双语·流动的盛宴 第十九章　一个关于长短的问题

A Matter of Measurements

Much later, in the time after Zelda had what was then called her first nervous breakdown and we happened to be in Paris at the same time, Scott asked me to have lunch with him at Michaud’s restaurant on the corner of the rue Jacob and the rue des Saints-Pères. He said he had something very important to ask me that meant more than anything in the world to him and that I must answer absolutely truly. I said that I would do the best that I could. When he would ask me to tell him something absolutely truly, which is very difficult to do, and I would try it, what I said would make him angry, often not when I said it but afterwards, and sometimes long afterwards when he had brooded on it. My words would become something that would have to be destroyed and sometimes, if possible, me with them.

He drank wine at the lunch but it did not affect him and he had not prepared for the lunch by drinking before it. We talked about our work and about people and he asked me about people that we had not seen lately. I knew that he was writing something good and that he was having great trouble with it for many reasons but that was not what he wanted to talk about. I kept waiting for it to come, the thing that I had to tell the absolute truth about; but he would not bring it up until the end of the meal, as though we were having a business lunch.

Finally when we were eating the cherry tart and had a last carafe of wine he said, “You know I never slept with anyone except Zelda.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I thought I had told you.”

“No. You told me a lot of things but not that.”

“That is what I have to ask you about.”

“Good. Go on.”

“Zelda said that the way I was built I could never make any woman happy and that was what upset her originally. She said it was a matter of measurements. I have never felt the same since she said that and I have to know truly.”

“Come out to the office,” I said.

“Where is the office?”

“Le water,” I said.

We came back into the room and sat down at the table.

“You’re perfectly fine,” I said. “You are O.K. There’s nothing wrong with you. You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened. Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile.”

“Those statues may not be accurate.”

“They are pretty good. Most people would settle for them.”

“But why would she say it?”

“To put you out of business. That’s the oldest way in the world of putting people out of business. Scott, you asked me to tell you the truth and I can tell you a lot more but this is the absolute truth and all you need. You could have gone to see a doctor.”

“I didn’t want to. I wanted you to tell me truly.”

“Now do you believe me?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Come on over to the Louvre,” I said. “It’s just down the street and across the river.”

We went over to the Louvre and he looked at the statues but still he was doubtful about himself.

“It is not basically a question of the size in repose,” I said. “It is the size that it becomes. It is also a question of angle.” I explained to him about using a pillow and a few other things that might be useful for him to know.

“There is one girl,” he said, “who has been very nice to me. But after what Zelda said—”

“Forget what Zelda said,” I told him. “Zelda is crazy. There’s nothing wrong with you. Just have confidence and do what the girl wants. Zelda just wants to destroy you.”

“You don’t know anything about Zelda.”

“All right,” I said. “Let it go at that. But you came to lunch to ask me a question and I’ve tried to give you an honest answer.”

But he was still doubtful.

“Should we go and see some pictures?” I asked. “Have you ever seen anything in here except the Mona Lisa?”

“I’m not in the mood for looking at pictures,” he said. “I promised to meet some people at the Ritz bar.”

Many years later at the Ritz bar, long after the end of the World War II, Georges, who is the bar chief now and who was the chasseur when Scott lived in Paris, asked me, “Papa, who was this Monsieur Fitzgerald that everyone asks me about?”

“Didn’t you know him?”

“No. I remember all of the people of that time. But now they ask me only about him.”

“What do you tell them?”

“Anything interesting that they wish to hear. What will please them. But tell me, who was he?”

“He was an American writer of the early Twenties and later who lived some time in Paris and abroad.”

“But why would I not remember him? Was he a good writer?”

“He wrote two very good books and one which was not completed which those who know his writing best say would have been very good. He also wrote some good short stories.”

“Did he frequent the bar much?”

“I believe so.”

“But you did not come to the bar in the early Twenties. I know that you were poor then and lived in a different quarter.”

“When I had money I went to the Crillon.”

“I know that too. I remember very well when we first met.”

“So do I.”

“It is strange that I have no memory of him,” Georges said.

“All those people are dead.”

“Still one does not forget people because they are dead and people keep asking me about him. You must tell me something about him for my memoirs.”

“I will.”

“I remember you and the Baron von Blixen arriving one night—in what year?” He smiled.

“He is dead too.”

“Yes. But one does not forget him. You see what I mean?”

“His first wife wrote very beautifully,” I said. “She wrote perhaps the best book about Africa that I ever read. Except Sir Samuel Baker’s book on the Nile tributaries of Abyssinia. Put that in your memoirs. Since you are interested in writers now.”

“Good,” said Georges. “The Baron was not a man that you forget. And the name of the book?”

“Out of Africa,” I said. “Blickie was always very proud of his first wife’s writing. But we knew each other long before she had written that book.”

“But Monsieur Fitzgerald that they keep asking me about?”

“He was in Frank’s time.”

“Yes. But I was the chasseur. You know what a chasseuris.”

“I am going to write something about him in a book that I will write about the early days in Paris. I promised myself that I would write it.”

“Good,” said Georges.

“I will put him in exactly as I remember him the first time that I met him.”

“Good,” said Georges. “Then, if he came here, I will remember him. After all one does not forget people.”

“Tourists?”

“Naturally. But you say he came here very much?”

“It meant very much to him.”

“You write about him as you remember him and then if he came here I will remember him.”

“We will see,” I said.