Ballads of a Bohemian | Page 5

is a fellow free-lance, a short-story man called MacBean. He is having a feast of ~Marennes~ and he asks me to join him.
MacBean is a Scotsman with the soul of an Irishman. He has a keen, lean, spectacled face, and if it were not for his gray hair he might be taken for a student of theology. However, there is nothing of the Puritan in MacBean. He loves wine and women, and money melts in his fingers.
He has lived so long in the Quarter he looks at life from the Parisian angle. His knowledge of literature is such that he might be a Professor, but he would rather be a vagabond of letters. We talk shop. We discuss the American short story, but MacBean vows?they do these things better in France. He says that some of the ~contes~ printed every day in the ~Journal~ are worthy of Maupassant. After that he buys more beer, and we roam airily over the fields of literature, plucking here and there a blossom of quotation. A fine talk, vivid and eager. It puts me into a kind of glow.
MacBean pays the bill from a handful of big notes, and the thought of my own empty pockets for a moment damps me. However, when we rise to go, it is well after midnight, and I am in a pleasant daze.?The rest of the evening may be summed up in the following jingle:
Noctambule
Zut! it's two o'clock.?See! the lights are jumping.?Finish up your ~bock~,?Time we all were humping.?Waiters stack the chairs,?Pile them on the tables;?Let us to our lairs?Underneath the gables.
Up the old Boul' Mich'?Climb with steps erratic.?Steady . . . how I wish?I was in my attic!?Full am I with cheer;?In my heart the joy stirs;?Couldn't be the beer,?Must have been the oysters.
In obscene array?Garbage cans spill over;?How I wish that they?Smelled as sweet as clover!?Charing women wait;?Cafes drop their shutters;?Rats perambulate?Up and down the gutters.
Down the darkened street?Market carts are creeping;?Horse with wary feet,?Red-faced driver sleeping.?Loads of vivid greens,?Carrots, leeks, potatoes,?Cabbages and beans,?Turnips and tomatoes.
Pair of dapper chaps,?Cigarettes and sashes,?Stare at me, perhaps?Desperate ~Apache\s~.?"Needn't bother me,?Jolly well you know it;?~Parceque je suis?Quartier Latin poe\te.~
"Give you villanelles,?Madrigals and lyrics;?Ballades and rondels,?Odes and panegyrics.?Poet pinched and poor,?Pricked by cold and hunger;?Trouble's troubadour,?Misery's balladmonger."
Think how queer it is!?Every move I'm making,?Cosmic gravity's?Center I am shaking;?Oh, how droll to feel?(As I now am feeling),?Even as I reel,?All the world is reeling.
Reeling too the stars,?Neptune and Uranus,?Jupiter and Mars,?Mercury and Venus;?Suns and moons with me,?As I'm homeward straying,?All in sympathy?Swaying, swaying, swaying.
Lord! I've got a head.?Well, it's not surprising.?I must gain my bed?Ere the sun be rising;?When the merry lark?In the sky is soaring,?I'll refuse to hark,?I'll be snoring, snoring.
Strike a sulphur match . . .?Ha! at last my garret.?Fumble at the latch,?Close the door and bar it.?Bed, you graciously?Wait, despite my scorning . . .?So, bibaciously?Mad old world, good morning.
III
My Garret, Montparnasse,
April.
Insomnia
Heigh ho! to sleep I vainly try;?Since twelve I haven't closed an eye,?And now it's three, and as I lie,?From Notre Dame to St. Denis?The bells of Paris chime to me;?"You're young," they say, "and strong and free."
I do not turn with sighs and groans?To ease my limbs, to rest my bones,?As if my bed were stuffed with stones,?No peevish murmur tips my tongue --?Ah no! for every sound upflung?Says: "Lad, you're free and strong and young."
And so beneath the sheet's caress?My body purrs with happiness;?Joy bubbles in my veins. . . . Ah yes,?My very blood that leaps along?Is chiming in a joyous song,?Because I'm young and free and strong.
Maybe it is the springtide. I am so happy I am afraid. The sense of living fills me with exultation. I want to sing, to dance; I am dithyrambic with delight.
I think the moon must be to blame:?It fills the room with fairy flame;?It paints the wall, it seems to pour?A dappled flood upon the floor.?I rise and through the window stare . . .?Ye gods! how marvelously fair!?From Montrouge to the Martyr's Hill,?A silver city rapt and still;?Dim, drowsy deeps of opal haze,?And spire and dome in diamond blaze;?The little lisping leaves of spring?Like sequins softly glimmering;?Each roof a plaque of argent sheen,?A gauzy gulf the space between;?Each chimney-top a thing of grace,?Where merry moonbeams prank and chase;?And all that sordid was and mean,?Just Beauty,