Memoirs of Montparnasse by John Glassco

Author:John Glassco
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59017-537-8
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2012-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

15

Stanley lay perdue for the next few days. But I now knew where she was living—in an ugly new building near the Place Magnan. Growing impatient, I called on her.

Her two-room apartment was comfortable but cheerless, with tubular furniture, bare floors, a tiled bathroom and a view of a sunless cemented patio. There was a rudimentary kitchen in the bathroom, with a small gas-stove, a cupboard for dishes and a garbage-can; the washbasin doubled as the sink. She showed me everything proudly. She was wearing white satin lounging pyjamas cut with the same economy as her duck trousers.

‘I can’t offer you anything to drink,’ she said. ‘But would you like a glass of milk and a biscuit?’

The milk, served in jelly-jars, was parboiled, fortified, homogenized and tasted like the dregs of an English rice pudding, and the biscuit was lined with stale fig-paste. I noticed a ukulele on the table beside her.

‘Do you play that?’ I asked.

‘A little. Would you like to hear something?’ She picked it up and ran her fingers over the strings. ‘Mozart, Ravel, Segovia, or just something simple?’

‘Something simple.’

‘Careless Love, then.’

She handled the little instrument as if it were a guitar, and with corresponding skill. First she played the simple refrain, slowly and clearly, underlining the melody with broad sweeping chords, then rendered the swift little verse in dance rhythm; then repeated the slow refrain with a few grace notes. After that she kept building on both with taste and invention, decorating them with surprising obbligati. Her eyes had grown remote, her straw-sandalled foot tapped the chair-cushion. She cuddled the absurd instrument like a baby—and all at once, as if irresistibly compelled, she began to sing in a small husky voice as true as a tuning-fork and with heart-rending pathos:

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