Murder in Montparnasse by Howard Engel

Author:Howard Engel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac: FIC000000; FIC022000;
ISBN: 9781468309782
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2014-02-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

The autumn was moving on towards winter. Paris had suffered a disastrous summer, and it was said that the winter was going to be worse. There were fewer clochards on the Métro gratings at night now. The door of the estaminet around the corner from me in the rue Gozlin was closed against the cold wind, and the patrons huddled around the high zinc bar for warmth as well as conversation. On Montparnasse, the patrons had moved off the uncovered parts of the terrasses to the protected insides, where a charcoal brazier gave an impression of heat if not the real thing. We watched the sign of the wood-and-coal dealer across from the Select come down: Juglar, Chantier, bois et charbon. This was followed by a general cleaning out of the yard. It was only a matter of time before the steam-shovels and wagons would turn the location, which went well back into the last century, into a quagmire, running muddy tracks out into the boulevard. At the Dôme, old Père Chambon joked that the new café would in the end drive him into a suicide pact, like the film actor Max Linder. If he could only find a partner, he complained. When it was suggested that he might consider Mme. Select from across the street, he admitted that there might be worse things on earth than a deteriorating Montparnasse after all.

During the day, I did my work at the agency. My command of French prepositions and irregular verbs improved to the point where I stopped worrying. I continued to play tennis with Wad and once in awhile with Hal Leopold, who always gave me a good game. In the evening, I tried to work on my notes, when I was in the mood and when I wasn’t too tired from work. I have to admit that at the end of November I had no more than a slender bundle of pages. From time to time, Wad and I would walk Snick-a-Fritz in the Luxembourg. Hash never asked her “Tatie” to help out in this way, but it was obvious she was delighted to see her men going off together. On these walks, Wad tried to get me to give him some idea of what I was working on. It was my private joke, as the only would-be writer in Paris more reticent to discuss his work than Wad, to keep him stewing about my “work in progress.” Mostly we talked about sports. He didn’t follow team sports, had at the most a sketchy idea of the baseball standings and never talked about football. He claimed that football was something he’d missed when he didn’t go to university, but I knew he was on his high school team.

Wad liked sports where one man was pitted against another force, be it man or beast. Everything was an extension of trout fishing. Even bullfighting. Sometimes he could get very sanctimonious about his bullfighting. I remember Hal Leopold once kidded him about

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