A voice said, “Are you there?”
“Yes, I'm here!” said Mama, wondering at the question.
There was a small death on the wire. Then Mama said, “I want to call the Ormsbee Arms.”
“Half a mo',” said the voice. We stood and waited. The coffin was heated (English graveyards are very cold an soggy).
“What was that plice, please?”
“Ormsbee Arms… a hotel… Ormsbee Arms.”
“Oh, Hormsbee Harms… lodgin's. Why didn't ya say so, please?”
Twenty minutes later the porter of the hotel said he would see if he coul find “the lidy what wus with the Greenstreet party” in the lobby. Three coins later Mama was able to whisper into the phone to Aunt Fran that she was lost and would they please find her.… Aunt Fran said she would, and Mama said she was a dear, and they said they were both, dears, and Aunt Fran would find a cab and be right over. And Mama almost hung up… but Aunt Fran suddenly remembered something and asked, “Where are you?”
“In London, I think.”
“Street?”
I went and found out we were at Horsemongers' Lane and Hanging Swor Alley… or maybe it was the other way around… somehow it escapes me now.
I don't remember much more of what happened to Mama in London… one of those blank periods in my journal and memory. We must have seen all the ruins, visited most of the famous pictures, and I know we did finally get that Eton suit… although Aunt Tillie was never able to collect any part of her fee, since we didn't buy it at Joe's.
I do remember reading Mama's an Aunt Fran's German and French books, so that soon I could do their lessons for them… which was a help to them. Gramp was still in conference with a famous beard—something about building some railroads for the Tzar (but nothing came of it; in Switzerland there was a man named Lenin, and in a Serb village a youth was practicing to shoot an Archduke, using passing hens as targets).
Gramp was to stay in London for business, and Mama and Aunt Fran an I were to run over to Paris. I do remember that, and the big book that Gramp bought me—William Herndon's Natural History of the World. I still have it, and often read Gramp's and my own favorite passage:
“Let us take the loveless snail; for he is a hermaphrodite and in himself he is male and female; or rather there is no he or she among snails, and the snail knows nothing of love. So the snail lives the slow, simple, dull life of the snail kind. Nothing excites the passions, nothing demands any emotions; there is no need to rage or hurry. The snail lives to eat, to exist, to die… not to love.…”
Mama was so excited by the trip to Paris that when she came in and caught me reading of snails, she didn't even object. She didn't even object when Gramp came to say goodbye, and remarked he was happy we were going, because he was tired of seeing Westminster Abbey.…
“Now Gramp,” said Mama. “We join you in Austria.”
“Fine,” said Gramp. “And better leave before Tillie tries to sell you some bodies for medical study. She's become a business woman.”
It was raining when we got to Paris. There were no chestnut trees in blossom. We had a huge suite in a hotel near the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur… at least ten miles from it, but its dome was always at our window, and the heights above Montmartre.
Aunt Fran was in love with her London hairdresser, we found out. He ha sent a huge basket of fruit to the boat… and while Aunt Fran moaned an was sick on deck (“traveling by rail,” Gramp always said), I ate the fruit, an found a love letter in it which I gave to Aunt Fran, honorable little chap that I was. The hairdresser was even a worse speller than I was.
When we got to Paris, Mama said to Aunt Fran, “I don't understand you at all. You fall in love all the time.”
“I can't help it. It's my nature.”
“But what about that freight handler you're going to marry back in the States?”
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