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She looked very young in her green linen dress which revealed her firm, satin-like arms; fundamentally, under that mask of worldly sophistication, how very natural she was! It was no more than normal that she wanted to succeed, to be seen, to dress well, to have fun; and she had the great merit of truthfully admitting her desires without worrying about whether they were noble or sordid. Even when she lied, she was more truthful than Paula, who never lied; there was a strong touch of hypocrisy in that code of the sublime Paula had developed. Henri pictured the haughty mask she'd have put on in face of all that easy luxury, and Dubreuilh's astonished smile, Anne's shocked expression. When those pictures and that interview appeared in print, they would all shake their heads in dismay.
'It's true that we all have a little bit of the puritan in us,' he thought. 'Myself included. Because we hate it when our privileges are thrust in our faces.' He wanted to avoid that luncheon so that he wouldn't have to admit to himself that he couldn't afford it. 'And yet when I'm at the Bar Rouge with the boys, I never count what I throw away in a single night.'
[...] he knew neither what he should believe nor what he should do; he knew nothing at all. He was still dazed, as if he'd been hit a heavy blow on the head. Obviously, George hadn't invented everything. Maybe, even, it was true! There were camps in which fifteen million workers were being reduced to a sub-human state, but thanks to those camps Nazism had been defeated and a great country was being built, a country which held out the only hope for a thousand million sub-humans slowly dying of hunger in China and India, the only hope for millions of workers enslaved to inhuman conditions, our only hope. 'Will it, too, fail us?' he wondered fearfully. He realized he had never seriously questioned it. He knew of the abuses, the imperfections of the Soviet Union; nevertheless, socialism, true socialism, the one in which justice and freedom belong to all men, would one day finish by triumphing in the Soviet Union, and through the Soviet Union. If, this evening, that certainty left him, then the whole future would sink into the shadows; nowhere else in the world could even a glimmer of hope be seen. 'Is that why I'm taking refuge in doubt?' he asked himself. 'Am I rejecting the evidence out of cowardice, because the air wouldn't be breathable if there were no longer a corner of the earth towards which mankind could turn with a little confidence? Or, on the other hand,' he thought, 'maybe I'm cheating by complacently accepting those horrifying pictures. Unable to rally to Communism, it would be a relief to hate it resolutely. If only you could be completely for, or completely against! But to be against, you've got to have other hopes to offer mankind. And it's only too evident that revolution will come about through the Soviet Union, or there'll be no revolution. And yet, if Russia has merely substituted one system of oppression for another, if she's reestablished slavery, how can one have the least friendship for her? . .. Perhaps evil is everywhere,' Henri said to himself. He remembered that night in a shelter in the Cevennes Mountains when he had voluptuously drowsed off in innocent delight. But if evil were everywhere, innocence didn't exist. Whatever he did, he'd be wrong: wrong if he printed a garbled truth; wrong if he hid the truth, even though it was garbled. He went down to the walk alongside the river. If evil is everywhere, there's no way out, neither for humanity nor for oneself. Would he have to come around to thinking that? He sat down and in a daze watched the water flowing by.
wow
We entered a bar. Brogan ordered ginger ale; I, bourbon. When we went out again, it was still just as cold. We entered another bar and began chatting. After the invasion, he had spent a few months in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Ardennes and he asked me a lot of questions about France, the war, the Occupation, Paris. I, in turn, questioned him. He seemed happy having someone listening to him but embarrassed talking about himself. He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time. He was born in South Chicago, the offspring of a Finnish grocer and a Hungarian Jewish mother. He was twenty when the great depression struck and for several years he lived the life of a hobo, crossing America hidden in freight cars, in turn peddler, dishwasher, waiter, masseur, ditch digger, bricklayer, salesman, and, when necessary, burglar. In some forgotten roadside lunchroom in Arizona where he earned a living washing glasses, he had written a short story which a leftist magazine accepted for publication. Then he wrote others. Ever since the success of his first novel, his publishers had been giving him an allowance which permitted him to live.
sweet
The promptness of his gesture touched me; that's what I had immediately found so appealing about him — his spontaneity. Ready-made phrases and the ritual of etiquette were unknown to him; his thoughtfulness was pure improvisation, and it resembled the little inventions affection inspires. At first, I had found it amusing meeting in the flesh that classic American species: self-made leftist writer. Now, I began taking an interest in Brogan. Through his stories, you got the feeling that he claimed no rights on life and that nevertheless he had always had a passionate desire to live. I liked that mixture of modesty and eagerness.
We went to a burlesque show and watched women strip to music; we went to hear jazz in a little Negro dance hall; we had several drinks in a bar which looked like a flophouse. Brogan knew everyone; the pianist with the tattooed wrists at the burlesque house, the Negro trumpet player in the dance hall, the bums, the coloured people, and the old whores in the bar. He invited them to our table, made them talk, and looked happily at me because he saw I was enjoying myself. When we were out in the street again, I said animatedly, 'Thank you for the best evening I've spent in America.'
Canada wasn't much fun. I was very happy when I landed again in New York, and at once I thought, 'I will telephone to Philip.' I was invited that same day to a cocktail party where I would see most of my friends; from my window, I looked out upon a vast landscape of skyscrapers. But all that was no longer enough for me. I went down to the bar of the hotel; in the blue-black light, a pianist was softly playing languorous melodies, couples were whispering together, and waiters were walking on tiptoe. I ordered a martini and lit a cigarette; my heart was palpitating. What I was about to do wasn't very sensible: after a week with Philip, I surely wouldn't be able to leave him without having serious regrets. Well, too bad! First of all, I wanted him; and as for the regrets, I'd have them anyhow. I already had them. The Queensboro Bridge, Central Park, Washington Square, the East River - in a week, I would no longer see them either, and all in all I'd rather miss a person than stones; that would be far less painful, it seemed to me. I took a sip of the martini. One week - too short for new discoveries, too short for pleasures without tomorrows. I no longer wanted to wander about in New York as a tourist; I had to live, really live in that city. That way, it would become a little mine and, in turn, I would leave something of myself in it. I had to walk in the streets holding the arm of a man who, provisionally at least, would be mine. I emptied my glass. Once during that trip a man had held my arm. It was winter and I was finding it difficult to walk on the icy pavement, but near him I felt warmth. 'Come back,' he had said. 'I don't want to think that I'm not going to see you again.' And I wouldn't go back; I'd hold another arm tightly against mine. For a moment I felt guilty of treason. But there was no question about it: it was Philip I had wanted all through a long night. I still wanted him and was awaiting my call. I got up, went into a telephone booth, and asked for Hartford.
lol
I hung up the telephone, damp with sweat. My heart calmed down, and it left an emptiness under my ribs. I went to the Wilsons. There were many people there; they put a glass in my hand, smiled at me, called me by my name, clutched my arm, my shoulder, invited me left and right; I wrote down appointments in my note-book - and that emptiness in my breast was still there. I could take my body's disappointment, but that emptiness I found almost unbearable. They smiled at me and spoke to me. I spoke. I smiled. For a whole week more we would speak and smile, and then none of them would think of me again, nor I of them. This country was indeed real, I was indeed alive, and I would go away without leaving anything behind me, without taking anything with me. Between two smiles, I abruptly thought, 'And suppose I went to Chicago?' I could call up Brogan this very evening and say to him, 'I'm coming.' If he no longer felt like seeing me, well, he'd tell me. What difference did it make? Two rebuffs wouldn't be worse than one. Between two other smiles, I looked inside myself and felt ashamed: I couldn't have Philip, so I was going to throw myself into Brogan's arms. What about those morals of a bitch in heat? Actually, the idea of sleeping with Brogan didn't mean much to me; I imagined him as being rather awkward in bed. And I wasn't even sure I'd enjoy seeing him again. I had spent only a single afternoon with him, and I might be letting myself in for worse disappointments. No doubt about it, the whole project was stupid. I felt like moving about, like doing things, to mask my failure; that's how you do really idiotic things. I decided to stay in New York and continued noting down appointments - exhibitions, concerts, dinners, parties. The week, would pass quickly. When I found myself out in the street again, it was midnight on the big clock in Madison Square. Anyhow, it was too late to call. No, it wasn't too late! It was only eleven in Chicago and Brogan was reading in his room, or writing. I stopped in front of the lighted window of a drugstore. I don't want to think that I'm not going to see you again. I went in, got change, and asked for Chicago.
oh my god SIMONE
He wasn't waiting for me; there was no one in the waiting-room. 'It's starting badly,' I thought, sitting down in an armchair. I was completely helpless and told myself worriedly that I had not been very cautious. 'Should I call Brogan, or should I not call him?' I had started by playing this game alone, and now I found myself involved in an escapade whose success no longer depended upon me only. All I could do was to watch the hands on the clock — and they did not move. This passiveness frightened me, and I tried to reassure myself. After all, if things went badly, I could always find an excuse for returning to New York tomorrow. In any event, a week from now the interlude would be ended. Securely back in my old life, I would smile indulgently at all my memories, the touching as well as the ridiculous. My anxiety subsided. Before opening my purse to find Brogan's telephone number in my address book, I had checked all the emergency exits, was guaranteed against all mishaps. When I raised my head again, he was standing in front of me; he was taking me all in, a gentle smile on his lips. I couldn't have been more stupefied if, at the other end of the world, I had met his ghost.
this is so me-coded lol
He took me to a bowling alley where we drank beer while watching the pins fall, and to a saloon where five mechanical pianos hammered out old dusty music one after the other, and to an aquarium where we looked at fish grimacing spitefully. We took streetcars, subways, other streetcars and other subways. I liked riding in the subways. Our foreheads pressed against the window of the first car, we were swallowed up in dizzying tunnels illuminated by pale blue bulbs. Brogan put his arm around me, and our silence was like the silence that unites confident lovers. But in the streets he kept his distance, and it made me sad to feel that we did not speak because we could find nothing to say to each other. Along about mid-afternoon I had to admit to myself that I had made an error in my calculations. In a week, tomorrow, this day would belong to the past and I'd have a chance to get over it. But first I had to live it hour by hour, and during all those hours a stranger was capriciously disposing of my fate. I was so tired and so disappointed that I wanted nothing more than to be alone.
The man and the two women stopped and smiled broadly back at him. A moment later I found myself sitting with them at a table in a dreary cafeteria; they were all speaking very rapidly and I understood nothing of what they were saying. Brogan was laughing a great deal, his face was animated; he seemed relieved to have escaped from our long tete-a-tete. It was only natural: these people were his friends; they had a lot of things to talk about. What, after all, did he and I have in common? The women seated opposite him were young and pretty. Did they please him? I realized that there must certainly have been young, pretty women in his life; but how could I experience so much anguish over that thought when we hadn't even exchanged a single real kiss? And I was suffering. Far off, very far off at the end of a tunnel, I saw one of the emergency exits that had made me feel so secure that morning. But I was much too tired to reach it, even on my knees. 'What a to-do about not getting kissed!' I tried to tell myself. But cynicism didn't help. It was no longer important if I was being more or less ridiculous, worthy of my own approval or deserving of my own blame. I had no control over what was happening; bound hand and foot, I had put myself at the mercy of another. What foolishness! I no longer even knew what I had come looking for here; certainly I must have been out of my mind to imagine that a man who was nothing to me could do something for me. When we were out on the street again, and Brogan had taken my arm, I made up my mind to go right back to the hotel and go to sleep.