Softly Walks the Beetle

Florian's is the resort of film and fashion, and the most successful café on the Champs-élysées. The tables have been reduced to the size of dinner plates. They are crowded so close together that whoever leans back in his chair may receive bitter reproaches in his right ear for infidelity, and in his left for lack of understanding. If he leans forward to escape these he may find himself involved in a motion picture deal which is not likely to come off. The solitary is well advised to cower over his apéritif, and to fix his eyes on the sidewalk and study the passing crowd.

I had no sooner made this depressing discovery, than the corner of a newspaper hovered over my coffee, and the radar in my ribs warned me of an elbow at a distance of not more than three inches. I glanced to my right. At the table between my own and the planting box was seated a young man who had all the look of one of the new bohemians, the more or less juvenile delinquents of the international motion picture set. As all arts tend to the condition of music, so the pants of these young men, whatever may be their cut or material, tend to the condition of levis. Their haircuts tend to the crewcut. Their shoes are so easygoing as to constitute, when worn in the presence of strangers, an impudent familiarity. Too numerous wherever they are, these young men are most numerous at film festivals, where they crowd the foyers of the best hotels, translating (continued on page 30) The Beetle(continued from page 27) them into lobbies. Their wagons are sometimes hitched to a star; more often to a director. Their services are available; there is little they cannot, and nothing they will not, do.

Reason now whispered reassuringly that he might, after all, be only, as we used to say of assistant producers in Hollywood, a mouse with ambitions to become a rat.

While I was still wondering to which order this particular specimen belonged, my attention was diverted by the apparition of an elderly gentleman who, even while he approached us in the main stream of passers-by, seemed, by reason of his improbable size and splendor, to move more slowly than the rest of them. It is thus that a great liner seems almost motionless in comparison with the scurrying tugs amidst whom, and at precisely the same speed, she moves majestically to her mooring.

This gentleman halted at our corner of the terrasse, and his rather puffy lips trembled a little as he looked over the wide expanse of tables. The crowd was crushed as close as a swarm of bees, buzzing with love and crawling with money, and there was not a single gap to be seen.

The old boy addressed the oaf who was sitting by the planting box. "I wonder if you'd very much mind if I sat at your table. I promise you I won't be in the very least a nuisance." These words were uttered in a tone of the humblest supplication; one of the very few things that are better for being obviously a fake. (One can get the genuine article from any panhandler.) The bland humility was spiced by a twinkling glance of good fellowship, sparkling from under an eyebrow whose naughty lift suggested that only an amusing mischance could have brought these two together in a place which, though probably respectable enough, was not exactly the Jockey Club.

All these delightful nuances were completely wasted on my neighbor. With one shoe half off and half on, he lifted his nose half out of his gossip column, which he was studying as earnestly as a punter studies a form sheet, and he signified with half a grunt and half a nod that he had no objection to the stranger taking the vacant chair.

The old boy lowered his vast posterior onto the inadequate little seat with a sigh of relief. He made no attempt to summon a waiter, but folded his hands over the handle of his mighty cane, and demurely dropped his eyes upon them. They were large, expensive, leathery looking hands, and their leatheriness was of such a quality as to make it clear that, regardless of any little prejudice you and I may entertain, the finest article in that line is made from human skin. These hands, moreover, were adorned with three or four enormous rings, and in each of these rings was a diamond of such implausible size that no maker of imitation jewelry could possibly have had the effrontery to concoct it. They were dull, yellowish stones, and cut so flat as to subdue all their sparkle. One thought of still champagne, which, nevertheless, is still champagne.

The waiters at Florian's respect no one but film personalities, and to these, on second thoughts, they see no reason to accord any very assiduous attention. The service, therefore, is not of the best. Nevertheless, a waiter was at once at the old man's elbow, and stood respectfully awaiting his order. A little white-jacket, who carried off the trays of soiled glasses, now set down his burden, greatly to the inconvenience of one of the first ladies of the screen, and took up a position flanking the waiter. This promising lad had realized instinctively that a command from such a source required at least two attendants even to receive it. The ancient grandee continued to look down upon his folded hands, for all the world like a peasant in a railway carriage.

Suddenly, as if at the rubbing of a lamp, as if in the soft flash of a soundless explosion, there now materialized the urbane and evil Raoul, manager in chief of all Florian's café. The waiter and the commis each fell back a pace; Raoul advanced, he smiled, he inclined his body, he offered his ear.

Like Queen Victoria confident of the chair, the dear old boy, without the least flicker of an upward glance, knew that his order was at last awaited by a person qualified to receive it. A fatuous, contented expression, like that of a sucking babe, spread over his face. He happily whimpered, "Bring me a glass of Perrier water, if you please. I prefer it not to be iced. At the same time, I like it to be sufficiently cool."

On the last words he raised his innocent little eyes and plunged them, without as much as a splash, into the dark depths of Raoul's eyes. It was clear that he at once perceived that, in spite of certain little brutalities, embezzlements, procurings, blackmailings, etc., Raoul was scrupulously clean in his person, idolized his little daughter, and knew his job, his place and the correct temperature for Perrier water. Satisfied by these important clearances, the magnifico presented him with a benign smile, more or less the equivalent of one of those signed photographs which crowned heads bestow on those who are not quite worthy of a tiepin. Raoul received the order and the smile with every appearance of the utmost gratification, but without addressing his distinguished customer by name or title. From this I concluded that though he realized what, he did not know who, he was.

My youthful neighbor, though no judge of princes, was not entirely lacking in perception. He was capable of being impressed by anything that impressed a head waiter. And he was capable of recognizing the good and true at a single glance, as I saw when he turned his eyes upon the old man's rings.

The wearer of those ornaments allowed an interval for their evaluation, which was carried out with the frank interest of a pawnbroker. Then he said with the utmost affability, "I really can't thank you enough for allowing me to sit down. I suppose I have been hotter, but I've very seldom been as tired. I was guilty of the incredible folly of accepting an invitation to lunch in the Place St. Aubert, a place of which you've quite certainly never heard. It is hidden away behind one of the ultimate quays on the Left Bank -- parts of which I must say I have always found fascinating--and my chauffeur, who was to have picked me up there, must have failed to find his way. I have had to walk halfway across Paris."

"But what's wrong with a taxi?" inquired the young man.

"Nothing at all," said his senior. "But I must confess I found myself unable to take one."

At these words the young man's forthcoming spirit withdrew as abruptly as the head of a turtle which has been rapped upon the nose.

Fortunately, before the old gentleman could notice the youth's outraged movement of recoil, the waiter reappeared, bringing the Perrier water, with the little commis close at his elbow and the infamous Raoul smirking in the background. The old boy was no sooner served than he began to slap here and there upon the breast of his voluminous jacket, as if trying to locate his pocket-book, and each blow seemed to have its impact on the very heart of the young man he had been talking to. Then, much to the latter's relief, the elder lugged out an enormous wallet, from whose interior, crammed with 10-thousand-franc notes, his tremulous fingers soon rooted out one of smaller denomination, and, beckoning Raoul: "Please be so good," said he, "as to give, out of the change, a little present to the waiter, and something to this adorable little fellow who was so kind as to wipe the table for me."

He accompanied the words with a gesture of dismissal, and returned to his talk with the young man. "A taxi is an excellent thing," said he. "There is nothing more democratic than a taxi, (continued on page 34)The Beetle(continued from page 30) and I believe deeply in the fellowship of man. However, the people do tend to ride in such conveyances, and to leave all sorts of unsavory little traces behind them. Call me an inconsistent old fool if you wish, but I really could not summon up the resolution to enter a taxicab, not even to shake off the priests who dogged me every inch of the way."

"What priests? Where are they?" said the young man, a little disconcerted.

"Look through that little privet hedge beside you," replied the old coot with a pathetic attempt at a smile. "You will notice two men at the café next door. They are sitting, I think, at the fourth table along."

"They don't look like priests to me," said the youth. "And if they were, why should they follow you around?"

The poor old fellow sighed and took a long sip of his Perrier water, whose mild effervescence may have offered a grateful coolness to his strawberry nose. "I am, it is true, no angel," said he. "However, that is not my fault. I went today into those distant wilds only, I assure you, in the hope of becoming one."

The young man, thinking it unprofitable to talk to a lunatic, merely grunted, and lifted his newspaper again.

"An angel," continued the simpering old man, "not in the celestial, but in the theatrical sense of the term."

The young man, who had for the second time withdrawn his head, now stuck it out again, and farther than before, and with it, as inevitably must follow, his neck.

"You're in the business?" he asked with a bright, engaging look.

"The business?" said the other. "I? No."

There was a brief silence during which the young man was obviously wondering what he had said that was wrong. His senior was kind enough to reassure him with a smile. "I love the arts," said the dear old boy, "and I do what I can to encourage them. I love the theatre. I love the ballet. I love, above all, the art of the motion picture. Film, with its amazing potentialities, its new and eternally re-created language of juxtaposition; the juxtaposition, to take the most obvious example, of vast panoramic shots and the most intimate close-ups,' as they call them, which were invented, as you know, by the great innovator D. W. Griffith, a director whom I never had the privilege of meeting, but who..."

At this point his voice swelled to an organ note, and I, as one sometimes does at the opera, focused my attention on the music without much heeding a libretto I had heard too often before. After a time the flat utterance of the name of a very promising young film director signaled the end of the recitative and the resumption of ordinary dialog.

"It was with him," said the old man, "that I lunched today, in the outlandish place in which he has chosen to live. It would have been more prudent to have invited him myself, but I wanted to make him a rather considerable financial offer. I felt it more delicate to be the guest."

It is said that when the string of a fine violin is plucked to produce a certain note, the same string on an equally sensitive instrument nearby will vibrate in harmony. In this respect, the young man must have been as finely attuned as any Stradivarius, for from his half-open, tensely quivering lips there breathed in tuneful echo the words, ". . . financial offer?"

"I proposed to buy, with my own money, which they have not yet succeeded in getting away from me, a certain extremely successful play, and to meet the whole cost of its production as a motion picture," said the old man with impressive simplicity. "I offered, for his personal contract, terms as favorable as I think any director has ever received. He flatly refused them. He told me to go to hell."

The old boy shook his head dolorously, and sought again the poor solace of his Perrier water. The young man seemed eager to offer him some more substantial consolation. "Listen to me," said he gracefully. "If you've got money to invest in a movie, I can . . ."

"I offered him more than money," said the other sadly. "I offered him also the services, for the leading role, of a young lady who is as beautiful as a nymph, as talented as she is beautiful, with eyes, lips, neck, bosom . . ." and, putting his fingers to his lips, he consigned a kiss to the air as if in the hope it might be fortunate in its landing.

"Oh! Oh!" said the youth, and he permitted himself a smile such as no older man likes to see on the face of a younger one.

The old nabob showed no sign of offense. "You suspect," said he, "that I am a bloody old fool trying to promote a career for some little chorus girl with whom he is infatuated. The name of the young lady would soon correct that impression. In a place of this sort I must confine myself to saying that she is listed, in the United States as well as in Europe, among the two or three most popular actresses of the year. What's more, I have heard, with my own ears, this same young director declare he would sell his soul to the devil for a chance to work with her in the very play I offered to purchase for him."

"Then what was the snag?" inquired the young man.

"In what you have referred to as the business (though I myself prefer to regard it as an art) people do not always mean what they say," replied the elder.

"Maybe he didn't think you really had the money," suggested the young man with a sceptical smile.

"You are right, after all, in calling it the business," said the old chap with an air of some distaste. "It was on that account that I took this with me." And, having as he spoke pulled out his oversized wallet again, he extracted from it a check which he unfolded for the young man's interested inspection.

"But this is certified!" cried the youth with such a simple, genuine air of enthusiasm that he looked like a baby in an advertisement, extolling its favorite milk.

"Which is more," bleated the old man happily, "than they've ever been able to do to me."

There was a brief pause as he stowed away the check, and during this pause his words sank in.

"Do you mean to say they've tried?" asked the young man at last.

"Peep discreetly through this little privet hedge," replied the other, "and you will see, in front of the next café, at the fourth table along, two men dressed in quite ordinary clothes. Those men are psychiatrists, and they have followed me all the way . . ."

"You said those men were priests!" exclaimed the youth.

"You have priests on the brain, my dear fellow," said the old buffer with the utmost sang-froid. "It is true the psychiatrist fulfills, in our modern society, many of the functions of the priest; for example, he receives confessions and he casts out devils. Personally I am inclined to believe that those two, who have passed themselves off on you as psychiatrists, are nothing more nor less than devils themselves. Otherwise why should they have thrown a piece of brioche to that gargoyle by the lamppost, which came clambering down as I passed Notre Dame and has insistently attached itself to me, for all the world like a lost dog?"

"It looks like nothing but a poodle to me," responded the youth.

"And those two look like priests to you, or psychiatrists," said the old chap rather brusquely. "Nevertheless, I tell you they are devils, fiends from hell. Or why should they try to declare me insane?"

"Well, if that's their little game," said the young man after a thoughtful pause, "I'm with you a hundred percent."

"You don't think I should be locked up?" quavered the poor old boy in pathetic gratitude. "You don't think I should have my money taken from me?"

The young man did not reply directly to this last question; which perhaps (continued on page 76)The Beetle (continued from page 34) seemed to him rather too personal. "I think you've got the right idea," said he. "Finance a film. Break all records at the box office. And there's not a head-shrinker in creation can get away with calling you nuts!"

"I should like it to be an artistic triumph as well," mumbled the grandee, who perhaps had been a little over-indulged in his infancy.

"It so happens I've got a property that's just about the tops from both angles," said the young man. "I don't mind telling you I picked it up for peanuts, from a writer who was in a jam for his rent money."

At this boast I expected the old gentleman to show some little signs of repugnance, but evidently his situation was too desperate, for he summoned up a beaming glance of admiration. "You must be a very complete businessman," said he. "Could you bring yourself to describe the story to me?"

"It starts out with this liner hitting this iceberg," began the complacent youth, "and everyone's drowned except Brando, Bardot, Greg Peck, Ava, Marilyn and one or two others. There's a couple with their marriage breaking up, and one of these H-bomb scientists, and a so-called liberal, and the highest-paid callgirl in the world, and maybe we put in a race angle, and they're all marooned on this melting iceberg, drifting south, followed by sharks. They have to get their problem worked out because they're faced with death."

The old man held up a forefinger which, apart from the gigantic diamond which adorned it, had something of the mottled and tremulous appearance of an uncooked pork sausage afflicted with St. Vitus' dance. "Say no more," said he. "This is not a mere story; it is an artistic conception of the first magnitude; an epic, a slice of life. It has everything -- if I, an outsider, may be permitted to use the expressive argot of the studios. It has everything, except perhaps Mr. Cary Grant, whom possibly we might persuade to take the role of an international playboy, or even a society killer. Dare I suggest also a plastic iceberg? It would have the advantage of not melting too quickly under the ardent temperament of the highly paid lady, who seems to me, more than any other member of the cast, to be pitted against the iceberg itself, in this titanic struggle between humanity and the forces of nature." But here the old man checked himself with an effort, paused, and said, "I fear my enthusiasm is carrying me beyond all seemly limits. I have not yet asked you -- and please tell me frankly if you would rather not; I shall quite understand -- I have not yet asked if you will allow me to participate. I can offer nothing but money, which is probably of no importance whatever to you. However, I have a great deal of it, and it is entirely under my own control, always providing that our friends at the next café do not get their hooks on me."

"As far as I'm concerned," said the young man, "I'd like to set the deal right now."

"It will take time to draw up the papers," lamented the old man. "Even this check I have is made out to my reluctant friend in the Place St. Aubert. We could, of course, have a gentleman's agreement."

At these last words the young man showed signs of great uneasiness. He seemed to feel that for some reason, though perhaps not the right one, a gentleman's agreement would be completely meaningless. "I'd like something more binding," said he at last.

"You are perfectly right," said the old boy. "An alternative occurs to me. I am convinced you have a blazing future. I foresee a long and exciting association between us. Now it so happens that some time ago I was dreaming of just such a fruitful relationship, and I indulged my fancy so far as to have a simple contract drafted, which binds me on my side to furnish all the money my partner may need, as well as to purchase properties for him, and to provide as much of what I believe is called talent as he may desire. He, on his part, agrees to remain with me, exclusively, absolutely and forever."

While he was speaking he lugged out his wallet, and, fumbling among the thick wads of bank notes, he now located a single sheet of paper, folded small, and rather dirty round the edges. This he opened up, and the young man reached forward his hand to take it. The dear old boy, however, drew it back a little, and gave him a smile instead. "Before I bother you with this ridiculous little document," said he, "I must, in elementary honesty, make known my name to you. Or did you, perhaps, read my signature on the check?"

"I couldn't make head or tail of it," said the young man frankly.

"Delightfully put!" said the old chap. "Well, I must confess to you that I am no other than . . ." But here he hesitated and peeped naughtily from side to side, and finally beckoned the youth to incline his ear, into which, like a child with a secret, he smilingly breathed the precious syllables.

The young man's face, on hearing this whisper, was hardened by the sort of realism on which such a one bases the decision to take what he can get while the going is good. "You don't say!" said he.

"Oh, but I do," said the old boy. "And I do so hope you believe me. For, if I were not the personage in question, what should I be but a deluded old idiot? In which case, if you signed this agreement, you would be taking advantage of my pitiable weakness, and that would be damnable indeed."

"I believe every word you say," protested the young man energetically.

"And you are not prejudiced?" asked the old boy, radiantly confident of a favorable answer. "That is so nice! You are not, for example, repelled by a little smell of sulphur which sometimes intrudes itself?"

"To me," said the young man graciously, "B.O. means box office. And, anyway, I don't smell a thing."

"Splendid!" said the other. "Those chlorophyll tablets must be everything they claim to be, which is more than can be said for most of us. Would you like to put your signature here? Right at the bottom, if you please -- where the dotted line is."

"But supposing," said the young man, "they get hold of you before you can draw another check. I'll have signed the paper, and I'll be sitting here with nothing."

"You need a little deposit? A little binder? A little something to clinch the bargain?" chortled the old boy. "Admirably shrewd! Commendably cautious! Perfectly businesslike! I congratulate myself upon my future associate. The only question is, what? The check is worthless to you. I have a very few hundred thousand francs in my pocketbook; I cannot add, to the injury of offering you naked and malodorous money, the insult of offering so little."

The young man was quite disposed to submit to any amount of insult and injury of this description, but before he could find words to express his magnanimous attitude, the old fellow eagerly forestalled him. "But stay!" said he, "I have it! And, placing his right hand over the fingers of his left, and tugging as hard as he could: "Sign," said he, "and accept this. It is altogether more valuable than the wretched money, and it has a pleasant association with the gages and tokens of times gone by."

The young man, seeing what he was at, now made haste to scribble his signature. His senior retrieved the paper with his left hand and held out his right a little under the level of the table, and pressed what he held into the young man's receptive fingers. "Put it in your pocket," whispered the old boy. "Don't let those infernal rascals next door see what I have given you, or they may pounce on us at once to recover it. Then we should both be in trouble."

The young man saw the point of this, and thrust his fist into his pocket. "It's a perfectly legitimate deal," said he.

"And such a delightful one!" cried the old boy. "I feel quite overcome by the pleasure of it. Allow me to retire for a moment. Please don't run away. We have all sorts of little arrangements to make; we must certainly arrange a rendezvous for tomorrow. I'll be back in a minute or two."

Thereupon he ambled into the dim interior of the café. As soon as he was out of sight the young man pulled his hand from his pocket and opened it, still below the level of the table, to look at the great ring which he had extracted from the old simpleton. When he saw what had been palmed off on him, the look of complacency left his face, and with a small gesture of fury he threw it into the planting box beside his chair. It was a piece of glass and brass of such aggressive crudity that its cheap gleam somehow diminished, by a minute but perceptible degree, the total value of all the film stars, social celebrities, cafés, shops, automobiles, etc., that were present at that moment in the Champs-élysées.

The young man looked scowling round as if in search of the old fool who had made a fool of him. But then, deciding there was no point in exposing himself a second time to the contagion, he threw down a couple of coins and left the café. By what was perhaps a coincidence, the two men who were sitting at the place next door also rose from their table and moved away in the same general direction.

No sooner had they all disappeared, than the gaga magnifico came waddling back, and seemed greatly astonished to find his young friend no longer there. He looked this way and that; his eye fell on the abominable confection in the planting box. He picked it out from among the cigarette ends and the spent matches, and, his full, mauvish lower lip trembling with dismay, he looked at it and then at me with all the blank bewilderment of earliest or latest childhood. "How," his piteous glance demanded, "could this precious token be so cruelly spurned?"

"I'm afraid he felt," I found myself answering, "that it wasn't altogether genuine."

"Well, perhaps it's not," muttered the old chap despondently. "Perhaps it's not." Then the faint returning gleam of a smile began to dawn on his flabby features, and he leaned confidentially toward me, and added, tapping the breast pocket where he had stowed away his precious document, "But this is."