Good Morning, Midnight Read Online Free Page A

for me....They want to saunter, this plump, placid lady and her slightly less placid daughter. They want to saunter in the beautiful Paris sunlight, to the Rue de la Paix.
    I pull myself together and we get to the Rue de la Paix. We go to the French-English dress shops and we go to the French-French dress shops. And then they say they want to have lunch. I take them to a restaurant in the Place de la Madeleine. They are enormously rich, these two, the mother and the daughter. Both are very rich and very sad. Neither can imagine what it is like to be happy or even to be gay, neither the mother nor the daughter.
    In the restaurant the waiter suggests pancakes with rum sauce for dessert. They are strict teetotallers, but they lap up the rum sauce. I've never seen anybody's mood change so quickly as the mother's did, after they had had two helpings of it.
    'What delicious sauce!' They have a third helping. Their eyes are swimming. The daughter's eyes say 'Certainly, certainly'; the mother's eyes say 'Perhaps, perhaps....'
    'It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?'
    'Yes,' I say, 'it can be sad.'
    But the softened mood doesn't last.
    She has coffee and a glass of water and is herself again. Now she wants to be taken to the exhibition of Loie Fuller materials, and she wants to be taken to the place where they sell that German camera which can't be got anywhere else outside Germany, and she wants to be taken to a place where she can buy a hat which will epater everybody she knows and yet be easy to wear, and on top of all this she wants to be taken to a certain exhibition of pictures. But she doesn't remember the man's name and she isn't sure where the exhibition is. However, she knows that she will recognize the name when she hears it.
    I try. I question waiters, old ladies in lavabos, girls in shops. They all respond. There is a freemasonry among those who prey upon the rich. I manage everything, except perhaps the hat.
    But she saw through me. She only gave me twenty francs for a tip and I never got another job as guide from the American Express. That was my first and last.
    I try, but they always see through me. The passages will never lead anywhere, the doors will always be shut. I know....
    Then I start thinking about the black dress, longing for it, madly, furiously. If I could get it everything would be different. Supposing I ask So-and-so to ask So-and-so to ask Madame Perron to keep it for me?....I'll get the money. I'll get it....
    Walking in the night with the dark houses over you, like monsters. If you have money and friends, houses are just houses with steps and a front door - friendly houses where the door opens and somebody meets you, smiling. If you are quite secure and your roots are well struck in, they know. They stand back respectfully, waiting for the poor devil without any friends and without any money. Then they step forward, the waiting houses, to frown and crush. No hospitable doors, no lit windows, just frowning darkness. Frowning and leering and sneering, the houses, one after another. Tall cubes of darkness, with two lighted eyes at the top to sneer. And they know who to frown at. They know as well as the policeman on the corner, and don't you worry....
    Walking in the night. Back to the hotel. Always the same hotel. You press the button. The door opens. You go up the stairs. Always the same stairs, always the same room....
    The landing is empty and deserted. At this time of night there are no pails, no brooms, no piles of dirty sheets. The man next door has put his shoes outside - long, pointed, patent leather shoes, very cracked. He does get dressed, then. . I wonder about this man. Perhaps he is a commercial traveller out of a job for the moment. Yes, that's what he might be - a commis voyageur. Perhaps he's a traveller in dressing gowns.
    Now, quiet, quiet....This is going to be a nice sane fortnight. 'Quiet, quiet,' I say to the clock when I am winding it up, and