U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [307]
. . . unless it's Moscow."
At the word Moscow a Frenchman playing checkers at
the next table brought his eyes up from the board and stared at the two Americans. Dick couldn't make out what there was in his stare; it made him uneasy. The waiter came with the hot water. It wasn't hot enough, so Robbins made a scene and sent it back. He poured out a couple of half-tumblers of straight whiskey to drink while they were wait-ing.
"Is the President going to recognize the soviets?" Dick found himself asking in a low voice.
"I'm betting on it . . . I believe he's sending an un-official mission. Depends a little on oil and manganese . . . it used to be King Coal, but now it's Emperor Petroleum and Miss Manganese, queen consort of steel. That's al in the pink republic of Georgia . . . I hope to get there soon, they say that they have the finest wine and the most beautiful women in the world. By God, I got to get
there. . . . But the oil . . . God damn it, that's what this damned idealist Wilson can't understand, while they're setting him up to big feeds at Buckingham palace the jol y old British army is occupying Mosul, the Karun River, Persia . . . now the latrine news has it that they're in Baku . . . the future oil metropolis of the world."
"I thought the Baku fields were running dry."
"Don't you believe it . . . I just talked to a fel ow who'd been there . . . a funny fel ow, Rasmussen, you
-359-ought to meet him." Dick said hadn't we got plenty of oil at home. Robbins banged his fist on the table.
"You never can have plenty of anything . . . that's the first law of thermodynamics. I never have plenty of whis-key. . . . You're a young fel ow, do you ever have plenty of tail? Wel , neither Standard Oil or the Royal Dutch-Shel can ever have plenty of crude oil." Dick blushed and laughed a little forcedly. He didn't like this fel ow Robbins. The waiter final y came back with boiling water and Robbins made them each a toddy. For a while neither of them said anything. The checkerplayers had gone. Suddenly Robbins turned to Dick and looked in his face with his hazy blue drunkard's eyes: "Wel , what do you boys think about it al ? What do the fel ers in the trenches think?"
"How do you mean?"
"Oh, hel , I don't mean anything. . . . But if they thought the war was lousy wait til they see the peace . . . Oh, boy, wait til they see the peace."
"Down at Tours I don't think anybody thought much about it either way . . . however, I don't think that any-body that's seen it considers war the prize way of settling international difficulties . . . I don't think Blackjack Pershing himself thinks that."
"Oh, listen to him . . . can't be more than twenty-five and he talks like a book by Woodrow Wilson . . . I'm a son of a bitch and I know it, but when I'm drunk I say what I goddam please."
"I don't see any good a lot of loud talk's going to do. It's a magnificent tragic show . . . the Paris fog smel s of strawberries . . . the gods don't love us but we'l die young just the same. . . . Who said I was sober?" They finished up a bottle. Dick taught Robbins a rhyme in French:
Les marionettes font font font
Trois petit tours et puis s'en vont
-360-and when the café closed they went out arm in arm. Rob-bins was humming, Cheer up, Napoleon, you'll soon be dead
A short life and a gay one
and stopping to talk with al the petite femmes they met on the Boul' Mich'. Dick final y left him talking to a cowlike woman in a flappy hat in front of the fountain on the Place St. Michel, and began the long walk home to his hotel that was opposite the Gare St. Lazare.
The broad asphalt streets were deserted under the pink arclights but here and there on benches along the quais, under the bare dripping trees along the bank of the Seine, in spite of the raw night couples were stil sitting huddled together in the strangleholds of l'amour. At the corner of the boulevard Sébastopol a whitefaced young man who was walking the other way looked quickly into his face and stopped. Dick slackened his pace for a moment, but walked on past the string of marketcarts rumbling down the rue de Rivoli, taking deep breaths to clear the reek of whiskey out of his head. The long brightlylighted avenue that led to the opera was empty. In front of the opera there were a few people, a girl with a lovely complexion who was hanging on the arm of a pol u gave him a long smile. Almost at his hotel he ran face to face into a girl who-seemed remarkably pretty, before he knew it he was asking her what she was doing out so late. She laughed, charm-ingly he thought, and said she was doing the same thing he was. He took her to a little hotel on the back street behind his own. They were shown into a chil y room that smelt of furniture polish. There was a big bed, a bidet, and a lot of heavy claretcolored hangings. The girl was older than he'd thought and very tired, but she had a beautiful figure and very pale skin; he was glad to see how clean her under-wear was, with a pretty lace edging. They sat a little while on the edge of the bed talking low.