GOOD AMERICANS GO TO PARIS WHEN THEY DIE (9 page)

“Nineteen times six months amounts to …”
Louis breaks off, trying to cope with the multiplication.

“Practically ten years,” says Seymour, the
New York intellectual.

He turns to the impassive silent female
functionary. “You mean, you actually mean that we could be
imprisoned here for practically ten years?”

“You are not prisoners,” the female
functionary rectifies in a scandalized tone, evading the question.
“You are in Administrative Suspension, therefore imposed guests.
Prisoners are locked up. Your door will remain unlocked. Unless, of
course, you willfully violate regulations.” She turns to the
door.

“The women now. I shall soon be back.”

True to her word, she leaves their door
unlocked. The bulb rallies and recovers steady light. Seymour and
Louis totter over to the beds and collapse in a cloud of dust and a
discordant twang of springs. Even more than warmth and food and
drink they crave sleep.

They close their eyes. Sleep almost comes.
Time after time, though, on the brink of that darkness, they pull
back from it, afraid sleep may be a prelude to a permanent end to
cold and thirst and hunger, those painful precious things.

From where they lie they can see the window
and blue sky. After a while, as though synchronized, they get up
and drag themselves over to the window. Max remains huddled in his
corner.

Seymour and Louis stand side by side in silence.
They gaze out at the city. It’s like warmth and food and drink to
them.

“By golly,” says Louis. “Hasn’t changed one
bit. Same swanky shops. Same elegant carriages.”

Seymour stares. He sees the same swanky
shops all right but not a single carriage, elegant or not. What he
does see hasn’t changed one bit. There are the same inelegant cars
he’d dodged when suicidally jay-trotting their avenues in 1951:
stolid Peugeot 203s, bug-like Renault
Quatre Chevaux
, a Panhard
Dyna
, gangsterish low-slung black Citroën
Tractions
, plenty of gray dinky-toy
Deux
Chevaux
, like
garbage-cans on wheels, banged-up pre-war Renault
Juvas
and
Rosalies
.

The sight fills him with tremendous nostalgia and he
wants the cars to be the real things out there, not the other’s
carriages dating back before the birth of his ponytailed
sweetheart, so meaningless. Of course, Louis rejects what Seymour
claims he sees, things that hopelessly age his slim honey-blonde
darling.

They start arguing about it. They agree
about the buildings and the river but not about the vehicles. Not
about the women either. Neat ankles, says Louis with shy
admiration. Seymour sees much more leg than that. Louis is shocked
when Seymour describes calves. He strikes Seymour as very
strait-laced for a Marine even for an ex-Marine. They go on arguing
about what they see.

The little gray-smocked middle-aged man who
had disgraced himself on the stepladder enters the room. His filthy
beret is moronically pulled down to the eyebrows and he wears a
fearful chastised expression. He’s bearing a pile of clothing with
names pinned to them. He places the pile on one of the beds.

He’s prepared to leave when Seymour invites
him to arbitrate the quarrel. What does he see outside, carriages
or cars? And how high are the women’s skirts? Can he see just their
ankles or their calves too?

The man doesn’t even glance at the window.
“No carriages, no cars,” he says in a hoarse whispery voice. “No
ankles, no calves, no legs, no titties, no belly, no nice warm wet
cunny. No women. Nothing. Just fog.”

“Fog? Look at that sunshine.”

“Fog,” the man persists.

“Look outside. You haven’t even looked.”

“Fog. It’s always fog.”

The scented fussily-dressed young
functionary enters the room.

“Oh go away, disgusting old Henri,” he says.
“You be careful, you. You’re not supposed to talk to Arrivals. I’ll
report you if you don’t leave.”

The little gray-smocked middle-aged
functionary looks scared and leaves.

“Three’s company, four’s a crowd,” the young
functionary adds, in perfect mid-Atlantic English. He smiles
stiffly at bare-chested Louis and explains his command of the
tongue and its colloquialisms.

“Back then, outside, I had oodles of
American friends, heaps of English too, plenty of Australians, the
odd (not to say queer, hi-hi!) New Zealander. That was long ago,
back then. Why don’t you take your towels off and put on your nice
new warm clothes?”

“Don’t you see your friends any more?” says
Seymour, just to change the subject and evade the invitation. The
functionary’s face turns petulantly tragic.

“That was a fib I just told, pure fantasy.
We don’t remember how it was before we came here. All that’s left
at my echelon are fragments. It’s punishment. I don’t remember for
what. I remember remembering lots of things but I don’t remember
what they were. Now it’s just scraps, like eating oysters with a
marvelous boy, a street at twilight, a bridge, a public garden with
flowers and butterflies on them, I don’t know what color. I don’t
know which public garden or the name of the boy or the street.
Outside of that, it’s all fog. I talk to Arrivals like you and they
tell me what it was like. I like to think I had all those handsome
English-speaking friends. I woke up here God knows how long ago
with my excellent knowledge of English. I’m so lonely. Be my
friends, please. I’m called Philippe. That’s what they call me when
they don’t call me other things. Philippe isn’t my real name. I
don’t know what my real name was. But call me Philippe anyhow.”

“Why don’t you make new friends outside?”
says Louis. He can’t stomach nancies but the generous impulses of
his heart combat the censorious impulses of his stomach in this
particular case. The nancy seems to be on the brink of tears.

“
Oh, we can’t leave the Reception
Department of the
Préfecture
.
Ever. Ever. You’ve certainly heard the old French saying:
‘The
Préfecture de Police
is where bad functionaries go when they exit.’”

“You mean you’ve all died too?” says Seymour. The
functionary recoils.

“
Don’t ever use that D-word here! Say
‘fuck’ and ‘
enculer
’ all you
like but never that D-word, M-word in French, never here! Of
course, to answer your crudely formulated question, everybody here
has exited, like you. But we’ll never be transferred out there. I
wish I could taste oysters again. One day if all goes well for you
(though I don’t think it will) order a dozen big juicy 00
grade
Marenne
oysters
out there, bedded on crushed ice and seaweed. Think of me here when
you squeeze lemon-juice on them. Or minced shallots with vinegar,
that’s even better. Enjoy yourselves while you can. After the
second exit there’s no second awakening, ever, ever.”

The stern-faced female functionary
returns.

“What are you doing here?” she says to the
male functionary. Her distaste is undisguised. “Keeping up my
English and admiring beauty,” he says impudently. She threatens to
report him again for speaking to Arrivals.

In deliberate self-caricature, he pouts,
flounces over to the door and addresses a limp-wristed bye-bye to
Louis. Before he closes the door he sticks out a long gray tongue
at his hierarchical superior’s back.

“You must dress immediately,” she commands
the materialized duo. “You cannot remain here. The cleaning girl
will be cleaning your rooms shortly. You will wait in the Common
Room opposite this room. The Prefect has informed me that he will
be coming to greet you all officially. That seldom happens. It is a
great honor. Try to be worthy of it.”

She leaves.

Chapter 9

Rules And Regulations

Shyly, back to back, Seymour and Louis unpin
their loin-towels and pull on their new clothes. They find
themselves clad in obsolete garb, a little too insistently typical,
as in a period-film where the clothing as well as the props (like
spittoons for 1900 and tommy-guns for the thirties) are calculated
to inform the most dull-witted of the spectators where they stand
time-wise. Seymour had d**d in 1980 but is now attired in a
turtleneck sweater and corduroy cuffed trousers of archaic 1950
cut. Louis had d**d in 1927 but is tricked out in a
turn-of-the-century costume with tight trousers, narrow lapels, a
string tie. He’d worn something vaguely similar during his sojourn
in Paris when he wasn’t wearing his Marine uniform. Apparently the
functionaries in charge of the costume wardrobe hadn’t been able to
come up with a Marine uniform for him.

Both of the men are happy at their garb. It
gives reality to a possible transfer to the Paris of their youth
and reunion with their lost sweethearts.

But then they start reading the graffiti,
mainly bitter, that covers the blistered gray walls. A century of
other Americans of questionable goodness had wound up here in
Administrative Suspension and had waited. Very few of the graffiti
bear signatures or even initials, potentially incriminating, given
the nature of the remarks on their hosts. But there’s nearly always
the scratched date, the supposed date in most cases, because
followed by a question mark. It’s as though the inscribers had been
here so long they’d lost count of the years.

Only four more centuries to
go
,” announces one
inscription. Surely an exaggeration. But how about:
“
Here seven
fucking years.
Fuck Prefuck de Hautecloque.
(1929?)
” Was
that one an exaggeration? And this: “
To those who died waiting for Paris: RIP.
(1962?)
” Certain
graffiti express bitterness toward the host country. Seymour makes
out: “
The
French fight with their feet and fuck with their faces.
(1918?)
” and
“
French Food
Sucks! (1998?)
”
Pathetic, this one: “
I was killed on Omaha Beach in 1944 to liberate
France and this is how the bastards thank me!
(1953?)
”

There’s a scattering of tarred rectangles. Louis and
Seymour assume even worse insults to France and the French. The
notion doesn’t occur to them (yet) that what has been carefully
censored are vital messages to future generations of
administratively suspended Americans.

Not all the graffiti address the problem
of quasi-incarceration. There’s the inevitable “
Conroy was here.
(1945?)
” There are a few
arrow-pierced hearts with initials. The initials of lost and
yearned-for firm-breasted Paris sweethearts, as for Seymour and
Louis? Or faithful evocation of dumpy widowed wives?

Other graffiti are political in nature.
The slogans urge and denounce on these alien walls although none of
the slogans could possibly influence the world the scratchers had
left behind in space and, irrevocably, in time. There are numerous
“
I like
Ike!
” and a few
dissenting “
Stevenson for President
.” That was the early fifties. “
Solution to the fuel crisis: don’t
burn oil, burn Iranians
.” That was 1979. “
Better Dead than Red
.” The forties. “
God Bless America, Goddam
France
.” (1962).
“
America,
Love it or Leave it!
”
The inscriber had himself contradicted the stark alternative of his
injunction: he’d left it but went on loving it.

But the graffiti that rivets the duo’s
attention are these ominous scratchings: “
Welcome to the new Arrivals. Oh you
poor bastards. (1921?)
”
Also: “
If
this is heaven, O Lord, give me hell.”
The year
1909?
is scratched under that. Twenty-three years later, (1932?)
the refutation: “
Where the hell do you think you are?
”

Also, this one: “
Going into my thirty-fourth year here
I think. Who wants transfer now? They say there’s nothing after
exit. Hope they’re right.
” Finally, this one: “
Goodbye to all. Keep up the work on Independence
Day!
”

Louis and Seymour wonder at the reference to the
Fourth of July. Above all they wonder at the meaning of that
farewell. Had the inscriber fared well himself? Out to color or
back to blackness after all those years of grayness? They search
for some hint of the fate of the other inscribers. Many had waited
a long time for an end to Administrative Suspension. That much was
clear. But what had happened to them finally? Maybe transfer and
exit sometimes occurred without warning, so fast that they had no
time to scratch their joy or despair on the walls.

The worst of all the inscriptions is this
in big print:
OUT IS A DOUBLE-CROSS!!
The meaning is clear, they think. The promise of possible
transfer is a fraud. You’re plucked, young, out of blackness and
you waited and waited for the good things outside and then you’re
chucked, shriveled, back into blackness.

The only note of theoretical gaiety on the
walls is a chalk-white life-size clown-face. The clown has a
gigantic bulbous nose. He wears a cockeyed conic hat and an
ear-to-ear smile baring all thirty-six teeth. But the smile is
disturbingly mirthless, more a grimace than a smile, like the
ultimate grimace of a tetanus or strychnine victim.