Tuesday afternoon, June 25. Dexter Jones walked out the entrance of the American embassy into the bright evening twilight of a clear summer’s day. He walked around the edge of the broad Place de la Concorde, across the Pont de la Concorde, while watching the sun set behind the magnificent Greek colonnaded façade of the Palais Bourbon, home to the Chamber of Deputies, the principal house of the French parliament. Reaching the other side of the river, the Left Bank, he turned and walked along the tree-shaded sidewalk heading towards the Palais de la Mutualité deep in the Latin Quarter. He wanted to hear André Malraux give the closing speech to the International Writers Congress for the Defense of Culture.
Approaching the front of the large building, Dexter scanned the milling crowd for any familiar faces. Suddenly, his eyebrows arched in surprise and his eyes widened in delight; there was Madame Bardoux, and, yes, besides her the intriguing Madame Lambert. He raised his hand in recognition, Madame Bardoux spotted him and leaned over and spoke to Madame Lambert, her hand outstretched to point out the approaching American diplomat. Dexter came up and shook each outstretched hand in turn, bowing his head. “Delighted you could come.” Both women smiled at him pleasantly.
Dexter said, “It will be jammed inside. Malraux has captured the public’s imagination.” He singled out Madame Lambert with a glance; she smiled and nodded back in agreement. Dexter continued, “Let’s push our way in.”
Madame Bardoux said, “We’ll let you lead the way.”
Dexter twisted and turned inside the jam-packed auditorium clearing a path for the two women. He found an empty space along the wall near the speaker’s presidium and waved with his hand for the women to take a space along the wall. “This is the best I can do.” Both women smiled and took places against the wall; Dexter took the rearmost position.
The three listened intently to Louis Aragon, once the iconoclastic firebrand of the Surrealists, commit the apostasy of actually hewing to the party line on art. “We must come back to reality…only the proletariat and its allies can hope to achieve realism, which in their hands becomes Socialist Realism, the method of the writers of the USSR.”
More party-line drivel, thought Dexter. Aragon then whipped himself into a blazing, acidic frenzy. Dexter looked towards the wall just behind the speaker’s presidium and watched the conference co-chairman André Gide shaking his head in sad exasperation at the rant. He pointed out Gide’s reaction to the two women; they turned their heads and smiled in sympathetic acknowledgement at him.
Aragon was followed by another firebrand who launched into another rant, comically brandishing a clenched fist in the final climax as a signal for applause. The audience sat motionless. The speaker looked out at the silent crowd like a mole blinking in the sunlight; the stupefied people sat in uncomprehending silence. Dexter laughed to himself. The speaker departed in a huff.
The other co-chairman, André Malraux, rose. He was regarded as the man to follow in the Thirties by Parisian intellectuals and café gossips alike, as Dexter well knew. He strode forward to the speaker’s rostrum, braced himself with one hand on the table, and leaned his long body forward into the big microphone. Madame Lambert turned back and smiled at Dexter in pleased anticipation at the coming speech.
The handsome, dark-haired Malraux spoke to the political hour with eloquent phrases delivered with the assured urgency of a leading public intellectual. The staccato words rushed forth, “It is in the nature of fascism to be nationalistic; it is our nature to be of the world.” Dexter nodded in silent agreement with the universalist message. Then, rising above the immediate struggle, Malraux looked to the eternal power of art, “A work of art is an object, but it is also an encounter with time.” A nice French touch, thought Dexter.
The man standing next to Dexter, nodding in approval, whispered, “This is what we have wanted, the call to fight for a new art.” Then nodding towards a group of Communist writers, “The Soviet writers will not understand one word of what André says.” Madame Lambert, overhearing the conversation, smiled at Dexter and nodded in agreement.
Dexter smiled and listened to Malraux wind-up his speech, the crowd in rapt silence. “Arts, ideas, peoples, all humanity’s old dreams, if we need them to live, they need us to live again.” As Malraux straightened up and stood back from the microphone, the crowd erupted into ardent applause. Dexter felt that Malraux had added a special French aura with his lofty phrases in support of the transcendent power of art in the enduring human struggle. He didn’t get caught in the mire of ideological conflict.
Madame Bardoux and Madame Lambert straightened up, their faces beaming approval, and vigorously clapped as Malraux walked away from the podium. Dexter also straightened up, pulling his shoulders off the wall, and clapped along with the women. As the applause died down, he leaned forward and whispered to the two women, “We better get outside ahead of the crowd.” The two women nodded in agreement. They joined the troop of people crowding their way out towards the lobby and the sidewalk.
On the sidewalk, Dexter asked, “There’s an English tea shop down by the Église Saint-Julien-Le-Pauvre. Could I interest you in a cup of tea?”
Madame Bardoux broke into an easy smile. “We know it well. It is one of our secret meeting places. You have found us out!”
Dexter smiled in pleased surprise. “After you, mesdames.”
In the gathering dusk, the three walked along the deeply shaded streets and then past the stonewalls of the small church Saint-Julien le Pauvre. Past the church, they crossed over to the far side of the street. Coming up to the tea shop, they entered and walked into the wood-paneled dining room with tables set underneath open oak beams running crosswise on the ceiling. They seated themselves at a table near the wall while the proprietress handed them menus and mentioned the favored teas of the day. The two women smiled, ordered tea, and whispered between themselves, settling upon fruitcakes as if they were a slightly forbidden delicacy. Dexter smiled at the proprietress and asked for the same.
Dexter asked, “What do you think of the writers’ conference?”
Madame Bardoux replied, “The coming together of the Communist intellectuals with the literary Left mirrors what is going on in politics today. The Communists, the Socialists, and the Radical Socialists are all marching under the Popular Front banner on Bastille Day. Why not the writers?”
Dexter nodded in agreement, “Agreed—a cultural alliance. Are the writers following in the steps of the French government’s recent agreement with Soviet Russia?”
Madame Bardoux leaned forward and spoke knowingly and with assurance, “Yes, France reaches east to the far side of Germany for alliance with Russia—a classically traditionalist policy. As foreign minister, Monsieur Laval has worked energetically to contain Hitler and Germany.”
Dexter parried, “We heard that Foreign Minister Laval lunched with German air minister Hermann Goering in Warsaw on his way back from Moscow. Goering put up quite a row about Laval trying to encircle Germany. So there are real risks to the rapprochement with Soviet Russia?”
Madame Bardoux sat back a little; Dexter had got right at the most sensitive aspect of any alliance with Russia. She composed her thoughts. “Yes, Germany makes a clever diplomatic argument that France is undermining the Locarno Pact with the Russian initiative. So France tries to strengthen Locarno, and Germany says that it is violating Locarno, which is the basis of current European stability,” and she added as an afterthought, “such as it is.”
Dexter nodded in agreement, “We have heard from sources in Berlin that in the future Germany might use ratification of a Soviet pact as a pretext for the remilitarization of the Rhineland.” Dexter understood that remilitarization of the Rhineland would force the French to confront the question of sending the French army across the border to evict the German army from the west bank of the Rhine. Dexter sighed with the knowledge that it would be a frighteningly difficult choice to contemplate. Out of his eye, he saw Madame Lambert come bolt upright.
He saw that Madame Lam
bert’s expression had quickened; her eyes were flashing as she looked searchingly across the table at Madame Bardoux for her answer. Madame Bardoux, a little taken aback, looked at her friend, then turned and responded to Dexter, “Yes, I understand that you could have heard such speculations.” Her face turned noncommittal.
Madame Lambert sat back, the meaning of Madame Bardoux’s reply sinking in. A tough issue was coming.
Dexter said, “Yes, I understand. Of course, I am not prying. Our embassy has its sources.” Madame Lambert looked at him and thought: yes, the Americans would have their own sources.
Madame Bardoux relaxed and smiled. “Of course.” She smiled sweetly at Dexter and gave Madame Lambert a warm smile.
Dexter changed the subject. “What about Malraux’s speech?”
Madame Lambert leaned forward and took the stage ever so discreetly. She looked at Dexter and said in a measured way, “Malraux made the point that the idealism of art, its individuality, must be the beacon that lights the way.”
Dexter replied with a question, “Art does not follow the party line?”
Madame Lambert explained, “Artistic expression can never be confined between the bright lines of doctrine.”
Dexter queried, “So art does not serve the struggle for revolutionary goals?”
Madame Lambert made a simple and ordered reply, “Doctrine sets bright lines; artistic expression always pushes outside the lines.” She leaned back and smiled at Dexter. “So, no, I don’t believe in Socialist Realism.”
Dexter, eyes twinkling, smiled. “Last week at the convention, my friend Adrienne Monnier, the bookseller, observed that Communist propaganda is boring and dull. She argued that the Nazis are better at using propaganda aimed at exciting the working classes.”
At the sound of the name “Adrienne Monnier,” Madame Bardoux brightened and reentered the conversation, turning to Dexter and saying, “Why Dexter, Marcelle and I are patrons of Madame Monnier’s bookstore. Do you know her friend Sylvia Beach?”
Dexter, somewhat surprised, replied, “Yes, I know both quite well. Its strange we haven’t bumped into each other at one or the other bookstore.”
Madame Bardoux explained, “Oh, we go to Madame Monnier’s store often enough, but we are really just getting to the point where we might take on English literature in its native tongue. Madame Monnier has so much of it in good French translation.”
Madame Lambert nodded in agreement.
Madame Bardoux playfully added, “Marcelle is a little unsure about being publicly seen patronizing the store that published Joyce’s Ulysses. She would not want her colleagues to think she was talking furtive pleasures in dirty books,” and Madame Bardoux laughed, nodding towards Madame Lambert’s somewhat embarrassed countenance.
Dexter laughed and smiled at Madame Lambert. “There are many fine books in Sylvia’s lending library in addition to Joyce’s books.”
Madame Lambert composed herself, getting back on top of her decorum, and replied, “Of course. I look forward to expanding my knowledge of English literature at Shakespeare and Company. Madame Monnier says Miss Beach is an excellent guide.”
Madame Bardoux interjected, “Maybe Dexter can provide some suggestions?”
Madame Lambert replied, “I don’t want to put him to any trouble,” and she turned and smiled benignly at Dexter. Then she added, “Besides, I think building a dialogue with Miss Beach is possibly the greater part of belonging to Shakespeare and Company.”
Dexter agreed, “You are quite right. She has become a great friend of mine. Hopefully you will have the same opportunity.”
Madame Lambert smiled at him by way of agreement. Then she took a long sip from her cup of tea and said, “I have a demanding day at the Matignon tomorrow. I must take my departure.”
Madame Bardoux turned to Dexter and said in weary agreement, “So do I. It has been delightful to talk with you Dexter, but Marcelle is right, we must be going.”
Dexter stood up, “Can I escort you to the Metro?”
Standing, Madame Bardoux replied, “Yes, you are always so gallant, Dexter.”
Madame Lambert nodded in agreement as she stood up.
The three walked out into the near-darkness and walked up the avenue to boulevard Saint-Germain and the Metro entrance. At the top of the stairway, they stopped and Dexter said by way of farewell, “Mesdames.” Then with a tone of expectation, he asked, “Until July 4? At the embassy?”
Welcoming the invitation, Madame Bardoux said, “We will try. Probably late in the afternoon.”
Madame Lambert made a nod of agreement.
Dexter dipped his head in farewell; the two women turned and proceeded down the stairs to train platform below.
Dexter turned and briskly walked along boulevard Saint-Germain towards his apartment, smiling, a glow of optimism to his outlook as he sensed that a romantic curiosity about a woman was starting to shape his thoughts, marshalling his emotional feelings toward some future point. Had she shared this sense, this sense of potential? He wondered.