Armed With Madness полностью

They all spoke French better than he, who always wanted to do it too well, whose ear was not in tune. His next brandy went down, and as his brain quickened he heard a party being discussed for late that night. Would they ask him? How could he bear it if they didn’t? In reality it did not occur to the Frenchmen that he would not want to go to Montmartre, and did not know how to take care of himself. Not that they were interested—the brandy mounted darkly—nobody was interested. Their pure speech hummed like a dynamo. He stretched himself insolently and spoke to a bulb-cheeked yellow-haired child there pursuing the career, and impressed by Felix’s obvious need to do nothing of the sort.

The party began to discuss a well-known eccentric who had just left.

“Oh, that man—” said Felix, gladly. But his comments in pretentious French were too severe, and left the others in doubt whether he really knew him. Soon they were not listening, and he saw the Frenchwoman catch his friend’s eye. Only the bulb-cheeked child was still attentive. Little faux monnayeur, fresh from his lycée, still rather ingenuous, he helped Felix along his transitions of envy, wonder, and fear.

A russian boy came in, tight in a merry circle of private intoxication, small, black, asiatic head in air. He sang:

A baby-faced negro rolled his drum. The saxophone began to cough out variations, apparently played backwards, on Dinah Lee. His memory of the sweet tune pricked a bubble in the boy’s petulance. He asked the Frenchwoman to dance, and moving easily with her, a little drunk, he began to bubble praise of Paris. When they got back, the little bar off the dancing-room was roaring with the love of life. In a frieze along the bar, in squares and fives and sixes round the scarlet tables were all the right people to play with. People of the world and the half-world, people who found the arts useful, and a fair number of people who were found useful by the arts. Eminent eccentrics, the very poor, the very rich, capital in wits or youth or looks or wit; diversity of creatures, young society in action, the motif of the time and the place repeated in the exit and entry of the pick of Paris’ basketful of boys. It was Felix’s party, too, if he could have forgotten himself, let himself go, torn up his silly little mask. Instead, he allowed himself to feel home-sick, looked timidly at his friend who had caught the eye of a princess, and was making her sure she was pleased to have caught his.

“Let’s have a day in the country to-morrow. We might go to Versailles.”

“All right, if we’re up.” The voice was soft and virile, touched with a brogue. No getting him to himself where everyone was out to be seen. In desperate need of a focus he gave up trying to understand French, and began to describe the people at his table to himself. He would never get to know them. Who ever gets to know the French? He might as well have something to remember. When he was a famous man, they’d wish they’d been nicer to him. There was the Frenchwoman in her man’s coat, without make-up, half-boy, half great lady, level-eyed and low-voiced, incapable of pretension or any false gesture. Then the musician’s chinese rotundity, the pouting lips, flat and amiable white hands, contradicted by a chin cleft like a Caesar’s, and terribly intelligent eyes. Felix respected those eyes. They had looked at him kindly, and he suspected pity, found himself caught with an emotion that was like pity when he looked at the third, the young Frenchman, because his beauty was “no stronger than a flower.” Scented like one, too, out of a bottle Felix wanted the name of.—“But he’s no brains,” he said, “and they say he takes drugs. It’s a pity.” He nursed the idea that he could be happy nowhere. Was there any one else in the room who was alone? He looked around. Even two boys having a row at the bar were in contact. A swing door burst open. It was the Russian back again, if anything, tighter. Felix saw a glass of champagne beginning to slide on the top of the downy black head. Skull of a tibetan idol: mouth of a wicked baby. In the middle of the floor he lowered the glass, and began an on-the-spot Charleston. “Hey, hey,” he shouted. Then a rune:

He shot through to the dancing-room. He was ugly. He had exquisite hands and feet. ‘Probably a shop-assistant pretending to be a prince.’ Felix’s demon was on the spot. He came back again, carrying the glass now like a chalice, empty, and looking crossly into it. Felix burst out laughing.

“Excuse me,” he said, “have another drink,” and went with him to the bar.