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Timebinder, v. 1, issue 4, 1945
Page 5
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CROSSROADS By M. A. R. The golden Spring of Paris had passed, and there was now an interlude of drab days full of rain and chill while all waited for the coming of Summer. The Soldier was quite used to Paris by now. The Arc de Triomphe was a thing you passed through on your way to work in the morning, and even though the war in Europe was now over, he still had his work to do. The streets were filled with soldiers in on pass from their camps in France and Germany and he watched him lined up on the sidewalks of certain streets waiting for the Mademoiselles to come along. For 2-- francs you could get a Mademoiselle. For 150 frs you could get an hour's instruction in music by a well-known concert pianist. After the Soldier watched Paris long enough, the undercurrents started to become visible. There are always undercurrents in a big city caused by the interplay of the millions of lives in a crowded place, but Paris was full of the flotsam of the European war, and Hollywood-type melodramas were the commonplace reality here. (Humphrey Bogart is a black-marketeer who meats Laurent Bacall, a beautiful refugee from Roumania. However, she falls in love with Robert Walker, a clean upright American soldier. The night his friend heard that he was a father they went out with a bottle of cognac. At the second bar, after the seventh drink there was the man sitting at the table with the well-dressed woman, and it was easy to start a conversation. His French was bad, so they went along in German, and the man said, "I'm Jewish -- escaped from Germany in time. I'll buy anything you have to sell -- cigarettes, soap -- a man has to make a living. Come to see me tomorrow night." He never went back, and the man disappeared into the maelstrom of the city. There was more cognac that night, and the sky and his mind grew darker. Somewhere his friend disappeared. Somewhere his bottle disappeared. He was a detached point of view past which moved jerkily the strange narrow streets filled with darkness and occasional dim forms of passing people. For an indefinite time he walked through the streets desperately seeking the direction of home, and gradually he became aware that the large rectangular boxes passing him in the dark were the closed bookstalls along the bank of the Seine river. And there at his side, looming up against the sky like an enormous black shadow were the towers of the Notre Dame cathedral. How his feet had led him to this part of the city he could not remember, and how he finally found his own street he could not comprehend, but afterwards there stayed in his mind clearly the remembrance of the narrow, dark, crooked streets through which he wandered as in a dream, and the black colussus of Notre 6
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CROSSROADS By M. A. R. The golden Spring of Paris had passed, and there was now an interlude of drab days full of rain and chill while all waited for the coming of Summer. The Soldier was quite used to Paris by now. The Arc de Triomphe was a thing you passed through on your way to work in the morning, and even though the war in Europe was now over, he still had his work to do. The streets were filled with soldiers in on pass from their camps in France and Germany and he watched him lined up on the sidewalks of certain streets waiting for the Mademoiselles to come along. For 2-- francs you could get a Mademoiselle. For 150 frs you could get an hour's instruction in music by a well-known concert pianist. After the Soldier watched Paris long enough, the undercurrents started to become visible. There are always undercurrents in a big city caused by the interplay of the millions of lives in a crowded place, but Paris was full of the flotsam of the European war, and Hollywood-type melodramas were the commonplace reality here. (Humphrey Bogart is a black-marketeer who meats Laurent Bacall, a beautiful refugee from Roumania. However, she falls in love with Robert Walker, a clean upright American soldier. The night his friend heard that he was a father they went out with a bottle of cognac. At the second bar, after the seventh drink there was the man sitting at the table with the well-dressed woman, and it was easy to start a conversation. His French was bad, so they went along in German, and the man said, "I'm Jewish -- escaped from Germany in time. I'll buy anything you have to sell -- cigarettes, soap -- a man has to make a living. Come to see me tomorrow night." He never went back, and the man disappeared into the maelstrom of the city. There was more cognac that night, and the sky and his mind grew darker. Somewhere his friend disappeared. Somewhere his bottle disappeared. He was a detached point of view past which moved jerkily the strange narrow streets filled with darkness and occasional dim forms of passing people. For an indefinite time he walked through the streets desperately seeking the direction of home, and gradually he became aware that the large rectangular boxes passing him in the dark were the closed bookstalls along the bank of the Seine river. And there at his side, looming up against the sky like an enormous black shadow were the towers of the Notre Dame cathedral. How his feet had led him to this part of the city he could not remember, and how he finally found his own street he could not comprehend, but afterwards there stayed in his mind clearly the remembrance of the narrow, dark, crooked streets through which he wandered as in a dream, and the black colussus of Notre 6
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