Tito’s companion ordered two cocktails.
The barman, with the mournful precision of a chemist engaged in a highly sophisticated laboratory experiment, poured three different liquors into a kind of big glass test tube, filled it to the top with crushed ice, poured into it some drops of heaven knows what from three different little bottles, and stirred the mixture; then he pressed the edges of two glasses into a half lemon and dipped them in sugar, which stuck to the edges like brine, and poured the mixture into the glasses.
The man with the black, geometrical features, looking as neat, austere and solemn as a millionaire’s funeral, glanced at the Italian, expecting to see on his face an expression of wonder at this catastrophic concoction. When Frenchmen, and Parisians in particular, have dealings with an Italian they believe they are revealing unsuspected marvels to him and invariably expect him to be as astonished as American natives were when Christopher Columbus showed them a cigarette lighter or a box of Valda tablets. Even Parisian cocottes, when they undress in the presence of an Italian, expect him to put his hands to his brow in utter amazement at the revelation that women are differently made to men. Cocktails are made like that in my country too, Tito said to himself. If you had drunk all the cocktails that I have, you’d have delirium tremens by now.
“Allow me to introduce Dr — who deals with German politics; Professor —, who handles the Russian section, and M. — , our medical correspondent,” he said.
Then, pointing to Tito, he said.
“M. Titò Arnodi.”
“Tito Arnaudi,” the owner of the name corrected him.
“M. Titò Arnodi, our new colleague,” the man repeated.
Tito took in only the end of their names (ein in the case of the German, ov in the case of the Russian and ier in the case of the medical correspondent). The three gentlemen concerned leapt from their stools to shake hands with their new colleague.
“And now I’ll take you to your office,” the editorial secretary said. “And on the way I’ll take the opportunity of introducing you to your fellow countryman who deals with Italian politics. C’est un charmant garçon.”
Tito put his glass on the counter and shook hands with the German, the Russian and the scientist, who climbed back on to their observation stools.
Beyond the bar there was another room with two billiard tables, and beyond that there was the restaurant for the editorial staff of The Fleeting Moment and their friends.
Tito and his companion walked down a corridor, and three or four messengers rose and sat down again as they passed. It was like a hotel corridor, with doors on either side; all that was missing was shoes outside the doors and trousers hanging on hooks on the door posts. As they passed the doors they heard the clatter of typewriters, all tuned in together, the ringing of telephone bells and the sound of feminine voices.
The secretary knocked at the door.
“Entrez,” someone answered.
A number of colored cushions lay on a lounge chair, and a man lay on the cushions. One leg slid to the ground, and Pietro Nocera rose with its aid.
“Good gracious.”
“Tito Arnaudi.”
“Good heavens, Pietro Nocera.”
“Fancy seeing you in Paris.”
“I’ve been here a month. And you?”
“I’ve been here a year. Are you passing through?”
“Goodness no.”
“Are you staying in Paris, then?”
“Not only that, I’m staying on this newspaper.”
And before Pietro Nocera recovered from his surprise the secretary said: “I’m putting you in the next office. I’ll have the communicating door opened, so that you won’t have to go out into the corridor if you want to talk.”
“And how on earth did you get here?”
“I’ll tell you. And you?”
“I’ll tell you too.”
“Are you free for lunch?”
“Completely.”
“There’s a restaurant on the premises.”
“So I’ve seen.”
“So you’ll have lunch with me.”
“Do you realize the gravity of what you are saying?”
“I do.”
“In that case I accept.”
“I’ll order you oysters still redolent of the sea.”
The secretary left the two friends together to allow all their sentimental gases to expand.
Pietro Nocera telephoned to the bar. “Two Turins,” he said.
He turned to Tito and explained that he had ordered Italian vermouth for the sake of local color. “Sit there, facing me, so that I can have a good look at you. Your complexion has changed a bit, but otherwise you’re just the same. And what brought you to Paris? And how’s that old aunt of yours?”
“Don’t let’s talk indecencies at table.”
“So you’ve taken to journalism too?”
“As you see.”
“And how did that happen?”
“It’s quite simple. I’m a journalist just as I might be a cinematograph operator or a boatswain on a sailing ship or a conjuror.”
“You’re quite right,” Pietro Nocera said. “One takes refuge in journalism, as one takes refuge on the stage after doing the most desperate and disparate jobs — as priest, dentist or insurance agent. There are some who fall in love with journalism because they have had distant glimpses of its most glamorous aspects or its most successful representatives, just as they fall in love with the actors’ trade because they’ve seen an actor who played Othello being frantically applauded. I’ll play Othello too, they say to themselves.”
“And all they ever get is a walk-on part.”
“And how many walk-on parts there are in journalism! We’re not people who live real life. We live on the margins of life. We have to defend views we don’t share and impose them on the public; deal with questions we don’t understand and vulgarize them for the gallery. We can’t have ideas of our own, we have to have those of the editor; and even the editor doesn’t have the right to think with his own head, because when he’s sent for by the board of directors he has to stifle his own views, if he has any, and support those of the shareholders.
“And then, if you knew how wretched it is behind the scenes of this big stage. You’ve seen the many rooms, the many carpets and many lamps; you’ve seen the bar, the salle d’armes, the restaurant, but you haven’t yet met the men. What a prima-donna atmosphere. How many ham actors preen themselves in these rooms, and how many megalomaniacs boast about successes they never had.
“Outsiders believe journalists to be privileged creatures because theaters give them free stalls, ministers give them precedence over prefects and senators kicking their heels in the waiting room, and great artists talk to them on familiar terms. But the public doesn’t know that in spite of their public cordiality all these people privately despise them. Everyone has a low opinion of journalists, from the hospital porter who gives a reporter information about a tram crash to the President of the Republic who grants an interview to the parliamentary correspondent. They are polite to them because they’re afraid of major acts of blackmail or minor acts of meanness; they willingly give them the information they need, and sometimes they actually give it to them already written out or dictate it to them word for word because, knowing their dreadful ignorance, they’re afraid of heaven knows what idiocy being attributed to them. A great musician or fashionable playwright or highly successful actor will be on familiar terms with newspaper critics, but they know perfectly well who and what those critics are: they’re individuals who between the age of eighteen and twenty-five became newspaper reporters just as you or I did, just as they might have gone into the cod-liver oil business or become a bookkeeper to an equestrian circus. Journalism put them in contact with writers, actors, painters, sculptors, musicians, and thus equipped them with a vocabulary extensive enough to write a defamatory column about a genius or eulogize an idiot.