Part 19 (1/2)
”Comment ca va! Yvonne? Bon?”
His pidgin-French made her show her little pearly teeth in a smile.
”Good,” she said in English.
They laughed childishly.
”Say, will you be my girl, Yvonne?”
She looked in his eyes and laughed.
”Non compris,” she said.
”We, we; voulez vous et' ma fille?”
She shrieked with laughter and slapped him hard on the cheek. ”Venez,”
she said, still laughing. He followed her. In the inner room was a large oak table with chairs round it. At the end Eisenstein and a French soldier were talking excitedly, so absorbed in what they were saying that they did not notice the other two. Yvonne took the Frenchman by the hair and pulled his head back and told him, still laughing, what Fuselli had said. He laughed.
”No, you must not say that,” he said in English, turning to Fuselli.
Fuselli was angry and sat down sullenly at the end of the table, keeping his eyes on Yvonne. She drew the knitting out of the pocket of her ap.r.o.n and holding it up comically between two fingers, glanced towards the dark corner of the room where an old woman with a lace cap on her head sat asleep, and then let herself fall into a chair.
”Boom!” she said.
Fuselli laughed until the tears filled his eyes. She laughed too. They sat a long while looking at each other and giggling, while Eisenstein and the Frenchman talked. Suddenly Fuselli caught a phrase that startled him.
”What would you Americans do if revolution broke out in France?”
”We'd do what we were ordered to,” said Eisenstein bitterly. ”We're a bunch of slaves.” Fuselli noticed that Eisenstein's puffy sallow face was flushed and that there was a flash in his eyes he had never seen before.
”How do you mean, revolution?” asked Fuselli in a puzzled voice.
The Frenchman turned black eyes searchingly upon him.
”I mean, stop the butchery,--overthrow the capitalist government.--The social revolution.”
”But you're a republic already, ain't yer?”
”As much as you are.”
”You talk like a socialist,” said Fuselli. ”They tell me they shoot guys in America for talkin' like that.”
”You see!” said Eisenstein to the Frenchman.
”Are they all like that?”
”Except a very few. It's hopeless,” said Eisenstein, burying his face in his hands. ”I often think of shooting myself.”
”Better shoot someone else,” said the Frenchman. ”It will be more useful.”