A Moveable Feast
1
A good café on the place st-michel then there was the bad weather. It would come in one day when
the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold
wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the place contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the
rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the cafe des
amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside. It was a
sad, evilly run cafe where the drunkards of the quarter crowded together and I kept away from it
because of the smell of dirty bodies and the sour smell of drunkenness. The men and women who
frequented the amateurs stayed drunk all of the time, or all of the time they could afford it, mostly
on wine which they bought by the half-litre or litre. Many strangely named aperitifs were
advertised, but few people could afford them except as a foundation to build their wine drunks on.
The women drunkards were called poivrottes, which meant female rummies.
The cafe des amateurs was the cesspool of the rue mouffetard, that wonderful narrow crowded
market street which led into the place contrescarpe. The squat toilets of the old apartment houses,
one by the side of the stairs on each floor with the two cleated cement shoe-shaped elevations on
each side of the aperture so a locataire would not slip, emptied into cesspools which were emptied
by pumping into horse-drawn tank wagons at night. In the summer time, with all windows open,
we would hear the pumping and the odour was very strong. The tank wagons were painted brown
and saffron colour and in the moonlight when they worked the rue cardinal lemoine their wheeled,
horse-drawn cylinders looked like braque paintings. No one emptied the cafe des amateurs though,
and its yellowed poster stating the terms and penalties of the law against public drunkenness was
as flyblown and disregarded as its clients were constant and ill-smelling.
All of the sadness of the city came suddenly with the first cold rains of winter, and there were no
more tops to the high white houses as you walked but only the wet blackness of the street and the
closed doors of the small shops, the herb sellers, the stationery and the newspaper shops, the
midwife-second class-and the hotel where verlaine had died, where I had a room on the top floor
where I worked.
It was either six or eight flights up to the top floor and it was very cold and I knew how much it
would cost for a bundle of small twigs, three wire-wrapped packets of short, half-pencil length
pieces of split pine to catch fire from the twigs, and then the bundle of half-dried lengths of hard
wood that I must buy to make a fire that would warm the room. So I went to the far side of the
street to look up at the roof in the rain and see if any chimneys were going, and how the smoke
blew. There was no smoke and I thought about how the chimney would be cold and might not
draw and of the room possibly filling with smoke, and the fuel wasted, and the money gone with it,
and I walked on in the rain. I walked down past the lycee henri quatre and the ancient church of
st-etienne-du-mont and the windswept place du pantheon and cut in for shelter to the right and
finally came out on the lee side of the boulevard st-michel and worked on down it past the cluny
and the boulevard st-germain until I came to a good cafe that I knew on the place st-michel.
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it was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and i hung up my old
waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the
bench and ordered a cafe au lait. the waiter brought it and i took out a notebook
from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write. i was writing about up in michigan
and since it was a wild, cold, blowing day it was that sort of day in the story. i had already
seen the end of fall come through boyhood, youth and young manhood, and in one
place you could write about it better than in another. that was called transplanting yourself, i
thought, and it could be as necessary with people as with other sorts of growing things. but in the
story the boys were drinking and this made me thirsty and i ordered a rum st james. this tasted
wonderful on the cold day and i kept on writing, feeling very well and feeling the good martinique
rum warm me all through my body and my spirit.
a girl came in the cafe and sat by herself at a table near the window. she was very pretty with a
face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin,
and her hair was black as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.
i looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. i wished i could put her in the
story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and i
knew she was waiting for someone. so i went on writing.
the story was writing itself and i was having a hard time keeping up with it. i
ordered another rum st james and i watched the girl whenever i looked up, or when i sharpened the
pencil with a pencil sharpener with the shavings curling into the saucer under my drink.
i've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if i never see
you again, i thought. you belong to me and all paris belongs to me and i belong to this notebook
and this pencil.
then i went back to writing and i entered far into the story and was lost in it. i was writing it now
and it was not writing itself and i did not look up nor know anything about the time nor think
where i was nor order any more rum st james. i was tired of rum st james without thinking about it.
then the story was finished and i was very tired. i read the last paragraph and then i looked up and
looked for the girl and she had gone. i hope she's gone with a good man, i thought. but i felt sad.
i closed up the story in the notebook and put it in my inside pocket and i asked the waiter for a
dozen portugaises and a half-carafe of the dry white wine they had there. after writing a story i
was always empty and both sad and happy, as though i had made love, and i was sure this
was a very good story although i would not know truly how good until i read it over the next day.
as i ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white
wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as i drank their cold
liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, i lost the empty feeling
and began to be happy and to make plans.
now that the bad weather had come, we could leave paris for a while for a place where this rain
would be snow coming down through the pines and covering the road and the high hillsides and at
an altitude where we would hear it creak as we walked home at night. below les avants there was a
chalet where the pension was wonderful and where we would be together and have our books and
at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. that was
where we could go. travelling third class on the train was not expensive. the pension cost very
little more than we spent in paris.
i would give up the room in the hotel where i wrote and there was only the rent of 74 rue cardinal
lemoine which was nominal. i had written journalism for toronto and the cheques for that were
due. i could write that anywhere under any circumstances and we had money to make the trip.
maybe away from paris i could write about paris as in paris i could write about michigan.
i did not know it was too early for that because i did not know paris well enough. but
that was how it worked out eventually. anyway we would go if my wife wanted to, and i
finished the oysters and the wine and paid my score in the cafe and made it the shortest way back
up the montagne ste-genevieve through the rain, that was now only local weather and not
something that changed your life, to the flat at the top of the hill.
'i think it would be wonderful, tatie,' my wife said. she had a gently modelled face and her eyes
and her smile lighted up at decisions as though they were rich presents. 'when should we leave?'
'whenever you want.'
'oh, i want to right away. didn't you know?'
'maybe it will be fine and clear when we come back. it can be very fine when it is clear and cold.'
'i'm sure it will be,' she said. 'weren't you good to think of going, too.'
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