Story: Charity

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1

Jon's bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg was covered with the warm light as with a thick and cozy blanket he pulled up to his chin, and he snuggled peacefully down on the sloping slats in the almost tangible air of a Paris spring morning. He lay on his back, his hands folded on his chest, and sighed. Weary, and warm. Quiet.

"Toi, gars! Lève-toi!"

It hadn't been more than a moment, and someone, a city policeman, a flic, "You can rent one of those reclining chairs." He gestured down the path where there were now four mothers and four black baby-carriages.

"Bien. Merci, monsieur," although Jon couldn't really think of any reason why he should be thanking the flic for having roused him from his quiet, warm nap. (Nor could he consider squandering 35 centimes for one of the chairs.)

The policeman disappeared down the path.

Jon sat there heavily, still not completely awake, and stared into the bushes across the pathway from his bench. Policemen always frightened him, and he still felt a little jumpy.

He stretched his arms high, then rubbed his chin. While he had dozed, he noticed, another man had come to sit on the farthest bench in the row. Jon turned the other way; no, no one had come to the other end… He could just hear the distant shouts of the children playing soccer beyond the low trees in front of him.

"Want some candy?"

It was the man, who had now approached and spoke to him in French.

"No, no. No thank you,” Jon said and smiled fleetingly.

The man was shabbily dressed in heavy, formless trousers that bulged down a little over his shoes and frayed at the cuffs. His shoes were sturdy but scuffed, and there was dried mud on them.

Jon sat forward, his chin in his hands, looking straight ahead. The man's pocket had a ragged spot at one corner. Above his gray trousers, he wore a heavy old sports coat with a dull pattern striping its flanks and thinned shoulders like old scars. His shirt was coarse, dark plaid; his tie, loose at the throat, was dirty white, lined with a sketchy black or blue pattern.

First the man mentioned the weather. It had been especially cold that year. Jon added a few things. They sat silently.

"You English?" the man looked at Jon, who sat back again. He wished the man would ask him now and end it. Then, maybe they could really talk.

"No. American,” he said.

"Amer-ri-cun boiee," the man said slowly in English, dwelling on the r and oy. "Amer-ri-cun boiee,” he said again.

"Ouais,” said Jon in his slangiest Parisian.

He was proud of his French. Please get it over with, he said inside.

"I...saylorr boiee," the man said.

"Marin?" Jon asked.

"Ouais, saylorr boiee," he said.

"Moi, je suis étudiant à la Sorbonne," Jon said.

"Amer-ri-cun boiee,” the man said again, and then in French, "It's good to travel, no?"

Jon smiled just an instant.

"I went to Mozambique once,” the man went on. "You know, Africa. I've even been to Amer-rickaa."

"Yes?" Jon said, doubting. "Where did you go?"

"Just New York," the man said. "Off the boat."

There was a long pause. Jon was awake at last. The sounds of the children and their soccer game had grown louder and more excited. The sunlight was becoming downright hot. He almost stood.

"You like Paris?" The man smiled with the corners of his mouth.

"It's all right," Jon said. Except..."

"The people?" The man nodded knowingly. "Very unfriendly, I know. I don't like them either."

"I think the cold winter had something to do with it." Actually, he rather liked Parisians.

"I'm not French, you know," the man said, and rubbed his hand over his chin. His nails were long and nicely shaped but very dirty on his stubby fingers. He was frowning slightly.

"No, I'm from Bretagne. I hate these French bastards!" The man bared his teethe, frowning harder, and shuddered as with a fever. The sudden violence of this outburst surprised Jon. He waited, a half-smile frozen in his cheeks.

"I hate them," the man said more quietly, and the cellophane in his pocket crinkled a little when he scuffed his feet in the sandy path.

Jon stared into the leaves. He would have to be leaving soon. He noticed that ten feet to his left some little old lady had come to sit, a delicate woman about 60 years old, in a gray patterned suit, gray hair, and a neat gray hat.

"Filthy cows," the man was saying.

The old lady sat, prim and proper, down the way, looking at the gloves in her lap beneath her folded fingers. Her lips were pursed in a neat half-smile.

"It must cost a lot," the man said, "all those books you students have to buy."

Here it comes, Jon thought. "Much less than in the U.S.," he said. He did not like to refuse. "I am saving a lot of money this year," he said. "A good thing it is too. I used to work at two jobs at once," he said.

"I am out of work now," the man said at last.

Jon was silent.

"Filthy French cows," he muttered.

Jon eyed the lady down the bench. She is probably listening to us, he thought.

"I'm just an unemployed sailor," the man said.

"I see," said Jon. I am not going to be run off, he vowed bravely, yet he almost stood to flee anonymously up the pathway.

"I don't suppose you could give me a little help, could you?"

Jon looked at the man sadly; the man looked away. "I'm sorry," Jon said. A toddling child about two feet tall was unsteadily clopping around the bend in the pathway, her pudgy arms raised above her head. She had red, fat cheeks and wide black eyes.

The man was watching the little girl, and nodding his head up and down. After a moment, he grabbed the candy sack and pulled it crackling from his pocket. Then he stood up, a bit abruptly. "Well..." he said. And, holding still the candy bag in one hand, he went down to the old lady. As he leaned toward her to speak quietly, Jon turned away to watch the child who was now curiously staring up at him from the turn in the pathway.

Ant then the man was coming back -- she too had refused him, Jon thought -- and before shuffling away the man suddenly leaned down before the child.

"Bon-bon?" Jon heard him say. The little girl hesitated but did not seem frightened. She looked in wide wonder at the bright colors under the cellophane. The man handed her a purple ball (grape -- Jon imagined its taste). She smiled happily and toddled back up the path to show mother.

The man turned for an instant, and vaguely waved at Jon. His smile seemed embarrassed or hard. "Byee byee, boiee," Jon heard, as the man walked swiftly down the path toward the fountain.

"Adieu, mon vieux," Jon said too softly to be heard. "Et bonne chance, hein?

2

After the man had gone, Jon sat watching the sunlight on the wide green leaves of the bushes across the path from his bench.

"It's disgraceful," the old lady said, in French.

Jon looked around at her curiously. She was sitting there ten feet down the row of benches, talking primly in her precise, pretty accents into the leaves, to him.

"Disgraceful," she said again. "A young man like that."

"Yes," Jon said, and she favored him with a shy smile. "A little sad," he added, to see what she would say.

The small gray lady was quiet a moment, looking into her lap. The she said, "Oh, a man like him can always find work. He is still young."

"Yes," Jon said.

There was another moment of silence as Jon's tired mind wandered down the paths, thought of the grape ball of candy and the little girl's red cheeks. He sat very still, and was weary and content to be motionless as the sun made him feel like a warm potato with butter melting on it and fragrant steam from inside it.

"Now I'll put it to you, monsieur," the little lady had turned fully toward Jon now and was speaking to him in a confidential tone.

Jon was flattered by her manner and smiled warmly.

"That girl," she gestured slightly down the benches. Jon had not noticed the young woman who had come to sit there. "That girl," the gray lady was saying. "Now look at her a moment."

The girl was rather large, wearing a medium-weight, autumn brown coat. There was a faded, large, and worn valise at her feet. Just as Jon looked, and the old lady between him and the girl turned toward her as well, just then the girl, who had been quietly sitting staring before herself, slumped forward and her head nodded to her chest.

"She is tired," the woman sadly smiled.

"Yes," Jon repeated flatly. Then he said, "She must be traveling."

"She has come a long way," the lady said sagely in her confidential tone.

"Gare Montparnasse?" Jon knew how far the train station would be, even for a sturdy girl, with such a large suitcase.

"I am convinced that she has not slept last night," the lady seemed to be thinking aloud, her delicate brows slightly pinched in thought.

"Traveling."

"Perhaps not," the lady persisted.

Jon waited.

She went on, "Sometimes, young girls come to the city to find work. From the country, you know. And they really have nowhere to go, no one to turn to." Her thin, white face had darkened in a pretty frown. "I wonder that their parents would let them just go off like that." After a moment she added, "They don't realize what the city can be like."

"Let me tell you something that happened to me once, young man." And the old lady made a little move to slide toward him on the bench. Jon made a similar move, but there still remained at least five feet between them. Still, the lady continued on with her tale in her confiding, friendly manner.

She had once seen a young girl, like the one down the bench from them, while entering the subway. This young woman had approached her -- "Oh, she would never had done it, she was not a forward girl at all, I assure you monsieur, if she had not been on the verge of utter despair."

There had been a troop of young fellows -- "You know the sort, monsieur" -- who had followed the young woman around, saying awful things to her. She was a country girl who had arrived only that day from her rural home.” (Jon remembered the notices on the church-board in Brittany, warning young women of the evils of the city.)

"She had nowhere else to go, you see, and no work besides."

The little gray lady had calmed the girl's fears and had helped her to a friend's home where she was allowed to spend the night.

"Oh, we had guests in our house at the time, you see, monsieur."

But it had turned out so marvelously: the friend just then has needed an extra helper in his shop -- "just down here on Boulevard St. Germain, you know."

Jon nodded.

"And she is working there still today, and lives not far away. Only yesterday I was visiting with her in the shop."

Jon looked beyond the lady. The girl there had raised her head now, and it was sleepily nodding and snapping up again.

"I am afraid this young girl is in a similar situation."

"Yes," Jon said. "It is possible."

"I could at least help her to a room, and help her to begin looking for work." After a moment, the old lady looked into Jon's face: "Now I will put it to you, monsieur," she said. "Should I approach her?"

Jon slightly smiled, but then spoke gravely, "Well, Madame, it could certainly do no harm. Even if the girl does not need your assistance, I am certain she will be pleased to see someone interested in being kind. And, of course, it could help her."

"I could at least tell her somewhere she could go," the lady said, frowning.

"I am afraid that if I spoke," Jon said, "I would only frighten her." He was confident he was risking nothing.

The lady looked up and said firmly, "No, of course not. It could not be a man." She paused and then asked, rhetorically Jon thought, "Shall I approach her?"

Jon smiled. "I think it would be quite nice of you, Madame," he said.

The delicate features of her face came suddenly alive in a clear smile. "O merci, monsieur. I will do it." She stood up, and smiled au revoir. Jon nodded and murmured "Madame" as good-bye through his wise smile. The little gray lady marched sprightly away. Jon thought it strange that she walked directly away from the girl, but in a moment he saw her round the far bend and approach from the other direction. She had circled the lawn, he thought with admiration.

The young woman and the old lady conversed quietly several minutes, and then the lady stood up and hurried away down the path toward the Rue d'Assas, without looking back at Jon. He mildly wondered what had been said, and wondered too if the long gray paper or pamphlet the girl held in her hand had been given to her by the old gray lady. It could have been a ticket, he supposed.

He sat back on the warm slats and stretched his legs out before him. Then he sat forward, stood, and walked down the narrow path into the leaves.

A moment later, when he stepped out from the row of urinals behind the bushes, the girl and her heavy suitcase were gone.

3

The night was cool. Again, like that morning days before in the park, the air felt soft on Jon's face and in his hair as he walked excitedly across the black, ripple-lit Seine at Boulevard St. Michel. The street lamps stood out from the quiet darkness, surrounded by a sphere of golden mist.

Jon fairly skipped along, his heart still ringing with Othello's thunderous cries. A British company had been visiting at Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt. He went there often now, where he could see a play for two francs.

The streets were charmed to Jon's sleepy but energized mind, and his step was light as he twisted through the turns of his now- familiar pathway home. Turning quickly down a small street running obliquely from the river, again turning beyond the small bright café there that was never closed, again into the long, moon-shadowed walk beside the towers and black walls of old St. Sulpice, and across the tiny square. Soon he was walking more slowly as his long day found him (it was after one a.m., and he hadn't slept since seven the morning before), and as the thrilling tones of Shakespeare's poetry faded away into the calm, black night behind the street lamps, walking along brightly lit but tranquil Rue de Rennes. There, blocks and blocks before him he could just make out the lights of Gare Montparnasse and its gloomy, squatting bulk in the distant shadows and neon colors of the Boulevard which ran before it.

He was crossing the broad Boulevard Raspail, which was also brightly lit and equally tranquil, when he saw her. She was sitting on the light rust-colored bench next to the metro entrance in the center of the little strip where the trees and grass grew dividing Boulevard Raspail. The metro stairs were dark and closed by a black, iron gate.

It was the girl he had seen in the Jardin. There at her feet again was the heavy brown suitcase. She sat motionless and looked away when Jon passed.

He crossed the boulevard, continuing his way, but just beyond the heavy cream-stone corner of the Crédit Commercial there he stopped, and called out inside himself to the exhausted, sad face he had seen. Yet he did not know what to do.

He hurried to the next corner and raced down and around, and then turned carefully onto Boulevard Raspail a block nearer the Seine. He walked quietly closer to her, watching her from behind as she eyed carelessly the car whose lights flashed yellow, crossed Rue de Rennes, and drove slowly by.

Jon stopped behind the corner of a construction project 50 yards beyond her and peeped at the girl. She certainly recognized me, he thought; it was the one clear thought he could gather through his night-bound brain.

For several minutes he watched her. She sat unmoving in the streetlight shadows beyond the vague, dark forms of the trees near Jon's hiding place. The little gray lady must have been right, he thought, and the girl has come to sit here on Boulevard Raspail because there are not many who pass here, yet the branches are well-lit and, if a cry would arouse aid from bourgeois beds anywhere in Paris, it would do so here. Jon realized, however, that there were not so many ears to hear, or to unhear there in a commercial district, near the lights at Rue de Rennes and the shady trees along the Boulevard. Yet that was why she had come, he was sure.

Perhaps, though, she wasn't naive and frightened. Perhaps she was merely a prostitute. But she is inept, he thought. There would be no one passing here, by the large shops and banks, the libraries and bureaux.

Jon imagined approaching her. "Excusez-moi, mademoiselle," he would keep his eyes on the ground and be very quiet. He would ask her if she remembered the little old lady in the park that day. She would; she had even recognized him.

But then… What then?

There are two possibilities, Jon thought, getting more and more nervous and growing more and more conscious of how late it was becoming. She still sat there staring blankly up Rue de Rennes.

Two possibilities -- she is a scared lost waif; or she is a whore.

If I approach, he thought, and she is scared and lost, she will be terrified -- perhaps will even panic and flee. He imagined in the shadow of the corrugated tin the large-boned girl clumsily stumbling off down Rue de Rennes in a pathetic, bumping run with her heavy suitcase banging her shins and hips and tripping her. Or perhaps she would even leave the valise behind, and Jon would be left with it, responsible for its being gone from her like a low thief.

And if she is a prostitute, merely a young inexperienced one from some other city, not used to the ways of Paris and the places where people go at night--Pigalle, Montparnasse, les Halles, St. Lazare, What then? Could Jon laugh it off and bow away gracefully? He didn't even want to imagine the scene.

He stood there a long time, considering even the police--no, they would simply take her to jail, if they listened to Jon at all. He had nowhere to turn for advice, no woman close-by who could do the asking for him. His landlady was out of town, in fact. (He would not have awakened her at that hour anyway, he realized.)

Finally, as it approached two a.m., he decided to walk slowly down his side of the street, not near enough to alarm her, yet near enough--and she would clearly recognize him again, even if he did not look at her--and slowly enough for her to call out or come to him if she were truly desperate. He had dressed nicely for the theatre, and looked respectable, and even English no doubt. He wasn't sure, but he stepped out from behind the construction works and walked toward the corner.

His heels sounded loudly on the walk. He turned his face into the light and felt her eyes on him.

What if she does call? Jon thought suddenly.

He couldn't take her home. Madame was gone and Paul, his roommate--yes, crazy old Paul would understand, of course. He might even like it since it would be so unexpected. But no, that would not be what he should do... Madame would not have approved, and he would respect her feelings.

He came to the corner and stopped, gazing off into the gloom beyond, up Boulevard Raspail toward Montparnasse where there was a statue of Balzac by Rodin. He would take her to a hotel he knew where his friend David had stayed the year before; it was only a few blocks away. He waited a moment, and then moved on around the corner.

She had not spoken; she would not come.

Jon hurried along the shady unlit blocks toward his room. He imagined desperately a fantastic plan to approach the police: "If I were to tell you of a girl, etc., what would you do?" he would say. "Would you see her to a hotel? or help her somehow?" But he could not imagine himself doing that. He couldn't imagine either that they would even listen to him.

And soon his furied footsteps were echoing dully into the shades of little Rue Mayet where he lived. He leaned and shoved open the heavy door at number 10. It swung silently back, splashing on the uneven brick floor a skewed trapezoid of light and his black silhouette framed in it. He stepped inside and swung carefully the door back, closing out the street light.

He stood silently a moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust enough to the darkness for him to see the Roman bust, quietly ghost-like in the moonlight of the court at the end of the entrance-way. His heels clacked with their familiar, incongruous cheeriness on the bricks. He moved slowly, his hands stiffly before him like a blind man with no cane or dog, until an amorphous patch of whiteness came to view at his left.

It was the sign which said "Fermez la porte, s. v. p." and which was just below the doorknob. He stepped up the curb-like step his toes found, reached for the door handle and silently turned it, to step inside. Madame's flat was two flights above. He moved carefully to the narrow stairs; they creaked under him.

She would be there still, he thought, sitting in the light of the Rue de Rennes, sleeping by day on a park bench where she could not lie down. And if it rained? (It rained often in Paris.)

His knees felt very old and his thighs heavy as he moved unhurriedly up one step and then another. At the first landing he looked down into the tiny court, on the cracked statue and garbage cans, and then up into the sky; but the eave was too wide and he could not see the soft moon which he had seen rippling the Seine.

Even Paul would be home by now, sleeping perhaps. Jon stepped up stair after stair, twisting to his right up the stairwell.

His heavy key jumped into his hand from his pocket, but the hole was difficult to find in the darkness of the landing. He felt the door with his fingers as an eyeless man reads his Bible, and found nothing. He was becoming exasperated.

She would be watching a lonely car now and again, blinking its yellow lights at the intersection and moving slowly on. Perhaps she would be frightened if one of them moved very slowly by her and she saw mocking young eyes leering out at her.

The key scraped hollowly in the lock. Jon stepped into the foyer. He stood there a long moment and then turned, feeling along the wall to the right and down a tiny passageway, where the bathroom was.

4

In a moment, he stepped briskly back through the passage; at the foyer he did not continue on toward his and Paul's room, but pulled instead at the door latch. He ran headlong, though not noisily, down the stairs, through the door, stumbled on the step, but quickly pulled the heavy door open. He would not ask Paul about it. It didn't seem to be any of his affair.

In a moment, he was racing down Rue du Cherche-Midi, his hard steps splatting into the silent night air like high school boys stomping overturned paper cups at a football game. He fled through the streetlights and shadows beyond the Post Office street, beyond the favored wine shop all shuttered and barred, beyond Rue Dupin and Hotel Raspail there with the nice Swiss lady who slept next to her office, beyond the long wall.

He came to the corner and slowed to a walk, his breathing heavy but regular. It was Boulevard Raspail, the corner behind her again; and Jon turned and walked silently, quickly to the corrugated tin blind.

She had not moved at all. She had not even slumped forward to sleep what little she could, but held her head erect staring before her into the shadows up Boulevard Raspail. He remembered how heavy her full cheeks looked, and felt tired.

His running had given him a headache, and his breathing slowly grew more normal, his temples took up the regular throb, and his eyes ached. He stood there idly watching the girl in her light brown coat. And then he turned back for home.

5

He was not aware of the streets before Rue Mayet, nor of the heavy door and the trapezoid of light. He moved mechanically through the inner door, and more and more wearily up the stairs. He was suddenly overcome with deep fatigue. His limbs ached as they had after he had borrowed Paul's bicycle and had ridden 50 miles. He concentrated all his effort on getting up the steps.

The key slipped in, and he was home. He felt for the bathroom again, and decided to wake Paul up to tell him about the girl. What would he advise?

Soon he quietly crossed the entranceway, streaked by the light leaking through from the living room windows beyond the piano. His feet sounded suddenly heavy as he stepped from the carpet onto the creaking boards of the hallway. He stepped carefully down it, turned to the right, and pushed the door open to their room.

If he saw her again some night, he decided, he would not fail again to approach her.

Paul's strong breathing was peaceful. The lights from Rue Mayet filtered as always, softly through the thin white curtains Madame had hung for them. Jon heard the ticking of his clock.

He sat on the edge of his bed, set back into a small alcove in the wall across from the windows, listening to Paul's breathing and the clock's tiny ticking and staring at the cool pattern of light on the rug in the floor's center.

After a moment, he stood up and undressed. He climbed into bed, the alarm set for seven as always.

And soon, his quiet breathing was as peaceful and as regular as the clock.

***