Max Jacob
Write Your Memoirs
Who remembers Passy before the Eiffel Tower? All the witnesses are dead, except me perhaps. From a distance, when you arrived by passenger steamer, you saw around the Trocadero a city of white villas and palaces. That was where Rosa Josepha, a phenomenon of the circuses (the term music hall was not yet employed), used to live. She lived on the ground floor. She was a bifurcated doll dressed in maroon velvet who used to play on a carpet. A brunette lady in white lace took very little notice of her. I saw the courtyard of the furnished flat and, in a tilbury, a Moldavian officer in full dress uniform whose expensive lifestyle aws paid for by the impresarios. A brother? A husband? The memory of this visit has not remained with me. I had to return by tram to the Place de la Republique and let myself be carried further, as far as Vincennes; on the rails I lost a rather old little suitcase. A man in grey was waiting for me under the chestnut trees - it was myself. Rosa Josepha has two souls in a single body and I have one soul in two bodies.
Translated by Michael Bullock
Page(s) 19
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