The Harbor
BOOK I
CHAPTER IX
I was in Paris for two years.
In those first weeks of deep delight I called it, "The Beautiful City of
Grays." For this town was certainly mellowed down. No jar of an ugly
present here, no loud disturbing harbor. But on the other hand, no
dullness of a fossilized past. What college had been supposed to do this
city did, it took the past and made it alive, richly, thrillingly alive,
and wove it in with the present. In the first Sorbonne lectures, even
with my meager French, I felt this at once, I wanted to feel it. These
profs were brilliant, sparkling, gay. They talked as though Rousseau and
Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac and Flaubert, Maupassant and all the rest were
still vital dazzling news to the world, because these men were still
molding the world. And from here exploring out over the town, I was
smilingly greeted everywhere by such affable gracious old places, that
seemed to say:
"We've been written about for a thousand years, and now you also wish to
write. How charming of you. Please sit down. Garçon, un bock."
And I sat down. Scenes from the books of my great idols rose around
every corner, or if they didn't I made them rise. There was pride in the
process. To go to the Place de la République, take a seat before some
cheap, jolly café, squint out at the Place with an artist's eye,
reconstruct the Bastille, the Great Revolution, dream back of that to
Rousseau and Voltaire and the way they shook the world by their
writings—and then wake up and find that I had been at it for three
mortal hours! What a chap I was for dreams. I must be quite a genius.
There[Pg 71] were hours with Hugo in Notre Dame in one of its most shadowy
corners; with Zola on top of a 'bus at night as it lumbered up into the
Belleville slums; with Balzac in an old garden I found; with Guy de
Maupassant everywhere, in the gay hum and lights of those endless cafés,
from bridges at sunset over the Seine, or far up the long rich dusk of
the Champs Élysées, lights twinkling out, and his women laughing,
chattering by.
Nothing left in this rich old world but the harbor? Nothing beautiful,
fine or great for an eager, hungry, happy young man? I could laugh! I
knew now that the harbor had lied! For into this radiant city not only
the past but the whole present of the earth appeared to me to be pouring
in. Painters, sculptors, writers and builders were here from all
nations, with even some Hindus and Japs thrown in, young, bringing all
their dreams and ambitions, their gaiety, their vigor and zest.
"Young men are lucky. They will see great things."
Voltaire had said that about thirty years before the French Revolution.
It had been true then, true ever since, it was true to-day and
here—though our great things I felt very sure were not to come in
violence—the world had gone beyond all that. No, these immense
surprises that were lurking just before us, these astounding miracles
that were to rise before our eyes, would come in the unfolding of the
powers in men's minds, working free and ranging wide, with a deep
resistless onward rush—in the stirring times of peace!
And we were not only to see great things but we were all to do them!
That was the very keynote of the place. Here a fellow could certainly
write if only he had it in him. Impatiently I slaved at my French. Five
hours sleep was plenty.
In the small apartment we had taken just on the edge of the Luxembourg
Gardens, on the nights when we were working at home, one of us at his
easel, another at his drafting board, myself at my desk, we would knock
off at[Pg 72] about eleven o'clock and come down for beer and a long smoke in
front of the café below. A homely little place it was, with two rows of
small iron tables in front, and at one of these we would seat ourselves.
Behind us in the window was a long glass tank of gold fish, into which
from time to time a huge cat would reach an omnivorous paw. Often from
within the café we would hear Russian folk songs played on balalaikas by
a group of Russian students there. And between the songs a low hubbub
rose, in French and many other tongues, for here were French and
Germans, English and Bohemians, Russians and Italians, all gathered here
while they were young.
How serene the old city seemed those nights. The street outside was
quiet. The motor 'bus, that pest of Paris, had not yet appeared. Only an
occasional cab would come tinkling on its way. Our street was absurdly
short. At one end was a gay cluster of lights from the crowded cafés of
the "Boul' Mich'," at the other were the low lighted arches at the back
of the Odéon, from which when the play was over fluffy feminine figures
would emerge from the stage entrance; we would hear their low musical
voices as they came merrily by us in cabs. Other figures would pass.
Across the street before us rose the trees and the lofty iron fence of
the Gardens, with a rich gloom of shrubs behind, and against this
background figures in groups and alone and in couples would come
strolling by with their happiness or hurrying eagerly toward it. Or to
what else were they hurrying? From what were they coming so slowly away?
These strangers in this setting thrilled me. Comedy, tragedy, character,
plot—there seemed nothing in life but the writing of tales—watching,
listening, dreaming, finding, then becoming deeply excited, feeling them
grow inside of you, planning them out and writing them off, then working
them over and over and over, little by little building them up. What a
rich absorbing life for a fel[Pg 73]low, and for me it still lay all ahead. I
had used but twenty-two years of my life, there were fifty left to write
in, and what couldn't you write in fifty years!
Often, sitting here at night, I would get an idea and begin to work, and
I would keep on until at last the enormous old woman who kept the
café—we called her "The Blessed Damozel"—would come lumbering out and
good humoredly growl,
"Couches-toi donc. Une heure vient de sonner."
There came a brief interruption. Into our street's procession one
evening, over its round cobblestones on a bicycle that wearily wobbled,
there came a lean dusty figure with something distinctly familiar in the
stoop of the big shoulders.
"Hello, boys," said a deep gruff voice.
"J. K.!"
It was. Joe Kramer arriving in Paris at midnight on a punctured tire,
and cursing the cobblestone pavements over which he had hunted us out.
A hot supper, a bottle of wine, a genial beam on all three of us, and
Joe told his story. After leaving college, from New York he had gone to
Kansas City, and by the "livest paper" there he had been sent abroad
with a bike to do a series of "Sunday specials." He had come over
steerage and written an exposé of his passage. He had two weeks for
Paris and then was off to Berlin and Vienna.
"I'm just breaking ground this time, boys," he said. "I want to get the
hang of the countries and a start in their infernal languages."
The next day he began to break ground in our city. Early the next
morning I found Joe propped up in bed scowling into Le Matin as he
tried to butt his way through the language into the news events of the
day.[Pg 74] What I tried to tell him of the Paris I had found made no appeal
whatever.
"All right, Kid," he said indulgently. "If I had a dozen lifetimes I
might be a poet. But I haven't, so I'll just be a reporter."
And he and his bike plunged into the town. He found its "newspaper row"
that day and a Frenchman to whom he had a letter. With this man Joe went
to the Bourse and that night to the Chamber of Deputies. He got "Sunday
specials" out of them both, and then went on to the Bourse de Travail.
And in the few spare moments he had, Joe told us of the things he had
seen. Rumors of war and high finance, trade unions, strikes and sabotage
burst on my startled artist's ears. It made me think of the harbor!
This was not my Paris!
"It is," said J. K. stoutly. "There's no place like a newspaper office
to put you right next to the heart of a town."
He would not hear to our seeing him off. I remember him that last night
after supper strapping his bag onto his bike and starting off down our
quiet old street on his way to the station.
"To-morrow," he said, "I'll stop off in Leipsic. I want to have a look
at the college that stirred my young grandfather up for life. I've got
his diary with me."
Again, in spite of the gruffness, I felt that wistful quality in him.
J. K. was hunting for something too.[Pg 75]