The green hat

by Michael Arlen

Smoothly ran the Renault with the scarlet wheels. The black lion found in us no little Citroën, cowered before us, slunk back into the jungle of nameless boulevards. Montparnasse showed lights to hold us, faces in cafés, singing groups of young men, little flashing women with lots of hair like dyed haloes. Artists. Swiftly we fled through the darkness, the stillness, the deep shadows of the phantom fortress of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, away we went from the ancien régime, the haute noblesse, across the river to the nouveau régime, the noblesse, down the stately slope of the Avenue Hoche into the sweet valley of the Parc Monceau, where lived the dashing Mrs. Conrad Masters, with bridge, dancing, Parisian-Americans....

“You can’t,” that man muttered, “expect her to be reasonable....”

“No,” I said, “I suppose not....”

“Nice!” snapped Masters “Good God, ‘nice’!”

Chapter Seven: FOR VENICE!

I

FAT white clouds hurried over the pale blue roof of the rue de la Paix. Spring, the first day before the first day of spring, the day that is not spring but is a voice of spring crying in the wilderness of the chilly heavens: “Here is spring, and lo! these are the clouds of winter fleeing before her, white as polar bears, and as stupid. Enjoy, enjoy le printemps!” Anxious the fat white clouds seemed, most anxious, hurrying from the vanities of the rue de la Paix towards the Cathedral of Our Lady, that they might pray, the poor clouds who know not that the pagan gods are dead, the poor clouds, who love the winter, against the return of Persephone from the arms of Plutus. The stormy brittle sunlight, eager to play with the pearls and diamonds of Van Cleef, Lacloche and Cartier, aye, and of Tecla also, chided away the fat white clouds, and now the sun would play with one window of the rue de la Paix, now with another, mortifying one, teasing another, but all in a very handsome way.

Early the next morning it was when I found myself looking upon these mighty diversions, but I had so much rather been asleep. My bedroom looked down on these things, but unfortunately not from a great height, for they are not tall, the hotels of Paris; and men are sent round the streets of Paris first thing in the morning, to the end that people may not fail to be aware of the beauty of shuttered shops, some of these men being directed to push along enormous tin barrels with which to make a carmagnole of dust, whilst others are placed on ancient taxi-cabs with especially adjusted gears and magnified horn-power. There is no peace in the world, that is what it is. There is no peace in Paris.

I lay in bed, staring through the lace curtains. What had happened, what were the alarums and excursions of that grey day yesterday, which had leapt at me from the darkness as I made to return to England after four months of pleasant wandering? Iris was ill unto death, Napier was enchanted....

Men, some in shirt-sleeves, were taking down the heavy, grey, burglar-proof shutters of the shops opposite. Set in the small windows above the shops, the modistes’ assistants seemed to be talking and talking. Some had hats in their nimble hands, some other things. It is pleasant, maybe it is the only pleasant pastime that does not ever pall, to see and not be seen. And now the shop windows began one and all to glitter in the stormy brittle sunlight which transmuted the pearls and diamonds on yellow velvet into celestial jewels fit to adorn the crown of the word printemps, than which there is not a more beautiful word in all the languages of the world. In the great window of Edouard Apel et Cie., whence in the long ago had come to this person such polite but manly notepaper, stood richly white and coloured papers, boxes of lacquer, ebony, and cedarwood, flaming quills and great cut-glass bottles for ink, and many another devise to make one realise how pleasant writing must be for those who do not have to write. Before a shop not far from Tecla’s which displayed the most charming baubles of all and completely deceived the sun, two short dark Semitic men and a lanky Semitic youth were having some difficulty with their shutters. The shutters did not look new, far from new, but maybe, I thought, a new burglar-proof arrangement has been wrought on them, and that would be causing the difficulty. The traffic had as yet but caressed the rue de la Paix, and through the open window one might hear the rising anger of the two short Semitic men with the lanky Semitic youth, an anger which seemed to call for and to attain a cuneiform language. Then a fourth man, also in shirt-sleeves, came out of the shop, a patriarchal mountain of a man with a great black beard and a mighty nose, who might that very moment have come from a breakfast of dates in a tent over against Ur of the Chaldees, and instantly I knew him for what he was, a millionaire. Many were the race-horses he owned, and often you would see him at Longchamps, talking to a beautiful woman in a deep voice about himself, for that was a vain and terrible man, and the worst of it was that he was always right about everything, whether it was a horse, a jewel, a woman, an antique, or the fall of a card. With one look of his eye he scattered the two short Semites and the lanky Semitic youth, who were his two brothers and his son, who were also millionaires, and in a trice he had those shutters off that window, and lo! there, royally alone against terraces of dingy green velvet, sat a brown Buddha with what looked like the largest emerald in the world in the middle of his forehead, but maybe it was only the second largest. The last time I had been in Paris there had been a golden chair in that window, golden arms and legs and back and sit-piece and all, and so it was no wonder that that man owned race-horses and said “Banquo!” to half-a-million francs while yawning, and rightly, for he always won, as I know to my cost. And one night he had come into the rooms at Cannes with a great ruby on his finger. Only he would, of course, but apart from the ethics of the thing it was an amazing ruby, crimson as blood and clear as a glass of Burgundy. “But what a stone!” cried Billee Ponthéveque, a cocotte who sat at the table losing all the money that she earned by breaking every Commandment but one, for she adored her father and mother and never failed to put aside for them as much as she gave in tips to the croupiers; but she never saw her parents, she would say, because of a funny idea they had that it was bad for her health to take cocaine on an empty stomach. “Yes, it is flawless,” said the deep voice of that terrible man, shouting “Banquo!” as an after-thought to some poor devil who thought he was going to get away unchallenged with fifty thousand francs. “You can have it, child. Here you are.” But Billee Ponthéveque had always a sense of the proprieties, and so, as the saying is among the vulgar, she damned his blasted cheek for offering her so valuable a present in public, but he said that made no matter, for it was just because the ruby was flawless that it was quite valueless. “If only it had the smallest flaw,” he boomed, “it would be beyond price, for any one can counterfeit a flawless ruby so that no expert can tell it from the original....”