Tales from the Eternal Cafe

Introduction

IN THE WORLD OF LITERATURE, THE café has long served as a sanctuary for its conception as well as an escape from its blessed tyranny. In the tales offered here, one may picture the melancholic cafés of the nineteenth century, where the poet, drowned in obscurity, pens his masterpiece and downs his absinthe. It is impossible to ignore the music wafting from an Italian modernist café hosting a parade of elegant savages who form the stylishly depraved sweet life, or feel the unease that permeates a Moroccan café where the pungent fragrance of mint tea and hashish can cloud and vibrate the senses.

This is the realm of The Eternal Café—at once existent and envisioned—given visceral substance by the poet Janet Hamill. The tales birthed in this glowing sphere speak not only of her expansive visionary power and well-traveled life but of her devotion to copious research. Her work ranges from cinematic tales that are fresh and present to those written in the tradition of storytellers throughout time. Her tales told within cafés conjure up the atmosphere of a plethora of eras, laying out mysteries both decadent and divine. We notice a different light falling on the complex movements of her characters, separate skies, separate stars.

Janet and I befriended as we were college girls in rural South Jersey, where there were no cafés to serve our dreams or expectations. Thus we were obliged to construct our own, composited by the stones of our mutual imagination. Cafés worthy of the poets and artists we adored, paying homage to their lively gossip and dissertation. Our projected selves, relaxed within the arcane walls of our phantom cafés and dressed in the fabrics of whatever era we fixated on, discoursed with Surrealists in Paris, Romantic poets in the Lake District, and the Beats in Tangiers. Armed with the memory of these redoubtable experiences, we each set out on our own.

Janet went on to travel, from Juárez to Rome to Marrakesh, and frequented such cafés herself. After years of contemplation and study she created The Eternal Café—a meeting place well worthy of the muse, melding universes and serving up elixirs unimaginable.

There is nothing more wonderful than the café, and the tales that are drawn from them. Long live the café—whether found on the dark backstreet, the fashionable thoroughfare, or the pages of a book! Within them, as through these tales, we gain entrance to the history of a world where madams rub shoulders with mystics and visionaries with vagabonds.

—Patti Smith

Baudelaire at the Prince of Wales

ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF. I’M a debtor, pornographer, and unreformed Socialist. I have a gift for conversation and an amusing take on everything, including my self-imposed exile in Belgium. I am Coco Poulet Malassis, who despite my ignoble achievements and reputation as a loyal, faithful friend, will be remembered solely as the publisher of Charles Baudelaire’s first collection. (Well, perhaps with this new invention of photography, my most distinguished features—my goatee and embroidered skull cap—will be remembered.)

Charles and I first met in the heady days of ’47–’48, the days of the first communard, when everyone was setting up barricades and calling for a Republic. Our politics were compatible, and we hated anything that spoke of convention.

Our temperaments were, and are, very different. Charles is inclined to the serious and spiritual, while I laugh at everything.

At the time of our first meeting, Charles was already gaining a reputation for his poetry. Aside from its originality and craft, it was said to be filled with debauchery. Of course, that appealed to me. Anything to shock the bourgeoisie. He was looking for a publisher, and while I wasn’t a publisher per se, I came from a long line of printers. I undertook the production of Charles’s first book, and our friendship was sealed.

Now in our forties, Charles and I both live in Brussels—Charles, as is his fashion, at the Hôtel du Grand Miroir, I in more humble quarters. Charles sees his exile as something temporary, the result of insurmountable debts in Paris, which he came here hoping to annihilate. My stay will likely be of a more permanent nature, my debt and politics so egregious to the French that I’d be thrown into prison should I return. I rather like it here and don’t care if I ever see Paris again. I get by publishing pornography and anti-Second Empire tracts, which I arrange to have smuggled across the border into France. Charles, on the other hand, despises Brussels and all things Belgian. He gets by with what remains of his dwindling inheritance.

I’d been in Brussels for several years when Charles arrived in ’64. He came with high hopes, put in his head by Belgian art dealer Arthur Stevens—high hopes of giving lectures and finding a new publisher. The former resulted in several disasters, the latter never materialized. He was already suffering from the tertiary stages of syphilis when he arrived, and I’d seen a rapid decline in his health during his stay. Even so, we make a habit of meeting at our favorite café, the Prince of Wales, conveniently located across the Place de Musée from the main post office. Originally established in 1815 by a veteran of the battle of Waterloo, it’s one of a handful of English-style pubs or taverns in Brussels patronized by Frenchmen fleeing the intolerable politics at home. Along with the French, the café attracts their Belgian and British sympathizers. Artists and writers for the most part, they enjoy the anti-Napoleon III bias of the café’s newspapers and the British ales, considered far superior to syrupy Flemish faros.

ONE LATE AFTERNOON, I WAS SEATED in the back room when Charles came in. Like me, he avoided the crowded outer room with its gentleman’s-club atmosphere and headed straight for the back room. I hadn’t seen him in almost two weeks, and I was stunned by his appearance. Usually impeccable, his clothes were uncharacteristically disheveled, he had a few days growth on his normally smooth face, and his hair was unwashed and hung in long locks over his shoulders. His cheeks were ashen, his eyes sunken and shadowed. My first thought was that he’d been drinking excessively, a nasty habit he’d developed in exile.

He sat across from me in a quiet corner. He didn’t greet me. I wasn’t certain he even knew who I was. I watched him remove his Inverness cape, his black wide-brimmed hat, and the sedative-soaked turban he wore beneath it to relieve his migraines. He laid them on the chair beside him and glanced around the room, looking for what I don’t know.

He sat silently staring into space then finally spoke in a barely audible voice. He said he felt as though he was twenty years old, sitting in his cabin on the Paquebot-des-Mers-du-Sud. In his mind, the room’s compactness, its low ceiling, wood paneling, and low hanging lamp over the table must have simulated his cabin when he was bound for Calcutta under the orders of his stepfather, General Aupick, who thought an ocean voyage would cure him of poetry.

He said he felt dizzy. He didn’t know if it was vertigo or if he was seasick. He said water must be flooding the hold, giving the ship a list to starboard. He gripped the bottom of his chair to steady himself. He said we were closeted in a tight cabin, just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, to the east of Madagascar. We were two days away from the Maldives, sailing turbulent waters, with a kerosene lamp overhead, swinging back and forth.

He started to concentrate on a faint patch of light pouring through the room’s single window. He said the light danced on the floor planks, creating patterns of a mast, a sail, and rigging. The dancing patch became a blazing orb, high in a vermilion sky. He suggested we surrender to the rough rhythm of the sea. We were sailing toward ornate mansions dotting the shore of a remote island.

As I said, I’d been observing a definite decline in Charles’s condition since his arrival in Brussels, but his words on this occasion were more disquieting than ever. I was accustomed to his complaints of migraines, stiffness, losing his balance, and increasing number of seizures. I knew his temperament was getting more and more unpredictable and he was drinking more. I saw his growing agitation, confusion, and forgetfulness, his tendency to keep to himself or fail to show for engagements. I was aware of his prolonged episodes of despondency, but never before had I known him to be as abstracted from his surroundings as he was at that moment.

He sat silently. Then I spoke. My dear Charles, your remote island is the Prince of Wales.

Charles’s eyes stayed fixed on the distance, staring at his shoreline.

Charles, look, it’s me, Coco!

Captain Saliz, he said, addressing me as the captain of the Paquebot-des-Mers-du-Sud, I find the rough seas no longer disturb me. Soon it will be evening, and the stucco villas on the coast will pick up the glow of the moon.

To me, Charles’s delusion was an alarming indication that his disease had reached his brain. Syphilis often manifested as dementia in its end stage. My concern prompted me to signal for service in the hope that food and drink would bring him to his senses.

Good evening, gentlemen. What can I bring you? The waitress at the Prince of Wales was a dark-haired, bronze-skinned beauty named Marie. She could easily have passed for a young Jeanne Duval, Charles’s Creole mistress. Her exotic looks came from a strain of East Indian blood mixed with her native Dutch. She was the wife of Harry Turner, the café proprietor.

I ordered ale and steak tartar with porter and egg, a specialty of the house.

And Monsieur Baudelaire … ?

Baudelaire looked adoringly at Marie and took her hand. Madame de Bragard, he said, should you ever leave Mauritius and visit us in France, you will not be without admirers.

I saw the confusion in Marie’s face. Don’t mind him. He’s reenacting an old sea voyage.

Will Madame be serving brandy after dinner? Charles inquired.

Marie withdrew her hand and looked to me for direction.

Monsieur Baudelaire would like a brandy.

Marie nodded, smiled sympathetically, and went to fetch the order.

Charles followed her graceful movements as she disappeared into the large room, taking his voyage vision with her. He snapped out of his trance and finally looked across, opaque glaze gone from his eyes.

Coco! How good to see you, he said, making the transition from ocean vessel to the Prince of Wales with ease. I’m glad you chose the small room. The main room is crowded with louts, noisy revolutionaries still wearing the red cravats of their youth. It’s so tiresome.

I’m worried about you, Charles. I haven’t seen you in over a week, and you just addressed me as Captain Saliz and Marie as Madame de Bragard?

The Paquebot-des-Mers-du-Sud! And Madame de Bragard, the wife of the Maldivian plantation owner. I met her on my aborted trip to India.

"One and the same, une dame Creole?"

The same. I hope I didn’t embarrass her. I wanted to order a brandy.

I’ve ordered one for you.

Baudelaire reached into his pocket and withdrew two letters. After ten days, ten days, this is all that was waiting for me at the post office! As if that weren’t enough of a disappointment, they weren’t sufficiently franked. I had to pay to have them released.

Who do you hear from?

My mother and a creditor.

Just one creditor? You’re lucky, Charles! I received six letters from six different creditors today.

Baudelaire opened his mother’s letter and tried to read it. I can’t understand this. The words make no sense. Maybe it’s my eyes. Would you mind reading it for me?

I took the letter and read aloud: My Dearest, Is it possible that you exaggerate the gravity of your illness? I took the liberty of reading your complaints to Dr. Porché here in Honfleur. He thinks you may be suffering from nervous exhaustion. In which case, he says you don’t need more medicine. It’s best you take long walks and cold baths….

Charles interrupted my reading. Long walks and cold baths! Can my mother actually think they would put an end to my migraines? She’s become so indoctrinated by this quack, Porché. She’s taking his word over mine. To suggest that I don’t need medication! Without laudanum and quinine I wouldn’t be alive!

I reacted calmly. Charles, she doesn’t even know the true nature of your illness. Shall I continue?

No. Baudelaire picked up his turban and wrapped it around his temples. Her letter’s only brought back my head pain. The thought of writing to her and telling her about the agonies I’ve endured would be worse than the agonies I’ve endured. God, it was horrific! Cold sweats, cramping, vomiting. Head pains like nails piercing my skull. I couldn’t stand without losing my balance. Once I pulled down all of the curtains from the window and knocked over my desk. Worse of all, I couldn’t sleep. The ceiling stains, transforming into faces….

What faces …?

All the faces that I’ll never see again. My face, the one painted by Emile Deroy when I lived on the Île de la Cité, the face of the young flâneur. I was so confident then, before I squandered the bulk of my inheritance on kid gloves, Moroccan bindings, the best Bordeaux and hashish. The shape-shifting faces mocked me. I saw Jeanne’s face in its copper radiance, her face with its voluptuous features sitting beside me in an open carriage in the Bois de Boulogne raising everyone’s eyebrows. The dandy and his black Venus. Oh how she aroused my mind and my senses. And lastly, there was my mother’s face in the days shortly after my father’s death. I thought I finally had her to myself. She’d sit on the floor with me with her great, wide skirts, as I traced my future voyages on my maps. Of course, all that was before she married General Aupik.

I’m sorry. I returned the letter to its envelope. So, when did you last hear from Lemer? I asked, referring to Baudelaire’s agent in Paris.

"Weeks, weeks and weeks! The incompetent ass! He’s yet to interest anyone in Paradis