CHAPTER XI
In a steep, narrow alley Spike stopped, exhausted, and leaned against a spindly tree that stood solitary by the curb. Nearby a woman in a ragged brown shawl tended a two-wheeled cart heaped high with oranges and tangerines. She examined with sympathetic curiosity the slim, red-headed youth who mopped his forehead and looked fearfully over his shoulder. She said softly, as in occult greeting:
"Mort au vaches!"
Spike stared.
"Dirty lackeys of the dirty bourgeoisie!" said the orange woman in her hushed voice. "I, myself, when I was younger, hit one with a brick! Voilà! Have a tangerine!" She thrust a glowing fruit into Spike's hands. He held it near his face, gazed at it in amazement as if he had never seen a tangerine before. Its bright color was a lighter shade of the color of his bristling hair.... His eyes in contrast were blue as the clear sky.
"Merci!" he said.
"It is nothing! Down with the police!"
"I am not running from the police!" Spike said, sitting down on the curb. He was breathing more easily now. He was calm enough to peel the tangerine and eat it slowly. "I am an artist," he added, as if this explained something. "I was in a restaurant eating lunch when I met an old woman who knew what I was thinking. It scared me."
"You came up this hill like the cavalry were after you! Who was chasing you?"
"I don't know that anybody was chasing me. I had seen that old woman before. She acted as if I belonged to her. She knew about me. She knew what I was thinking. Suppose you were wondering in your mind, 'Shall I go home now or wait until I sell a dozen more tangerines?' and a man came up and poked his face up to yours and said: 'Better wait till you sell a dozen more!' Wouldn't you be frightened?"
She looked at him, apparently bewildered.
Spike went on, rubbing his hair: "Maybe she is a witch, and maybe she is only a friend of a witch. She seems to want to be friendly, but she is so ugly!"
Rosie Rosenberg came down the alley, carrying a canvas and his color-box. "Hello, Spike Flecker! What are you doing here?"
"Resting," said Spike.
The orange woman spoke up maliciously: "He came running up the hill like a crazy man. 'What's the matter?' I asked him, 'I just saw a witch,' he told me, his eyes popping out of his head."
She put her hands to the handle of her cart and walked deliberately away from them. Her skirt hiked up in back. Flecker gazed fascinated at her limber feet. Could it be? Anything could be! He shuddered, feeling utterly defenseless, and alone.
"Spike!" Rosie's voice was melodious with condescending pity. "Look at me, Spike!"
Spike shouted frantically, "Oh, shut up, Rosie. I'm in trouble!"
Rosie started again.
"Say another word," Spike shouted, getting quickly on his feet, "say another word to me and I'll sock you one!"
Rosie jumped back, startled. Three brushes fell from his pocket and he stooped to pick them up, looking up under his wrinkled forehead at Spike.
"Rosie!" Spike pleaded, "I need help. I am sorry I got angry, but I need help. I don't want your pity."
They walked toward the Boul' Mich' together.
"I have seen things," Spike said, "that probably no American ever saw before. Witches. Magic. Disappearing acts to make your hair curl. When I go walking it seems as if the whole world watches me, holding its breath, waiting. Powers move around me; something is happening; there is a struggle somewhere.... I met a pretty girl in a café and she gave me power of magic.... When I pass a general with red-and-gold ribbons on him, or see a train pull out from the Gare, I smile, thinking how I could smash 'em to nothing by saying a word."
Spike's talk was jarred loose by his fright. And he was grateful (after his first irritation) to have the company of even so matter-of-fact and unimaginative a fellow as Rosenberg.
"I got power," he went on, heedlessly. "The feel of it is with me always. It scares me a little. Things and people aren't what they seem. An old woman comes up to me and knows what I am thinking. You know, Rosie, I'm in danger all the time now."
"Is that so?" said Rosie politely.
Spike knew his friend thought him mad. A feeling that suddenly found words told him Rosie's opinion was of no moment whatever. Let him think he was crazy as a coot,—that did not make him crazy. Spike felt he had grown older in a jerk. He laughed with a new sensation of freedom.
"Don't worry, Rosie," he cried—and hearing the confident ring in his voice, Rosie visibly shriveled. "The ordeal ends Saturday noon. We shall see what we shall see. I'll tell you about it, Rosie."
His friend said "All right!" shortly. Plainly he could sympathize only if Spike were decently ashamed of his madness.
"All right!" he said. "Well, so long. I've lost enough hours of sunlight."
In the evening Spike walked out almost to the Porte Versailles and back, thinking of the witch as his legs passed and repassed each other and the soles of his feet shoved the pavement backwards. He talked to her of his troubles and she replied intelligently, gayly made whole the funny half-thoughts he offered her.
Who was the ugly, dangerous,—pathetic, impotent old woman in gray? What was her place in the drama of his omnipotent wish? What was her relation to the beautiful, young witch in the Café de Lilas?
The young witch was a lovely girl in little, high-heeled shoes, a chic black hat, and small hands that clutched his forearm. He would not think of her as a witch! He wanted to see her because her beauty touched him deeply, because he loved her.