Tropic of Cancer - Miller, Henry [91]
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 bloodsucking 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 you?"
"You're just a little 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 tonight, 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 crazy," 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 has bronchitis, the princess, as I was saying, has the clap, and I have the piles. Just exchanged six empty bottles at the Russian épicerie 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 adrenalin 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 The Living Corpse.
At first I thought it was going to be embarrassing, a ménage à trois, 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 café." But it's not necessary to do that, I explain. Just use ordinary precautions. "Tut tut!" she says, "I won't sit down then