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Henry Miller TROPIC OF CANCER [??]
A beautiful day -- so far. The Rue de Buci is alive, crawling. The bars
wide open and the curbs lined with bicycles. All the meat and vegetable
markets are in full swing. Arms loaded with truck bandaged in
newspapers.
A fine Catholic Sunday -- in the morning, at least. High noon and here I
am standing on an empty belly at the confluence of all these crooked lanes
that reek with the odor of food.
Opposite me is the Hotel de Louisiane. A grim old hostelry known to the
bad boys of the Rue de Buci in the good old days. Hotels and food, and I'm
walking about like a leper with crabs gnawing at my entrails.
On Sunday mornings there's a fever in the streets. Nothing like it
anywhere, except perhaps on the East Side, or down around Chatham
Square.
The Rue de l'Echaudé is seething. The streets twist and turn, at every
angle a fresh hive of activity. Long queues of people with vegetables under
their arms, turning in here and there with crisp, sparkling appetites.
Nothing but food, food, food. Makes one delirious.
Pass the Square de Furstemberg. Looks different now, at high noon. The
other night when I passed by it was deserted, bleak, spectral. In the middle
of the square four black trees that have not yet begun to blossom.
Intellectual trees, nourished by the paving stones. Like T. S. Eliot's verse.
Here, by God, if Marie Laurencin ever brought her Lesbians out into the
open, would be the place for them to commune. Très lesbienne id. Sterile,
hybrid, dry as Boris' heart.
In the little garden adjoining the Eglise St. Germain are a few dismounted
gargoyles. Monsters that jut forward with a terrifying plunge. On the benches
other monsters -- old people, idiots, cripples, epileptics. Snoozing quietly,
waiting for the dinner bell to ring.
At the Galerie Zak across the way [rue Bonaparte] some imbecile has made
a picture of the cosmos -- on the flat. A painter's cosmos! Full of odds and
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