had forgotten to include them when I paid for the supper.) “It isn’t that I want you to pay me back,” he protested with his so distinguished courtesy—.”
I always had to order the same drinks for myself as for Insel, or he would not have taken anything— but I made him drink my
fine
. It would, I felt, have superfluous results were I to even sip alcohol in the company of this weirdly intoxicating creature. At the same time in accordance with my mission as a lifesaver, I begged him to take
café au lait
—which roused a piteous opposition.
As if wound up he went on beating a
mea culpa
on his absent breast.
I caught him by the arm.
Instantaneously he displaced to a distance. I was left with my own arm articulated at a right angle, holding in my hand a few inches of gray bone. It had come away with a bit of his sleeve, acutely decorated with the jagged edge of torn black cloth. At the same time, Insel laying his hand on my shoulder, the rag and the bone did a “fade-out.”
“Promise me to stay here,” he whispered, “while I go to the bar. These people would not like it if I did not pay.”
Insel, who seemed to remember our pact, wanted to go back to the Dôme. But I refused.
“It’s time for you to sleep,” I commanded. That persistentteeter in my mind which was always tipping Insel up in a stiff horizontal straight line, his immovable eyes glued to infinity, was laying him out in state on no bed under an awesome canopy of poverty.
“No,” I decided, “I shall put you back in your box—my pet clochard is going to lie in a row—under a bridge.”
11
WE WANDERED OFF IN SEARCH OF THE SEINE— IT was dawn.
Perhaps this showcase hung outside a
librairie
was a prison and we, therefore, suspecting an isolation, dissolved its wire caging with the crafty focus of sight to set the content free.
We saw the primeval steam (whose last wisp straying endlessly had wreathed itself round Insel’s brain) condense to stone in a frayed torso.
In the darkness it was blind. As the sky broke open, its outline entered the morning gently with the eyes of an animal. As daylight warmed the lids widened to the vision of a pagan.
In conception vast enough to absorb the centuries it survived, now in defiance of time to surpass it—the eternal Thing was looking at us with the fullness of the future. All we had ever understood that was less than itself peeled like spoiled armor.
What enormous foreboding, Insel, in his simplicity, I, in my complexity, recognized in its ideal expression, I cannot say. It was a recognition of something known which, in spite of life, we would know again. Insel, without speaking,turned to me staring at the re-impression of an impression on a book spread out for the passerby we had both, I could see, in identical silence found one significance in an early Greek fragment—I do not remember which.
I have heard that some philosophers assume reality to be absent without an audience. In empty streets the sun had a terrible excessive existence for ourselves alone. We walked together, yet repeatedly, as if having veered in an arc it took no time to describe, Insel would be coming towards me from far away.
“Go back!” he cried in gaunt derangement, “if it disgusts you to look at me.” Shining uselessly, as an electric bulb “left on” by day, his face, unshaven, was partially clouded.
We came to a Raoul Dufy in a dealer’s window; his charming “crook’s technique” disintegrated my meticulous companion. I feared that, the shock reinforcing his perpetual cerebral fit, he was about to throw a physical one. Instead he became covered with verdigris.
We had to relapse at another cafe. Insel disappeared for quite a while.
“Have you been sick?” I asked solicitously. He was looking less green.
“Dufy,” he explained.
I put down the money for the coffee and a twenty-five centime piece rolled to the ground.
“Would you pick that up?” I begged. Insel began pulling himself together
I always had to order the same drinks for myself as for Insel, or he would not have taken anything— but I made him drink my
fine
. It would, I felt, have superfluous results were I to even sip alcohol in the company of this weirdly intoxicating creature. At the same time in accordance with my mission as a lifesaver, I begged him to take
café au lait
—which roused a piteous opposition.
As if wound up he went on beating a
mea culpa
on his absent breast.
I caught him by the arm.
Instantaneously he displaced to a distance. I was left with my own arm articulated at a right angle, holding in my hand a few inches of gray bone. It had come away with a bit of his sleeve, acutely decorated with the jagged edge of torn black cloth. At the same time, Insel laying his hand on my shoulder, the rag and the bone did a “fade-out.”
“Promise me to stay here,” he whispered, “while I go to the bar. These people would not like it if I did not pay.”
Insel, who seemed to remember our pact, wanted to go back to the Dôme. But I refused.
“It’s time for you to sleep,” I commanded. That persistentteeter in my mind which was always tipping Insel up in a stiff horizontal straight line, his immovable eyes glued to infinity, was laying him out in state on no bed under an awesome canopy of poverty.
“No,” I decided, “I shall put you back in your box—my pet clochard is going to lie in a row—under a bridge.”
11
WE WANDERED OFF IN SEARCH OF THE SEINE— IT was dawn.
Perhaps this showcase hung outside a
librairie
was a prison and we, therefore, suspecting an isolation, dissolved its wire caging with the crafty focus of sight to set the content free.
We saw the primeval steam (whose last wisp straying endlessly had wreathed itself round Insel’s brain) condense to stone in a frayed torso.
In the darkness it was blind. As the sky broke open, its outline entered the morning gently with the eyes of an animal. As daylight warmed the lids widened to the vision of a pagan.
In conception vast enough to absorb the centuries it survived, now in defiance of time to surpass it—the eternal Thing was looking at us with the fullness of the future. All we had ever understood that was less than itself peeled like spoiled armor.
What enormous foreboding, Insel, in his simplicity, I, in my complexity, recognized in its ideal expression, I cannot say. It was a recognition of something known which, in spite of life, we would know again. Insel, without speaking,turned to me staring at the re-impression of an impression on a book spread out for the passerby we had both, I could see, in identical silence found one significance in an early Greek fragment—I do not remember which.
I have heard that some philosophers assume reality to be absent without an audience. In empty streets the sun had a terrible excessive existence for ourselves alone. We walked together, yet repeatedly, as if having veered in an arc it took no time to describe, Insel would be coming towards me from far away.
“Go back!” he cried in gaunt derangement, “if it disgusts you to look at me.” Shining uselessly, as an electric bulb “left on” by day, his face, unshaven, was partially clouded.
We came to a Raoul Dufy in a dealer’s window; his charming “crook’s technique” disintegrated my meticulous companion. I feared that, the shock reinforcing his perpetual cerebral fit, he was about to throw a physical one. Instead he became covered with verdigris.
We had to relapse at another cafe. Insel disappeared for quite a while.
“Have you been sick?” I asked solicitously. He was looking less green.
“Dufy,” he explained.
I put down the money for the coffee and a twenty-five centime piece rolled to the ground.
“Would you pick that up?” I begged. Insel began pulling himself together
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