272
the elderly ladies who appear from the
remoter corners of New Haven to at–
tend such public lectures, had been
shocked by his lyrical and detailed de–
scription of his wife's breasts, and my
new friend was delighted to hear this.
He kept chuckling about it and asking
me to give more specific data . . . how
did they show their disapproval? did
they hiss, blush, hide their faces? I
invented answers to all these questions
and they all pleased him.
At the Select Bar on the Champs–
Elysees he showed me a few items he
had written for last week's
Gavroche
and affirmed that he would make my
story about Breton's lecture into an
'echo' of the same type. Thus is jour–
nalism created . . . 'a usually unre–
liable source.' Over the beer we became
good friends. It turned out that he too
had been a university instructor . . . in
philosophy. He is writing a study of
William Blake and has completed a
thesis on Gerard de Nerval. .. .
We then went to the Cafe de Flore,
where my friend, X, was to meet a
Chinese painter and his girl friend, a
Rumanian interpreter. We were joined
by a young French surrealist painter,
Y. At dinner at a restaurant nearby
Y told me some of his experiences in
the resistance movement. In Marseilles,
where he had gone with Andre Breton
and some others who subsequently left
the country from there, he and about
50
others rented a large house which
they turned into a cooperative confec–
tion factory. Each man worked four
hours a day making fruit bars like the
ones we get in K rations, and the pro–
ducts were sold at prices good enough
to support the whole group. Nowa–
days the 'fruit-bar boys' recognize each
other by a gesture as of kneading
crushed dates. We discussed the disillu–
sion and reaction that have set in now
that the underground movement is
above ground. Y said that there is still
much rottenness in France and did not
seem to have much hope that it would
be eradicated, which I found a wel–
come contrast with the starry-eyed atti–
tudes so often struck in the press about
the 'resurrection of France.' After din-
PARTISAN REVIEW
r:er we had some hot rum at another
cafe and then went to the painter's
studio to look at his work. It is rather
like posters . . . phallic advertising,
one might say .. . but he has some very
nice 'psycho-analytical' illustrations for
'Alice in Wonderland.' The Rumanian
girl was upset by Y's pictures, but I
was pleased to find he collects apple
cores. Also to hear from X that Jean–
Paul Sartre used to collect the pieces
of paper he found in the street.
The truck that was supposed to take
me to the front next morning didn't,
so I had to stay in town all day Sun–
day. Overcoming my disappointment
with a slight effort, I wandered into
the Red Cross' "Rambow Corner" and
saw a notice saying that Braque would
show me (well 'you' generally} his pic–
tures that morning if I liked. I thought
this a fine idea, and in a few minutes
a young lady called Suzanne something
turned up and carried me and another
sergeant off to Montparnasse by Metro,
talking agreeably all the way. These
Sunday mornings
chi;: les peintres
are
becoming an institution among G .I.'s
stationed in Paris. I gathered that
Suzanne had started the whole thing
by taking an American friend on a
visit to Picasso. Someone found out
about this and slowly more and more
people did and eventually Picasso's
studio was thronged with autograph-
5eekers and curiosity-hounds. Things
came to a head when about sixty of
them congregated there and sang
"Happy Birthday" for him. Happy
birthday, dear Pablo! It was too much,
and soon afterwards he requested the
Red Cross to stop sending our emis–
saries. He wanted to work. As for
Braque, he had not been deluged, and
was extremely pleasant to the dozen or
so visitors he had that morning. His
house and studio are a superb exhibi–
tion. H e is trying out new greens and
yellows, painting sunflowers almost a
Ia van Gogh ... only much more sober–
ly and, to my taste, far better . .. and
still lifes enriched with velvety browns
and purples. He is also doing things
that are rather like cameos . . . white-
• line designs on black plaster. Many of
