Allan Stein by Matthew Stadler

Author:Matthew Stadler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Psychological, Fiction, Gay, General
ISBN: 9780802136626
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 1999-10-14T13:00:00+00:00

♦9 ♦

In the fall of 1912 a young American named Sylvia Salinger came to stay with the Steins. Her romance in San Francisco with a man known only as “the coffee boy" had upset her family, and they sent her to Paris with a girlfriend to end it. Visitors were always coming from America, and Sylvia stayed for almost a year. Allan Stein fell in love with her. He was sixteen years old, and she was twenty-three.

“Dearest family, Paris is such a strange place. After six hours on the train we landed, and Sarah and Mike and Allen [sic] and Gertrude and Alice were there to meet us. Alice and Gertrude got into one cab and disappeared. Our trunks got into another and the rest of us into still another. Then the cabs had a race up to the Hotel Lutecia, where we had engaged two rooms. The Steins stayed here awhile Friday evening, and then we went to sleep in wonderful beds. I have had absolutely no recollection of the steamer and I think that is rather unusual, nicht wahr?" Which reminds me, I must drop German and take up French.

“Saturday morning we woke up at ten-thirty and had breakfast in bed. Mike called for us at one and we went to the Steins. The first impression of their home was a never to be forgotten one. I could not make out much, but finally decided the thing to do was to concentrate on one painting at a time until I could see something. I have hopes for myself. In several of them I could see what was meant, the object, but in few could I see beauty, and from what I hear that is doing rather well. And I did it all by myself too.

"After lunch Allen took me to see Paris. We did not walk, we ran, just everywhere and through everything, Allen giving me the historical significance to every piece of everything as we ran by. His chief object was not to have me see anything definitely, but just to kind of get an impression, so that I should fall in love with Paris immediately. It was a funny afternoon. I ran through the Luxembourg Gardens, through the Luxembourg Gallery— just imagine it—through the Cluny Museum, through some funny little church, through Notre Dame, and along the river. It was not to see anything, remember, but just to get an idea of the possibilities of Paris. He certainly is some youth. I forgot the Pantheon. Then he rushed me to Gertrude's and he vanished."

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