chapter02-01

2

Miss SteinInstructs

When we cameback to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely. The city had accommodated itselfto winter, there was good wood for sale at the wood and coal place across ourstreet,

and there werebraziers outside of many of the good cafés so that you could keep warm on the terraces.Our own apartment was warm and cheerful. We burned boulets which were molded, egg-shaped lumpsof coal dust, on the wood fire, and on the streets the winter light was beautiful.Now you were accustomed to see the bare trees against the sky and you walked onthe fresh-washed gravel paths through the Luxembourg gardens in the clear sharpwind. The trees were beautiful without their leaves when you were reconciled tothem, and the winter winds blewacross the surfaces of the ponds and the fountains were blowing in the brightlight. All the distances were short now since we had been in the mountains.

Because of thechange in altitude I did not notice the grade of the hills except with pleasure,and the climb up to the top floor of the hotel where I worked, in a room thatlooked across all the roofs andthe chimneys of the high hill of the quarter, was a pleasure. The fireplacedrew well in the room and it was warm and pleasant to work. I broughtmandarines and roasted chestnuts to the room in paper packets and peeled andate the small tangerine-like oranges and threw their skins and spat their seedsin the fire when I ate them and roasted chestnuts when I was hungry. Iwas always hungry with the walking and the cold and the working. Up in the roomI had a bottle of kirsch that we had brought back from the mountains and I tooka drink of kirsch when I would get toward the end of a story or toward the endof the day’s work. When I was through working for the day I put the notebook, orthe paper, away in the drawer of the table and put any mandarines that wereleft in my pocket. They would freeze if they were left in the room at night.

It was wonderfulto walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I’d had good luck working.I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knewwhat was going tohappen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes whenI was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in frontof the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of theflame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look outover the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always writtenbefore and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence.Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence,and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentencethat you knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to writeelaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found thatI could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start withthe first true simple declarative sentence I had written. Up in that room Idecided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I wastrying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline.