Wherever There Is Light (28 page)

“Jules! My man!”

Otis had seen him on the stairs, and when Julian reached the quay, Otis threw his arms around him. “Man,” Otis said, standing back and checking out Julian's suit and wing tips. “We're gonna have to frenchify your rags. Make you
dans le vent
.”

“I'm thirty-three. That's not young enough to be ‘with it.' ”

“It's about style, baby, not time,” Otis said, patting his purple beret. “How you and Eddie makin' it?”

“We saw Art Tatum at the Downbeat and we say he's got nothing on you.”

Otis chuckled. “Didn't know you boys gone deaf. What you doing in the City of Lights?”

“Yes, to what do we owe this pleasure?”

It was Kendall's voice, behind him, and to Julian it was as poignant as hearing an old love song. He turned. She was thinner, there were lines around her eyes, and the satchel she'd carried since college was on her shoulder. Julian hadn't seen her since December 11, 1941, yet now, with her close enough to touch, he froze, and Kendall appeared equally flustered.

“Kiss already,” Otis said. “My break's about done.”

They kissed on the lips. Julian would've been happy to let it go on for an hour or two, but Kendall pulled away, saying, “I have to get over to Deux Magots.”

Julian couldn't tell whether Kendall was announcing that she had a date or suggesting that he come along. Otis settled it: “Go with her, Jules. I'll catch up later.”

Kendall said, “You hate the Magots.”

“Yeah, but I love you two.”

As they climbed the stairway, Julian heard the quartet break into “Someone to Watch Over Me,” and he imagined dancing with Kendall, holding her hand, feeling her against him.

She said, “Mama wrote me about your mother. She was really broken up about losing her. I'm so sorry, Julian.”

“Thanks.” Across the Seine Julian could see the Louvre, a dull gold in the shadows. He said, “Why does Otis hate that café?”

“It's a hangout for Sartre and
les existentialists
, and Otis says they'll talk you stupid and don't care none for the Lord.”

On the ship over to France, Julian had slogged through Jean-Paul Sartre's
Being and Nothingness
. It was fatter than the French-English dictionary he had to consult so frequently that a steward, a kindly older fellow from Avignon, offered to help translate. Julian tipped him for the offer and plodded on by himself, deciding that because the book was written in Nazi-occupied Paris, it was understandable that Sartre had declared man useless and existence nauseating. Still, his views struck Julian as nothing but nihilism spiffed up for a night on the town. Not that Julian believed God would get him out of any fix he was dumb enough to get himself into. Yet he was a great believer in being angry at God. For the war, the dead women and children especially, and for every horror he had to remember.

Kendall said, “You didn't tell Otis why you're here.”

“To open a
boîte de nuit
.”

“A nightclub?” she replied, as if he were joking. “Like Bogart in
Casablanca
?”

“Bogie's was for gambling. Mine's for music.”

“And that's why you're in Paris? For this nightclub?”

“And for this.” Julian took her grandfather's Hamilton wristwatch from his pants pocket. “You told me to bring it back it you. When we were outside Crossroad Bar-B-Q.”

Kendall glanced down at the watch and sighed, a sound with more confusion in it than resignation. “I've been thinking about Grandpa Ezekiel lately.”

Julian wanted her to say that she had been thinking about him, which seemed so childish, he was chagrined that the thought had popped into his head.

“The crystal broke,” he said. “I had to replace it.”

Kendall ran a finger over the crystal and looked at Julian, studying him as if she were about to snap his picture, trying to discern the meaning embedded in the image.

Then she fastened the watch to her wrist and pecked Julian on the cheek.

S
alut, Kendall! Rejoignez-nous
.”

The man who stood on the terrace of Les Deux Magots beckoning Kendall to join him and his companions had thinning blond hair and a cockeyed stare behind horn-rimmed glasses. He had spotted Kendall as she and Julian had come up Rue Bonaparte, then passed the people milling around the cobbled plaza of the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, among the few sights that Julian remembered from his year in Paris as a child. He'd gone by the church with his father, who commented that the bones of the philosopher René Descartes were entombed inside while his skull was interred elsewhere, an illustration, Theodor said, of Descartes's belief in the separation of mind and body. It was the one time that Julian could recall his father laughing.

“That's Sartre,” Kendall said. “The woman next to him is his soul mate, Simone de Beauvoir.”

Kendall had to bend so Sartre could do the cheek-to-cheek kiss with her, but as he altered the Gallic ritual, copping a cheap feel by rubbing his hands along the sides of her black silk jacket, Julian noticed Simone, in a white shirt and a tie the same riveting sapphire as her eyes, glowering at Sartre.

Kendall introduced Julian to everyone as
mon cher ami
—my dear friend. That was a start, Julian thought. To demonstrate that he wasn't a boorish American, Julian bowed slightly and, with his best French accent that still mangled the nasal vowels even though he'd spent eighteen months in France during the war, Julian said, “
Bonsoir
,
je suis très heureux de faire votre connaissance
.” Despite his saying good evening and that he was very happy to make their acquaintance, no one—not the publisher, Christian; nor the poet, Jacques; nor the novelist, essayist, and playwright, Samuel; nor Sarte nor Beauvoir appeared pleased to meet him. The first three men were too deep in conversation, and the two soul mates were glaring at each other.

Julian and Kendall sat, but before he could order, a waiter brought Kendall a bottle of muscadet and two glasses, and poured the wine for her to taste, and when she nodded her approval, he filled her glass and one for Julian.

“
Merci
, Albert,” she said to the waiter.

“You're a regular?” Julian said.

“Sort of. I'm usually at La Palette. I'll take you there”—she laughed, clearly skeptical—“if you're not too busy with your
boîte de nuit
.” She raised her glass. “To your nightclub.”

The wine was cold and crisp and dry. Christian, the publisher, asked Kendall about some of her photographs, and they began to talk, and then she entered the conversation with the others, except for Beauvoir, who was in a tête-à-tête with a slender, sloe-eyed beauty. The table was like a stage in a theater-in-the-round, and men and women, most of them in their twenties, sat or stood close by their older heroes, drinking wine and smoking sharp-smelling Gauloises, the men in dark berets and sport coats that hadn't been new before the war, the women in snug sweaters, short skirts, and colorful scarves.

Julian felt ignored by Kendall and thought that the chatter at the café would be as tedious as the babbling of the bohemians in the Village. He did find it comical that he kept hearing the term
absurd
spoken with the utmost solemnity—why be so solemn if everything was pointless? Yet he admired the young Parisians. They had either scrambled to survive the Occupation or fought with the Résistance against the Nazis and the Milice—the brutal French militia created by the Vichy government, the official French government established after Hitler had conquered France in 1940. Julian could only guess at the suffering these young men and women had endured, the loved ones who had been shot in the streets or tortured in the internment camps or sent to Auschwitz. And now, on top of that suffering, were the shortages. Fuel was scarce: on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, Julian saw more bicycles than cars. Bread was rationed—a calamity, because the crusty baguettes were central to life in France—black-market prices for food were astronomical, and jobs were impossible to find.

Nonetheless, here they were, these spiffy Parisians, discussing philosophy, literature, art, and politics as if words could cure grief and quiet growling stomachs. Julian listened, not for meaning but for the delight of hearing native French speakers, which for him was like listening to Dizzy Gillespie and his bent trumpet brightening the air with starbursts of bebop.

The waiter replenished Kendall's wine: it was her third glass.

Julian was hungry, and he ordered twenty-five grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches and a dozen bottles of wine. Albert, eyes bugging, said, “
Pardon
,
monsieur?
”

Albert's hearing improved when Julian handed him a couple of hundred-dollar bills—almost twenty-four thousand francs, with France devaluing its postwar currency. Smirking, Kendall said, “The rich Americans take Paris.”

“I hate to eat alone. Besides, these kids won't be insulted. From what they're saying, they're all Communists.”

The Communists had fought the Nazis, and these efforts, along with the shortages and their support for the beleaguered workers of France, had made the Parti Communiste Français a power in politics.

Kendall smiled at Julian with some of the warmth that he remembered. When the sandwiches and wine were brought, the young people hesitated, their expressions stuck between suspicious and resentful. Julian did a quick-and-dirty translation of Karl Marx into French and more or less proclaimed, “ ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.' ”

That did the trick. They started to eat and drink. So did Sartre and his pals, save for Beauvoir, who was whispering with the girl, who seemed more beautiful the longer you looked at her, and Kendall, who was talking to the publisher again. On the boulevard, couples strolled in the spring evening, and the lights were on in the cafés with the red geraniums in the window boxes above the terraces.

“Café life's the nuts, ain't it?” Otis had come up behind Julian and sat next to him.

“Not bad,” Julian said, pouring Otis some wine. “And it's good to see you recovered. Eddie says you wrote him you were wounded.”

“Burns on my legs. When Patton sent us to Vic-sur-Seille. Now I can do two things. Play the piano and drive a tank while folks try to blow me up.” Otis sipped the muscadet. “Surprised to see you, Jules.”

“I'm opening a jazz club.”

Otis grinned. “In Paris?”

“That funny?”

“No, baby. Paris swings.”

“Then why you grinning?”

“You're here for Kenni-Ann.”

“Who says?”

“Anybody not blind. But it's cool. The girl could use some sobering up.”

They could hear Kendall talking: her speech was slurred. Julian said, “I need a house band. You think your quartet would be interested? I'll pay decent.”

“The money'll be gravy. The GI Bill pays us seventy-five a month—twice the scratch most French families got.”

Across the boulevard a Negro man was entering Lipp's with a flaxen-haired mademoiselle on his arm. He stopped to speak to another Negro who was exiting the brasserie, and that man, carrying an overnight bag and wearing a tan suit, walked toward the café. Julian recognized him from the Léo Sapir Gallery. “That's Simon Foxe, isn't it?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Why unfortunately?”

Otis glanced into his wineglass. “Him and . . .”

“Him and Kendall have a thing?”

“Had. Simon's been reporting for the Negro wire service. He covered the cats fighting in Italy, Holland, France, and Germany. He was with us at Vic-sur-Seille. Before Kenni-Ann got there, and he bent my ear in three about her telling him to hit the road. Now he's reporting on Negro soldiers in Europe and dating this white girl—Thayer Claypoole. Kenni-Ann knows Thayer from that Quaker school in Philly. She's taking classes at the Sorbonne, and Kenni-Ann don't care about her and Simon, but he's still mad, and he sees Kenni-Ann, the shit get stirred.”

The stirring began as soon as Simon got to Deux Magots. Kendall was laughing like an inebriated duck, and Simon gave her a cutting look and said to Otis, “Our girlie isn't herself unless she's lit up and got her legs wrapped around somebody.”

Kendall overheard him and, standing up and holding on to the table to support herself, replied in English, “Don't ‘girlie' me, you smug sonovabitch.”

Simon noticed Julian, who was standing and offering him his hand. “Julian Rose. Met you years ago at Kendall's opening.”

They shook, and Julian said, “Read your book on the Harlem riot. Enjoyed it.”

“Thank you.” Simon glanced at Kendall, as if he wanted to answer her, and then looked at Julian. He said, “Otis, I have to catch a train to Bonn. I called Thayer, but she's not in. She's supposed to be here in fifteen minutes. Will you tell her I'll give her a ring tomorrow?”

“Will do, man.”

Simon got into one of the taxis outside the church. Kendall was standing with Beauvoir, Sartre, and the young beauty that Beauvoir had engaged in a tête-à-tête. Now Beauvoir whispered to Kendall, who erupted in a fit of laughter. Evidently, Beauvoir knew English, because Kendall said to her, “Don't go inviting people to a party at my pussy without asking me.”

Beauvoir spoke to Sartre, probably translating Kendall's response. He puffed on his pipe and grimaced. The young beauty's face was as animated as a slab of marble.

Otis said, “You should get Kenni-Ann to her hotel. She's at the Trianon. On the Rue de Vaugirard. Where you staying?”

“At the Voltaire. Give me a call and leave your number. I'll track you down.”

Julian went and took Kendall's arm. “Let me take you home.”