lost her child, but
her mother was home, ill, very ill, and there was the doctor to pay and
medicine to be bought, and so on and so forth. I didn't believe a word of
it, of course. And since I had to find a hotel for myself, I suggested that
she come along with me and stay the night. A little economy there, I thought
to myself. But she wouldn't do that. She insisted on going home, said she
had an apartment to herself -- and besides she had to look after her mother.
On reflection I decided that it would be still cheaper sleeping at her
place, so I said yes and let's go immediately. Before going, however, I
decided it was best to let her know just how I stood, so that there
wouldn't be any squawking at the last minute. I thought she was going to
faint when I told her how much I had in my pocket. "The likes of it!" she
said. Highly insulted she was. I thought there would be a scene ...
Undaunted, however, I stood my ground. "Very well, then, I'll leave you," I
said quietly. "Perhaps I've made a mistake."

"I should say you have!" she exclaimed, but clutching me by the sleeve at
the same time. <i>"Ecoute, cheri... sois raisonnable!"</i> When I heard that
all my confidence was restored. I knew that it would be merely a question of
promising her a little extra and everything would be O. K. "All right," I
said wearily, "I'll be nice to you, you'll see."

"You were lying to me, then?" she said.

"Yes," I smiled, "I was just lying ..."

Before I had even put my hat on she had hailed a cab. I heard her give the
Boulevard de Clichy for an address. That was more than the price of a room,
I thought to myself. Oh well, there was time yet ... we'd see. I don't know
how it started any more but soon she was raving to me about Henry Bordeaux.
(I have yet to meet a whore who doesn't know of Henry Bordeaux!) But this one
was genuinely inspired; her language was beautiful now, so tender, so
discerning, that I was debating how much to give her. It seemed to me that I
had heard her say -- <i>"quand il n'y aura plus de temps."</i> It sounded like
that, anyway. In the state I was in, a phrase like that was worth a hundred
francs. I wondered if it was her own or if she had pulled it from Henry
Bordeaux. Little matter. It was just the right phrase with which to roll up
to the foot of Montmartre. "Good evening, mother," I was saying to myself,
"daughter and I will look after you -- <i>quand il n 'y aura plus de
temps!"</i> She was going to show me her diploma, too, I remembered that.

She was all aflutter, once the door had closed behind us. Distracted.
Wringing her hands and striking Sarah Bernhardt poses, half undressed too,
and pausing between times to urge me to hurry, to get undressed, to do this
and do that. Finally, when she had stripped down and was poking about with a
chemise in her hand, searching for her kimono, I caught hold of her and gave
her a good squeeze. She had a look of anguish on her face when I released
her. "My God! My God! I must go downstairs and have a look at mother!" she
exclaimed. "You can take a bath if you like, <i>cheri.</i> There! I'll be
back in a few minutes." At the door I embraced her again. I was in my
underclothes and I had a tremendous erection. Somehow all this anguish and
excitement, all the grief and histrionics, only whetted my appetite. Perhaps
she was just going downstairs to quiet her <i>maquereau.</i> I had a feeling
that something unusual was happening, some sort of drama which I would read
about in the morning paper. I gave the place a quick inspection. There were
two rooms and a bath, not badly furnished. Rather coquettish. There was her
diploma on the wall -- "first class," as they all read. And there was the
photograph of a child, a little girl with beautiful locks, on the dresser. I
put the water on for a bath, and then I changed my mind. If something were
to happen and I were found in the tub ... I didn't like the idea. I paced
back and forth, getting more and more uneasy as the minutes rolled by.

When she returned she was even more upset than before. "She's going to die
... she's going to die!" she kept wailing. For a moment I was almost on the
point of leaving. How the hell can you climb over a woman when her mother's
dying downstairs, perhaps right beneath you? I put my arms around her, half
in sympathy and half determined to get what I had come for. As we stood thus
she murmured, as if in real distress, her need for the money I had promised
her. It was for <i>"maman."</i> Shit, I didn't have the heart to haggle about
a few francs at that moment. I walked over to the chair where my clothes were
lying and I wiggled a hundred franc note out of my fob pocket, carefully
keeping my back turned to her just the same. And, as a further precaution, I
placed my pants on the side of the bed where I knew I was going to flop. The
hundred francs wasn't altogether satisfactory to her, but I could see from
the feeble way that she protested that it was quite enough. Then, with an
energy that astonished me, she flung off her kimono and jumped into bed. As
soon as I had put my arms around her and pulled her to me she reached for the
switch and out went the lights. She embraced me passionately, and she groaned
as all French cunts do when they get you in bed. She was getting me
frightfully roused with her carrying-on; that business of turning out the
lights was a new one to me ... it seemed like the real thing. But I was
suspicious too, and as soon as I could manage conveniently I put my hand out
to feel if my trousers were still there on the chair.

I thought we were settled for the night. The bed felt very comfortable,
softer than the average hotel bed -- and the sheets were clean, I had noticed
that. If only she wouldn't squirm so! You would think she hadn't slept with
a man for a month. I wanted to stretch it out. I wanted full value for my
hundred francs. But she was mumbling all sorts of things in that crazy bed
language which goes to your blood even more rapidly when it's in the dark. I
was putting up a stiff fight, but it was impossible with her groaning and
gasping going on, and her muttering: <i>"Vite cheri! Vite cheri! Oh, c'est
bon! Oh, oh! Vite, vite, cheri!"</i> I tried to count but it was like a fire
alarm going off. <i>"Vile, cheri!"</i> and this time she gave such a gasping
shudder that bango! I heard the stars chiming and there was my hundred francs
gone and the fifty that I had forgotten all about and the lights were on
again and with the same alacrity that she had bounced into bed she was
bouncing out again and grunting and squealing like an old sow. I lay back and
puffed a cigarette, gazing ruefully at my pants the while; they were terribly
wrinkled. In a moment she was back again, wrapping the kimono around her, and
telling me in that agitated way which was getting on my nerves that I should
make myself at home. "I'm going downstairs to see mother," she said. <i>"Mais
faites comme chez vous, cheri. Je reviens tout de suite."</i>

After a quarter of an hour had passed I began to feel thoroughly restless. I
went inside and I read through a letter that was lying on the table. It was
nothing on any account -- a love letter. In the bathroom I examined all the
bottles on the shelf; she had everything a woman requires to make herself
smell beautiful. I was still hoping that she would come back and give me
another fifty francs' worth. But time dragged on and there was no sign of
her. I began to grow alarmed. Perhaps there <i>was</i> someone dying
downstairs. Absent-mindedly, out of a sense of self-preservation, I suppose,
I began to put my things on. As I was buckling my belt it came to me like a
flash how she had stuffed the hundred franc note into her purse. In the
excitement of the moment she had thrust the purse in the wardrobe, on the
upper shelf. I remembered the gesture she made -- standing on her tip-toes
and reaching for the shelf. It didn't take me a minute to open the wardrobe
and feel around for the purse. It was still there. I opened it hurriedly and
saw my hundred franc note lying snugly between the silk coverlets. I put the
purse back just as it was, slipped into my coat and shoes, and then I went
to the landing and listened intently. I couldn't hear a sound. Where she had
gone to, Christ only knows. In a jiffy I was back at the wardrobe and
fumbling with her purse. I pocketed the hundred francs and all the loose
change besides. Then, closing the door silently. I tip-toed down the stairs
and when once I had hit the street I walked just as fast as my legs would
carry me. At the Cafe Boudon I stopped for a bite. The whores there having a
gay time pelting a fat man who had fallen asleep over his meal. He was sound
asleep; snoring, in fact, and yet his jaws were working away mechanically.
The place was in an uproar.

There were shouts of "All aboard!" and then a concerted banging of knives
and forks. He opened his eyes for a moment, blinked stupidly, and then his
head rolled forward again on his chest. I put the hundred franc bill
carefully away in my fob pocket and counted the change. The din around me
was increasing and I had difficulty to recall exactly whether I had seen
"first-class" on her diploma or not. It bothered me. About her mother I
didn't give a damn. I hoped she had croaked by now. It would be strange if
what she had said were true. Too good to believe. <i>Vite cheri ... vite.
vite!</i> And that other half-wit with her "my good sir" and "you have such
a kind face"! I wondered if she had really taken a room in that hotel we
stopped by.

        x x x

It was along toward the close of Summer when Fillmore invited me to come and
live with him. He had a studio apartment overlooking the cavalry barracks
just off the Place Dupleix. We had seen a lot of each other ever since the
little trip to Le Havre. If it hadn't been for Fillmore I don't know where I
should be to-day -- dead, most likely.

"I would have asked you long before," he said, "if it hadn't been for that
little bitch Jackie. I didn't know how to get her off my hands."

I had to smile. It was always like that with Fillmore. He had a genius for
attracting homeless bitches. Anyway, Jackie had finally cleared out of her
own accord. The rainy season was coming on the long, dreary stretch of
grease and fog and squirts of rain that make you damp and miserable. An
execrable place in the winter, Paris! A climate that eats into your soul,
that leaves you bare as the Labrador coast. I noticed with some anxiety
that the only means of heating the place was the little stove in the studio.
However, it was still comfortable. And the view from the studio window was
superb.

In the morning Fillmore would shake me roughly and leave a ten franc note on
the pillow. As soon as he had gone I would settle back for a final snooze.
Sometimes I would lie abed till noon. There was nothing pressing, except to
finish the book, and that didn't worry me much because I was already
convinced that nobody would accept it anyway. Nevertheless, Fillmore was much
impressed by it. When he arrived in the evening with a bottle under his arm
the first thing he did was to go to the table and see how many pages I had
knocked off. At first I enjoyed the show of enthusiasm but later, when I was
running dry, it made me devilishly uneasy to see him poking around, searching
for the pages that were supposed to trickle out of me like water from a tap.
When there was nothing to show I felt exactly like some bitch whom he had
harbored. He used to say about Jackie, I remembered -- "it would have been
all right if only she had slipped me a piece of ass once in a while." If I
had been a woman I would have been only too glad to slip him a piece of ass:
it would have been much easier than to feed him the pages which he expected.

Nevertheless, he tried to make me feel at ease. There was always plenty of
food and wine, and now and then he would insist that I accompany him to a
<i>dancing.</i> He was fond of going to a nigger joint on the Rue d'Odessa
where there was a good-looking mulatto who used to come home with us
occasionally. The one thing that bothered him was that he couldn't find a
French girl who liked to drink. They were all too sober to satisfy him -- He
liked to bring a woman back to the studio and guzzle it with her before
getting down to business. He also liked to have her think that he was an
artist. As the man from whom he had rented the place was a painter, it was
not difficult to create an impression; the canvases which we had found in
the <i>armoire</i> were soon stuck about the place and one of the unfinished
ones conspicuously mounted on the easel. Unfortunately they were all of a
Surrealistic quality and the impression they created was usually
unfavorable. Between a whore, a concierge and a cabinet minister there is
not much difference in taste where pictures are concerned. It was a matter
of great relief to Fillmore when Mark Swift began to visit us regularly with
the intention of doing my portrait. Fillmore had a great admiration for
Swift. He was a genius, he said. And though there was something ferocious
about everything he tackled nevertheless when he painted a man or an object
you could recognize it for what it was.

At Swift's request I had begun to grow a beard. The shape of my skull, he
said, required a beard. I had to sit by the window with the Eiffel Tower in
back of me because he wanted the Eiffel Tower in the picture too. He also
wanted the typewriter in the picture. Kruger got the habit of dropping in
too about this time; he maintained that Swift knew nothing about painting. It
exasperated him to see things out of proportion. He believed in Nature's
laws, implicitly. Swift didn't give a fuck about Nature; he wanted to paint
what was inside his head. Anyway, there was Swift's portrait of me stuck on
the easel now, and though everything was out of proportion, even a cabinet
minister could see that it was a human head, a man with a beard. The
concierge, indeed, began to take a great interest in the picture; she thought
the likeness was striking. And she liked the idea of showing the Eiffel Tower
in the background.

Things rolled along this way peacefully for about a month or more. The
neighborhood appealed to me, particularly at night when the full squalor
and lugubriousness of it made itself felt. The little Place, so charming and
tranquil at twilight, could assume the most dismal, sinister character when
darkness came on. There was that long, high wall covering one side of the
barracks against which there was always a couple embracing each other
furtively -- often in the rain. A depressing sight to see two lovers squeezed
against a prison wall under a gloomy street light: as if they had been
driven right to the last bounds. What went on inside the enclosure was also
depressing. On a rainy day I used to stand by the window and look down on
the activity below, quite as if it were something going on on another
planet. It seemed incomprehensible to me. Everything done according to
schedule, but a schedule that must have been devised by a lunatic. There
they were, floundering around in the mud, the bugles blowing, the horses
charging -- all within four walls. A sham battle. A lot of tin soldiers who
hadn't the least interest in learning how to kill or how to polish their
boots or curry-comb the horses. Utterly ridiculous the whole thing, but part
of the scheme of things. When they had nothing to do they looked even more
ridiculous; they scratched themselves, they walked about with their hands in
their pockets, they looked up at the sky. And when an officer came along
they clicked their heels and saluted. A madhouse, it seemed to me. Even the
horses looked silly. And then sometimes the artillery was dragged out and
they went clattering down the street on parade and people stood and gaped and
admired the fine uniforms. To me they always looked like an army corps in
retreat; something shabby, bedraggled, crestfallen about them, their uniforms
too big for their bodies, all the alertness, which as individuals they
possess to such a remarkable degree, gone now.

When the sun came out, however, things looked different. There was a ray of
hope in their eyes, they walked more elastically, they showed a little
enthusiasm. Then the color of things peeped out graciously and there was that
fuss and bustle so characteristic of the French; at the <i>bistrot</i> on the
corner they chattered gaily over their drinks and the officers seemed more
human, more French, I might say. When the sun comes out, any spot in Paris
can look beautiful; and if there is a <i>bistrot</i> with an awning rolled
down, a few tables on the sidewalk and colored drinks in the glasses, then
people look altogether human. And they <i>are</i> human -- the finest people
in the world when the sun shines! So intelligent, so indolent, so carefree!
It's a crime to herd such a people into barracks, to put them through
exercises, to grade them into privates and sergeants and colonels and what
not.

As I say, things were rolling along smoothly. Now and then Carl came along
with a job for me, travel articles which he hated to do himself. They only
paid fifty francs a piece, but they were easy to do because I had only to
consult the back issues and revamp the old articles. People only read these
things when they were sitting on a toilet or killing time in a waiting
room. The principal thing was to keep the adjectives well furbished -- the
rest was a matter of dates and statistics. If it was an important article
the head of the department signed it himself; he was a half-wit who couldn't
speak any language well, but who knew how to find fault. If he found a
paragraph that seemed to him well written he would say -- "Now that's the way
I want you to write! That's beautiful. You have my permission to use it in
your book." These beautiful paragraphs we sometimes lifted from the
encyclopaedia or an old guide book. Some of them Carl did put into his
book -- they had a Surrealistic character.

Then one evening, after I had been out for a walk, I open the door and a
woman springs out of the bed-room. "So you're the writer!" she exclaims at
once, and she looks at my beard as if to corroborate her impression. "What a
horrid beard!" she says. "I think you people must be crazy around here."
Fillmore is trailing after her with a blanket in his hand. "She's a
princess," he says, smacking his lips as if he had just tasted some rare
caviar. The two of them were dressed for the street; I couldn't understand
what they were doing with the bed-clothes. And then it occurred to me
immediately that Fillmore must have dragged her into the bed-room to show her
his laundry bag. He always did that with a new woman, especially if she was a
<i>Francaise.</i> "No tickee, no shirtee!" that's what was stitched on the
laundry bag, and somehow Fillmore had an obsession for explaining this motto
to every female who arrived. But this dame was not a <i>Francaise -- </i>he
made that clear to me at once. She was Russian -- and a princess, no less.

He was bubbling over with excitement, like a child that has just found a new
toy. "She speaks five languages!" he said, obviously overwhelmed by such an
accomplishment.

"<i>Non, four</i>!" she corrected promptly.

"Well, four then ... Anyway, she's a damned intelligent girl. You ought to
hear her speak."

The princess was nervous -- she kept scratching her thigh and rubbing her
nose. "Why does he want to make his bed now?" she asked me abruptly. "Does he
think he will get me that way? He's a big child. He behaves disgracefully. I
took him to a Russian restaurant and he danced like a nigger." She wiggled
her bottom to illustrate. "And he talks too much. Too loud. He talks
nonsense." She swished about the room, examining the paintings and the books,
keeping her chin well up all the time but scratching herself intermittently.
Now and then she wheeled around like a battleship and delivered a broadside.
Fillmore kept following her about with a bottle in one hand and a glass in
the other. "Stop following me like that!" she exclaimed. "And haven't you
anything to drink but this? Can't you get a bottle of champagne? I must have
some champagne. My nerves! My nerves!"

Fillmore tries to whisper a few words in my ear. "An actress ... a movie
star ... some guy jilted her and she can't get over it ... I'm going to get
her cockeyed ..."

"I'll clear out then," I was saying, when the princess interrupted us with a
shout.

"Why do you whisper like that?" she cried, stamping her foot. "Don't you know
that's not polite? And <i>you,</i> I thought you were going to take me out? I
must get drunk to-night, I have told you that already."

"Yes, yes," said Fillmore, "we're going in a minute. I just want another
drink."

"You're a pig!" she yelled. "But you're a nice boy too. Only you're loud.
You have no manners." She turned to me. "Can I trust him to behave himself?
I must get drunk to-night but I don't want him to disgrace me. Maybe I will
come back here afterwards. I would like to talk to you. You seem more
intelligent."

As they were leaving the princess shook my hand cordially and promised to
come for dinner some evening -- "when I will be sober," she said.

"Fine!" I said. "Bring another princess along -- or a countess, at least. We
change the sheets every Saturday."

About three in the morning Fillmore staggers in ... alone. Lit up like an
ocean liner, and making a noise like a blind man with his cracked cane. Tap,
tap, tap, down the weary lane ... "Going straight to bed," he says, as he
marches past me. 'Tell you all about it tomorrow." He goes inside to his
room and throws back the covers. I hear him groaning -- "what a woman! what a
woman!" In a second he's out again, with his hat on and the cracked cane in
his hand. "I knew something like that was going to happen. She's crazy!"

He rummages around in the kitchen a while and then comes back to the studio
with a bottle of Anjou. I have to sit up and down a glass with him.

As far as I can piece the story together the whole thing started at the
Rond-Point des Champs Elysees where he had dropped off for a drink on his
way home. As usual at that hour the <i>terrasse</i> was crowded with
buzzards. This one was sitting right on the aisle with a pile of saucers in
front of her; she was getting drunk quietly all by herself when Fillmore
happened along and caught her eye. "I'm drunk," she giggled, "won't you sit
down?" And then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to
do, she began right off the bat with the yam about her movie
director, how he had given her the go-by and how she had thrown herself in
the Seine and so forth and so on. She couldn't remember any more which
bridge it was, only that there was a crowd around when they fished her out
of the water. Besides, she didn't see what difference it made which bridge
she threw herself from -- why did he ask such questions? She was laughing
hysterically about it, and then suddenly she had a desire to be off -- she
wanted to dance. Seeing him hesitate she opens her bag impulsively and pulls
out a hundred francs note. The next moment, however, she decided that a
hundred francs wouldn't go very far. "Haven't you any money at all?" she
said. No, he hadn't very much in his pocket, but he had a checkbook at home.
So they made a dash for the checkbook and then, of course, I had to happen
in just as he was explaining to her the "No tickee, no shirtee" business.

On the way home they had stopped off at the Poisson d'Or for a little snack
which she had washed down with a few vodkas. She was in her element there
with everyone kissing her hand and murmuring <i>Princesse, Princesse.</i>
Drunk as she was, she managed to collect her dignity. "Don't wiggle your
behind like that!" she kept saying, as they danced.

It was Fillmore's idea, when he brought her back to the studio, to stay
there. But, since she was such an intelligent girl and so erratic, he had
decided to put up with her whims and postpone the grand event. He had even
visualized the prospect of running across another princess and bringing the
two of them back. When they started out for the evening, therefore, he was
in a good humor and prepared, if necessary, to spend a few hundred francs
on her. After all, one doesn't run across a princess every day.

This time she dragged him to another place, a place where she was still
better known and where there would be no trouble in cashing a check, as she
said. Everybody was in evening clothes and there was more spine-breaking,
hand-kissing nonsense as the waiter escorted them to a table.

In the middle of a dance she suddenly walks off the floor, with tears in her
eyes. "What's the matter?" he said, "what did I do this time?" and
instinctively he put his
hand to his backside, as though perhaps it might still be wiggling. "It's
nothing," she said. "You didn't do anything. Come, you're a nice boy," and
with that she drags him on to the floor again and begins to dance with
abandon. "But what's the matter with you?" he murmured. "It's nothing," she
repeated. "I saw somebody, that's all." And then, with a sudden spurt of
anger -- "why do you get me drunk? Don't you know it makes me crazy?"

"Have you got a check?" she says. "We must get out of here." She called the
waiter over and whispered to him in Russian. "Is it a good check?" she
asked, when the waiter had disappeared. And then, impulsively: "Wait for me
downstairs in the cloak-room. I must telephone somebody."

After the waiter had brought the change Fillmore sauntered leisurely
downstairs to the cloak-room to wait for her. He strode up and down, humming
and whistling softly, and smacking his lips in anticipation of the caviar to
come. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Still whistling softly. When twenty
minutes had gone by and still no princess he at last grew suspicious. The
cloak-room attendant said that she had left long ago. He dashed outside.
There was a nigger in livery standing there with a big grin on his face. Did
the nigger know where she had breezed to? Nigger grins. Nigger says: "Ah
heerd Coupole, dassall sir!"

At the Coupole, downstairs, he finds her sitting in front of a cocktail with
a dreamy, trance-like expression on her face. She smiles when she sees him.

"Was that a decent thing to do," he says, "to run away like that? You might
have told me that you didn't like me ..."

She flared up at this, got theatrical about it. And after a lot of gushing
she commenced to whine and slobber. "I'm crazy," she blubbered. "And you're
crazy too. You want me to sleep with you, and I don't want to sleep with
you." And then she began to rave about her lover, the movie director whom
she had seen on the dance floor. That's why she had to run away from the
place. That's why she took drugs and got drunk every night. That's why she
threw herself in the Seine. She babbled on this way about how crazy she was
and then suddenly she had an idea. "Let's go to
Bricktop's!" There was a man there whom she knew ... he had promised her a
job once. She was certain he would help her.

"What's it going to cost?" asked Fillmore cautiously.

It would cost a lot, she let him know that immediately. "But listen, if you
take me to Bricktop's, I promise to go home with you." She was honest enough
to add that it might cost him five or six hundred francs. "But I'm worth it!
You don't know what a woman I am. There isn't another woman like me in all
Paris ..."

"That's what <i>you</i> think!" His Yankee blood was coming to the fore.
"But I don't see it. I don't see that you're worth anything. You're just a
poor crazy son-of-a-bitch. Frankly, I'd rather give fifty francs to some
poor French girl; at least they give you something in return."

She hit me ceiling when he mentioned the French girls. "Don't talk to me
about those women! I hate them! They're stupid ... they're ugly ... they're
mercenary. Stop it, I tell you!"

In a moment she had subsided again. She was on a new tack. "Darling," she
murmured, "you don't know what I look like when I'm undressed. I'm
<i>beautiful</i>!." And she held her breasts with her two hands.

But Fillmore remained unimpressed. "You're a bitch!" he said coldly. "I
wouldn't mind spending a few hundred francs on you, but you're crazy. You
haven't even washed your face. Your breath stinks. I don't give a damn
whether you're a princess or not ... I don't want any of your high-assed
Russian variety. You ought to get out in the street and hustle for it.
You're no better than any little French girl. You're not as good. I wouldn't
piss away another sou on you. You ought to go to America -- that's the place
for a blood-sucking leech like you ..."

She didn't seem to be at all put out by this speech. "I think you're just a
little afraid of me," she said.

"Afraid of you? Of <i>you</i>?"

"You're just a lime boy," she said. "You have no manners. When you know me
better you will talk differently ... Why don't you try to be nice? If you
don't want to go with me to-night, very well. I will be at the Rond-Point
tomorrow between five and seven. I like you."

"I don't intend to be at the Rond-Point tomorrow, or any other night. I don't
want to see you again ... ever. I'm through with you. I'm going out and find
myself a nice little French girl. You can go to hell!"

She looked at him and smiled wearily. "That's what you say now. But wait!
Wait until you've slept with me. You don't know yet what a beautiful body I
have. You think the French girls know how to make love ... wait! I will make
you crazy about me. I like you. Only you're uncivilized. You're just a boy.
You talk too much ..."

"You're <i>crazy,"</i> said Fillmore. "I wouldn't fall for you if you were
the last woman on earth. Go home and wash your face." He walked off without
paying for the drinks.

In a few days, however, the princess was installed. She's a genuine
princess, of that we're pretty certain. But she has the clap. Anyway, life
is far from dull here. Fillmore had bronchitis, the princess, as I was
saying, has the clap, and I have the piles. Just exchanged six empty bottles
at the Russian <i>epicene</i> across the way. Not a drop went down my
gullet. No meat, no wine, no rich game, no women. Only fruit and paraffin
oil, arnica drops and adenalin ointment. And not a chair in the joint that's
comfortable enough. Right now, looking at the princess, I'm propped up like
a pasha. Pasha! That reminds me of her name: Macha. Doesn't sound so damned
aristocratic to me. Reminds me of <i>The Living Corpse.</i>

At first I thought it was going to be embarrassing, a <i>menage a trois,</i>
but not at all. I thought when I saw her move in that it was all up with me
again, that I should have to find another place, but Fillmore soon gave me
to understand that he was only putting her up until she got on her feet.
With a woman like her I don't know what an expression like that means; as
far as I can see she's been standing on her head all her life. She says the
revolution drove her out of Russia, but I'm sure if it hadn't been the
revolution it would have been something else. She's under the impression
that she's a great actress; we never contradict her in anything she says
because it's time wasted. Fillmore finds her amusing. When he leaves for the
office in the morning he drops ten francs on her pillow and ten francs on
mine; at night the three of us go to the Russian restaurant down below. The
neighborhood is full of Russians and Macha has already found a place

where she can run up a little credit. Naturally ten francs a day isn't
anything for a princess; she wants caviar now and then and champagne, and
she needs a complete new wardrobe in order to get a job in the movies again.
She has nothing to do now except to kill time. She's putting on fat.

This morning I had quite a fright. After I had washed my face I grabbed her
towel by mistake. We can't seem to train her to put her towel on the right
hook. And when I bawled her out for it she answered smoothly: "My dear, if
one can become blind from that I would have been blind years ago."

And then there's the toilet, which we all have to use. I try speaking to her
in a fatherly way about the toilet seat. "Oh zut!" she says. "If you are so
afraid I'll go to a cafe." But it's not necessary to do that, I explain.
Just use ordinary precautions. "Tut tut!" she says, "I won't sit down then
... I'll stand up."

Everything is cockeyed with her around. First she wouldn't come across
because she had the monthlies. For eight days that lasted. We were beginning
to think she was faking it. But no, she wasn't faking. One day, when I was
trying to put the place in order, I found some cotton batting under the bed
and it was stained with blood. With her everything goes under the bed:
orange peel, wadding, corks, empty bottles, scissors, used condoms, books,
pillows ... She makes the bed only when it's time to retire. Most of the
time she lies abed reading her Russian papers. "My dear," she says to me,
"if it weren't for my papers I wouldn't get out of bed at all." That's it
precisely! Nothing but Russian newspapers. Not a scratch of toilet paper
around -- nothing but Russian newspapers with which to wipe your ass.

Anyway, speaking of her idiosyncrasies, after the menstrual flow was over,
after she had rested properly and put a nice layer of fat around her belt,
still she wouldn't come across. Pretended that she only liked women. To take
on a man she had to first be properly stimulated. Wanted us to take her to a
bawdy house where they put on the dog and man act. Or better still, she
said, would be Leda and the<i> </i>swan: the flapping of the wings excited
her terribly.

One night, to test her out, we accompanied her to a
place that she suggested. But before we had a chance to broach the subject
to the madame, a drunken Englishman, who was sitting at the next table, fell
into a conversation with us. He had already been upstairs twice but he
wanted another try at it. He had only about twenty francs in his pocket, and
not knowing any French, he asked us if we would help him to bargain with the
girl he had his eye on. Happened she was a negress, a powerful wench from
Martinique, and beautiful as a panther. Had a lovely disposition too. In
order to persuade her to accept the Englishman's remaining sous, Fillmore
had to promise to go with her himself soon as she got through with the
Englishman. The princess looked on, heard everything that was said, and
then got on her high horse. She was insulted. "Well," said Fillmore, "you
wanted some excitement -- you can watch me do it!" She didn't want to watch
him -- she wanted to watch a drake. "Well, by Jesus," he said, "I'm as good
as a drake any day ... maybe a little better." Like that, one word led to
another, and finally the only way we could appease her was to call one of
the girls over and let them tickle each other... When Fillmore came back
with the negress her eyes were smouldering. I could see from the way
Fillmore looked at her that she must have given an unusual performance and I
began to feel lecherous myself. Fillmore must have sensed how I felt, and
what an ordeal it was to sit and look on all night, for suddenly he pulled a
hundred franc note out of his pocket and slapping it in front of me, he
said: "Look here, you probably need a lay more than any of us. Take that and
pick someone out for yourself." Somehow that gesture endeared him more to me
than anything he had ever done for me, and he had done considerable. I
accepted the money in the spirit it was given and promptly signalled to the
negress to get ready for another lay. That enraged the Princess more than
anything, it appeared. She wanted to know if there wasn't anyone in the
place good enough for us except this negress. I told her bluntly NO. And it
was so -- the negress was the queen of the harem. You had only to look at her
to get an erection. Her eyes seemed to be swimming in sperm. She was drunk
with all the demands made upon her. She couldn't walk straight any more -- at
least, it seemed that way to me. Going up the narrow winding stairs behind
her I couldn't resist the temptation to slide my hand up her crotch; we
continued up the stairs that way, she looking back at me with a cheerful
smile and wiggling her ass a bit when it tickled her too much.

It was a good session all around. Everyone was happy. Macha seemed to be in
a good mood too. And so the next evening, after she had had her ration of
champagne and caviar, after she had given us another chapter out of the
history of her life, Fillmore went to work on her. It seemed as though he
was going to get his reward at last. She had ceased to put up a fight any
more. She lay back with her legs apart and she let him fool around and fool
around and then, just as he was climbing over her, just as he was going to
slip it in, she informs him nonchalantly that she has a dose of clap. He
rolled off her like a log. I heard him fumbling around in the kitchen for
the black soap he used on special occasions, and in a few moments he was
standing by my bed with a towel in his hands and saying -- "can you beat that?
that son-of-a-bitch of a princess has the clap!" He seemed pretty well
scared about it. The princess meanwhile was munching an apple and calling
for her Russian newspapers. It was quite a joke to her. "There are worse
things than that," she said, lying there in her bed and talking to us
through the open door. Finally Fillmore began to see it as a joke too and
opening another bottle of Anjou he poured out a drink for himself and
quaffed it down. It was only about one in the morning and so he sat there
talking to me for a while. He wasn't going to be put off by a thing like
that, he told me. Of course, he had to be careful... there was the old dose
which had come on in Le Havre. He couldn't remember any more how that
happened. Sometimes when he got drunk he forgot to wash himself. It wasn't
anything very terrible, but you never knew what might develop later. He
didn't want any one massaging his prostate gland. No, that he didn't relish.
The first dose he ever got was at college. Didn't know whether the girl had
given it to him or he to the girl; there was so much funny work going on
about the campus you didn't know whom to believe. Nearly all the co-eds had
been knocked up some time or other. Too damned ignorant... even the profs
were ignorant. One of the profs had himself castrated, so the rumor went...

Anyway, the next night he decided to risk it -- with a condom. Not much risk
in that, unless it breaks. He had bought himself some of the long fish-skin
variety -- they were the most reliable, he assured me. But then, that didn't
work either. She was too tight. "Jesus, there's nothing abnormal about me,"
he said. "How do you make that out? Somebody got inside her all right to
give her that dose. He must have been abnormally small."

So, one thing after another failing, he just gave it up altogether. They
lie there now like brother and sister, with incestuous dreams. Says Macha,
in her philosophic way: "In Russia it often happens that a man sleeps with a
woman without touching her. They can go on that way for weeks and weeks and
never think anything about it. Until paff! once he touches her ... paff!
paff! After that it's paff, paff, paff!"

All efforts are concentrated now on getting Macha into shape. Fillmore
thinks if he cures her of the clap she may loosen up. A strange idea. So
he's bought her a douche bag, a stock of permanganate, a whirling syringe
and other little things which were recommended to him by a Hungarian doctor,
a little quack of an abortionist over near the Place d'Aligre. It seems his
boss had knocked up a sixteen year old girl once and she had introduced him
to the Hungarian; and then after that the boss had a beautiful chancre and
it was the Hungarian again. That's how one gets acquainted in
Paris -- genito-urinary friendships. Anyway, under our strict supervision,
Macha is taking care of herself. The other night, though, we were in a
quandary for a while. She stuck the suppository inside her and then she
couldn't find the string attached to it. "My God!" she was yelling, "where
is that string? My God! I can't find the string!"

"Did you look under the bed?" said Fillmore. Finally she quieted down. But
only for a few minutes. The next thing was: "My God! I'm bleeding again. I
just had my period and now there are <i>gouttes</i> again. It must be that
cheap champagne you buy. My God, do you want me to bleed to death?" She comes
out with a kimono on and a towel stuck between her legs, trying to look
dignified as usual. "My whole life is just like that," she says. "I'm a
neurasthenic. The whole day running around and at night I'm drunk again. When
I came to Paris I was still an innocent girl. I read only Villon and
Beaudelaire. But as I had then