II
I Get to Paris and Encounter Some Strange Sights
In obedience to the captain’s orders we remained on deck last night, fully dressed, till our ship was past the danger zone and in harbor. There was a rule against smoking or lighting matches, but none against conversation.
The Gentleman from Louisiana and a young American Field Service candidate had the floor. The former’s best was a report of what he saw once while riding along beside the Columbia River. An enormous salmon jumped out of the water and raced six miles with the train before being worn out. Whether the piscatorial athlete flew or rode a motorcycle, we were unable to learn.
The Gentleman from Louisiana yielded to his younger and stronger countryman. Someone had spoken of the lack of convoy. “Don’t you think we haven’t a convoy,” the kid remarked.
I scanned the sea in all directions and saw nothing but the dark waters. “Where is it?” I inquired.
“There’s one on each side of us,” said Young America. “They’re about twenty miles from the ship.”
“I should think,” said somebody, “that a very slender submarine might slip in between our side kicks and us and do its regular job.”
“No chance,” the youth replied. “The convoy boats are used as decoys. The sub would see them first and spend all its ammunition.”
A little later he confided in me that the new American warships were two hundred and forty-five thousand horsepower. I had no idea there were that many horses left to measure by.
We spotted a shooting star. “That was a big one,” I said.
“Big! Do you know the actual size of those things? I got it straight from a professor of astronomy. Listen. They’re as small as a grain of sand.”
“Why do they look so big?”
“Because they’re so far away and they travel so fast.”
Round ten o’clock, beckoning lights ashore told us we were close to safety. But the French gunners remained at their posts two hours longer. The captain’s shouted order, relieving them from duty, was music to our ears.
After midnight, however, we turned a complete circle, and at once the deck was alive with rumors. We had been hit, we were going to be hit, we were afraid we would be hit, and so on. The fact was that our pilot from ashore was behind time and we circled round rather than stand still and be an easy target while awaiting him. We were in harbor and anchored at three. Many of us stayed up to see the sun rise over France. It was worth the sleep it cost.
They told us we would not dock until six tonight. Before retiring to my cabin for a nap, I heard we had run over a submarine and also that we had not. The latter story lacked heart interest, but had the merit, probably, of truth. Submarines have little regard for traffic laws, but are careful not to stall their engines in the middle of a boulevard.
I was peacefully asleep when the French officers came aboard to give us and our passports the Double O. They had to send to my cabin for me. I was ordered to appear at once in the salon de conversation. A barber hater addressed me through his beard and his interpreter: “What is Monsieur Laudanum’s business in France?”
I told him I was a correspondent.
“For who?”
“Mark Sullivan.”
“Have you credentials from him?”
“No, sir.”
“Your passport says you are going to Belgium. Do you know there are no trains to Belgium?”
“I know nothing about it.”
“Well, there are no trains. How will you go there?”
“I’ll try to get a taxi,” I said.
“Are you going from here to Paris?”
“Yes.”
“And where are you going from Paris?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please explain that answer.”
“I will go wherever the authorities permit me to go.”
“That is not a satisfactory answer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What is your real business in France?”
“To write.”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to keep your passport. You will appear tomorrow morning at nine o’clock at this address.”
And they handed me a scary-looking card.
On the deck I met our congressman and told him my troubles.
“I know these fellows very well,” he said. “If you like, I can fix it for you.”
“No,” I replied proudly. “I’d rather do my own fixing.”
At the dock I got into a taxi and asked to be taken to the ⸻ Hotel. Not to my dying day will I forget that first ride in a French taxi. Part of the time we were on the right side of the street, part of the time on the left, and never once were we traveling under a hundred and fifty miles an hour. We turned twenty corners and always on one ear. We grazed dozens of frightened pedestrians, many of them men crippled in the war, or by taxis, and women too old to dodge quickly. We aimed at a score of rickety horse-drawn vehicles, but our control was bad and we bumped only one. In front of the hostelry we stopped with a jerk.
“Comme beaucoup?” I asked the assassin.
“Un franc cinquante,” he said.
Only thirty cents, and I thought I knew why. When they get through a trip without killing anyone, they feel they have not done themselves justice nor given you a square deal.
I found myself a seat at a sidewalk table and ordered sustenance. The vial they brought it in was labeled “Bière Ritten,” but I suspect the adjective was misspelled.
Till darkness fell I watched the passing show—streetcars with lady motormen and conductors; hundreds of old carts driven by old women, each cart acting as a traveling roof for an old dog; wounded soldiers walking or hobbling along, some of them accompanied by sad-faced girls; an appalling number of women in black; a lesser number of gayly garbed and extremely cordial ones, and whole flocks of mad taxis, seeking whom they might devour.
By using great caution at the street crossings, I succeeded in reaching the telegraph office where I wrote a message informing Paris friends of my arrival. I presented it to the lady in the cage, who handed it back with the advice that it must be rewritten in French. I turned away discouraged and was starting out again into the gloom when I beheld at a desk the songbird of the ship. Would she be kind enough to do my translating? She would.
The clerk approved the new document, and asked for my passport. I told her it had been taken away. She was deeply grieved, then, but without it monsieur could send no message. Bonne nuit!
Back at the hotel I encountered the Yankee vice-consul, a gentleman from Bedford, Indiana. I told him my sad plight, and he said if matters got too serious his office would undertake to help.
With his assurances to comfort me, I have retired to my room to write, to my room as big as Texas and furnished with all the modern inconveniences.
It is Saturday night and they have hot water, but before I take advantage of it I must recount the thrilling experiences of the day.
After a sidewalk breakfast of “oofs” and so-called café in Bordeaux, I went to keep my engagement at court. It was apparent that I was not the only suspect. The walk outside and the room within were crowded with shipmates, most of them from the second cabin, all looking scared to death.
I stood in line till I realized that I must make it snappy if I wanted to catch the eleven-five for Paris; then I butted my way into the august presence of Him of the Beard.
He recognized me at once and told me with his hands to go upstairs. In a room above I found the English-speaking cross-examiner, with the accent on the cross.
He waved me to a chair and began his offensive.
“Monsieur Laudanum,” he said, “when I asked you yesterday how you expected to get to Belgium, you said something about a taxi. That answer was not satisfactory. You have not explained anything to us. I do not believe we can allow you to leave Bordeaux.”
“All right, sir.” I arose.
“Sit down!” he barked. “Now tell me if you have any explanations to make.”
“Nothing beyond what I said yesterday. I have come here to write. I want to go to Paris, and when I arrive there I will find out where else I will be permitted to go.”
“It seems very strange to me that you have no papers.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you any?”
I searched my pockets and produced a used-up check book on a Chicago bank. The ogre read every little stub and I felt flattered by his absorbed interest. When he had spent some five minutes on the last one, which recorded a certain painful transaction between me and a man-eating garage, he returned my book and said: “You don’t satisfy me at all. You will have to stay here.”
“Suppose,” said I, “that the American consul vouches for me.”
“That will make no difference. You do not seem to realize that we are at war.”
“Not with America.”
“I don’t know your nationality.”
“I thought,” said I, “that my passport hinted at it.”
“You will have to stay in Bordeaux,” was his pertinent reply.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, and arose again.
“Sit down,” said he, “and wait a minute.”
He was out of the room five years.
“If he ever does come back,” I thought, “it will be in the company of five or six large gendarmes.”
But when he came back he came alone.
“Here,” he said abruptly, “is your passport. You will be permitted to go to Paris. We will keep track of you there.” And he bowed me out of the joint.
The crowd downstairs seemed as great as ever, and as scared. I picked my way through it with my head held high, a free man.
I decided on a fiacre for my trip from hotel to station. It would be safer, I thought. But I learned, on our interminable way, that defensive fighting in the streets of Bordeaux is far more terrifying, far more dangerous than the aggressive taxi kind. We were run into twice and just missed more times than I could count, and besides my conveyance was always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. ’Spite all the talk of periscopes and subs, the journey across the ocean was parlor croquet compared to my fiacre ride in Bordeaux.
While awaiting my turn at the ticket window I observed at the gate a French soldier wearing a large businesslike bayonet. “Probably to punch tickets with,” I thought, but was mistaken. Another gentleman attended to that duty, and the soldier did not give me so much as the honor of a glance.
Outside on the platform were a few of the Red Cross and Y.M.C.A. men of our ship, and I learned from them that one of their number had suffered a sadder fate than I. He had tried to get by on a Holland passport, viséed at the French consulate in New York, and been quietly but firmly persuaded to take the next boat back home.
I shared a compartment on the train with a native of the Bronx, and a French lady who just couldn’t make her eyes behave, and two bored-looking French gentlemen of past middle age, not to mention in detail much more baggage than there was room for. The lady and the two gentlemen wore gloves, which made the Bronxite and me feel very bourgeois.
Our train crew, with the possible exception of the engineer and fireman whom I didn’t see, was female, and, thinking I might some time require the services of the porter, I looked in my dictionary for the feminine of George.
To try my knowledge of française, I had purchased at the station a copy of Le Cri de Paris. I found that I could read it very easily by consulting the dictionary every time I came to a word.
But the scenery and the people were more interesting than Le Cri, the former especially. Perfect automobile roads, lined with trees; fields, and truck gardens in which aged men and women, young girls and little boys were at work; green hills and valleys; winding rivers and brooks, and an occasional château or a town of fascinating architecture—these helped to make us forget the heat and dust of the trip and the earsplitting shrieks of our engines. No wonder the boche coveted his neighbor’s house.
We stopped for some time at one particularly beautiful town and went out for air. I wondered audibly concerning the name of the place. An American companion looked at the signs round the station.
“It’s Sortie,” he said.
But it wasn’t. It was Angoulême, and I wouldn’t mind moving thither. My American friend was probably from Exit, Michigan.
The discovery was made and reported that one might go into the dining-car and smoke as much as one liked without asking permission from the maiden with the dreamy eyes. This car was filled with French soldiers and officers going back to the front after their holiday. There seemed to be as many different uniforms as there were men, and the scenery indoors was almost as brilliant as that outside.
It was about eight-thirty in the evening when we reached Paris. The sophisticated soldiers engaged their “redcaps” before they left the train, calling to them through the open windows. The demand was much greater than the supply, and I was among the unfortunates who had to carry their own baggage. I staggered to a street where a whole flotilla of taxis was anchored, but when I asked for one the person in charge said “No, no, no, no, no,” meaning “No,” and pointed around the corner. I followed his directions and landed on a boulevard along which there was a steady procession of machines, but it was fully twenty minutes before one came that was going slow enough to stop.
Our city is not all lit up like a church these nights, and it was impossible to see much of what we passed on the way to the hotel.
At the desk an English clerk, dressed for a noon wedding, gave me a blank to fill out. All the blank wanted to know was my past family history. It is to be sent, said the clerk, to the prefect of police. I had no idea he was interested in me.
When I get back to Chicago I shall insist that my favorite restaurant place tables out on the walk. It is more hygienic and much more interesting.
But Chicago, I’m afraid, can’t provide half as much sidewalk entertainment as Paris. As I remember the metropolis of Illinois, there is a sad lack there of demonstrative affection on the streets. In fact, I fear that a lady and gentleman who kissed each other repeatedly at the corner of Madison and Dearborn would be given a free ride to Central Station and a few days in which to cool off. Such an osculatory duel on Paris’s Grand Boulevard—also known by a dozen other names—goes practically unnoticed except by us Illinois hicks.
An American officer and I—at the former’s expense—lunched sur curb today. The food was nothing to boast about, but we got an eyeful of scenery. Soldiers—French, British and American—strolled by constantly, accompanied by more or less beautiful brunettes, and only a few were thoughtless enough not to stop and kiss a few times in full view of our table. We also observed the inmates of passing taxis. No matter how wide the back seat, the lady occupant invariably sat on her escort’s lap. A five-passenger car in America is a ten-passenger car in Paris, provided the chauffeur has a girl of his own.
When the American officer was tired of buying, I left him and sought out the Chicago Tribune office, conveniently located above Maxim’s. The editor was there, but he was also broke, so I went back to the Ritz and got ready for bed.
The express office will be open tomorrow and I will be a rich man.
Went down to the express office and cashed a large part of my order. Friends were with me, and they immediately relieved me of most of the burden. I was hungry for lunch, having had no breakfast. Meat was what I wanted, and meat was what I couldn’t get. Which led me to inquire into the Rules de la vie of Paris.
Monday and Tuesday are meatless days.
All except Saturday and Sunday are heatless days. Hot baths are impossible on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
Strong liquor is procurable between noon and two p.m. and seven-thirty and nine-thirty at night. At other times ye toper must be content with light wines.
All public places except the theaters must close and douse lights at nine-thirty in the evening.
There is no speed limit for taxis or privately owned cars. A pedestrian run over and killed is liable to imprisonment. The driver is not only innocent, but free to hurl as many French curses as he likes at his victims. If the pedestrian is not killed, he must explain why not to the judge.
It is not only permissible but compulsory to speak to any girl who speaks to you, and a girl who won’t speak to you should be reported to the police.
No watch or clock is wrong. Whatever time you have is right and you may act accordingly.
Matches never ignite. A smoker must purchase a cigar or cigarette lighter and keep it filled with essence, the française term for gas. Sometimes the lighters work.
American cigarettes are not procurable. Bum ones may be bought at any tabac store or café for only five times what they are worth.
Water must never be used as a thirst quencher, and seldom for any other purpose. It’s worse than bourgeois; it’s unheard-of.
The lack of water, hot or cold, drove me to a barber shop this morning. The barber first made me put on a shroud, and I was afraid he was either going to cut me to pieces or talk me to death. But his operation was absolutely painless and his incessant conversation harmless, because I couldn’t understand a word of it.
From the barber shop I went to the information department of American Army Headquarters. That’s where you get permits to visit our camps. But of course, if you’ve run over here from America, you have lots of spare time on your hands, so they’re doing you a favor if they hold you up a few days. What is a week or so when a man’s here for a whole month?
They have queer ideas at the Maison de la Presse, which is the French equivalent for our publicity bureau. They receive you cordially there and treat you just as if you were not dregs.
I jumped thither after a futile visit to our own headquarters. I said I would like to go to the French front.
“Certainly,” replied the man in charge. “Whenever is convenient for you, we’ll see that you get a trip.”
So I told him when it would be convenient and he’s going to see me through. I hear that the British are similarly peculiar. They are polite even to newspaper men and magazine writers. They might even speak to a cartoonist.
Returning to our side of the Seine, I bumped into some Australians, here on leave. One had been in Germany before the war and could speak and understand the “schoenste language.”
“They use me as an interpreter,” he said. “When they bring in a bloody boche prisoner, I talk to him. First we give him a real meal, maybe bacon and eggs and coffee, something he hasn’t seen for months. Then I ask him where he came from and how he got here. Most of them are glad to tell me the truth. Those that do, I mark them down as ‘Very intelligent.’ Those that volunteer information I record as ‘Extremely intelligent.’ Those that say ‘Nicht verstehe’ go down in the record as ‘Not intelligent.’ But the majority are so bloody well glad to be out of the war that they talk freely.
“I asked one Heinie if he was going to try to escape. ‘Not me,’ he said, ‘I’m tickled to be here.’ They’re all fed up on the war. You’d be too with three years of it.”
This young man admitted that he was one of the best football players in Australia. “Maybe I’ve forgotten how now,” he said. “I’ve been over here three years. Just think of it—I traveled twelve thousand miles, or maybe it’s kilos, to mix up in this.”
Baseball, he told me, had taken a strong hold on Australia.
“I don’t hit well,” he said, “but I can catch what you call flies! I can catch the widest flies that are knocked.”
Which gift would probably be useless in America, where most of the flies knocked are bloody narrow.
Before I left him I learned also that Les Darcy was all right at heart, but that the professional “sports” spoiled him, and that he could have “knocked Jack Johnson, Stanley Ketchel, Billy Papke or Jess Willard clean out of the ring.”
He is going back to the trenches tonight, and I hope there are plenty of extremely intelligent Heinies there to keep him busy interpreting till his next leave. Interpreting, I should think, would be much pleasanter than going over the top.
This time it was an American of the French Ambulance Service.
“Say, listen,” he said. “I can give you some mighty good stories. Real stuff, do you get me? Listen: One night there was a boche wounded out there and I brought him in. He had one leg all shot to pieces and we had to operate. I was going to give him the ether when he turned over and looked me in the face. ‘Why, Dan,’ he said, ‘aren’t you going to speak to me?’ It was a chap I’d gone to school with in America. I could give you lots of stuff like that; do you get me? I used to be in New York, and Rube Goldberg used to call me up out of bed at six in the morning. ‘Dan,’ he’d say to me, ‘I’m up against it for an idea. Will you give me an idea?’ Do you get me? And there’s a dramatic critic in New York—I won’t tell you his name—but he used to tag around me after a first night and ask me what I thought of the show. Do you get me? I can give you a lot of good stuff.”
I told him I was afraid that if he gave it to me all at once I wouldn’t remember any of it. So he is coming to my hotel every day during his leave, to give me a little at a time—if he can find me.
Last night a good-hearted American officer took me to dinner at La Tour d’Argent, which is said to be the oldest restaurant in Paris and which, they say, is the place the Kaiser was going to have his banquet on a certain night three years ago if Gott hadn’t gone back on him at the last moment.
We ordered duck, the restaurant’s specialty. They cook it in your presence, slice off whatever is sliceable, and then put the bird in a press and give you the result as gravy. After the meal they hand you a post card on which is inscribed le numéro de votre canard. I looked up “canard” in my dictionary and found that it meant a drake, or false news, or a worthless newspaper. I have heard lots of false news, but I know no one took the trouble to count the items. Also I know that my newspaper is neither worthless nor numbered. So canard in this case must mean drake. The number of mine was 41654. If he had happened to disagree with me, I could have taken his number and traced him to the source. It’s a very good idea and might be used in America on eggs or drinks.
I made another trip to the office which is supposed to be in charge of American correspondents and accommodations for them. I will go there again tomorrow and again the next day. I will bother them to death. Meantime I have applied to a person in London for permission to go to the British front, and have been assured a visit to the French lines late next week. I have wonderful vision and can see things twelve miles away.
P.S. It was revealed to me tonight that my detention and trial in Bordeaux was a frame-up conceived by loving friends aboard ship and carried out by that English-speaking cross-examiner, who, believe me, is a convincing actor.
Thanks, gents. It was good for about two thousand words.