Paris: The Novel

anyone cares.” She smiled. “Shakespeare and Company’s like a sort of club. As well as selling books, Sylvia also has a lending library. She supports authors, too. About a year ago, she even published
Ulysses
for James Joyce, the Irish writer, at her own expense, when the manuscript was virtually banned in Ireland and England. She even lets people sleep at the place. Everyone loves her.”
    And indeed, when they arrived, Frank introduced them at once to the owner, who turned out to be a bright, friendly woman in her mid-thirties, who soon remarked to Marie that around the time she and James Fox had left Paris for London, she’d been arriving in Paris for the first time with her father, who was taking up an appointment as assistant minister at the American Church.
    “I’ve hardly a single ancestor in a century who wasn’t either a pastor or a missionary,” she informed Marie with a wry smile, before she left them to attend to business.
    Frank’s friends were an American journalist who wrote articles for a Canadian newspaper, and his wife. The wife was the first to arrive, a broad-faced woman in her early thirties with intelligent eyes.
    “This is Hadley,” Frank explained, and grinned. “We’re not related. Hadley’s her first name. The match with my family name is pure coincidence.”
    “And here comes my husband,” said Hadley, indicating an approaching figure.
    He was a muscular-looking fellow, somewhat younger than his wife, but his impressive appearance seemed to make up for the difference. He was six feet tall, with a broad regular face and a mustache, and eyes set wide apart and square. Despite the warm July weather, he was wearing a sturdy tweed suit which, Marie guessed, served him for all occasions, and a pair of equally sturdy brown shoes—that let one know at once that he was a sportsman and an outdoorsman. She thought he looked like a young Theodore Roosevelt, without the politics or the glasses. From the way he carried himself, she guessed that he wrote fine, clean prose about where he’d been and what he’d done, and how it felt.
    “This is Hemingway,” said Frank.
    To Marie’s surprise, Hemingway turned to her at once and said that he’d seen her before.
    “You like to walk in the Luxembourg Gardens,” he explained. “We live just south of there, beside a sawmill in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs on the edge of Montparnasse.” He grinned. “The poor district. Sometimes I sit quietly in the Luxembourg Gardens, and I see you. But I’m usually keeping my head down, and when no one’s looking I grab a pigeon.”
    “Whatever for?”
    “To eat, madame. I kill it quick, tuck it under my coat, and head for home. The Luxembourg pigeons are well fed, so they cook up nicely.”
    “I don’t believe you are so poor, monsieur,” said Marie.
    “Sometimes we are,” he said.
    “None of the French can believe that any American is short of money,” Frank remarked with a laugh. “Especially in the last couple of years, with the French franc falling like a stone against the dollar. That’s why so many of us are flocking over here. They say there are thirty thousand Americans in Paris now.” He looked at his friend, who was shaking his head. Then, excusing himself, Hemingway and his wife stepped outside for a moment to look at the shop window.
    “Actually,” Frank continued quietly to Marie, “Hadley has a small income from a trust fund, but they lost some of it recently, and Hemingway quit his job with the newspaper to write his fiction. So they’re sometimes a little short. Hemingway can write articles to make money if he has to, but his short stories are already attracting notice. Ford Madox Ford has started publishing them in the
Tribune
.”
    As they went out to rejoin Hemingway, it was Claire who spotted the volume in the window.
    “Look,” she said to her mother. The volume was very slim and its cover was very simple. It was titled, in lowercase letters,
in our time
.”
    “Those are Hemingway’s,” said Frank, with almost as much pride as if they had been his own. “Short stories. How many has Sylvia sold?” he asked the author.
    “Nearly twenty already.”
    “Not bad,” said Frank cheerfully. “It’s not just the numbers, but the quality of the readers.” He grinned. “A novel or two and you’ll be rich.”
    “Come on,” said Marie.

    The boxing was taking place in the covered winter cycling track, the Vélodrome d’hiver, that lay on the Left Bank