out laughing again, his chunky body rolling about on the chair. What are they? Three of them have sworn to slay Sinbad, and four of them have sworn to slay me. But that's too complicated to tell at lunchtime. Eighth, there are the Lady Relievers, Sinbad's specialty. Ninth, there's Sinbad- Ah, shut up, Heinz, you're getting me modeling, spluttered Henslow. Oh, Sinbad was in bad all around, chanted Heinemann. But no one's given me anything to drink, he said suddenly in a petulant voice. Oh, what's next? It ends with Vergon. You've seen the play, haven't you? Greatest playgoing, seen it twice sober and seven other times. Cyrano de Bergerac? That's it. You see, I work in the Red Cross. You know, Sinbad, old Peterson's a brick. I'm supposed to be taking photographs of tubercular children at this minute. The noblest of my professions is that of artistic photographer. Borrowed the photographs from the rickets, man. So I have nothing to do for three months and 500 francs traveling expenses. Oh, children, my only prayer is, give us this day our Red Workers permit, and the Red Cross does the rest. Heinemann laughed till the glasses rang on the table. He took off his glasses and wiped them with a rueful air. So now I call the Red Cross the cadets, cried Heinemann, his voice a thin shriek from laughter. Andrews was drinking his coffee in little sips, looking out the window at the people that passed. An old woman with a stand of flowers sat on a small cane chair at the corner. The pink and yellow and blue violet shades of the flowers seemed to intensify the misty straw color and azured gray of the wintry sun and shadow of the streets. A girl in a tight-fitting black dress and black hat stopped at the stand to buy a bunch of pale yellow daisies, and then walked slowly past the window of the restaurant in the direction of the gardens. Her ivory face and slender body and her very dark eyes sent a sudden flush through Andrews' whole frame as he looked at her. The black, erect figure disappeared in the gate of the gardens. Andrews got to his feet suddenly. I have to go, he said in a strange voice. I just remember a man was waiting for me at the school headquarters. I'll let him wait. Why, you haven't had a liqueur yet, cried Heinemann. No, but where can I meet you people later? Café de Rouen at five opposite the Palais Royale? You'll never find it. Yes, I will, said Andrews. Palais Royale metro station. They shouted after him as he dashed out of the door. He hurried into the gardens. Many people sat on benches in the frail sunlight. Children in bright-colored clothes ran about chasing hoops. A woman paraded a bunch of toy balloons in carmine and green and purple, like a huge bunch of party-colored grapes inverted above her head. Andrews walked up and down the alleys, scanning faces. The girl had disappeared. He leaned against a gray balustrade and looked down into the empty pond, where traces of the explosion of a bertha still subsisted. He was telling himself that he was a fool, that even if he had found her, he could not have spoken to her. Just because he was free for a day or two from the army, he needn't think that the age of gold had come back to earth. Smiling at the thought, he walked across the gardens, wandered through some streets of old houses in gray and white stucco with slate mansard roofs and faint complications of chimney pots, till he came out in front of a church with a new classic facade of huge columns that seemed toppling by their own weight. He asked a woman selling newspapers what the church's name was. Me, monsieur, c'est sans soupice, said the woman in a surprised tone. Sans soupice. Manon's songs came to his head and the sentimental melancholy of 18th century Paris, with its gambling houses in the Palais Royal, where people dishonored themselves in the presence of their stern, catonian fathers, and its B.A.D.U. written at little guilt tables, and its coaches lumbering in covered with mud from the provinces through the Porte d'Orléans and the Porte de Versailles. The Paris of Diderot and Voltaire and Jean Jacques, with its muddy streets and its ordinaries were one-eight bisques and larded pullets and souffles. A Paris full of muddy, guilt magnificence, full of pompous ennui of the past, and insane hope of the future. He walked down a narrow, smoky street, full of antique shops and old bookshops, and came out unexpectedly on the river opposite the statue of Voltaire. The name on the corner was K. Malaké. Andrews crossed and looked down for a long time at the river. Opposite behind a lacework of leafless trees were the purplish roofs of the Louvre with their high peaks and their ranks and ranks of chimneys. Behind him the old houses of the quay and the wing topped by a balustrade with great stone urns of a domed building of which he did not know the name. Barges were coming upstream, the dense green water spewing under their blunt boughs, towed by a little black tugboat with its chimney bent back to pass under the bridges. The tug gave a thin shrill whistle. Andrews started walking downstream. He crossed by the bridge at the corner of the Louvre, turned his back on the arch Napoleon had built to receive the famous horses from Saint Mark's, a pinkish pastry-like affair, and walked through the Tuileries, which were full of people strolling about or sitting in the sun, of doll-like children and nursemaids with elaborate white caps, of fluffy little dogs straining at the ends of leashes. Suddenly a peaceful sleepiness came over him. He sat down in the sun on a bench, watching, hardly seeing them, the people who passed, two in fro casting long shadows. Voices and laughter came very softly to his ears above the distant stridency of the traffic. From far away he heard for a few moments notes of a military band playing a march. The shadows of the trees were faint blue-gray in the ruddy yellow gravel. Shadows of people kept passing and repassing across them. He felt very languid and happy. Suddenly he started up. He had been dozing. He asked an old man with a beautifully pointed white beard the way to Rue de Faubourg Saint-Honoré. After losing his way a couple of times, he walked listlessly up some marble steps where a great many men in khaki were talking. Leaning against the door-post was Walters. As he drew near, Anders heard him saying to the man next to him, Why, the Eiffel Tower was the first piece of complete girder construction ever built. That's the first thing a fellow who's wide awake ought to see. Tell me the opera is the grandest thing to look at, said the man next to it. If there's wine and women there, me for it, and don't forget the song. But that isn't interesting like the Eiffel Tower is, persisted Walters. Say Walters, I hope you haven't been waiting for me, stammered Anders. No, I've been waiting in line to see the guy about courses. I want to start this thing right. I guess I'll see them tomorrow, said Anders. Say, have you done anything about a room, Andy? Let's you and me be bunkies. All right, but maybe you don't want a room where I do, Walters. Where's that, in the Latin Quarter? You bet, I want to see some French life while I'm about it. Well, it's too late to get a room today. I'm going to the Y tonight anyway. I'll get a fellow I know to put me up. Then tomorrow we'll see. Well, so long, said Anders, moving away. Wait, I'm coming with you. We'll walk around town together. All right, said Anders. The rabbit was rather formless, very fluffy, and had a glance of madness in its pink eye with a black center. It hopped like a sparrow along the pavement, emitting a rubber tube from its back which went up to a bulb in a man's hand, which the man pressed to make the rabbit hop. Yet the rabbit had an air of organic completeness. Anders laughed inordinately when he first saw it. The vendor, who had a basketful of other such rabbits on his arm, saw Anders laughing and drew timidly near to the table. He had a pink face with little sensitive lips, rather like a real rabbit, and large frightened eyes of a wan brown. Do you make them yourself? asked Anders, smiling. The man dropped his rabbit on the table with a negligent air. Oh, oui, monsieur, d'après la nature. He made the rabbit turn a somersault by suddenly pressing the bulb hard. Anders laughed, and the rabbit man laughed. Think of a big, strong man making his living that way, said Walters, disgusted. I do it all. Said the rabbit man. Hello, Andy, latest hell. I'm sorry, said Henslow, dropping down into a chair beside them. Andrews introduced Walters. The rabbit man took off his hat, bowed to the company, and went off, making the rabbit hop before him along the edge of the curb stone. What's happened to Heinemann? Here he comes now, said Henslow. An open cab had driven up to the curb in front of the café. In it sat Heinemann, with a broad grin on his face, and beside him a woman in a salmon-coloured dress, ermined furs, and an emerald green hat. The cab drove off, and Heinemann, still grinning, walked up to the table. Where's the lion-club? asked Henslow. They say it's got pneumonia. Mr. Heinemann? Mr. Walters. The grin left Heinemann's face. He said, How do you do, curtly? cast a furious glance at Andrews, and settled himself in a chair. The sun had set. The sky was full of lilac and bright purple and carmine. Among the deep, blue shadows, lights were coming on, primrose-coloured street lamps, violet arc lamps, ruddy sheets of light poured out of shop windows. Let's go inside, I'm cold as hell, said Heinemann crossly, and they filed in through the revolving door, followed by a waiter with their drinks. I've been in the Red Cross all afternoon, Andy. I think I am going to work that Romania business. Want to come? said Henslow and Andrews' ear. If I can get hold of a piano and some lessons and the concerts keep up, you won't be able to keep me away from Paris with wild horses. No, sir, I want to see what Paris is like. It's going to my head, so it'll be weeks before I know what I think about it. Don't think about it. Drink, growled Heinemann, scowling savagely. That's two things I'm going to keep away from in Paris. Drink and women, and you can't have one without the other, said Walters. True enough, you sure do need them both, said Heinemann. Andrews was not listening to their talk. Twirling the stem of his glass of vermouth in his fingers, he was thinking of the Queen of Sheba, slipping down from the shoulders of her elephant, glistening fantastically with jewels in the light of crackling, resinous torches. Music was seeping up through his mind as the water seeps into a hole in the sand of the seashore. He could feel all through his body the tension of rhythms and phrases taking form, not quite to be seized as yet, still hovering on the borderland of consciousness. From the girl at the crossroads singing under her street lamp, to the patrician pulling roses to pieces from the height of her litter, all the imaginings of your desire. He thought of the girl with skin like old ivory that he had seen in the Plast des Medici. The Queen of Sheba's face was like that now in his imaginings, quiet and inscrutable. A sudden symbol-clanging of joy made his heart thump hard. He was free now of the imaginings of his desire, to lull all day at cafe tables, watching the tables move in changing patterns before him, to fill his mind and body with a reverberation of all the rhythms of men and women moving in the frees of life before his eyes. No more like wooden automatons knowing only the motions of the drill manual, but supple and varied, full of force and tragedy. For heaven's sake, let's beat it from here. Gives me a pain this place does." Heinemann beat his fist on the table. All right, said Andrews, getting up with Eon. Henslow and Andrews walked off, leaving Walters to follow them with Heinemann. We're going to town at Leraki Donks, said Henslow, an awfully funny place. We just have time to walk there comfortably with an appetite. They followed the long, dimly-lighted Rue de Richelieu to the Boulevard, where they drifted a little while with the crowd. The glaring lights seemed to powder the air with gold. Cafes and the tables outside were crowded. There was an odor of vermouth and coffee and perfume and cigarette smoke mixed with the fumes of burnt gasoline from taxi cabs. Isn't this mad? said Andrews. It's always Carnival at 7 on the Grand Boulevard. They started climbing the steep streets to Montmartre. At the corner they passed a hard-faced girl with rouge-smeared lips and over-powdered cheeks, laughing on the arm of an American soldier who had a shallow face and dull green eyes that glittered in the slanting light of a street lamp. Hello, Stein, said Andrews. Who's that? A fellow from our division got here with me this morning. He's got curious lips for a Jew, said Henslow. At the fork of two slanting streets they went into a restaurant that had small windows pasted over with red paper, through which the light came dimly. Inside were crowded oak tables and oak wainscotting with a shelf round the top, on which were shell cans, a couple of skulls, several cracked Majolica plates, and a number of stuffed rats. The only people there were a fat woman and a man with long gray hair and a beard who sat, talking earnestly over two small glasses in the center of the room. A husky-looking waitress with a Dutch cap and apron, hovered near the inner door, from which came a great smell of fish frying in olive oil. The cooks here from Marseilles, said Henslow as they settled themselves at a table for four. I wonder if the rest of them lost the way, said Andrews. More likely old Heinz stopped to have a drink, said Henslow. Let's have some hors d'oeuvres while we are waiting. The waitress brought a collection of boat-shaped plates of red salads and yellow salads and green salads, and two little wooden tubs with herrings and anchovies. Henslow stopped her as she was going, saying, Rien de plu? The waitress contemplated the array with the tragic air. Her arms folded over her ample bosom. Que voulez-vous, monsieur? C'est l'armestice. The greatest fake about all this war business is the peace. I tell you, not till the hors d'oeuvres has been restored to its proper abundance and variety will I admit that the war is over. The waitress tittered. Things aren't what they used to be, she said, going back into the kitchen. Heinemann burst into the restaurant at that moment, slamming the door behind him so that the glass rang, and the fat woman and the hairy man started violently in their chairs. He tumbled into a place, grinning broadly. And what have you done to Walters? Heinemann wiped his glasses meticulously. Oh, he died of drinking raspberry shrub, he said. D'Iron Petite Van de Bargogne, he shouted towards the waitress in his nasal French. Then he added, La Guy is coming in a minute, I just met him. The restaurant was gradually filling up with men and women of very various costumes, with a good sprinkling of Americans in uniform and out. God, I hate people who don't drink, cried Heinemann pouring out wine. A man who doesn't drink just cumbers the earth. How are you going to take it in America when they have prohibition? Oh, don't talk about it, here's La Guy. I wouldn't have him know I belong to a nation that prohibits good liquor. Mr. La Guy, Mr. Henslow, and Mr. Andrews, he continued getting up ceremoniously. A little man with twirled moustaches and a small van dyke beard sat down at the fourth place. He had a faintly red nose and little twinkling eyes. How glad I am, he said, exposing his starched cuffs with a curious gesture. To have someone to dine with, when one begins to get old, loneliness is impossible. It is only youth that dares think. Afterwards, one has only one thing to think about. Old age. There's always work, said Andrews. Slavery. Any work is slavery. What is the use of freeing your intellect if you sell yourself again to the first bidder? Rot, said Heinemann, pouring out from a new bottle. Andrews had begun to notice the girl who sat at the next table, in front of a pale young soldier in French blue who resembled her extraordinarily. She had high cheekbones and a forehead in which the marbling of the skull showed through the transparent, faintly olive skin. Her heavy chestnut hair was coiled carelessly at the back of her head. She spoke very carefully and pressed her lips together when she smiled. She ate quickly and neatly like a cat. The restaurant had gradually filled up with people. The waitress and the patron, a faint man with a wide red sash coiled tightly around his waist, moved with difficulty among the crowded tables. A woman at a table in the corner, with white dead skin and drugged staring eyes, kept laughing hoarsely, leaning her head in a hat with bedraggled white plumes against the wall. There was a constant jingle of plates and glasses, and an oily fume of food and women's clothes and wine. Do you want to know what I really did with your friend? said Heinemann, leaning towards Andrews. I hope you didn't push him into the sand. It was damn impolite, but hell, it was damn impolite of him not to drink. No use wasting time with a man who don't drink. I took him into a cafe and asked him to wait while I telephoned. I guess he's still waiting. One of the horriest cafes on the whole bouvard, Clichy. Heinemann laughed uproariously and started explaining it in his nasal French to Monsieur Laguille. Andrews flushed with annoyance for a moment, but soon started laughing. Heinemann had started singing again. Oh, Sinbad was in bed in Tokyo and Rome, in bed in Trinidad, and twice as bad at home. Oh, Sinbad was in bed all around. Everybody clapped. The white-faced woman in the corner cried, Bravo! Bravo! In a shrill nightmare voice. Heinemann bowed, his big grinning face bobbing up and down, like the face of a Chinese figure in porcelain. Luye Sinbad, he cried, pointing with a wide gesture towards Henslow. Give him some more, Heinz! Give them some more! said Henslow, laughing. Big brunettes with long stellettes on the shores of Italy. Dutch girls with golden curls beside the Zaders. Everyone cheered again. Andrews kept looking at the girl at the next table, whose face was red from laughter. Okule dro, cellula! Okule dro! Heinemann picked up a glass and waved it in the air before drinking it off. Several people got up and filled it from their bottles with white wine and red. The French soldier at the next table pulled an army canteen from under his chair and hung it round Heinemann's neck. Heinemann, his face crimson, bowed to all sides, more like a Chinese porcelain figure than ever, and started singing in all solemnity this time. Houlas and houlas would pucker up their lips. He fell for their ball-bear and hips, for they were pips. His chunky body swayed to the ragtime. The woman in the corner kept time with long white arms raised above her head. But she's a snake-jarmer, said Henslow. Oh, wild woman, love that child! He could drive ten women wild, though Sinbad was in bad all around. Heinemann waved his arms, pointed again to Henslow, and sank into his chair, singing the tones of a Shakespearean actor. Say, Louise, Sinbad! The girl hid her face on the tablecloth, shaken with laughter. Andrews could hear a convulsed little voice saying, OK, les rigolos! Heinemann took off the canteen and handed it back to the French soldier. Merci, camarade, he said solemnly. Et bien, Jean, c'est temps de ficher le camp, said the French soldier to the girl. They got up. He shook hands with the Americans. Andrews caught the girl's eye, and they both started laughing convulsively again. Andrews noticed how erect and supple she walked as his eyes followed her to the door. Andrews' party followed soon after. We've got to hurry if we want to get to the La Pangeale before closing, and I've got to have a drink, said Heinemann, still talking in his stagey Shakespearean voice. Have you ever been on the stage, asked Andrews? What stage, sir? I'm in the last stages now, sir. I am an artistic photographer and none other. Moki and I are going into the movies together when they decide to have peace. Who's Moki? Moki Hodge is the lady in the salmon-colored dress, said Henslow in a loud stage whisper in Andrews' ear. They have a lion cub named Boo Boo. Boo Boo. Our first born, said Heinemann with a wave of the hand. The streets were deserted. A thin ray of moonlight bursting now and then through the heavy clouds lit up low houses and roughly cobbled streets, and the flights of steps with rare dim lamps bracketed in house walls that led up to the boot. There was a gendarme in front of the door at the La Pangeale. The street was full of groups that had just come out. American officers and YMCA women were the sprinkling of the inhabitants of the region. Now, look, we're late, groaned Heinemann in a tearful voice. Never mind, Heinz, said Henslow. Liggy'll take us to see Declogesville like he did last time. Miss Palliggy? Then Andrews heard him add, talking to a man he had not seen before. Come along, Aubrey. I'll introduce you later. They climbed further up the hill. There was a scent of wet gardens in the air. Entirely silent, except for the clatter of their feet on the cobbles. Heinemann was dancing a sort of jig at the head of the procession. They stopped before a tall, cadaverous house, and started climbing a rickety wooden stairway. Talk about inside dope! I heard this from a man who's actually in the room when the peace conference meets. Andrews heard Aubrey's voice with the Chicago bur in the arse, behind him on the stairs. Fine, let's hear it, said Henslow. Did you say the peace conference took dope? shouted Heinemann, who's puffing to be heard as he climbed the dark stairs ahead of them. Shut up, Heinz. They stumbled over a raised doorstep into a large garret room with a tile floor, where a tall, lean man in a monastic-looking dressing gown of some brown material received them. The only candle made all their shadows dance fantastically on the slanting white walls as they moved about. One side of the room had three big windows, with an occasional cracked pane mended with newspaper, stretching from floor to ceiling. In front of them were two couches with rugs piled on them. On the opposite wall was a confused mass of canvases piled one against the other, leaning helter-skelter against the slanting wall of the room. C'est la bonvan la bonvan, c'est la chanson du vent, chanted Heinemann. Everyone settled themselves on couches. The lanky man in the brown dressing gown brought a table out of the shadow, put some black bottles and heavy glasses on it, and drew up a camp stool for himself. He lives that way. They say he never goes out. Stays here in paints and when friends come in he feeds them wine and charges them double, said Henslow. That's how he lives. The lanky man began taking bits of candle out of a drawer of the table and lighting them. Andrew saw that his feet and legs were bare below the frayed edge of the dressing gown. The candlelight lit up the men's flushed faces and the crude banana yellows and arsenic greens of the canvases along the walls, against which jars full of paint brushes cast blurred shadows. I was going to tell you, Henny, said Aubrey, the dope is that the president's going to leave the conference. I'm going to call them all damn blaggards to their faces and walk out with the band playing the Internationale. God, that's news! cried Andrews. If he does that he'll recognize the Soviets, said Henslow. Me for the first Red Cross mission that goes to save starving Russia. Gee, that's great! I'll write you a postal from Moscow, Andy, if they haven't been abolished as delusions of the bourgeoisie. Hell no! I've got five hundred dollars with the Russian bonds that girl Vera gave me. But worth five million, ten million, fifty million if the czar gets back. I'm backing the little white father, cried Heinemann. Anyway, Moky says he's alive. That Savarov's got him locked up in a suite in the Ritz. And Moky knows. Moky knows a damn lot. I'll admit that, said Henslow. But just think of it, said Aubrey. That means world revolution with the United States at the head of it. What do you think of that? Moky doesn't think so, said Heinemann. And Moky knows. She just knows what a lot of reactionary warlords tell her, said Aubrey. This man I was talking with at the Crayon. I wish I could tell you his name. Heard it directly from... Well, you know who. He turned to Henslow, who smiled knowingly. There's a mission in Russia at this minute, making peace with Lenin. The goddamn outrage! cried Heinemann, knocking a bottle off the table. The lanky man picked up the pieces patiently without comment. The new era is opening, man. I swear it is, began Aubrey. The old order is dissolving. It is going down under a weight of misery and crime. This will be the first great gesture towards a newer and better world. There is no alternative. The chance will never come back. It is either for us to step courageously forward or slip into unbelievable horrors of anarchy and civil war. Peace or the dark ages again. Andrews had felt for some time an uncontrollable sleepiness coming over him. He rolled himself in a rug and stretched out on the empty couch. The voices arguing, wrangling, enunciating emphatic phrases dinned for a minute in his ears. He went to sleep. When Andrews woke up, he found himself staring at the cracked plaster of an unfamiliar ceiling. For some moments he could not guess where he was. Henslow was sleeping wrapped in another rug on the couch beside him. Except for Henslow's breathing there was complete silence. Floods of silvery gray light poured in through the wide windows, behind which Andrews could see a sky full of bright, dove-colored clouds. He sat up carefully. Sometime in the night he must have taken off his tunic and boots and patees, which were on the floor beside the couch. The tables with the bottles had gone and the lanky man was nowhere to be seen. Andrews went to the window in his stockinged feet. Paris Way, a slate gray and dove-color lay spread out like a Turkish carpet, with a silvery band of mist where the river was, out of which the Eiffel Tower stood up like a man waiting. Here and there, blue smoke and brown spiraled up to lose itself in the faint canopy of brown fog that hung high above the houses. Andrews stood along while, leaning against the window frame until he heard Henslow's voice behind him. You look like Louise. Andrews turned round. Henslow was sitting on the edge of the bed with his hair and disorder, combing his little soky mustache with a pocket comb. Gee, I have a head, he said. My tongue feels like a nutmeg grater. Doesn't yours? No, I feel like a fighting cock. What do you say we go down to the Sen and have a bath in Benny Franklin's bathtub? Where's that? It sounds grand. Then we'll have the biggest breakfast ever. Oh, that's the right spirit. Where's everybody gone to? Old Hines has gone to his mokey, I guess, and Aubrey's gone to collect more dope at the Crayon. He says four in the morning when the drunks come home is the prime time for a newspaper man. And the monkish men? Ah, search me. The streets were full of men and girls hurrying to work. Everything sparkled, had an air of being just scrubbed. They passed bakeries from which came a rich smell of fresh baked bread. From cafes came whiffs of roasting coffee. They crossed through the markets that were full of heavy carts lumbering to and fro, and women with net bags full of vegetables. There was a hundred cent of crushed cabbage leaves and carrots and wet clay. The mist was raw and biting along the quay, and made the blood come into their cheeks and their hands stiff with cold. The bathhouse was a huge barge with a house built on it in a lozenge shape. They crossed to it by a little gang plank on which were a few geraniums in pots. The attendant gave them two rooms side by side on the lower deck, painted gray, with steamed-over windows, through which Andrews caught glimpses of hurrying green water. He stripped his clothes off quickly. The tub was of copper varnished with some white metal inside. The water flowed in through two copper swans' necks. When Andrews stepped into the hot green water, a little window in the partition flew open and hended. Henslow shouted into him, Talk about modern conveniences. You can converse while you bathe. Andrews scrubbed himself jauntly with a square piece of pink soap, splashing the water about like a small boy. He stood up and lathered himself all over, and then let himself slide into the water, which splashed out over the floor. Do you think you're a performing seal? shouted Henslow. It's also preposterous, cried Andrews, going off into convulsions of laughter. She has a lion cub named Boo Boo, and Nicholas Romanoff lives in the Ritz, and the revolution is scheduled for day after tomorrow at 12 noon. I'd put it about the first of May, answered Henslow, amid a sound of splashing. Gee, it'd be great to be a people's commissary. You could go and revolute the grand llama of Tibet. Oh, it's too deliciously preposterous, cried Andrews, letting himself slide a second time into the bathtub. End of section 12