2

John Quinn got them off.

I had been going down there for a long time before I saw the Baroness. She was a famous character in the Village and Jane and Margaret had a great admiration for her. They talked at length of her exploits, discussed her poems for hours and ran them every month in the magazine. She wrote in both German and English. Her title was bona fide from a defunct German husband and she herself was of the German nobility. The Baroness was also an artist, she had given the girls several of her pictures which hung in their apartment. Bits of glass, mirrors, string and tin were pasted on the paint. She was doing this long before Picasso. Jane and Margaret worried about her because she had no money and they tried to get donations for her from time to time. As they had no funds themselves and the magazine was run on a shoestring, it was impossible for them to pay their contributors. The Baroness picked up a little money here and there posing for artists in the Village, for although not young, she still had a fine, youthful figure.

I couldn't always understand what the Baroness wrote about, but if Jane and Margaret said it was good, there was no question in my mind. It was harder in those days, in view of small town prejudices, to conquer my reactions to the stories I heard about her. When Jane said the Baroness had been in wearing a tea ball and a collection of souvenir spoons on a chain around her neck, I thought it eccentric. When I was told she had painted designs on her legs and walked up Fifth Avenue in a child's dress to her knees when long skirts were in fashion, it seemed plain crazy. But the girls were indignant because a policeman had discovered that the vivid colors were on bare skin instead of stockings, and had ordered the Baroness off the Avenue into a side street. When she had refused to go, he led her to the police station.

The Baroness had her hair cut short and changed the color of it almost every week. She was not a tall woman and usually wore a child's cotton dress, size 10, because it was the cheapest thing she could buy. Besides,

3

she was proud of her legs. For the studios, she wore a garment that could be removed with one swift lift from the back of the neck. Artists who did not know her might be misled by her face into thinking she was not a good model. She took no chances. She would walk into a studio and without any conversation throw off this garment, saying, "You see, my figure is perfection." And it was.

One morning Jane telephoned me at the office and said the Baroness was to read a paper on Hamlet that night at their apartment, and I must surely come. The thought of seeing this personage for the first time kept me in a dither of anticipation and fear all day. That night rain poured down in torrents. The Baroness was late. Finally we heard emphatic steps on the stairs and Jane said, "Here she comes."

The Baroness was wearing a boy's rain coat and had no umbrella, so her hair, which was purple that night, was dripping wet. She took off the rain coat and a pair of old goloshes and stood there nude, except for a small piece of batik, which began under her arms and ended just below her hips with a slit on each side up to the waist. The water ran off her hair and made faintly purple streaks on her face, arms and legs. She disregarded this completely. There were no formal greetings, in fact, almost a complete silence. She walked to the big chair which had been placed for her, arranged the floor lamp so the light would fall just as she wished on her shining body and on the papers she was holding. Then she sat down, crossed her slender legs with care, took a perfect pose and began to read. There was no sound for some time except her voice. I was rigid with listening to words I couldn't remember, After what must have been two hours Margaret yawned. She yawned audibly several times, but the reading continued. When the Baroness had finished the paper on Hamlet, three hours had gone by. Afterwards Margaret said to Jane, "I can't understand it, but that paper was stupid. Why didn't she stop when she saw we were bored?" Jane laughed. "Do

4

you ever stop?" she said.

A girl I knew who had a room in the same house with the Baroness, told me that every now and then clothes and things of hers/disappeared. She was quite sure the Baroness had taken them, but hesitated to confront her if by chance she was wrong. However, one evening she missed an article of sentimental value and went out to find a policeman. She told the officer she didn't want him to make an arrest, only to stand below on the sidewalk where he would be plainly visible. Then she went up and knocked on the Baroness' door. "You have stolen my things and I have a policeman downstairs." The Baroness looked out of the window, then she opened a drawer. "Everything is here," she said, and began to take out the various articles. The girl said, "Oh please keep them all, I only want the keepsake you took tonight," and she gave the Baroness two dollars.

But it was not always like that and sometimes the Baroness went to jail.
The last I heard of her she had shaved her head and shellaced it and
gone to France.

Some years ago, news came of her tragic death in Paris. She died of
disappointment. The Baroness knew humanity was in a rut. She defied
custom and prejudice. She wanted people to stop being like sheep. Per-
haps her method wasn't right, but anyway, she had an idea.

ROWE WRIGHT

425 WEST 42ND STREET
NEW YORK

TELEPHONE: WATKINS 9-6176

THIS IS NO LIFE

by Louise Davidson

Up the rue Bonaparte in the Place St. Germain des Prés, a pile of sand had stood for days in front of the old 12th century church. Workmen were there now pouring the sand into bags. Across the Place, on the terrasse of the Deux Magots Café, people were sitting reading newspapers. Some of the shopkeepers were putting up their shutters. Out of doorways, men and women came carrying valises to waiting cars. Whole families were leaving town. The children, the bird cages, the dogs, the cats, the bicycles. At windows, strips of brown paper were being pasted in criss-cross patterns to prevent shattering from concussion in air raids. In every direction taxis were speeding. There were no buses. It was the second day of a war that no one had believed could happen.

At the corner bistrot, a silent blankness hung in the air. People ate absentmindedly as if they were listening to something remote. The waitresses hurried back and forth. Often their eyes waned to the stream of cars, loaded with people and baggage, that were rushing down the rue Bonaparte. Horns and motors were the only sounds. Even the radio was silent. Three elderly men were whispering at a nearby table and their words finally penetrated my dismal reflections on human nature.

"Ah, oui, ce soir c'est sur! Last night there was nothing, mon vieux, but to-night you can count on it. There will be avions. You have your gas mask? Very good. Alors, au'voir until this evening at the air raid shelter."

My crème caramel suddenly became very unattractive. I paid my check,

3

I went upstairs to continue packing for my brother, an immediate return to

2

took Tuppie, my pekingese and went out into the lovely afternoon
sunshine.

Back at the hotel, where few of us were left, all preparations had been
made. There was an official abri - shelter - in our cellar. Monsieur
Doré, the patron, who had fought through four years of the last war to
end war, a sad little gray wisp of a man in a blue beret, was the Chef
d'Abri. He had been working on it halfheartedly for a week before war
was declared. As a matter of fact, most of that time/he had sat in the
little dining room wearing his beret, his arms folded, his face grayer
than his gray smock, eyes fixed on a glass of red wine on the table, re-
peating over and over:

"War again? What fools men are!"

Now everything was as ready as it could be to stand the foolishness of
humanity.

On white placards at each side of the hotel entrance, the word "Abri"
was printed in large, black letters and below in smaller print, the word
"personnes". Before this word, written in pencil, was the number 66.

Shelter for 66 persons.

Air vents from the cellar to the street had been carefully sealed with xix
plaster to prevent gas seeping in, or fresh air either for that matter.
An old red bed quilt, dripping wet, was hung over the cellar door. A
bucket of water stood beside it to replenish the moisture. Cracks a-
round the door were stopped with rags. A cosy, air tight little tomb.
The picture of 66 supposedly sane human beings in gas masks, trying to
wedge themselves in among the fantastic junk collected during decades
in that small cellar, restored my equilibrium.

3

I went upstairs to continue packing for, perhaps, an immediate return to America. The garçon had left for the front. There had been no service and no hot water for days. In my room valises were on the chairs, the bed, the chaise longue. A trunk, something I hadn't owned for years, was on the floor. What to take, what to leave? How to leave and when it was on the floor? Oh, the aching charm of this place I'd lived in for six years, a charm which persisted even with everything upside down, even with apprehensions, with bombs imminent, with a war going on!

Later in the darkness, I had dinner on the terasse of the Petit St. Benoit under the stars. Every table was taken. There were jokes and laughter, but ears were listening for that sound of warning to which Paris had been trained every Thursday at midday for over two years.

After dinner, Tuppie and I took our usual evening walk in the rue Jacob. I didn't know it was to be our last. Past the ancient houses and the well known shops, the blanchisserie, the teinturerie, the papeterie, the mercerie, the marchand de couleurs and my many antiquaires. Through the misty darkness to the Place Furstenberg, that charming little Place with the beautiful bronze lampadère. Dark, but enough light from the stars. Into the rue de l'Abbaye, past the great Church of St. Germain des Prés, darker than the darkness against the sky. Calm. Silent. I found myself tip-toeing home. At two o'clock, after reading a detective story, I put out the light and opened the shutters. Stars, darkness, silence. Two hours later, a faint distant wail on a mounting note, woke me instantly. The sound came nearer, continued, expanded, prepared to wake the universe. Those damnable sirens!

I jumped out of bed. My woolen dressing gown on the chair. Yes, cotton onate substituting combi- in the pockets, bicarb of soda solution on the table - that was the unprocurable gas mask, wool socks on the floor, dog on the foot of the bed. Damn that noise, damn and damn!

I was combing my hair when a loud knock sounded at the door. Monsieur

4

Doré, fully dressed, beret on, gas mask over shoulder, suddenly an efficient little general, bless him.

"Mademoiselle, dépechez-vous, descend, hurry!"

"But Monsieur Doré, is everyone down?"

"Mademoiselle, do not occupy yourself with others. Descend!"

Down the black stairway by the light of Monsieur Doré's flash lamp, Tuppie and I arrived in the cellar for our first "alerte". We were the last ones down. I thought of my grandmother who always said, "you will be late, even for St. Peter," and somehow that thought cheered me.

It was brightly lighted in the cellar and the first person I saw was Madame Alex. Madame Alex who does anything and everything, our friend, our enemy, our joy, our despair, who sews like an angel and a demon, who runs errands, promenades the dog, washes, irons, burns, mends, is always there or never there when you want her. Ageless. Invincible. There was Madame Alex in an old black dressing gown and an old black coat, with an old black zipper bag on her knees, sitting on an old rusty trunk, looking as if she were still in bed. Her dyed mohogany hair made a stiff, startling circle around her head. She hadn't stopped for a comb. Living three doors up the rue Bonaparte from the hotel, up four flights of stairs, she had, nevertheless, arrived among the first at the abri. We exchanged a feeble smile.

I heard Madame Doré hospitably offering me a chair. Monsieur Doré had securely fastened the door, murmuring "dix-sept personnes." Seventeen people. Thank heaven no more. I tried not to think of claustrophobia and sat down in the narrow aisle between the stacked débris, holding Tuppie and the bottle of bicarbón solution, watching Madame Doré struggling into her gas mask. After a minute she took it off and said:

"Not necessary until later. I have forgotten that we have half an hour before the détonations."

"Détonations?" I said.

"Mais oui Mademoiselle. They will shake the house as they used to in the

5

last war. You will also hear rapid firing. That will be our anti-aircraft guns."

As even the simple firecracker had always been a major menace for me, it looked like a bad morning.

A man said: "Ah oui, we have plenty of time." He was sitting on a box at right angles to me, his knees almost touching mine, leaning against the foot of a battery bed. I hadn't noticed him before. It was the French officer, a transient guest, whom I had seen only in dashing uniform, his head in an elegant red and gold cap with a black visor. Bald now and in a plaid, wool bath robe, holding a gas mask with an embarrassed air, he looked childlike and appealing.

As there seemed to be no immediate necessity to prepare for the detonations, I relaxed enough to look around at my companions. I recognized several. We greeted each other with "bonjours", but sheepishly, at finding ourselves in such a predicament. Everyone was embarrassed over the situation. Adult human beings behaving like lunatics. We would all have been clapped in an asylum for such antics if there wasn't a war on. The very air was tense, though everyone tried to hide apprehension, fear, raw nerves. A woman looked at her wrist watch: "Vingt-cinq minutes," she said.

"Twenty-five minutes. Madame Dore' began again to put on her gas mask. Others did likewise. I took some cotton from my pocket, clutched Tuppie firmly and sat. The hotel kitten was leaping silently among the bed-springs/broken chairs, boxes, baskets, bottles, bundles and baggage, years of storage never to be claimed. Ears listening. Not a sound. Then a far-off rumble.

"Avion?" asked a voice.

"Non, camion," said another.

"But cars are forbidden to circulate." was

It was a camion however, and we finally heard it jolting past the hotel.

6

The minutes went on. Madame Doré took off her gas mask. "It is very uncomfortable," she said.

"Three quarters of an hour," the French officer announced.

Fifteen minutes past the allotted time for détonations and still silence
An hour. More than an hour.

"A rehearsal perhaps?" Someone suggested hopefully. "Ah yes, that was possible, a répétition," Conversation started, Tension lifted. Two young American girls on their way home from Switzerland, cracked a joke and laughed. There was some moving about and feet scuffled on the dirt floor.

Madame Alex never moved or spoke. She looked exhausted and old. Her
face was white and wrinkled against that wild, red frame. She sat with
one hand in the zippered bag, so I knew she had her pet in there, a
perfect friend of a black cat.

"You have brought Blanc-blanc, Madame Alex?" I asked.

"But naturally. You think I would leave my daughter for the bombs? She who is so charming?"

"Let us see your cat, Madame Alexandre. Do bring the cat out!" Every-
one was eager for diversion. Madame Alex began slowly to draw back the
zipper with her free hand, lifting with the other. Suddenly, an explo-
sive snarl of such venom came from the bag that everyone jumped, even
Madame Alex. She quickly closed the zipper on the charming one.

"Worse than the sirens," someone said, and everybody laughed.

At the end of two hours, an old man who had joined us with his daughter
from the rue Jacob, decided he would like to take a walk. "I am getting
stiff here. I will go out and take a look around."

"It is forbidden, you will be arrested," Monsieur Doré said. But he
opened the door and let him out. In about fifteen minutes he was back
again.

"I have made a tour of the whole Place and met no one. Paris is beauti-
ful in the dawn, the stars are shining. There is no sign or sound of

7

Avions. I think we may all go home."

But Monsieur Doré was firm about further privileges. We would have to wait for the "all clear" signal, a steady siren call lasting three minutes.

It was cold in the cellar but the air hadn't given out. There were suggestions as to what might be done to make the next "alerte" more entertaining. "I'll bring a pack of cards," said the wife of Monsieur Chartel who kept the art shop next door. Their youngest son, a big handsome chap, was leaving for the front in a few days. The two older boys had already gone.

Another hour went by. Everyone was stiff and cold and exhausted. Madame Alex still sat with her hand in the zipper bag. In the midst of a dead silence she said:

"This is no life!"

Her face, which held a concentrated bitterness for the folly of mankind, didn't change its expression. She didn't move or say another word. A few of the people tried to laugh, unsuccessfully.

At seven o'clock, even Monsieur Doré relented and said we might go up to the foyer. We trooped up the cellar steps laughing and talking. As we reached the hall and welcome daylight, someone came rushing through the front door.

"Descend, descend, sixty avions almost over Paris!"

"Who says?" "Impossible!" "No, true!" "Rumor." "No, hurry, descend!" we flew, Down the stairs, gas masks rattling, breathless, waiting again for heaven knew what!

But it was a false alarm. At that moment the inexhaustible and even more terrifying wail of the "all clear" sounded, and we went up to the hall again, bidding each other good-bye and shaking hands all round as if it were a church sociable. "Au'voir, à bientôt, see you soon, to-night without doubt."

8

I ate my petit dejeuner with the Doré's in their tiny kitchen. The three of us sat at the kitchen table drinking Madame Dore's wonderful, hot café au lait, with rolls from the bakery still warm and lots of fresh butter. What a breakfast it was.

ThatFriday day at noon I found it was possible to sail for America by way of Italy and that night I was at the Gare de Lyons taking a train for上海, Paris. I could never have made it if it hadn't been for Madame Alex. For days she had helped me with endless errands and packing. This day was her masterpiece. Though empty taxis were practically invisible waiting at the hotel door at six-thirty. "I have brought Mademoiselle Marie to help with the baggage, Mademoiselle." Mademoiselle Marie was her spinster pal who lived in the flat next door. She had sat with us that morning in the cellar.

Into the cab with Mademoiselle Marie went my trunk and the two largest bags. Into the cab with Madame Alex went five other bags, a box of ½ lunch, a first aid air raid kit, bought the last moment at the pharmacie and Tuppie, only waiting for me to complete the picture of leaving. So now good-bye to my Doré's.

"Oh good-bye, good-bye! Good luck! Soon we will meet again!"

The chauffeurs stepped on the gas, the engines roared, the taxis swung away from the curb. I looked back. The last thing I saw was Monsieur Doré on a stepladder, pasting strips of brown paper on the black and gold glass signs on each side of our front door that announced: "Chauffage centrale, confort moderne."

In the taxi, Madame Alex was weeping. "Oh Mademoiselle, do change your mind. There is still time. Rest tranquilly in Paris and decide later what to do. I cannot bear to think that you may be torpedoed and drowned in the sea."

"Dear Madame Alex, don't think it then."

We had to go to the very end of the Gare to check my trunk and the two

9

big bags. No porters were available there, only in the main station, So
Madame Alex and Mademoiselle Marie put the rest of the luggage on a hand
truck and followed me down the long walk to the trains - two little old
women in black pushing a truck load of baggage.

Pandemonium in the Gare and shoving thousands. It was all we could do to
get through the mob, yet up and down the platforms went my strange pro-
cession, searching for a seat in a train going South. A dozen times we
were told there were no places to be had in any of the trains going to
Cannes. Hundreds of people were already standing in the corridors. Noth-
ing to do. Impossible to leave. At the last minute a kind official of the
Gare appeared, a seat had been discovered by the window. Incredible
luck.

"I will pray for you, Mademoiselle," said Madame Alex.

"And I for you, Madame Alex, and for France!"

It was eight o'clock. As the dark train pulled silently out into the
dark night, I remembered those words spoken in the cellar:

"This is no life!"

***