(1969) The Seven Minutes (66 page)

By late afternoon, carrying his briefcase, Barrett had caught a taxi and directed the driver to take him to Greenwich Village. After leaving the cab near Washington Square, he had bought a copy of The Village Voice. It contained no listing or advertisement of the club. At last he had approached a boy and a girl - they both turned out to be girls, one in pea jacket and dungarees, the other in a colorful short shift and sandals - and they pointed the way.

Now, after walking four blocks through the Village, Mike Barrett had arrived at his destination.

There was a sign over a striped canopy that stretched above the sidewalk. The sign read: the appropoet. bar - snacks, open 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. Along the border of the fringed canopy, in Irish half-uncials, was the lettering ‘A Book of Verses underneath the Bough … A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Though … Beside me singing in the Wilderness… Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!’

There were two worn steps between wrought-iron rails leading down to the entrance. Barrett descended and went inside. The room

was crowded and cramped, with clouds of smoke curling beneath the ceiling. The professor had been wrong about the absence of music. Today there was the mournful strumming of a single guitar above the low-keyed chatter. Leaning against the far brick wall, a long-haired, beared young man, holding a yellow sheet of paper, was reading a poem. ‘Paint me by number / And perforate me for a machine.’ One more voice singing in the Wilderness, Barrett thought, and he headed for the nearest side of the bar just ahead.

The bartender, a black patch over one eye, was rinsing glasses. Barrett coughed to get attention. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m supposed to meet Sean O’Flanagan here.’

‘He’s at his regular table.’

Barrett looked about, confused, and the bartender pointed over Barrett’s shoulder.

‘Next to the window,’ the bartender added, ‘the fellow with the beret.’

‘Thanks,’ said Barrett. He turned around, waited for some new arrivals to pass, and then moved between the tables toward the fellow with the beret, who sat hunched over a drink beneath the oblong frosted window.

As he neared Sean O’Flanagan, the face of the poet took on definition. The beret was a soiled faded blue and was worn like a skullcap. The eyes were rheumy, the wrinkles above and below gouged deeply like seams stitched to hold the flesh together. There was a grayish stubble on the protruding chin. A rubbed corduroy jacket was draped over thin coat-hanger shoulders, and a string of love beads hung from the scrawny neck. All in all, he gave the impression of a failed Andre Gide.

‘Mr Sean O’Flanagan?’

The poet had been staring off into space. Now he lifted his gaze in the manner of one who was used to having strangers introduce themselves to him. ‘Yes, young man?’ he said.

‘I’m Mike Barrett. I’m in from Los Angeles. A mutual acquaintance suggested I look you up. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about. Mind if I sit down?’

O’Flanagan’s voice was whisky-hoarse, and doubtful. ‘Depends. What you want to talk to me about ?’

‘Mainly about your period in Paris.’

‘You’re not a poet?’

‘No,I-‘

‘You can’t tell any more, these days. Now poets wear ties and crew cuts and some of them work as dentists.’

‘Well, I did want to ask you a few questions about writing and writers. Can I treat you to a drink?’

O’Flanagan considered his almost empty glass, and then his head came up and the mouth cracked at the corners and wrinkled into a smile of brotherhood. ‘That last was poetry, Mr Banner. You are a qualified versifier. Grab a chair.’

Barrett found a free one nearby and dragged it to a spot across the circular table from O’Flanagan. No sooner was he seated than the poet had caught the attention of a waiter. ‘Chuck, I’ll be having another brandy and water. Make it a double - the brandy, not the water.’

‘Scotch on the rocks,’ Barrett called out.

O’Flanagan launched into a long, humorous anecdote about a St Bernard dog and its keg of brandy, and at its conclusion he cackled with glee, and Barrett laughed and felt better. The drinks appeared, and O’Flanagan’s hand trembled, as he brought the glass to his mouth. He gulped, smacked his lips, gulped again. Half of the brandy and water at had disappeared.

He winked at Barrett. ‘Needed that fueling up, Mr …’ He looked blank. ‘Lost my memory for names.’

‘Mike Barrett.’

‘Barrett, Barrett. Okay. Now, what’s it you wanted to ask me about Paris?’

‘Exactly when were you there?’

‘When was I? Let me see. Got there as a puling kid in 1929. Stayed on until 1938, I guess. About ten years. Never been years like those years. “Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets.” That’s Joyce. Knew him. First met him at La Maison des Amis des Livres. Knew Sylvia Beach too. And Gert Stein. But the main watering place was the Dome. You know Paris? The cafe in Montparnasse? It’s still there on the corner, I guess. That was real Bohemia. This -‘ he waved his hand to take in the room - ‘this is dross, fake, synthetic Bohemia.’

‘Have you ever been back to Paris?’ asked Barrett.

‘Back? No. I wouldn’t want to spoil the dream. Every man has his own annuity for his later years. Mine is the old dream. It was incredible, everybody writing way out ahead of the world, or painting, or getting laid. God, what a Mohammedan heaven for a kid with a questing cock. You know what? One night I banged some old frump. Turned out she had been one of Modigliani’s models once. And one night, Christ, I must’ve been loaded, I let some old buzzard bugger me. Know why? Because I was told he used to bugger Rimbaud or Verlaine, forget which. Ah, well, here’s mud in your eye, Barrett.’

He finished his drink.

‘Have another,’ said Barrett.

O’Flanagan signaled the waiter for a refill and nodded his thanks to Barrett. ‘My old pal Wilson Mizner used to say, ‘As a writer I am a stylist, and the most beautiful sentence I have ever heard is ‘Have one on the house.’ ” Ha!’ He broke into a fit of cackling and coughing, and at last he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Now, where were we?’

‘In Paris.’

‘Paris, that’s right.’

Barrett waited for the refill to be served and watched O’Flanagan go at it. ‘Mr O’Flanagan, when did you meet J J Jadway in Paris ?’

With the mention of Jadway’s name, the poet stopped drinking. ‘What makes you think I knew Jadway?’

‘Several people told me you did. In fact, this morning, a man who once spent time with you, Dr Hiram Eberhart -‘

‘Who?’

‘He’s a professor at Columbia. He wrote a book called Outside the Mainstream and he mentions Jadway in it. He said you gave him an interview once, right here.’

‘A little runt of a guy ? Yes, I remember him. Why are you interested in Jadway ? Are you writing a paper or book or something?’

‘I’ll be truthful. I’m an attorney. I’m the lawyer who’s defending Jadway’s book, The Seven Minutes, in the trial in Los Angeles.’

O’Flanagan looked troubled. ‘That trial. Been reading about it. You’re the lawyer, eh? Well, from where I sit, they’re making mincemeat out of you - and poor Jad.’

“That’s why I’m here. To try to improve our case. I was told you were one of Jadway’s closest friends.’

‘And that’s why I’m not going to talk about him, Barrett. I made a vow after he was gone. He was - he was driven to his death. Now he deserves to rest in peace. He deserves that much.’

‘Well, the censors aren’t letting him rest in peace. I want to defend him, not only to save his book, liberate it, but to see that his memory and name are honored. I’m afraid I’ve just about reached dead end. I need your help.’ Barrett stared at O’Flanagan, who was drinking silently. ‘Mr O’Flanagan, you were his friend, weren’t you?’

‘The only friend he ever had and trusted, besides Cassie McGraw. I’ll tell you this much, and with great pride in it. I knew him. I knew Jad and Cassie, and I was their friend. Met them the first time in Sylvia Beach’s bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, in the Rue de l’Odeon, number 12 Rue. de l’Odeon. Hemingway, Pound, Fitzgerald, they all browsed and bought and gabbed there, along with Joyce. And I came in there one day, and there was Jadway and there was Cassie.’

‘When was that?’

‘Summer of 1934, when he was writing his book.’

‘Christian Leroux testified that he wrote the book in three weeks.’

‘Leroux’s a turd. He’d say anything for a buck.’

Barrett’s heart leaped. ‘You mean he lied in his testimony?’

O’Flanagan drank. ‘I’m not saying he lied. I’m saying he has not always been a devotee of the truth. I don’t like him, never did, and I don’t want to talk about him.’

‘But was most of his testimony accurate?’

‘Most of it.’

‘The part about Jadway’s death?’

‘Generally true. The book came out. The daughter of another

one of Jadway’s friends got in trouble, and the friend blamed it on Jadway because of the book. Then there was some other trouble Jadway had with his parents. He was very sensitive. He fell into a depression. He killed himself. It’s already in the record.’

‘When did he kill himself?’

‘In February, the year of Our Lord 1937 a.d. Amen.’

‘It was in February of 1937? All right, that’s what I really came here to speak to you about.’

Barrett felt the poet’s suspicious eyes upon him as he unlatched his briefcase and brought out a copy of Dr Eberhart’s book. He opened it at the bookmark and showed O’Flanagan the underlined passage.

When he had finished reading it, O’Flanagan looked up. ‘What about it?’

‘Dr Eberhart says you gave him that material about Jadway’s discussing the Louis-Braddock fight and commenting on the 1939 publication of Tropic of Capricorn?

‘Maybe I did.’

‘Can you explain this, then. Jadway died in February, 1937. How could he have heard the heavyweight fight four months after his death and read the Miller book two years later?’

O’Flanagan did not reply. He stared blankly at Barrett; groped beside him for the glass, and slowly drank. He set the glass down. ‘Maybe that Eberhart took it down wrong, didn’t hear me right.’

‘Mr O’Flanagan, even if he heard you wrong, his tape recorder heard you right. He taped the interview with you. He played it back for me over the phone two hours ago.’

“Then maybe I made the mistake. I must’ve been boozing that night.’

‘Eberhart said you were cold sober.’

‘How in the hell would he know?’

‘You sounded sober to me on the tape.’

O’Flanagan grunted. ‘Maybe the sober are the drunks of the world, and vice versa.’ He straightened. T guess I got screwed up on my dates and time. My memory’s been going. That’s the only explanation. I’ll have another drink.’

Barrett caught a waiter by the arm and ordered a third double brandy for O’Flanagan and a second Scotch for himself. ‘Mr O’Flanagan, couldn’t you be mistaken about the date of Jadway’s death as well? Maybe he died later, say in 1939 or 1940, instead of 1937.’

‘No, I remember the time exactly. I remember the services. I was with Cassie all through that period after.’

The drinks came. O’Flanagan took up his glass. Barrett ignored his own drink. He decided to pursue a new line of inquiry. ‘You were with Cassie,’ he repeated. ‘Whatever happened to her ?’

‘She left Paris. There was nothing more for her there.’ O’Flanagan was speaking between gulps, and his words had begun to slur.

‘She went back to America. To the Midwest, I think.’

‘Whatever happened to her child?’

‘Judith? I had a postcard from her once, maybe ten years ago. She was moving to California to get married. That’s the last I heard from her.’

‘Any idea where in California?’

‘How would I know?’

‘There was testimony that Cassie McGraw herself finally married some other man and lived in Detroit. Do you know anything about that?’

‘I know she married someone and was widowed not long after. I know that. But I never heard from her again after. I don’t know what happened to her. Probably dead and gone for years. There was no life for her after Jadway.’ He shook his head drunkenly. ‘They were great ones, those two. He was tall and consumptive-looking, like Robert Louis Stevenson. She was a beauty, a lot of woman. She’s all in his book. We used to have great times together, arms linked, strolling along the Seine, reciting poetry. They had favorites. There was one I remember most. ‘Laying his head back against the wall, eyes closed, O’Flanagan said, ‘By Pietro Aretino, the Renaissance man.’ He paused, then recited soft,’ “Could man but fatter post mortem, I would cry: / Let’s fotter ourselves to death, and wake to fotter
With Eve and Adam, who were doomed to die
By that fotteren apple and their rotten luck.” ‘ He opened his eyes. ‘For fotter, and all its correct forms in Italian that I don’t remember, you can substitute “fuck,” which is less elegant. That was Aretino’s poem, and it was like four hundred years ago when he wrote it and we recited it. That was the favorite.’

‘Whose favorite ? Jadway’s ?’

‘No. Cassie’s.’

Barrett could see that O’Flanagan would not be articulate much longer. He must make haste.

‘Mr O’Flanagan, would you consider appearing for the defense-as a defense witness for Jadway - in the trial? We would pay you handsomely for your time and trouble.’

‘You couldn’t pay me enough, Barrett. There’s not enough money minted on earth to make me talk about Jadway any more.’

‘You could be subpoenaed, you know.’

T could suffer amnesia, you know. Don’t threaten me, Barrett. Jadway and Cassie, they’re the best part of my private past. I’m not robbing their graves and my dreams for pay.’

Tm sorry,’ said Barrett. T won’t bother you about this again. Just one last point. A short time ago, an autograph dealer in this city, Olin Adams, got his hands on several Jadway letters. He told me that he offered them to you. You didn’t have the money to buy them, and so you declined. Right after that, you called Adams and said you had got money and wanted to buy them. Why?’

O’Flanagan grunted. ‘Why? Tell you why. I wanted them as part

of the O’Flanagan Manuscript Collection in the Special Collections Department at the library of Parktown College. That’s a small school just before you get to Boston. They once gave me an honorary degree when I was editing my magazine. In return I donated to them all my personal memorabilia and papers. Always wanted something of Jadway’s in my collection. I had nothing. Cassie had what little Jadway left behind. Don’t know if she destroyed his papers and letters or kept them. But when these few letters came up for sale, I wanted them. Couldn’t afford them. Then had a chance to borrow some money. So tried to get them. Too late.’ He sighed. ‘Too bad. Would have looked good in my collection at Parktown. Too bad.’