“That’s a lot better than names of streets,” Andrew said. “Were you scared, Tommy, when he was eating him?”
“No. The big cat was the best friend I had then. I mean the closest friend. I think he would have liked me to eat the pigeon too.”
“You ought to have tried it,” Andrew said. “Tel some more about slingshots.”
“Mother gave you the other slingshot for Christmas,” young Tom said. “She saw it in a gun store and she wanted to buy you a shotgun but she never had enough money. She used to look at the shotguns in the window every day when she went past the store to the Epicene and one day she saw the slingshot and she bought it because she was afraid they would sell it to somebody else and she kept it hid until Christmas. She had to falsify the accounts so you wouldn’t know about it. She’s told me about it lots of times. I can remember when you got it for Christmas and you gave me the old one. But I wasn’t strong enough to pull it then.”
“Papa, weren’t we ever poor?” Andrew asked.
“No. I’d gotten over being poor by the time you guys were born. We were broke lots of times but never really poor the way we were with Tom and his mother.”
“Tell us some more about in Paris,” David said. “What else did you and Tommy do?”
“What did we do, Schatz?”
“In the fall? We used to buy roasted chestnuts from a roast chestnut man and I used to keep my hands warm on them too. We went to the circus and saw the crocodiles of Le Capitaine Wahl.”
“Can you remember that?”
“Very well. The Capitaine Wahl wrestled with a crocodile (he pronounced it crowcodeel, the crow as in the bird of that name) and a beautiful girl poked them with a trident. But the biggest crocodiles wouldn’t move. The circus was beautiful and round and red with gold paint and smelled of horses. There was a place in back where you went to drink with Mr. Crosby and the tamer of lions and his wife.”
“Do you remember Mr. Crosby?”
“He never wore a hat nor an overcoat no matter how cold it was and his little girl had hair that hung down her back like Alice in Wonderland. In the illustrations I mean. Mr. Crosby was always very very nervous.”
“Who else do you remember?”
“Mr. Joyce.”
“What was he like?”
“He was tall and thin and he had a moustache and a small beard that grew straight up and down on his chin and he wore thick, thick glasses and walked with his head held very high. I remember him passing us on the street and not speaking and you spoke to him and he stopped and saw us through the glasses like looking out of an aquarium and he said, ‘Ah, Hudson, I was looking for you,’ and we three went to the café and it was cold outside but we sat in a corner with one of those what do you call thems?”
“Braziers.”
“I thought that was what ladies wore,” Andrew said.
“It’s an iron can with holes in it they burn coal or charcoal in to heat any place outside like a café terrace where you sit close to them to keep warm or a race track where you stand around and get warm from them,” young Tom explained. “At this café where papa and I and Mr. Joyce used to go they had them all along the outside and you could be warm and comfortable in the coldest weather.”
“I guess you’ve spent the biggest part of your life in cafés and saloons and hot spots,” the youngest boy said.
“Quite a bit of it,” Tom said. “Haven’t we, papa?”
“And sound asleep in the car outside while papa has just a quick one,” David said. “Boy, I used to hate that word quick one. I guess a quick one is about the slowest thing on earth.”
“What did Mr. Joyce talk about?” Roger asked young Tom.
“Gee, Mr. Davis, I can’t remember much about that time. I think it was about Italian writers and about Mr. Ford. Mr. Joyce couldn’t stand Mr. Ford. Mr. Pound had gotten on his nerves, too. ‘Ezra’s mad, Hudson,’ he said to papa. I can remember that because I thought mad meant mad like a mad dog and I remember sitting there and watching Mr. Joyce’s face, it was sort of red with awfully smooth skin, cold weather skin, and his glasses that had one lens even thicker than the other, and thinking of Mr. Pound with his red hair and his pointed beard and his nice eyes, with white stuff sort of like lather dripping out of his mouth. I thought it was terrible Mr. Pound was mad and I hoped we wouldn’t run into him. Then Mr. Joyce said, ‘Of course Ford’s been mad for years,’ and I saw Mr. Ford with his big, pale, funny face and his pale eyes and his mouth with the teeth loose in it and always about half open and that awful lather dripping down his jaws too.”