'Then you can only cut someone you have known on terms of equality?' I pursued.
'Naturally.'
'How would one ever meet a cad?'
'You might not know it, or the fellow could have become a cad.'
'What is a cad?' I asked. 'Isn't he someone that one has to thrash within an inch of his
life?'
'Not necessarily,' Ford said.
'Is Ezra a gentleman?' I asked.
'Of course not,' Ford said. 'He's an American.'
'Can't an American be a gentleman?'
Terhaps John Quinn,' Ford explained. 'Certain of your ambassadors.'
'Myron T. Herrick?'
'Possibly.'
'Was Henry James a gentleman?'
'Very nearly.'
'Are you a gentleman?'
'Naturally. I have held His Majesty's commission.'
'It's very complicated,' I said. 'Am I a gentleman?'
'Absolutely not,' Ford said.
'Then why are you drinking with me?'
'I'm drinking with you as a promising young writer. As a fellow writer, in fact.'
'Good of you,' I said.
'You might be considered a gentleman in Italy,' Ford said magnanimously.
'But I'm not a cad?'
'Of course not, dear boy. Who ever said such a thing?'
'I might become one,' I said sadly. 'Drinking brandy and all. That was what did for
Lord Harry Hotspur in Trollope. Tell me, was Trollope a gentleman?'
'Of course not.'
'You're sure?'
'There might be two opinions. But not in mine.'
'Was Fielding? He was a judge.'
'Technically, perhaps.'
'Marlowe?'
'Of course not.'
'John Donne?'
'He was a parson.'
'It's fascinating,' I said.
'I'm glad you're interested,' Ford said. 'I'll have a brandy and water with you before I
go.'
After Ford left it was dark and I walked over to the ktosque and bought a Paris-Sport
Compkt, the final edition of the afternoon racing paper with the results at Auteuil, and the
line on the next day's meeting at Enghien. The waiter Emile, who had replaced Jean on
duty, came to the table to see the results of the last race at Auteuil. A great friend of mine
who rarely came to the Lilas came over to the table and sat down, and just then as my
friend was ordering a drink from Emile the gaunt man in the cape with the tall woman
passed us on the sidewalk. His glance drifted towards the table and then away.
'That's Hilaire Belloc,' I said to my friend. 'Ford was here this afternoon and cut him
dead.'
'Don't be a silly ass,' my friend said. 'That's Aleister Crowley, the diabolist. He's
supposed to be the wickedest man in the world.'
'Sorry,' I said.
10 Birth of a New School
The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was
too wasteful), the marble-topped tables, the smell of early morning, sweeping out and
mopping, and luck were all you needed. For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a
rabbit's foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit's foot long ago and
the bones and the sinews were polished by wear. The claws scratched in the lining of
your pocket and you knew your luck was still there.
Some days it went so well that you could make the country so that you could walk
into it through the timber to come out into the clearing and work up onto the high ground
and see the hills beyond the arm of the lake. A pencil-lead might break off in the conical
nose of the pencil sharpener and you would use the small blade of the penknife to clear it
or else sharpen the pencil carefully with the sharp blade and then slip your arm through
the sweat-salted leather of your pack strap to lift the pack again, get the other arm
through and feel the weight settle on your back and feel the pine needles under your
moccasins as you started down for the lake.
Then you would hear someone say, 'Hi, Hem. What are you trying to do? Write in a
cafe?'
Your luck had run out and you shut the notebook. This was the worst thing that could
happen. If you could keep your temper it would be better but I was not good at keeping
mine then and said, 'You rotten son of a bitch, what are you doing in here off your filthy
beat?'
'Don't be insulting just because you want to act like an eccentric.'
'Take your dirty camping mouth out of here.' 'It's a public cafe. I've just as much
right here as you have.' 'Why don't you go up to the Petite Chaumiere where you belong?'
'Oh dear. Don't be so tiresome.'
Now you could get out and hope it was an accidental visit and that the visitor had
only come in by chance and there was not going to be an infestation. There were other
good cafes to work in but they were a long walk away and this was my home cafe. It was
bad to be driven out of the Closerie des Lilas. I had to make a stand or move. It was
probably wiser to move but the anger started to come and I said, 'Listen. A bitch like you
has plenty of places to go. Why do you have to come here and louse a decent cafe?'
'I just came in to have a drink. What's wrong with that?'
'At home they'd serve you and then break the glass.'
'Where's home? It sounds like a charming place.'
He was sitting at the next table, a tall fat young man with spectacles. He had ordered
a beer. I thought I would ignore him and see if I could write. So I ignored him and wrote
two sentences.
'All I did was speak to you.'
I went on and wrote another sentence. It dies hard when it is really going and you are
into it.
'I suppose you've got so great nobody can speak to you.'
I wrote another sentence that ended the paragraph and read it over. It was still all
right and I wrote the first sentence of the next paragraph.
'You never think about anyone else or that they may have problems too.'
I had heard complaining all my life. I found I could go on writing and that it was no
worse than other noises, certainly better than Ezra learning to play the bassoon.
'Suppose you wanted to be a writer and felt it in every part of your body and it just
wouldn't come.'
I went on writing and I was beginning to have luck now as well as the other thing.
'Suppose once it had come like an irresistible torrent and then it left you mute and
silent.'
Better than mute and noisy, I thought, and went on writing. He was in full cry now
and the unbelievable sentences were soothing as the noise of a plank being violated in the
sawmill.
'We went to Greece,' I heard him say later. I had not heard him for some time except
as noise. I was ahead now and I could leave it and go on tomorrow.
'You say you used it or you went there?'
'Don't be vulgar,' he said. 'Don't you want me to tell you the rest?'
'No,' I said. I closed the notebook and put it in my pocket.
'Don't you care how it came out?'
'No.'
'Don't you care about life and the suffering of a fellow human being?'
'Not you.'
'You're beastly.'
'Yes.'
'I thought you could help me, Hem.'
'I'd be glad to shoot you.'
'Would you?'
'No. There's a law against it.'
'I'd do anything for you.'
"Would you?'
'Of course I would.'
'Then keep the hell away from this cafe. Start with that.'
I stood up and the waiter came over and I paid.
'Can I walk down to the sawmill with you, Hem?'
'No.'
'Well, I'll see you some other time.'
'Not here.'
'That's perfectly right,' he said. 'I promised.'
'What are you writing?' I made a mistake and asked.
'I'm writing the best I can. Just as you do. But it's so terribly difficult.'
'You shouldn't write if you can't write. What do you have to cry about it for? Go
home. Get a job. Hang yourself. Only don't talk about it. You could never write.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Did you ever hear yourself talk?'
'It's writing I'm talking about.'
"Then shut up.'
'You're just cruel,' he said. 'Everybody always said you were cruel and heartless and
conceited. I always defended you. But not any more.'
'Good.'
'How can you be so cruel to a fellow human being?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'Look, if you can't write why don't you learn to write criticism?'
'Do you think I should?'
'It would be fine,' I told him. 'Then you can always write. You won't ever have to
worry about it not coming nor being mute and silent. People will read it and respect it.'
'Do you think I could be a good critic?'
'I don't know how good. But you could be a critic. There will always be people who
will help you and you can help your own people.'
'What do you mean, my own people?'
'The ones you go around with.'
'Oh them. They have their critics.'
'You don't have to criticize books,' I said. 'There's pictures, plays, ballet, the
cinema—'
'You make it sound fascinating, Hem. Thank you so much. It's so exciting. It's
creative too.'
'Creation's probably overrated. After all, God made the world in only six days and
rested on the seventh.'
'Of course there's nothing to prevent me doing creative writing too.'
'Not a thing. Except you may set yourself impossibly high standards by your
criticism.'
'They'll be high. You can count on that.'
'I'm sure they will be.'
He was a critic already, so I asked him if he would have a drink and he accepted.
'Hem,' he said, and I knew he was a critic now since, in conversation, they put your
name at the beginning of a sentence rather than at the end, 'I have to tell you I find your
work just a little too stark.'
'Too bad,' I said.
'Hem, it's too stripped, too lean.'
'Bad luck.'
'Hem, too stark, too stripped, too lean, too sinewy.'
I felt the rabbit's foot in my pocket guiltily. 'I'll try to fatten it up a little.'
'Mind, I don't want it obese.'
'Hal,' I said, practising speaking like a critic, 'I'll avoid that as long as I can.'
'Glad we see eye to eye,' he said manfully.
'You'll remember about not coming here when I'm working?'
'Naturally, Hem. Of course. I'll have my own cafe now.'
'You're very kind.'
'I try to be,' he said.
It would be interesting and instructive if the young man had turned out to be a
famous critic, but it did not turn out that way although I had high hopes for a while.
I did not think that he would come back the next day but I did not want to take
chances and I decided to give the Closerie a day's rest. So the next morning I woke early,
boiled the rubber nipples and the bottles, made the formula, finished the bottling, gave
Mr Bumby a bottle and worked on the dining-room table before anyone but he, F. Puss
the cat, and I were awake. The two of them were quiet and good company and I worked
better than I had ever done. In those days you did not really need anything, not even the
rabbit's foot, but it was good to feel it in your pocket.
11 With Pascin at the Dome
It was a lovely evening and I had worked hard all day and left the flat over the sawmill
and walked out through the courtyard with the stacked lumber, closed the door, crossed
the street and went into the back door of the bakery that fronted on the Boulevard
Montparnasse and out through the good bread smells of the ovens and the shop to the
street. The lights were on in the bakery and outside it was the end of the day and I walked
in the early dusk up the street and stopped outside the terrace of the Negre de Toulouse
restaurant where our red and white checkered napkins were in the wooden napkin rings in
the napkin rack waiting for us to come to dinner. I read the menu mimeographed in
purple ink and saw that the plat du jour was cassoulet. It made me hungry to read the
name.
Mr Lavigne, the proprietor, asked me how my work had gone and I said it had gone
very well. He said he had seen me working on the terrace of the Closerie des Lilas early
in the morning but he had not spoken to me because I was so occupied.
'You had the air of a man alone in the jungle,' he said.
'I am like a blind pig when I work.'
'But were you not in the jungle, Monsieur?'
'In the bush,' I said.
I went on up the street looking in the windows and happy with the spring evening
and the people coming past. In the three principal cafes I saw people that I knew by sight
and others that I knew to speak to. But there were always much nicer-looking people that
I did not know that, in the evening with the lights just coming on, were hurrying to some
place to drink together, to eat together and then to make love. The people in the principal
cafes might do the same thing or they might just sit and drink and talk and love to be seen
by others. The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they
were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them and be
together. The big cafes were cheap then too, and all had good beer and the aperitifs cost
reasonable prices that were clearly marked on the saucers that were served with them.
On this evening I was thinking these wholesome but not original thoughts and
