by Philip Quinn

The nude’s legs are casually spread and her mound is like that grass-covered hill at Vimy Ridge. How do the French say it? Mons veneris, the eminence of Venus, or of venery, the hunted; but the size; it probably won’t fit. She reluctantly placed the Rodin lithograph back on the shelf and looked for something smaller to steal.

The old man found her wiping her hands at the back of the bookstore and she stuffed the antibiotic wipe into her leather carryon bag.

"Are you a professional?" he asked.

"Yes."

"What? Doctor? Psychiatrist?"

"How did you know?"

"You smell of medicine."

She opened a leather-bound anthology of the British war poets and stared at the precise handwriting inside the cover. He peered over her shoulder and cleared his throat. "Stanislaw Wright—an interesting man who used to stack these same shelves."

"You knew him?"

"Oh yes. Everyone knew him but I was only a boy back then. A long time ago, I’m afraid."

"You don’t seem that old." She stared down at his flaking scalp, the orange hair clumped around his ears, and a lumpish nose streaked with red veins.

"Would you like to come for tea at 4:00? We have a gallery of the Lost Generation."

"I should check with my husband."

"You’re married as well?"

"Yes."

"That’s not so obvious."

"I hope the invitation still stands?"

"Yes. Please bring him too."

"He likes to nap around that time."

"Of course. If not today, there will be other occasions."

"We leave Paris tomorrow."

"American?"

"No. Canadian."

"Your husband…do you love him?"

"I think so."

"Ahhh…marvelous. That helps. Shakespeare and Company was not always such a museum piece of a bookstore and I wasn’t always such a harmless looking old man. After the gallery showing, we should visit my flat. I have a few pictures, other mementos of that remarkable time."

"I’d like that."

"Are you looking for a gift for your husband?

"It’s for a friend."

"This friend…how dear?"

"Of some importance."

"I miss my old friends. Thank God, we have their books to read. Oh…already I’ve talked too much. Do come for tea."

"I will."

(&)

When she returned in the late afternoon, she tried to imagine Hemingway leaning up against the door of the bookshop such as he had in that famous photograph, his head bandaged from a domestic accident. She hesitated to push on the door, feeling a residue of energy on the other side, an old ghost, perhaps herself, how she had once been, so naive putting her trust in books and men and their plans for her.

A store clerk directed her to some stairs, at the top of which, she found herself in a hallway lined with too many old posters and photographs. She passed through an open door into a medium-sized room, hoping to escape the musty smell of decay. As soon as the old man saw her, he put down his teacup and came towards her.

"I’m so glad you could make it."

"Thank you for inviting me."

"We’re about to start…there are always a few stragglers but why should we wait?"

"I’m in no rush. My husband is dining out tonight…with friends."

"Always the convenient friends?"

"Not always."

"I see."

She selected her own cup, poured the tea. It was something for her hands to do and they did not betray her by shaking. There they were, the so-called Lost Generation just as her husband had said. The model Lee Miller was the easiest to recognize after the writers. The photographer Man Ray had made her pose naked and like a statue next to musical instruments, anything that struck his fancy. Even a sprinkling of Miller’s own photographs, the ones she took of the Nazi concentration camps after the war. It was her attention to light, the details of light—would she be so kind to her own husband by making sure the light flattered him, showed him as something banal and evil but also strangely beautiful.

"Andre?"

"Yes father."

"I want you to meet this lovely woman. I’m sorry what is your name?"

"Ingrid." She held out her hand to the tall, slightly stooped man who grinned, his nose too small and perfect, unlike her own.

"She’s a doctor of medicine."

"No…not quite…I study corporations…how they learn. I’m working on my doctorate something that should go on for years."

"How boring," says Andre.

"Andre."

"Well, listen father…these Americans."

"I’m Canadian…it is boring…but it helps pay the bills."

"Well in that case, it’s no longer boring. Please to meet you." With an exaggerated grin, he clicked his heels together and grabbed her right hand and kissed it.

"Your name?"

"Andre."

"Your father’s name?"

"Henri Andre."

"Ah. Already you make my head swim."

"Pleasantly, I hope?"

"Your husband…what does he do?" said the old man brushing with a fine cloth at the glass surface of a photograph of Ezra Pound.

"What he once did? He was the vice-president of a company circling the globe with underwater cable. Now that the cable is there, no one has any use for it."

"Ah…the big technology melt down?"

"That’s why we’re here in Paris."

In the corner of the room stood the transsexual writer, she and her husband had met in Lisbon. They had been drunk and if asked to return the leather carryon, she’d pretend confusion, saying she had thought it a gift.

Henri Andre grabbed her arm, steered her towards a Modigliani. She was disappointed to see it was only a print. A thin cadaverous man stroked his sharp chin, peered too intently at her, then back at the print. Henri Andre whispered in her ear: "An American professor…Dr. Armstrong. He wants his university to buy these photographs and prints and set them up in a room just like this."

"How quaint."

"Yes. Expensive too."

"They have all the money my husband says."

"You really aren’t a doctor?"

"No."

"You were pulling my leg as they say."

"No. I want to be a doctor."

"I see but not of medicine."

"Only if I can cure myself." She laughed, perhaps a little too loudly and looked around. Most of those milling about in the room appeared well dressed, if slightly overweight and a little too old.

"Americans?"

"Yes, of course."

"Why am I here?"

"You’re beautiful. That’s an invitation anywhere."

"Now look who’s pulling whose leg?"

"Would you sit for me? I dabble but my portraits are quite good." He points to a print. "Marcel Duchamp put a woman’s face on a garbage can."

"I understand that."

"Do you?"

"Oh yes."

"Good."

He pokes his finger into the stomach of the thin man. "Don’t you agree Dr. Armstrong…Duchamp was onto something …how quick we are to dispose of beauty. Do you really think you could prepare a suitable laboratory for such work?"

"Like I’ve told you before," the professor says in an accent she thought was American mid-west though her husband said she didn’t do accents well. "All we want is what’s ours…the American contribution to Modernism…even Gertrude Stein belongs to us. All the paintings are just part of the scenic backdrop…Paris in the ‘20s."

"My friends will not be happy to hear that. Next you will want to exhume bodies and put them on display too."

"Henri Andre you are too dramatic for your own good."

"Do you agree Ingrid that these Americans are entitled to purchase anything they want?"

"No."

"See, Dr. Armstrong. You don’t deserve this room."

"But I am your guest and I will buy it."

"Are you counseling a photograph to hang on these walls? Because if that’s the case I can arrange that too. I know just the photographer."

Maybe Xanax on an empty stomach had not been such a great idea; her mind was stuttering.

"Ingrid?" It was the younger Andre, touching her on the shoulder. "Don’t listen to them. They are quite mad and now they are negotiating about the money."

"Did your father really know these famous writers and artists?"

"Know? Oh sure, just like the man who runs the corner store knows the famous novelist who buys her morning newspaper there. The Americans purchase these objects to impress their friends, to have bought a photograph of Hemingway from someone who actually knew him, a vastly richer story."

"So he hopes to trap a few wealthy Americans?"

"More than a few I’m afraid."

Henri Andre batted him on the head with a pointer. "Andre enough. Ingrid was kind enough to join us."

"Father, offer Ingrid a gift, something to remember her visit to the world famous bookstore?"

"I shall do but not right now."

"You could give her this." Andre picked up a silver framed photograph. "It’s a photo of Francine DuBois. She was the bookkeeper. I mean she bound books for Sylvia Beach, right here in this bookstore. One of the little people, just like you and me." He handed her the photograph.

She saw something of herself in the severe looking young woman who was staring off into the distance and not into the camera lens. She released it into the eager hands of the father.

"Thank-you," he said. "There will be a time for such a discussion. Andre, what have you been telling my new friend?"

"The truth, father."

Henri Andre laughs. "Then tell her how I support you though you are almost 40 years old and damaged goods ever since that American woman walked out on you, taking your child."

"Ingrid, don’t listen to father…he’s just jealous…he hasn’t had a woman since that summer of free love." He laughed. "Come dine with me this evening."

"I can’t."

"Is it your mysterious husband, the technology man?"

"No."

"I want to show you the precious objects that father never puts on display."

"Do you live with your father?"

"I have my own place now, a flat near the Seine. A ten-minute cab ride from here."

"Are the others, permanent attendees of this gallery?"

"Half are; the rest are newcomers like you."

He grabbed her hand and lifted it to his nose before kissing it.

"I smell blood. Are you menstruating?"

"No."

"Good."

A bell rang.

"Shall we begin?" Henri Andre stood at a small lectern.

"We all speak English, yes? Tonight we are looking at 1921, only three years after the Great War, but so much was going on. Andre, please dim the lights. Oh yes, before I forget, there are seats at the back though it’s best to move around. So in 1921, Hemingway was only 22, but of the older generation, the painters what of them. Here is Cezanne."

The slide projector clicks, an old man’s face appears like a shadow on the wall, a grey ghost then vanishes.

"And Picasso, of course." A colourful Harlequin prances about then fades into the crowd that’s Guernica. She shifts from one foot to the other. A loud speaker vibrates, sputters out Stravinsky’s Le Sacred du Printemps.

The lights go up. Henri Andre wears a Salvador Dali mask and taps the glass of a photo hanging on the wall with a silver baton.

"The Dada dancers appear at the end of the First World War like soldiers wearing gas masks. A silly experiment, no? The American writers by comparison were so civilized, almost tame."

He droned on so she shut him out, and retreated. She hadn’t eaten all day and found herself in front of a small table, picking at the crackers and splinters of cheese. She poured red wine into a plastic glass, hoping that it was clean.

"Are you selling all the photographs?" She turned towards Andre.

"They’re only prints. More can be made. But father is a good sales man, is he not?"

"I’m not sure."

"He rents this space on a monthly basis, in-between he promotes the hell out of these afternoons…a gallery of the Lost Generation. He laughed. "The local people don’t come near him of course. Did you really expect only tea?"

"No, of course, not."

"Would you like something stronger?"

"No."

His right hand returned a piece of tinfoil to his coat pocket. She noticed a flushing to his face then it was gone. He steered her towards a picture of a family on the Riviera. "This is father’s biggest lie. He tells the gullible Americans that he attended parties at Gerald and Sara Murphy’s Villa America. They were good friends of the Fitzgerald’s. You know what father really was, a cook, studying at night, literature and medicine. Why not come with me tonight? For a drink?"

"I can’t. My husband will be waiting for me."

"Oh, I don’t think so."

"What do you mean?"

"You have a radiance about you. A synthaesthestica. You know what that means?"

"Yes but you talk too much."

"Father has quite a good collection not that he would show it here. He owns some rather personal things that once belonged to Gertrude Stein. He bribed the doctor and nurse attending the old girl in her final hours."

"How grim."

"Only my mother stood by my father as he collected. No one else saw the importance at least not immediately after the war."

"You mean the first?"

"Oh no, the second. Father knew what the Nazis hadn’t removed would one day be of equal value to the old masters. I will give him that. He was even friends for a time with that frog-eyed Sartre, walked with him in some kind of protest march."

(&)

She insisted on Henri Andre’s place and after they made love on the old man’s couch, the son fell into a boozy sleep. She wriggled back into her skirt, zipped up and began to check off her husband’s wish list. A Ford Maddox Ford handwritten notebook, a charcoal sketch of Zelda Fitzgerald by the artist Paul Klee, a Gertrude Stein journal diary, and even a blotchy beret that James Joyce had once worn, all gently lifted from the dusty bookshelves and stuffed into the transsexual writer’s leather travel bag. Her final theft caused the most discomfort but she delicately set it down on top of all the other items.

With the money they received from the sale of these articles, they could finally return to Toronto and to their old lifestyle, complete with the Annual Aztec Charity Ball. She re-opened the leather bag and removed Stein’s stained nightgown, folded it neatly and placed it back on the bookshelf, visited the bathroom and without turning on the light, carefully washed her hands and left.

Philip Quinn’s work has appeared in sub-Terrain, blood+aphorisms, Front&Centre, Kiss Machine, Lichen journal, Broken Pencil, Snow Monkey and Anemone Sidecar. On-line appearances include: Laura Hird’s Showcase, eli mae, The Shore Magazine and Danforth Review. Books include: Dis Location, Stories After the Flood and The Double, a novel. Upcoming: This fall, Jay MillAr’s BookThug press will be publishing The SubWay, a collection of poetry that portrays and illustrates the history of the Toronto subway system and its parallel impact on those riding it. Mr. Quinn lives in Toronto and online at www.philipquinn.ca