Let's pick you up without eating it.
I don't have to eat it, I can just stand here
and it picks me up.
Thank you.
This is really a debut for me.
I've never done anything like this before.
My life, I've read other people's works
or I've read a talk for an occasion,
but really I never thought of the unthinkable,
of reading from my own published work.
And I'm glad it's under your auspices, Ms. Shelton.
I think I have a feeling of security.
You've handled a lot of strange readers in your time
and it's a very distinguished group of people who have read.
And I'm glad to be added as a fellow
eccentric to this long list.
And with due respect for the academic setting
of tonight's seance, I want to offer a few remarks.
Coming among poets as I do with my own prose,
a crow among swans, I surely present a drab image.
My aim in writing is to make music, however simple,
to accompany my meaning, which is of course the aim of poetry,
or should be.
And from the gravity of your brochure, which
announced this evening, some may expect a reading
of equal gravity such as my recent article on computers
in the Wall Street Journal.
My aim is much lower.
Years ago, aspiring to be a novelist,
I believed that longer is better and I ignored lines
by an early American poet, I think
it was Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who wrote,
"What mighty epics have been wrecked
by time since Herrick launched his cockle shells of rhyme."
When I came finally to realize that writing which
bored me would also bore others, would that more novelists would
do the same, I found myself sharing Willa Cather's wish
to throw all the furniture out the window
and leave the stage as bare as in Greek tragedy or Scotch
ballad.
So I wrote a short work meant to be
to the novel something of what the string quartet is
to the symphony.
That is one for a few voices playing variations
on a single theme.
It seems as old as man, the way of a man with a maid or vice
versa.
Today in the fashionable world of explicit sex,
mine is an old fashioned book.
For I believe that the most moving way
of writing about sex, the most various and subtle,
is the before and the after, not the during.
And like many a first novel, mine
failed to find favor with a publisher.
I buried it deeper ever than plummet would sound
and I pursued an academic career which after 30 years at UCLA
brought me here 15 years ago.
36 years passed before my book was published
and then it went into a paperback,
into a French translation, and into movie rights,
lacking now a producer with big bucks and a train.
But calling a book The Blue Train
meant a very good sale to railroad buffs.
Was that meant to be autobiographical?
Of course not.
When my wife, who refused to come tonight out
of an excess of pride in me, when she said crossly,
"you know very well those women weren't like that," I agreed.
The writers would write as to re-orchestrate his past
and to please himself and perhaps a few readers.
In those ecstatic moments when writing is everything,
these lines of Omar the tent maker possess
the writer: ah, love, could thou and I with fate
conspire to grasp this sorry scheme of things
entire, would not we shatter it to bits--
and then remould it nearer to the heart's desire.
So I shall read the episode from The Blue Train called Choice.
The narrator is a young American doctor doing graduate work
in endocrinology.
He has French blood in his veins.
His paternal grandfather was a Burgundian vintner
from Auxerre, a town not far from Dijon.
The time is 1930, the setting, a town in the heart of France,
a safe distance from the fleshpots of Paris.
And then one day in early spring when I'd finished lunch
and was about to leave for the Faculty of Sciences,
a British couple named Penfield entered the cafe.
They were students of landscape design living in Dijon
who were writing a thesis on ancient Burgundian parks.
I'd met them one weekend at Versailles
where we had gone to see the Basilique de la Madeleine.
Burton Penfield was tall, thin, and bespectacled.
His wife, Mildred, a plump Irish woman
with rose petal skin and honey colored hair.
A woman was with him I'd never seen before.
The cafe was crowded; mine was the only table
with empty seats.
"May we?"
Penfield asked.
"Please do.
I'll be leaving."
"Stay," Mildred Penfield said, "and meet
my friend, Mrs. Davies."
The woman's eyes met mine and I was the first to look away.
Hers were green eyes and a blank white face.
"We've been trying to persuade Joyce
to see Vézelay and now that she's this close,"
Mildred Penfield said, "but she insists on going through."
"To?"
I asked to be polite.
"Cannes," Mrs. Penfield replied.
"Have you been to Vézelay again?"
"No.
I've been too busy."
"And what occupies Mr. Burgoyne so urgently?"
Mrs. Davies asked.
"Jack is a science student at the medical faculty,"
Penfield said.
"He's a slave to his studies, especially since he
was in Paris last winter."
"I do not care for doctors," the woman said.
"Oh, Jack would never actually cut into you,"
Penfield explained.
"He's more apt to dissect you philosophically."
"Jolly brilliant, these Americans," Mrs. Penfield said.
"I would not have taken Mr. Burgoyne for an American,"
Mrs. Davies said.
"Well, would you like to see my passport?"
"The Americans I have known have all been writers."
"Well, one finds what one seeks," I said.
Our eyes met again and this time hers dropped
and she lit a cigarette and she blew the smoke in my face.
"Thanks, " I said, "I happen to like the Gauloise bleu."
The Penfields were embarrassed and I rose.
"Well, back to the formaldehyde vat," I said,
"where life is less hazardous."
Mrs. Davies smiled faintly and I shook hands with all three
and left.
All afternoon
in the laboratory, her perfume lingered on my hand.
It was an exotic smell soap and water did not remove.
And I recalled her chic clothes, her long legs crossed high up,
her thin face with wide mouth and above all, her green eyes.
I had not seen her hair but she was wearing a tightly wound
dark green silk turban.
I went to the movies that night to see Charlie Chaplin
in Les Lumières de la Ville.
It was the third time I had seen it, enthralled by the master
pantomimist and the musical score
he had composed for the picture.
And I walked up the aisle afterward humming
the little flower girl song.
And then in the crowded foyer, I found myself
pressed against Joyce Davies.
She was with the Penfields.
And when she turned to see who was crowding her,
our faces nearly touched.
Hers cut like a knife only for a moment then her eyes widened
in recognition and I saw that the green was amber flecked.
"Monsieur le docteur," she murmured
with the faintest of smiles.
"We're going to the Miroir for coffee,"
Penfield said, "won't you join us?"
"Oh, please excuse me," I said.
"I have work to do."
"It would give me pleasure if you would come,"
Mrs. Davies said in French.
"I thought you didn't like Americans,"
I countered, also in French.
"Are there not exceptions to the rules?"
"Oh, I assure you of my profoundest gratitude.
Do come," she said in English, "I'll behave."
There's a whiff of a perfume that decided it.
I went with them up there on Rue de la Liberté to the Brasserie
du Miroir and a string orchestra was playing the ballet music
from Le Cid.
The Penfields and I fell into a discussion
of Cluny in southern Burgundy and the merits
of Viollet-le-Duc's work
while Joyce Davies listened, watching
the face of each speaker, her own
veiled in smoke from the strong cigarette she favored.
"Are you always this silent," I challenged her
in a lull of our talk.
"I'm afraid of angering you again."
"Joyce is still fatigued from her journey,"
Mrs. Penfield explained.
"She came across on the trans-Siberian."
"All the way across?"
I asked, "what kind of equipment do they have on that train."
"Horrible.
The food was even worse.
It took two weeks.
And she wants to leave tomorrow," Mrs. Penfield said.
"We're frightfully annoyed with her."
"Go on talking architecture," she said, "It's so reassuring."
She intrigued me, who was she?
Not French, although she spoke it fluently.
I kept trying to place the perfume, was it Chinese?
I did not leave as early as I had intended to do.
It was Monday night and the Miroir
and the town's other cafes all closed at 11:00.
"Just as I'm waking up," Mrs. Davies protested.
"Is there nowhere open that I may stand a round of Pernod?"
"The buffet de la gare," I said, "is open all night."
"Shall we go there then?' she asked.
"Well, we'd better not," Penfield said.
"Jack, you go with Joyce.
A bit of nightlife will do you good."
I did not protest.
So we separated, the Penfields going off
to their apartment and Mrs. Davies
and I re-tracing the Rue de la Liberté to the Place Darcy
and on to the railway station.
We walked silently under an arch of plane trees in new leaf.
In a smoky buffet, she removed her coat for the first time
and I saw that she was a mature woman.
Full breasted, round armed, thin only in face and shapely legs.
"Oh, I see that you approve of me," she said.
"I suppose you'll be wanting to sleep with me
before the night is over."
I stood up in anger.
"Sorry," she said taking my hand,
"I seem to be fated to annoy you."
"You're accustomed to men finding you irresistible,"
I said.
"You speak the truth."
"Have you tried not wearing that perfume?"
"I do not wear perfume."
"What is it then?"
"It's on my clothes.
Our closets were made of sandalwood."
"In China?"
"Indo-China."
"So that's an oriental mask you wear?"
"Yes.
For protection."
"Well, I'd take it off."
"Why should I?"
I stood up, "Where are you staying?
I'd better take you to your hotel.
We don't seem to be getting along."
Her face softened and she took a long swallow
of the milky Pernod.
"Please don't."
She lit a Gauloise.
"I'm beginning to relax."
"Why so tense?"
"I suppose it was the long journey.
Men on the train annoyed me.
There was no privacy."
"I want nothing from you."
"I'm beginning to see that you don't."
"Who are you?"
"You know my name."
"Oh, let's not spar."
"You want me to take my hair down?" she asked.
"Well, it might help."
She began to unwind the turban.
"I wrapped it too tight.
It's giving me a headache."
And her hair came down in a flood, thick
and curly and copper red clear to her shoulders.
I reached out and touched it.
"Well, it burned me."
She laughed.
"It's all my own nor do I tint it."
"Why you hide such beautiful hair?"
"I attract enough attention without this bonfire."
"Well," I said, "it is indeed an incendiary red."
"Now tell me who you are. " "Oh, please don't be an aggressive
American just as I'm beginning to like you."
"Do you dislike all men at first?"
"Yeah, mostly."
"I don't suppose I'm any different from the rest.
I'm just a man."
"That is obvious," she said.
"Why don't we be simple with each other?"
I asked.
"Dijon is a poor place for melodrama."
"Don't you find it dull here?" she asked.
"I do not seek excitement."
"Why are you here?"
"To work.
Why are you?"
"I'm passing through and to see Mildred.
Do you sometimes go to Paris?"
she asked.
"No," I said, "not since December.
The severe cold burned me."
"Your paradox fails to hide the presence of a woman," she said.
"Oh, but you're perceptive."
"Tell me about her."
"She returned to the Arctic Circle."
"Tiens," she said, "an Eskimo, how exotic."
We laughed.
"What do you do to amuse yourself?" she asked.
"We were at the movie," I said.
"Don't you remember?"
"Was that tonight?"
"No, after midnight last night.
We met yesterday noon."
"Do you have a girl here?" she asked.
"No."
"Lucky you.
Was the one in Paris good?"
I laughed.
"She was really Swedish, not Eskimo."
"Where is she now?"
"She went home to Stockholm to be married."
"Lucky you she left."
The train caller entered the buffet
and poured out a torrent of words.
"I thought I knew French," she laughed.
"He's calling the blue train," I explained.
"It's due to make a 10 minute stop.
You want to go see?"
"Whither thou goest."
So I put 50 centimes pieces in the vending
machine for billets de quai and we gained the platform.
And we waited beside the main line
into the deluxe sleeping car train from Calais
and Paris came in precisely at midnight.
Blinds were pulled on the windows
of the blue and gold wagons-lit.
A mechanic hurried along with a flashlight
crouching to check the journaled boxes with a rap of his hammer.
A few people boarded, no one got off.
The blue train carried only through passengers
for Marseilles and beyond.
We walked back along the train, drawn by a lighted unshaded
window.
There we paused and gazed up and we
saw four red faced Englishmen in shirtsleeves sitting,
rigidly erect, playing cards.
We were so close that I could read the label on their bottle
of Johnnie Walker.
One man looked down and saw us.
His lips moved soundlessly.
The other three turned and looked.
Their faces were expressionless, and we stared up at them.
They turned back to their cards.
The train began to move and gather speed.
And as the fourgon passed us, we saw the baggage master standing
in the open side door, his ill-fitting red-corded black
uniform open at the throat, in the act of tilting a wine
bottle to his lips.
"Santé," I called, as the car glided past.
His Adam's apple twitched.
He removed the bottle from his mouth.
"À la vôtre, m'sieu'dame," he said.
Joyce squeezed my arm and laughed,
and we walked the length of the platform
after the departing train until finally its rear lights
disappeared around a curve.
And we walked out from under the great iron shell
and saw the yard signals turn red.
And the air was damp, and smelled of cold smoke
and hot, oily machinery.
I told her of the last times I was
there, and of Nancy and Erda, and what I'd learned from them.
Joyce clung to my arm, and as we walked in slow strides
together, and I spoke of my successes and failures,
I touched her hair.
It was beaded with moisture, the bitter smell of coal
smoke blended with her sandalwood.
We drifted back under the arch of the station.
"I call it my cathedral," I said.
"Shall we eat something?"
"As you like.
I seem to be yours without your asking for me."
"Well," I said, "you have grown wonderfully gentle."
We entered the buffet and ordered ham and Gruyere
sandwiches, coffee, and brandy.
"In a few more minutes," I said, "the Simplon Orient Express
is due, and then to Rome.
And at 2:38 there's the Bordeaux-Strasbourg Rapide,
the only fast train and all of France that
does not originate in Paris.
"Well," she said, "I am coming to the conclusion
that you like trains."
"Yes," I said.
"I often come here at night to see them pass.
I do not visit the buffet, so it costs only 50 centimes.
She laughed.
"I thought I never wanted to see a train again."
"Now tell me," I said, "are you an international spy?"
"Heavens, no.
The Russians took me for a whore.
I might look like one, and I am no virgin,
but I've never taken money.
And isn't that the definition of a whore?
Well, I would if I had to.
But then, I've never lacked money,
so I shouldn't boast of my virtue."
"Well," I observed, "you--
you've known many men."
"Ah, too many."
"Is there a Mr. Davies?"
"That is my maiden name."
"You were married?"
"Yes, to a Frenchman."
"You will understand my natural curiosity
about your antecedents," I said.
"Well," she laughed, "that's much nicer than 'who are
you?'" "Our manners improve with practice," I observed.
She laughed.
"My father was a Welsh adventurer and my mother
an English noblewoman.
He earned his living by cards.
And when he was blinded in an accident,
he killed my mother and committed suicide.
And I was sent to a convent in Rouen."
"I once thought of studying there," I said.
"Well," she said, "it's much like Dijon, though busier
because of the river commerce.
They're all alike, however, these provincial holes.
Well, at 15 I was seduced by a high ecclesiastic,
and became his mistress until he died of apoplexy
from overeating."
[LAUGHTER]
"Then I married a wealthy importer
and we moved to Indochina.
10 years in Saigon, and then alcohol did for him.
As it will do for me, I fear.
I turned down an even dozen proposals, more or less
legitimate, took my maiden name, and here I
am in a buffet de la gare de Dijon.
"And where to the Penfields come in?"
I asked.
"Mildred was in the convent.
We've kept in touch.
I was curious to see if she could still
excite me the way she did when we were girls."
"Well," I said, "does she?"
And she smiled.
"You didn't give me time to find out."
"Do I excite you?"
She finished her brandy and then said, "Yes, you do."
"Are you in a hurry?"
I asked.
"No, I like talking with you.
There's no hurry."
"What takes you to Cannes?"
"My husband left me a villa at Antibes.
I want to see whether to keep it or sell it."
"Then you're not a spy?"
"Oh, you're sweet, Jack Burgoyne.
Have you forgiven me?"
"For what?"
"The rude things I said."
"That was yesterday."
"Is today tomorrow?"
"It grows late," I said.
"Are you tired?"
"I'm not sure.
Perhaps in a state of ecstatic fatigue."
"We need fresh air," I said.
"Which is your hotel?"
"La Bourgogne."
I laughed.
"It belongs to me.
I own the entire Duchy of Burgundy.
It was my grand patrimony."
"May I be your first duchess?"
"Joyce the Red, all hail," I toasted her.
She laughed.
"I don't know which has gone most to my head--
you, the brandy, or the trains.
But I've never been this happy.
Do you learn this art at school?"
"Yes," I said.
"It is the Burgundian bedside manner."
"But you're not wanting anything from me," she said.
"Don't I?"
I asked.
"Do you?"
"Yes," I said.
"Your hair."
"Sorry, it's not removable."
"I want to bury my face in it."
"Didn't you say we needed fresh air," she countered.
"You don't want to see the other trains?"
"No," she said.
"Not tonight."
She smiled, and then said, "I was wrong.
I am in a hurry."
So we went out into the damp air.
We walked arm in arm up the street, and a group of soldiers
came toward us, walking in the middle of the street,
clinging together and singing drunkenly.
We stopped and watched them reel past.
They paid no attention to us.
"You haven't told me," she said, "that I smoke and drink
too much."
"Do you?"
I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"Well," I said, "that's settled."
We reached her hotel on the Place Darcy.
The lobby was deserted and the room clerk was snoring.
We leaned against the wall at the elevator.
"Journey's end," she said, and drew my face to her hair.
We stood for a long moment, and then she
opened the elevator door and held it for me.
"Will you?" she asked.
"Willingly, I replied.
We mounted to her room on the fifth and top floor,
and she undressed swiftly and lay on the bed
and waited for me to join her.
[LAUGHTER]
There's a powerful emotion called thirst.
[LAUGHTER]
It was nearly noon when I awoke.
[LAUGHTER]
How nice.
Joyce was still asleep, her hair like fire on the pillow.
We'd enjoyed long, deliberate, deeply satisfying intercourse,
and I felt refreshed.
I dressed quietly, and as I was about to leave without waking
her, I saw her eyes open.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
She reached up her arms.
I held her and kissed her, and she laughed and fell back.
And on her milk-white skin, her hair was all the redder.
"I'd forgotten," she said, "how good it can be."
"Ha," I said.
"You'd think we'd done it for years."
"I wanted you the moment I saw you," she said.
"But you nearly drove me away."
"Oh, horrible thought."
"I'm late," I said.
"Will you be here after lab?"
"I was going to take the 7:30 Rapide."
"Don't."
"You want me to stay?"
"Yes."
"What will we do?"
"What we did."
"You want more?"
"Yes."
"Well, so do I. Is there a quiet cafe where I could sit and have
a drink until you come?"
"The Concord, directly across the Place."
"It'll take me until then to get the tangles out of my hair."
"Don't bother," I said.
"I'll only put them back in."
When I returned at six, I found Joyce
seated on the leather banquette at the Concorde,
a Pernod in front of her, a cigarette in her hand.
Before she saw me, her face was expressionless,
as it was when we first met.
And then as I approached, her eyes widened,
her face relaxed, the lines disappeared, and she smiled.
We shook hands, and I sat beside her
and ordered a demi of Vézelise, the blonde pilsner-type beer
featured at the Concorde.
"À toi."
She lifted her glass, drank it half down.
Then lit her cigarette, and we were enveloped
in a cloud of the acrid smoke.
"How is it," I ask, "that you smoke the worker's cigarette?"
"Did we not labor?"
she asked.
"Truth is, I like everything strong.
You."
"Oh, you're a strange one," I said.
"Do you like me?"
"I haven't had time to think about it."
"Did it go well for you?
You're not too tired?"
"No," I said.
"Recharged."
"I too," she said.
"Then you are not leaving?"
"You want me to stay?"
"Yes," I said.
"You are good medicine."
The time passed as we drifted along in quiet talk,
she on Pernod and I on beer, there in the peacefulness
of the cafe La Concorde, its paneled gilt mirrored walls
reflecting the older Dijonnais who frequented it as a club.
Merchants and professional men and matrons
too came for aperitifs and tea, chess, the newspapers,
and talk.
The waiters were old professionals--
deliberate, impersonal, skilled.
When ours brought more drinks, Joyce's face
would resume her habitual green-eyed mask.
And then when he had left, she turned to me and smiled,
and her eyes widened and were again amber flecked.
Toward eight, she paid for the accumulation of saucers,
and we strolled up to Rue de la Liberté to the Place d'Armes.
And there at a table, behind a hedge of potted privet,
on the terrace of the Restaurant du Pré aux Clercs,
we dined on steak, potatoes, salad, and Beaujolais
en carafe.
It was beginning to grow dark, and the pigeons
were settling to roost on the ledges of the Hotel
de Ville, the great structure of honey-colored limestone, which
stood where the Dukes of Burgundy
had once built their palace.
The vanished rulers were symbolized
by stone helmets, which rose from the cornices in silhouette
against the eggshell sky.
A trolley car rocked crazily across the Place
and disappeared down the main street
with a squeal of flange wheels.
Our waiter lit the candles on our table,
and as we emptied the second carafe,
Joyce took my hand across the cloth.
"Mœurs de province," she said.
"Bearable only when one knows they are not permanent.
That one can escape them."
"But not tonight," I said.
"No," she said.
"Not tonight."
I held her knee between my knees and our hands too were joined.
"When will you leave?"
I asked.
"Oh, let us live each day," she said.
"And night," I added.
"Again, so soon?"
"Oh, it was long ago," I said.
"We met only yesterday," she said.
"A century ago."
"You are unusually romantic for one studying the sciences,"
she said.
"Well, haven't you heard of Arthur Schnitzler,
of Somerset Maugham, of James Joyce, all of whom
studied medicine?"
"No," she said.
"I have small culture and large appetite."
"Stay, and I will teach you."
"Oh, you have," she said.
We strolled back up the street to her hotel.
It was now dark, and the bright shop windows
offered beautiful displays of mustard jars,
gingerbread, and confections.
Dijon specialties on view for the passersby.
A soft spring rain was falling as we turned in and again
mounted to her room.
There we opened the tall windows that
looked across a courtyard with elms and chestnuts
in leaf, to the cathedral of Saint Benigne.
The air smelled strong--
of wet earth, of sandalwood, and tobacco.
And our lips tasted of wine as we stood at the open window
in a searching kiss, hearing the sound of rain on the leaves.
And thus a week went by, each day and night the same for us.
We met at the Concorde, we dined at the Pré aux Clerc,
we walked up the street to our hotel.
We stood at the open window, kissed, undressed, made love.
Each morning I went away refreshed to the day's work
at the Faculty of Science.
There were no variations in the slow and muted music
that we made.
I was not in love as I had known it before, nor even infatuated.
When we met in the afternoon, it was as friends.
And it was not until we had finished dinner
and were holding hands across the table,
our knees gripped together, relaxed, assured,
and I saw her peaceful smiling face,
that I began to feel a desire again.
"Shall we go now?"
I asked.
"Oh," she said, "it's lovely not being in a hurry."
"But I am now."
"Well," she laughed, "so am I. You go and I will follow."
The Penfields called us the stuffy old married couple.
Our sole concession to sociability
was to go with them one evening to the movie.
It was a René Clair's Sous le Toits de Paris.
"All those train whistles," Joyce
said, as we talked after love, "they'll haunt me forever."
"He used them as a leitmotif in the film."
"It'll be ours," she said.
"That first night at the station,
those Englishmen have never known enchantment like this."
"Listen, " I said, "you can hear the yard engines."
"And the rain on the leaves," she said.
"Oh Jack, it's too good to last."
And I kissed her words away.
Sunday afternoon, we walked to the park on the only fine
day since she had come.
It was the first time I'd been there since the winter
walk with Erda.
Now the trees made a green sky overhead.
Thrushes sang and a cuckoo called.
Children rolled hoops down the long walks.
We reached the riverbank and sat on a stone bench.
And across the stream the grassy field
was the nesting place of larks, and they rose up singing.
"I was reading Henry James's Little Tour in France," I said,
"and it's here on this very bench
that he brings it to a close.
He did not like Dijon."
"He was probably alone," Joyce said.
"I'd go mad if I were here alone.
I'll only remember it because of you."
"You sound sad," I said.
"Nostalgic, I guess, remembering Sunday afternoon walks along
the river in Rouen.
Now I'll add Dijon to memory."
"What are you telling me?"
"That I'll be leaving."
"No."
"You didn't think I'd stay forever?"
"But it's only been a week."
"I intended to stay only a day."
"We could pool our money," I said, "and share an apartment."
"Money is not the problem," she said.
"What is?"
"It's you.
You're losing weight.
You can't go on with such a regime.
What you have been lavishing on me belongs to your work."
"Oh," I said.
"I have enough for both.
Never felt better."
"Nothing in excess, my husband used
to say when I began on the second bottle of Pernod."
"I've never known one like you," I said.
"You do not keep me aroused."
"Well," she laughed, "I take that as a compliment."
"Stay," I pleaded.
"We'll find an apartment tomorrow."
"Oh, now you're being that aggressive American.
Don't forget," she said, "I've loved you
because you weren't one."
"Be reasonable," I said.
"Oh, I am.
Jack, you've been the first who's not sought to reform me.
I truly have bad habits, and a worse character."
"We've had other things to do," I said.
"Oh, lovely things," she said.
"And all lovely things do pass.
You're poet enough to know that."
"I refuse to be categorized," I said.
She stood up.
"Let's walk.
Talking is not good this afternoon."
She had her way.
We wandered back through the park,
then returned to town along the riverbank and the canal path,
past the hospital and the Faculty of Science,
and the workers' quarter, and the Rue Monge,
and the statue of Bossuet preaching,
a fat pigeon on his head.
I showed her a secret garden behind the stone
wall of a deserted hotel.
There against the side of the building was a well shrine with
a stone Cupid and the inscription 'to paramour,
1539.'
Lilacs had run wild, and the bushes
were covered with purple blossoms,
and the air was sweet with their fragrance.
"Oh," she said, "I could have loved you well.
Why was it not you who came over the convent wall?"
We reached the Place Émile Zola as the fanfare
of the PLM, the Paris, Lyon, et Mediterranée,
began its Sunday afternoon concert,
a dozen middle-aged railway workers
in sloppy blue and red uniforms, blowing
blasts of strident music.
We found a table on the terrace of the tiny Cafe du Midi.
The leafy square was thronged with promenading Dijonnais.
Children had scrambled atop the [AUDIO OUT]..
--were gaping over the crowd at the sweaty musicians.
We drank warm beer from green bottles,
and it was a spectacle Breughel would have relished.
The music and the shouting, the barking dogs,
and the roaring motorcycles made conversation impossible.
When it grew dark, we walked on to the Pré aux Clerc
for dinner.
The Place d'Armes was also peopled with promenaders,
the quieter bourgeoisie.
And behind the hedge we were able to talk again.
"Oh," I said, "it's a poem by Rimbaud.
Listen."
Les tilleuls sentent bon dans les bons soirs de juin!
L'air est parfois si doux, qu'on ferme la paupière.
"And where was when he wrote that?" she asked.
"In Charleville," I explained.
"Ah, the dreary North.
What escapists you poets are.
But if I shut my eyes, I'm back in Rouen.
Oh Jack, why did it have to be the way it was?"
"Stay," I said.
"We'll make it over."
"An old drunkard like me?
No, you're my last man.
I intend to live with women after this.
Anyway, I'll be dead of lung cancer before I'm 40.
Look at my fingers.
You'd think I was Chinese.
What could I give you?
A child?
No, the good father took care of that.
He told me it was an appendectomy when he destroyed
my ability to bear a child.
My best gift to you would be my body and alcohol."
"Don't talk like that," I said.
"You never have before."
"You're hearing the true me," she said.
"I've hidden her for a week, thanks to you.
Now you must face her, you fool."
"Please be reasonable."
"Ah," she said, "it's been a lovely week for me.
I've gained the weight you've lost.
The lines are gone from my face.
My hair is glossy again."
"And your green eyes have turned amber," I said.
"You haven't asked anything of me.
For God's sake, don't start now."
"I ask only that you stay for a while."
"You're a damn fool, John Burgoyne."
She began to laugh hysterically, and I
realized that for the first time, she was drunk.
I went across the square to the carriage stand
and I came back for her, and we drove to the hotel.
And there she was quiet.
And when we were in bed, she was violent in love,
and then lay exhausted.
It was nearing 11 when she pushed me gently out of bed.
"Go," she said.
"Let's both get a good sleep."
She watched me dress.
And then when I was putting on my shoes,
she knelt naked and tied the laces.
I buried my face in her hair as she hugged my knees.
Sandalwood, tobacco, wine, and woman
were blended in one strong perfume.
I drew her up and held her against me.
"You will stay?"
"Yes, but go now.
I'm so tired," she said.
"Tomorrow?"
"Oui, à demain."
She pushed me into the hall and I heard the door lock.
All the next day, I was impatient to see her.
It was the first time I had not been
able to concentrate on my work.
On my way to the Concorde, I bought a nosegay lilies
of the valley, porte bonheur.
The first time I had taken her flowers.
She was not in the cafe.
I crossed the Place to the hotel.
The room clerk stared when I asked
him to ring Madame Davies.
"She's left."
"What?"
"She's no longer here."
"You mean that she has checked out?"
"That's a fact."
"Since when?"
"She left last night, soon after you did."
"Where's she gone?"
"She said that she was taking the Deluxe at midnight."
"The blue train?"
I asked.
"Yes, that's the one.
Le Train Bleu.
For the Cote d'Azur.
Oh," the clerk laughed, "some people have all the luck.
They say it's fine weather down there."
"Doubtless," I said.
"But did not madame leave a message for me?"
"She left nothing.
Nothing at all, save the scent of a strange perfume."
"She was alone?"
I ventured.
"Oh, but certainly."
I thrust the lilies into my pocket, and I left the hotel.
It had begun to rain.
I crossed the square to the Concorde
and I sat down on the banquette.
The old flat-footed garçon came for my order.
"Monsieur desires?"
"The usual," I said.
"Shall I bring madame's?"
"No," I said.
"She will not be here."
The waiter peered at me, then elaborately wiped off
the marble top table with his towel.
"Then you are alone," he concluded.
"That, alas, is the exact truth.
She took The Blue Train last night."
"Well," he said.
"I'm truly sorry to hear that.
You made a brave couple."
"Well," I said, "that's life, my friend."
"True," the garçon said.
"One learns from experience that it's not all roses."
C'est tout.
Merci.
[APPLAUSE]