CHAPTER IX
"How is Adele?" asked Flecker.
The poet put a suspicious question with a glance of his dark eyes. He shrugged and after a pause, in which they were separated and thought their own secret thoughts, he went on with the discussion. "Take love, for instance. When you are in your sweetheart's arms—in the sweet moment, aren't we happy then?"
"I wouldn't call it sweet," Spike put in at right angles to the discussion. "You know what it is like? It is like hunting around eagerly, yet apprehensively, for contact with the—um—life current itself. And when you get down to it—smash! a million volts run through you, a white light flares behind your eyes; your body is burnt and thrown and you sink down dying, as if you had taken hold of a live wire or been struck by lightning.... Then you feel better, as if all your veins were placid brooks, as the fellow says."
The poet smiled as if with an effort. Before he could say what he thought, Flecker hurried on: "That's not so good, I know. Now let me try saying it. An arched way under the darkness. Me, I always start up a long hill slowly. There's a silken wind; a vast dark loneliness; and a thought, like a flickering light, apart, untouched. Who am I towering above the sea of dark? One expects so much and experiences so little.... But the pounding is my heart! There is an upward rush, as of wind and sea. The little flickering thought swoons, unformed lightning fills the void....
"As I was saying, I climb a hill slowly, and now I pause. From another world I hear a murmuring, a Klaxon in a deserted street, far away.... In space a clock strikes two!... And when I pause again"—Spike rubbed his red hair and looked into his wine,—"I feel like a continent! Can you imagine that? My arm is a peninsula. I think a little thought and it flows out into a white road, miles long. I sway above an abyss, and I look backward through a tunnel of time...."
"To two o'clock, I suppose," quietly remarked the poet.
"And ahead to—something, to Fate. As I said at first I climb a hill slowly. I pause to look about, to listen to the thunder of my heart. Higher, higher.... Far off a clock strikes three. The little flickering thought clinches tight its conscious eyes and dives. A gale on the top of the long hill; a moment of suspended death, and down into the abyss, down and down, into a sea of light, turning over and over—the flickering thought now balanced on my head, now whirling after me....
"I hear my own voice. I am tired in every part of me, and I want to be alone; but being an understanding man, I know this is an impulse of a moment only. I hear someone weeping softly; a cart rattles in the street. A rooster crows. Sometimes I smoke a cigarette, and sometimes I start very brilliant conversation—witty, you know—ironical. I feel that every time I open my mouth a shining word will fall out. I feel comfort singing in all my joints. In the darkness I smile slowly, pull down the corners of my mouth—proud!"
"First you heard two o'clock, then three," murmured Marius, the Poet, "Hm-m-m!"
"Nowadays," added Spike, "there's a lot of novelists who take you along to show you how they yawn! They say: 'O woe! O disillusion' and think they're describing something. But it's only themselves they describe. When they call on Venus they see boredom in her eyes and rush away to tell the world. If the world were as clever as I myself, it would blush with shame for their unconscious, un-invited confessions."
Marius, himself, yawned. "C'est Ca!... But I must get back to the shop. Good-by!"
"Good-by! Pay you tomorrow!"
It was nearing dinner time. A bearded guard in a blue jacket clanged the tall gates of the Gardens. Crowds flowed homeward in the pearl gray dusk. The great motor buses were jammed. Clerks and stenographers, fathers in tail coats and pince nez, slim, homely little girls painted like toys, quick as birds and as attractive; workmen collapsed in on themselves, weary, eyes down, as if there had never been a barricade. Tired, intent women in black. A round-shouldered lad darted from the shadow of a doorway to grasp the hands of a girl in a blue serge, knee-length skirt and white stockings. Her face was as pinched as his. They went off, arm in arm, without smiling. The unhappiness of the homeward crowd immersed Flecker as he stood at the entrance of the wine shop, his cheeks and his spirit warm with the wine he had drunk. He saw a man of his own age moving painfully on a peg leg too short for him. Prodded by the thought of a life imprisoned in lonely suffering, Flecker moved impatiently away from the shop door, mixing up his thoughts. Perhaps one got "used to it." For him it was still intolerable to believe that there are men who hopefully live unhappy, painful lives and are rewarded by a final suffering as meaningless to them as the first. And so he didn't believe it!
He stood a moment on the curb. Down that way was his pension and if he went there he would eat his dinner sensibly, and keep control of the day. Down this other way was the Café du Dome, and if he went there, anything might happen. He decided to go to the pension....
Well, thinking back across the talk and the thoughts of the day—was he any nearer decision? If happiness were joy, or contentment, or anything he could name with a name, he did not want it. He did not want to imprison himself for life in an unchanging condition. Still, he did want to be happy. Should he hurry to his room now and make the wish, and then go out on a tear?
Next him a woman hesitated to ford the traffic stream. Her gray skirt and cloak hung loosely about a slight figure. One arm was doubled back, the scrawny hand picked nervously at her shoulder, an unlovely gesture. Her soft shoes were heelless, and as she stepped, hesitating, off the curb and back on, her feet seemed limber as hands. Flecker moved a step away. Her bent arm, her feet, her slight body under the voluminous gray, were too scrawny and too limber.
Growing curiosity made him examine her from head to foot. Her hat startled him for it was like a turban of black feathers, identical with that of the witch in the café. Watching her nervous hand he realized suddenly that one eye, like a round, black spot in an oyster, stared at him from her profile. She smiled, showing long, gray teeth.
"Yes!" she said, nodding.
He walked quickly toward his pension. From the door he looked back and saw her coming on her limber feet, her head up as if she thought herself divinely beautiful, her face gashed with that arch smile.
Spike slammed the entrance door and stood leaning against it. He heard soft footsteps outside drawing nearer quickly. Would the doorknob move? Her footsteps did not pause but went on. On the stair Flecker felt the strength had drained from his knees. Why had she so frightened him? She was a monster. Her smile had touched him, made him share in her monstrousness. But the horror was that she had said "Yes," as if she had heard his thought.
Spike sat on the edge of his green, iron bed, his head in his hands. He must decide. He must decide. He had omnipotence, and yet he had been wasting his days facetiously. The encounter with the old woman, the disappearance of the witch, and the four black hairs, confirmed his faith in the magic ring. His world had changed. The supernatural moved in it now. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then he would be Spike Flecker again. He could endure it. What had the hideous old woman to do with the witch? Spike got up and stood a long time at the one window that gave on the street.... His fear had been ridiculous, he told himself.
The priest was also late for dinner and they had the dining room to themselves for the last course. Spike wanted to tell him everything. The priest was wise. He read Le Temps and the Manchester Guardian and sometimes even the Berliner Tageblatt. He had a deep appreciation of sound cooking, and talked of how the southern provinces would vote in the spring elections. He was experienced enough, doubtless, to believe anything, Flecker thought—but, alas, he was a priest. He might report to the Pope Flecker's traffic with a witch, and the Pope, as any one knows, has Pull.
Spike suspected that there was no such thing as a Christian witch; and while the government was not a churchly one, still you couldn't tell what might happen. He saw himself in Le Matin:
American Art Student Makes Compact
With Witch; Officials Move
to Deport
Looking at the comedy five-reeler that night in the rue de la Gaitie theater, he held his right hand down near the floor lest the usher see the light of the magic ring and investigate.
The picture was not interesting. He sat in the warm, rhythmical dark, pressed between a bearded bourgeois and a pale, homely girl, and dreamed....
He and the witch walked on a smooth hill under a tremendous summer sky. He put his hand in her jacket pocket and found her hand there. She looked into his face and smiled....