The Light of Paris(53)

“I live not far away. That’s how I knew about the Club,” Sebastien said. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here too.”

Sebastien grinned. “Ah, bien!” he exclaimed. “You have taken a room at the Club. I knew you would stay. You are meant for Paris. Where are you going now? We are going to Le D?me—would you like to join us? These are my friends. Some of the most brilliant artists in Paris today. You should meet them, if you are going to be a writer.”

If only he hadn’t said that, Margie thought. The idea of her sitting at a table with brilliant artists was ridiculous. The idea of her being a writer was ridiculous. If only she hadn’t told him. It had been the beautiful day, it had been the child with the bread and the pigeons in the square, the church bells and the flower vendors outside the Métro. Now he would expect her to act in some particular way, some way real writers acted. Not that she would have the faintest idea of what that was—she didn’t know any real writers.

But wasn’t this what she had wanted? The real Paris, the Paris they wrote about in magazines Margie had gotten hold of at the library at home and devoured, right there in the reading room, where her mother wouldn’t be able to ask what sort of trash she was reading. The artists who were making this city the place to be, the place to run to after the sad endlessness of the war, or the simple drudgery of a heavy, empty existence.

Noting her hesitation, Sebastien reached down for her hand. “Come on, then,” he said.

Margie, who had held hands with men only in the context of dancing at highly chaperoned affairs, looked down at it doubtfully, then slipped her fingers into his and followed him.

“Your hair looks pretty,” he said as they stood, waiting to cross the street.

Reaching up, Margie patted the curls emerging from under her hat, as though they might have been bruised. The feeling of them, light and soft underneath her fingers, reminded her of how she had looked in the mirror, shorn and bare and someone new and lovely, and she smiled as she said, “Thank you.”

“So Paris has turned you into a flapper?”

“Oh!” She laughed at the thought of herself as a flapper, lounging around the courtyard with the girls at the Club in one of those flimsy little dresses, a cigarette in one hand and a flask of gin in the other. “No, not a flapper. I just didn’t want to have long hair anymore.” It was a good enough explanation.

“It suits you,” he said.

She blushed a little at the compliment. “Thank you.” They crossed the street to Le D?me, Sebastien’s hand still warm and solid around hers, and ducked under the awning where his friends were settling in, pushing tables and chairs together, absorbing people they knew from other tables into the group, taking off their jackets and hats, someone producing ashtrays and distributing glasses. As Margie and Sebastien joined them, a waiter appeared, bearing bottles of wine. Two of the men took the bottles from him and began pouring, and Sebastien pressed a glass into Margie’s hand as they sat down.

“This is Marguerite.” He spoke in French, introducing her to those who were paying attention and pointing out and naming the others who were already distracted by their own conversations. She listened to the brief biographies he sketched of them, feeling anxious and envious, wondering how these men and women had done so much already. They seemed to be so accomplished—ones who had exhibited at galleries or prominent shows, others who had studied with masters, and all of them doing something exciting, something brave and new, making space for themselves without waiting for an invitation.

A curious mix of people sat at the table, some Americans, some French, an Englishman, and two Russian girls. The blur of languages was ridiculous; the common tongues were French and English, but there were a dozen accents, and the Russians spoke in asides to each other, and at the end of the collection of tables a woman and a man were having an enthusiastic conversation in what sounded like Spanish. Their names were a blur, their faces complex and glamorous in a way Margie couldn’t yet distinguish. One of the men was so blond his skin looked like parchment, his eyes a unique and intensely pale blue. One of the Russian women had cheekbones like knives, sharp slashes across her face, and arms so slender Margie could have encircled them with her fingers.

“Sebastien, Sebastien.” One of the men across the table, René, snapped his fingers at him. Three of them had their heads bent together over a notebook. “écoutez,” he demanded. “Si vous aimez l’amour, vous aimerez le Surréalisme.” He spoke these words like a grand proclamation, and then collapsed back in his chair and took a large gulp of wine as though the act had exhausted him.

“Bon, bon,” Sebastien said, with a little applause, and then, in English to Margie, “Did you understand?”

“If you like love, you’ll love Surrealism?” Margie asked. She had read articles about these art movements in Paris without entirely understanding them. They described things incomprehensible to her—Margie shared none of the Surrealists’ anxiety about their art, none of their desperate need to make meaning of things by taking all the meaning from them. She had read a piece by a Surrealist writer that she hadn’t understood at all; it just seemed like words strung together. Margie, who liked stories about people who found the love she longed for herself, stories about people who were broken and then made themselves whole again, had read that and felt a strong desire to lie down.