Walters was speaking:
“The first thing I want to see is the Eiffel Tower.”
“Why d’you want to see that?” said the small sergeant with a black mustache and rings round his eyes like a monkey.
“Why, man, don’t you know that everything begins from the Eiffel Tower? If it weren’t for the Eiffel Tower, there wouldn’t be any sky-scrapers… ”
“How about the Flatiron Building and Brooklyn Bridge? They were built before the Eiffel Tower, weren’t they?” interrupted the man from New York.
“The Eiffel Tower’s the first piece of complete girder construction in the whole world,” reiterated Walters dogmatically.
“First thing I’m going to do’s go to the Folies Berdjairs; me for the w.w.’s.”
“Better lay off the wild women, Bill,” said Walters.
“I ain’t goin’ to look at a woman,” said the sergeant with the black mustache. “I guess I seen enough women in my time, anyway… The war’s over, anyway.”
“You just wait, kid, till you fasten your lamps on a real Parizianne,” said a burly, unshaven man with a corporal’s stripes on his arm, roaring with laughter.
Andrews lost track of the talk again, staring dreamily through half-closed eyes down the long straight street, where greens and violets and browns merged into a bluish grey monochrome at a little distance. He wanted to be alone, to wander at random through the city, to stare dreamily at people and things, to talk by chance to men and women, to sink his life into the misty sparkling life of the streets. The smell of the mist brought a memory to his mind. For a long while he groped for it, until suddenly he remembered his dinner with Henslowe and the faces of the boy and girl he had talked to on the Butte. He must find Henslowe at once. A second’s fierce resentment went through him against all these people about him. Heavens! He must get away from them all; his freedom had been hard enough won; he must enjoy it to the uttermost.
“Say, I’m going to stick to you, Andy.” Walters’s voice broke into his reverie. “I’m going to appoint you the corps of interpreters.”
Andrews laughed.
“D’you know the way to the School Headquarters?”
“The R.T.O. said take the subway.”
“I’m going to walk,” said Andrews.
“You’ll get lost, won’t you?”
“No danger, worst luck,” said Andrews, getting to his feet. “I’ll see you fellows at the School Headquarters, whatever those are… So long.”
“Say, Andy, I’ll wait for you there,” Walters called after him.
Andrews darted down a side street. He could hardly keep from shouting aloud when he found himself alone, free, with days and days ahead of him to work and think, gradually to rid his limbs of the stiff attitudes of the automaton. The smell of the streets, and the mist, indefinably poignant, rose like incense smoke in fantastic spirals through his brain, making him hungry and dazzled, making his arms and legs feel lithe and as ready for delight as a crouching cat for a spring. His heavy shoes beat out a dance as they clattered on the wet pavements under his springy steps. He was walking very fast, stopping suddenly now and then to look at the greens and oranges and crimsons of vegetables in a push cart, to catch a vista down intricate streets, to look into the rich brown obscurity of a small wine shop where workmen stood at the counter sipping white wine. Oval, delicate faces, bearded faces of men, slightly gaunt faces of young women, red cheeks of boys, wrinkled faces of old women, whose ugliness seemed to have hidden in it, stirringly, all the beauty of youth and the tragedy of lives that had been lived; the faces of the people he passed moved him like rhythms of an orchestra. After much walking, turning always down the street which looked pleasantest, he came to an oval with a statue of a pompous personage on a ramping horse. “Place des Victoires,” he read the name, which gave him a faint tinge of amusement. He looked quizzically at the heroic features of the sun king and walked off laughing. “I suppose they did it better in those days, the grand manner,” he muttered. And his delight redoubled in rubbing shoulders with the people whose effigies would never appear astride ramping-eared horses in squares built to commemorate victories. He came out on a broad straight avenue, where there were many American officers he had to salute, and M.P.’s and shops with wide plate-glass windows, full of objects that had a shiny, expensive look. “Another case of victories,” he thought, as he went off into a side street, taking with him a glimpse of the bluish-grey pile of the Opera, with its pompous windows and its naked bronze ladies holding lamps.
He was in a narrow street full of hotels and fashionable barber shops, from which came an odor of cosmopolitan perfumery, of casinos and ballrooms and diplomatic receptions, when he noticed an American officer coming towards him, reeling a little, — a tall, elderly man with a red face and a bottle nose. He saluted.
The officer stopped still, swaying from side to side, and said in a whining voice:
“Shonny, d’you know where Henry’sh Bar is?”
“No, I don’t, Major,” said Andrews, who felt himself enveloped in an odor of cocktails.
“You’ll help me to find it, shonny, won’t you?… It’s dreadful not to be able to find it… I’ve got to meet Lootenant Trevors in Henry’sh Bar.” The major steadied himself by putting a hand on Andrews’ shoulder. A civilian passed them.
“Dee-donc,” shouted the major after him, “Dee-donc, Monshier, ou ay Henry’sh Bar?”
The man walked on without answering.
“Now isn’t that like a frog, not to understand his own language?” said the major.
“But there’s Henry’s Bar, right across the street,” said Andrews suddenly.
“Bon, bon,” said the major.
They crossed the street and went in. At the bar the major, still clinging to Andrews’ shoulder, whispered in his ear: “I’m A.W.O.L. shee?… Shee?… Whole damn Air Service is A.W.O.L. Have a drink with me… You enlisted man? Nobody cares here… Warsh over, Sonny… Democracy is shafe for the world.”
Andrews was just raising a champagne cocktail to his lips, looking with amusement at the crowd of American officers and civilians who crowded into the small mahogany barroom, when a voice behind him drawled out:
“I’ll be damned!”
Andrews turned and saw Henslowe’s brown face and small silky mustache. He abandoned his major to his fate.
“God, I’m glad to see you… I was afraid you hadn’t been able to work it… Said Henslowe slowly, stuttering a little:
“I’m about crazy, Henny, with delight. I just got in a couple of hours ago… ” Laughing, interrupting each other, they chattered in broken sentences.
“But how in the name of everything did you get here?”
“With the major?” said Andrews, laughing.
“What the devil?”
“Yes; that major,” whispered Andrews in his friend’s ear, “rather the worse for wear, asked me to lead him to Henry’s Bar and just fed me a cocktail in the memory of Democracy, late defunct… But what are you doing here? It’s not exactly… exotic.”
“I came to see a man who was going to tell me how I could get to Rumania with the Red Cross… But that can wait… Let’s get out of here. God, I was afraid you hadn’t made it.”
“I had to crawl on my belly and lick people’s boots to do it… God, it was low!… But here I am.”
They were out in the street again, walking and gesticulating.
“But ‘Libertad, Libertad, allons, ma femme!’ as Walt Whitman would have said,” shouted Andrews.