The Paris Wife

TWENTY-ONE

Near Thanksgiving 1922, the Star sent Ernest to cover a peace conference in Lausanne that would decide the territorial dispute between Greece and Turkey, the thing that had started the terrible business at Smyrna and had generally kept them killing each other for the better part of three years. When the cable came, I saw Ernest’s nervousness. He almost couldn’t open it and I knew why. We couldn’t take another fight like the last. We might not survive it.

“Lausanne,” he said finally. “We have the money. You’ll come, too.”

“I needn’t,” I said. “I can be good.”

“No,” he said. “I want you there.”

I was relieved he’d insisted and agreed to go-but by the time the trip was launched, I was sick in bed, my head stuffed and aching. I couldn’t eat anything without retching. We decided he would go alone, and that I would join him when I could travel. My old friend Leticia Parker from St. Louis happened to be coming through Paris just then, and she said she wanted to visit every day and take care of me when Ernest was gone. It wouldn’t be like his time in Turkey at all, or even like Genoa.

By the time I felt well enough to join him, it was early December. I packed happily, knowing that when the conference was over and the reporting done, we’d have a long skiing holiday at Chamby and have Christmas there with Chink and then go on to Italy and Spain. All in all, we wouldn’t be back in Paris for four months, and I was ready for a nice long break from the cold and dampness. I hadn’t been out of bed for a week and wasn’t sure I’d have the energy for skiing, but I was damned well going to try.

Along with the travel plans passing back and forth between us, Ernest had also cabled to say that Lincoln Steffens, one of the journalists he’d met in Genoa, was in Lausanne and highly impressed with his dispatches. He wanted to see everything Ernest had written so far, but he only had one thing with him, “My Old Man,” a story about a boy and his ruined jockey father. Steffens thought the story was wonderful and compared it to Sherwood Anderson. Ernest didn’t like being compared to anyone, and it seemed worse, somehow, that it was Anderson, a friend and champion, but it helped that Steffens had offered to send the story on to an editor friend at Cosmopolitan. Ernest had one published piece at that point, in a small art magazine out of New Orleans called the Double Dealer. There was only that, and the promise from Pound about printing something for Three Mountains. This was much more promising, thrilling even.

As I packed my big suitcase, I thought about how long we’d be gone, and how anxious Ernest would be to return to his stories and the novel. It went without saying that he’d like to show more of his work to Steffens, so I headed for the dining room, to the cupboard where Ernest kept all his manuscripts. I gathered everything together and packed it in a small valise. This was my surprise for him, and I felt buoyed by it as I left the apartment for the Gare de Lyon.

The station was busy, but I had never seen it any other way. Porters scrambled by in their red jackets-past the waxed wooden benches and the ornamental palms and the well-dressed travelers headed home or away with anticipation. By morning, I would be with Ernest again and all would be well, and this was my only thought as I moved through the station and handed my bags to a porter. He helped me onto the train, put the big suitcase with my clothes on the rack up high, and placed the small valise under my seat, where I could reach it. The train was nearly empty. We had half an hour before departure, so I went to stretch my legs and get a newspaper. I threaded through the station, past the vendors with their apples and cheese and Evian water, the rented blankets and pillows and warm wrapped sandwiches and little flasks of brandy. When the conductor called for boarding I hurried onto the train with the stream of passengers and found my compartment just as it was before. Except for the small valise.

It wasn’t under my seat. I didn’t see it anywhere.

In a panic, I called for the conductor.

“Is there something I can do?” my seatmate said while I waited for him to appear. She was a middle-aged American who seemed to be traveling alone. “I can lend you something of mine to wear.”

“It isn’t clothing!” I shrieked, and the poor woman turned away, understandably horrified. When the conductor finally arrived, he didn’t seem to understand, either. I couldn’t stop crying long enough to find the right words in my terrible French. Finally he called over two French policemen, who led me outside the train and interrogated me while everyone stared. They asked for my identification cards, which one officer examined while the other asked me to describe the bag and my actions in detail.

“It was yours, this valise?”

“My husband’s.”

“Is he on board?”

“No, he’s in Switzerland. I was bringing it to him. It’s his work. Three years’ worth of work,” and here I lost any remaining composure. I felt sick with rising dread. “Why are you standing here questioning me?” My voice pitched shrilly. “He’s getting away! He’s probably long gone by now!”

“Your husband, madame?”

“The thief, you idiot!”

“We cannot help you if you’re going to be hysterical, madame.”

“Please.” I felt as if I might lose my mind. “Please just search the train. Search the station.”

“Can you estimate the value of the case and its contents?”

“I don’t know,” I said in a fog. “It’s his work.”

“Yes, so you said. We’ll do what we can.” And the two men walked off officiously.

The conductor agreed to hold the train for another ten minutes while the police performed their search. They walked from one end of the train to the other asking the passengers if they’d seen the bag. I didn’t for a moment believe that whoever had stolen it was still on the train. It had obviously been a common pickpocket who’d seen an opportunity and taken it, hoping for valuables. Instead, it contained every thought and sentence Ernest had sweated over since we came to Paris and well before, the Chicago stories and sketches, every poem and fragment. He never threw anything away, and it was all there.

The two officers came off the train empty-handed. “Nothing yet, madame,” one of them said. “We’ll continue to look, but if you still intend on traveling to Switzerland, I suggest you take your seat.”

I gave them our address and the phone number for the dance hall, since there wasn’t a phone in our apartment, but I didn’t hold out much hope they’d succeed in their efforts. Paris was vast and too much time had passed. I imagined the thief hurrying to an empty alleyway, opening the case and then shutting it immediately. He’d have dropped it where he stood or pitched it into a rubbish pile. It could be in any alleyway or gutter or burning trash barrel in Paris. It could be listing, at that moment, toward the bottom of the Seine.

“I’m very sorry for your trouble,” my seatmate said when I’d finally made my way back to the compartment.

“No, I’m sorry,” I said, beginning to weep again. “I’m not usually this discomposed.”

“Is it very dear, what you’ve lost?”

The train grumbled beneath us, then lurched away from the platform with finality. There was no stopping or changing anything now. No avoiding the truth of what had happened. I felt dread settle in to fill me completely and a new hard-won certainty. There was only one answer to her question. “Priceless,” I said, and turned away.