Going to Meet the Man (20 page)

Vidal was a Gaullist before de Gaulle came to power. But he regrets the manner of de Gaulle’s rise and he is worried about de Gaulle’s regime. “It is not the fault of
mon général
,” he sometimes says, sadly. “Perhaps it is history’s fault. I
suppose
it must be history which always arranges to bill a civilization at the very instant it is least prepared to pay.”

Now he rises and walks out on the balcony, as though to
reassure himself of the reality of Paris. Mahalia is singing
Didn’t It Rain?
I walk out and stand beside him.

“You are a good boy—Chico,” he says. I laugh. “You believe in love. You do not know all the things love cannot do, but”—he smiles—“love will teach you that.”

We go, after dinner, to a Left Bank discothèque which can charge outrageous prices because Marlon Brando wandered in there one night. By accident, according to Vidal. “Do you know how many people in Paris are becoming rich—to say nothing of those,
hélas!
, who are going broke—on the off chance that Marlon Brando will lose his way again?”

He has not, presumably, lost his way tonight, but the discothèque is crowded with those strangely faceless people who are part of the night life of all great cities, and who always arrive, moments, hours, or decades late, on the spot made notorious by an event or a movement or a handful of personalities. So here are American boys, anything but beard-less, scratching around for Hemingway; American girls, titillating themselves with Frenchmen and existentialism, while waiting for the American boys to shave off their beards; French painters, busily pursuing the revolution which ended thirty years ago; and the young, bored, perverted, American
arrivistes
who are buying their way into the art world via flattery and liquor, and the production of canvases as arid as their greedy little faces. Here are boys, of all nations, one step above the pimp, who are occasionally walked across a stage or trotted before a camera. And the girls, their enemies, whose faces are sometimes seen in ads, one of whom will surely have a tantrum before the evening is out.

In a corner, as usual, surrounded, as usual, by smiling young men, sits the drunken blonde woman who was once the mistress of a famous, dead painter. She is a figure of some importance in the art world, and so rarely has to pay for either her
drinks or her lovers. An older Frenchman, who was once a famous director, is playing
quatre cent ving-et-un
with the woman behind the cash register. He nods pleasantly to Vidal and me as we enter, but makes no move to join us, and I respect him for this. Vidal and I are obviously cast tonight in the role vacated by Brando: our entrance justifies the prices and sends a kind of shiver through the room. It is marvelous to watch the face of the waiter as he approaches, all smiles and deference and grace, not so much honored by our presence as achieving his reality from it; excellence, he seems to be saying, gravitates naturally toward excellence. We order two whiskey and sodas. I know why Vidal sometimes comes here. He is lonely. I do not think that he expects ever to love one woman again, and so he distracts himself with many.

Since this is a discothèque, jazz is blaring from the walls and record sleeves are scattered about with a devastating carelessness. Two of them are mine and no doubt, presently, someone will play the recording of the songs I sang in the film.

“I thought,” says Vidal, with a malicious little smile, “that your farewell to Paris would not be complete without a brief exposure to the perils of fame. Perhaps it will help prepare you for America, where, I am told, the populace is yet more carnivorous than it is here.”

I can see that one of the vacant models is preparing herself to come to our table and ask for an autograph, hoping, since she is pretty—she has, that is, the usual female equipment, dramatized in the usual, modern way—to be invited for a drink. Should the maneuver succeed, one of her boy friends or girl friends will contrive to come by the table, asking for a light or a pencil or a lipstick, and it will be extremely difficult not to invite this person to join us, too. Before the evening ends, we will be surrounded. I don’t, now, know what I expected of fame, but I suppose it never occurred to me that the light could be just as dangerous, just as killing, as the dark.

“Well, let’s make it brief,” I tell him. “Sometimes I wish that you weren’t quite so fond of me.”

He laughs. “There are some very interesting people here tonight. Look.”

Across the room from us, and now staring at our table, are a group of American Negro students, who are probably visiting Paris for the first time. There are four of them, two boys and two girls, and I suppose that they must be in their late teens or early twenties. One of the boys, a gleaming, curly-haired, golden-brown type—the color of his mother’s fried chicken—is carrying a guitar. When they realize we have noticed them, they smile and wave—wave as though I were one of their possessions, as, indeed, I am. Golden-brown is a mime. He raises his guitar, drops his shoulders, and his face falls into the lugubrious lines of Chico’s face as he approaches death. He strums a little of the film’s theme music, and I laugh and the table laughs. It is as though we were all back home and had met for a moment, on a Sunday morning, say, before a church or a poolroom or a barbershop.

And they have created a sensation in the discothèque, naturally, having managed, with no effort whatever, to outwit all the gleaming boys and girls. Their table, which had been of no interest only a moment before, has now become the focus of a rather pathetic attention; their smiles have made it possible for the others to smile, and to nod in our direction.

“Oh,” says Vidal, “he does that far better than you ever did, perhaps I will make him a star.”

“Feel free,
m’sieu, le bon Dieu
, I got mine.” But I can see that his attention has really been caught by one of the girls, slim, tense, and dark, who seems, though it is hard to know how one senses such things, to be treated by the others with a special respect. And, in fact, the table now seems to be having a council of war, to be demanding her opinion or her cooperation. She listens, frowning, laughing; the quality, the force of
her intelligence causes her face to keep changing all the time, as though a light played on it. And, presently, with a gesture she might once have used to scatter feed to chickens, she scoops up from the floor one of those dangling rag bags women love to carry. She holds it loosely by the drawstrings, so that it is banging somewhere around her ankle, and walks over to our table. She has an honest, forthright walk, entirely unlike the calculated, pelvic workout by means of which most women get about. She is small, but sturdily, economically, put together.

As she reaches our table, Vidal and I rise, and this throws her for a second. (It has been a long time since I have seen such an attractive girl.)

Also, everyone, of course, is watching us. It is really a quite curious moment. They have put on the record of Chico singing a sad, angry Martinique ballad; my own voice is coming at us from the walls as the girl looks from Vidal to me, and smiles.

“I guess you know,” she says, “we weren’t
about
to let you get out of here without bugging you just a little bit. We’ve only been in Paris just a couple of days and we thought for sure that we wouldn’t have a chance of running into you anywhere, because it’s in all the papers that you’re coming home.”

“Yes,” I say, “yes. I’m leaving the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh!” She grins. “Then we really
are
lucky.” I find that I have almost forgotten the urchin-like grin of a colored girl. “I guess, before I keep babbling on, I’d better introduce myself. My name is Ada Holmes.”

We shake hands. “This is Monsieur Vidal, the director of the film.”

“I’m very honored to meet you, sir.”

“Will you join us for a moment? Won’t you sit down?” And Vidal pulls a chair out for her.

But she frowns contritely. “I really ought to get back to my
friends.” She looks at me. “I really just came over to say, for myself and all the kids, that we’ve got your records and we’ve seen your movie, and it means so much to us”—and she laughs, breathlessly, nervously, it is somehow more moving than tears—“more than I can say. Much more. And we wanted to know if you and your friend”—she looks at Vidal—“your
director
, Monsieur Vidal, would allow us to buy you a drink? We’d be very honored if you would.”

“It is we who are honored,” says Vidal, promptly, “
and
grateful. We were getting terribly bored with one another, thank God you came along.”

The three of us laugh, and we cross the room.

The three at the table rise, and Ada makes the introductions. The other girl, taller and paler than Ada, is named Ruth. One of the boys is named Talley—“short for Talliafero”—and Golden-brown’s name is Pete. “Man,” he tells me, “I dig you the most. Your tore me up, baby, tore me
up.
”

“You tore up a lot of people,” Talley says, cryptically, and he and Ruth laugh. Vidal does not know, but I do, that Talley is probably referring to white people.

They are from New Orleans and Tallahassee and North Carolina; are college students, and met on the boat. They have been in Europe all summer, in Italy and Spain, but are only just getting to Paris.

“We meant to come sooner,” says Ada, “but we could never make up our minds to leave a place. I thought we’d never pry Ruth loose from Venice.”

“I resigned myself,” says Pete, “and just sat in the Piazza San Marco, drinking gin fizz and being photographed with the pigeons, while Ruth had herself driven
all
up and down the Grand Canal.” He looks at Ruth. “Finally, thank heaven, it rained.”

“She was working off her hostilities,” says Ada, with a grin.
“We thought we might as well let her do it in Venice, the opportunities in North Carolina are really terribly limited.”

“There are some very upset people walking around down there,” Ruth says, “and a couple of tours around the Grand Canal might do them a world of good.”

Pete laughs. “Can’t you just see Ruth escorting them to the edge of the water?”

“I haven’t lifted my hand in anger yet,” Ruth says, “but, oh Lord,” and she laughs, clenching and unclenching her fists.

“You haven’t been back for a long time, have you?” Talley asks me.

“Eight years. I haven’t really lived there for twelve years.”

Pete whistles. “I fear you are in for some surprises, my friend. There have been some changes made.” Then, “Are you afraid?”

“A little.”

“We all are,” says Ada, “that’s why I was so glad to get away for a little while.”

“Then you haven’t been back since Black Monday,” Talley says. He laughs. “That’s how it’s gone down in Confederate history.” He turns to Vidal. “What do people think about it here?”

Vidal smiles, delighted. “It seems extraordinarily infantile behavior, even for Americans, from whom, I must say, I have never expected very much in the way of maturity.” Everyone at the table laughs. Vidal goes on. “But I cannot really talk about it, I do not understand it. I have never really understood Americans; I am an old man now, and I suppose I never will. There is something very nice about them, something very winning, but they seem so ignorant—so ignorant of life. Perhaps it is strange, but the only people from your country with whom I have ever made contact are black people—like my good friend, my discovery, here,” and he slaps me on the shoulder. “Perhaps it is because we, in Europe, whatever else we do not
know, or have forgotten, know about suffering. We have suffered here. You have suffered, too. But most Americans do not yet know what anguish is. It is too bad, because the life of the West is in their hands.” He turns to Ada. “I cannot help saying that I think it is a scandal—and we may all pay very dearly for it—that a civilized nation should elect to represent it a man who is so simple that he thinks the world is simple.” And silence falls at the table and the four young faces stare at him.

“Well,” says Pete, at last, turning to me, “you won’t be bored, man, when you get back there.”

“It’s much too nice a night,” I say, “to stay cooped up in this place, where all I can hear is my own records.” We laugh. “Why don’t we get out of here and find a sidewalk café?” I tap Pete’s guitar. “Maybe we can find out if you’ve got any talent.”

“Oh, talent I’ve got,” says Pete, “but character, man, I’m lacking.”

So, after some confusion about the bill, for which Vidal has already made himself responsible, we walk out into the Paris night. It is very strange to feel that, very soon now, these boulevards will not exist for me. People will be walking up and down, as they are tonight, and lovers will be murmuring in the black shadows of the plane trees, and there will be these same still figures on the benches or in the parks—but they will not exist for me, I will not be here. For a long while Paris will no longer exist for me, except in my mind; and only in the minds of some people will I exist any longer for Paris. After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds. Perhaps this is what the old folks meant, what my mother and my father meant, when they counseled us to keep the faith.

We have taken a table at the Deux Magots and Pete strums on his guitar and begins to play this song:

He has a strong, clear, boyish voice, like a young preacher’s, and he is smiling as he sings his song. Ada and I look at each other and grin, and Vidal is smiling. The waiter looks a little worried, for we are already beginning to attract a crowd, but it is a summer night, the gendarmes on the corner do not seem to mind, and there will be time, anyway, to stop us.

Pete was not there, none of us were, the first time this song was needed; and no one now alive can imagine what that time was like. But the song has come down the bloodstained ages. I suppose this to mean that the song is still needed, still has its work to do.