The Paris Wife by Paula McLain Page B

the general direction of the Seine, passing the Sorbonne and the Odéon Théâtre, until we found the Pré aux Clercs, a café on the rue des Saints-Pères that looked welcoming. We went in, taking a table near some British medical students who were talking drily about the effects of alcohol on the liver. Apparently they’d recently been intimate with cadavers.
    “You can have my liver when I’m done with it,” Ernest joked with them. “But not tonight.”
    Prohibition had been in full swing when we left the States, and though we’d never stopped drinking—who had?—it was a relief to be able to buy and enjoy liquor openly. We ordered Pernod, which was green and ghoulish looking once you added the water and sugar, and tried to concentrate on that instead of our dinner, which was a disappointing coq au vin with grayish coins of carrot floating in the broth.
    “It doesn’t feel right to be so far from home at Christmas. We should have a proper tree and holly and a fat turkey roasting in the oven,” I said.
    “Maybe,” he said. “But we have Paris instead. It’s what we wanted.”
    “Yes,” I said. “But we’ll go home again someday, won’t we?”
    “Of course we will,” he said, but his eyes had darkened with something—recollection or anxiety. “First we have to find a way to make it here. Do you think we can?”
    “Of course,” I bluffed.
    Out the café window, the streets were dim and the only passing thing was a horse pulling a tank wagon full of sewage, the cart’s wheels throwing spliced shadows.
    He signaled the waiter over to order us two more Pernods, and we got down to serious drinking. By the time the café closed, we were so tight we had to hold on to one another for balance as we walked. Uphill was infinitely harder than down, particularly in our state, but we managed in our slow way, stopping to rest in doorways, sometimes sharing a sloppy kiss. This was something you could do in Paris without drawing much attention.
    At home, we were both sick, one after another, in the chamber pot. The dance hall was still roaring with drunks when we went to bed; the accordion had risen to a fever pitch. We nuzzled forehead to forehead, damp and nauseous, keeping our eyes open so the world wouldn’t spin too wildly. And just as we were falling asleep, I said, “We’ll remember this. Someday we’ll say this accordion was the sound of our first year in Paris.”
    “The accordion and the whores and the retching,” he said. “That’s our music.”

    It rained for much of January, and once that passed, winter in Paris was stingingly cold and clear. Ernest had believed he could write anywhere, but after a few weeks of working in the cramped apartment, always aware of me, he found and rented a single room, very nearby, on rue Descartes. For sixty francs a month, he had a garret not much bigger than a water closet, but it was perfect for his needs. He didn’t want distractions and didn’t have any there. His desk overlooked the unlovely rooftops and chimney pots of Paris. It was cold, but cold could keep you focused, and there was a small brazier where he could burn bundles of twigs and warm his hands.
    We fell into a routine, rising together each morning and washing without talking, because the work had already begun in his head. After breakfast, he’d go off in his worn jacket and the sneakers with the hole at the heel. He’d walk to his room and struggle all day with his sentences. When it was too cold to work or his thoughts grew too murky, he’d walk for long hours on the streets or along the prettily ordered paths of the Luxembourg Gardens. Along the Boulevard Montparnasse there was a string of cafés—the Dôme, the Rotonde, the Select—where expatriate artists preened and talked rot and drank themselves sick. Ernest felt disgusted by them.
    “Why is it every other person you meet says they’re an artist? A real artist doesn’t need to gas on about it, he doesn’t have time. He does