CHAPTER

1

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not
think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it
meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked
it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling
of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at
Princeton. There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock
down anybody who was snooty to him, although, being very shy and a
thoroughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym. He was Spider
Kelly’s star pupil. Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box
like featherweights, no matter whether they weighed one hundred and five
or two hundred and five pounds. But it seemed to fit Cohn. He was really
very fast. He was so good that Spider promptly overmatched him and got
his nose permanently flattened. This increased Cohn’s distaste for
boxing, but it gave him a certain satisfaction of some strange sort, and
it certainly improved his nose. In his last year at Princeton he read
too much and took to wearing spectacles. I never met any one of his
class who remembered him. They did not even remember that he was
middleweight boxing champion.

I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories
hold together, and I always had a suspicion that perhaps Robert Cohn had
never been middleweight boxing champion, and that perhaps a horse had
stepped on his face, or that maybe his mother had been frightened or
seen something, or that he had, maybe, bumped into something as a young
child, but I finally had somebody verify the story from Spider Kelly.
Spider Kelly not only remembered Cohn. He had often wondered what had
become of him.

Robert Cohn was a member, through his father, of one of the richest
Jewish families in New York, and through his mother of one of the
oldest. At the military school where he prepped for Princeton, and
played a very good end on the football team, no one had made him
race-conscious. No one had ever made him feel he was a Jew, and hence
any different from anybody else, until he went to Princeton. He was a
nice boy, a friendly boy, and very shy, and it made him bitter. He took
it out in boxing, and he came out of Princeton with painful
self-consciousness and the flattened nose, and was married by the first
girl who was nice to him. He was married five years, had three children,
lost most of the fifty thousand dollars his father left him, the balance
of the estate having gone to his mother, hardened into a rather
unattractive mould under domestic unhappiness with a rich wife; and just
when he had made up his mind to leave his wife she left him and went off
with a miniature-painter. As he had been thinking for months about
leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to
deprive her of himself, her departure was a very healthful shock.

The divorce was arranged and Robert Cohn went out to the Coast. In
California he fell among literary people and, as he still had a little
of the fifty thousand left, in a short time he was backing a review of
the Arts. The review commenced publication in Carmel, California, and
finished in Provincetown, Massachusetts. By that time Cohn, who had been
regarded purely as an angel, and whose name had appeared on the
editorial page merely as a member of the advisory board, had become the
sole editor. It was his money and he discovered he liked the authority
of editing. He was sorry when the magazine became too expensive and he
had to give it up.

By that time, though, he had other things to worry about. He had been
taken in hand by a lady who hoped to rise with the magazine. She was
very forceful, and Cohn never had a chance of not being taken in hand.
Also he was sure that he loved her. When this lady saw that the magazine
was not going to rise, she became a little disgusted with Cohn and
decided that she might as well get what there was to get while there was
still something available, so she urged that they go to Europe, where
Cohn could write. They came to Europe, where the lady had been educated,
and stayed three years. During these three years, the first spent in
travel, the last two in Paris, Robert Cohn had two friends, Braddocks
and myself. Braddocks was his literary friend. I was his tennis friend.

The lady who had him, her name was Frances, found toward the end of the
second year that her looks were going, and her attitude toward Robert
changed from one of careless possession and exploitation to the absolute
determination that he should marry her. During this time Robert’s mother
had settled an allowance on him, about three hundred dollars a month.
During two years and a half I do not believe that Robert Cohn looked at
another woman. He was fairly happy, except that, like many people living
in Europe, he would rather have been in America, and he had discovered
writing. He wrote a novel, and it was not really such a bad novel as the
critics later called it, although it was a very poor novel. He read many
books, played bridge, played tennis, and boxed at a local gymnasium.

I first became aware of his lady’s attitude toward him one night after
the three of us had dined together. We had dined at l’Avenue’s and
afterward went to the Café de Versailles for coffee. We had several
_fines_ after the coffee, and I said I must be going. Cohn had been
talking about the two of us going off somewhere on a weekend trip. He
wanted to get out of town and get in a good walk. I suggested we fly to
Strasbourg and walk up to Saint Odile, or somewhere or other in Alsace.
“I know a girl in Strasbourg who can show us the town,” I said.

Somebody kicked me under the table. I thought it was accidental and went
on: “She’s been there two years and knows everything there is to know
about the town. She’s a swell girl.”

I was kicked again under the table and, looking, saw Frances, Robert’s
lady, her chin lifting and her face hardening.

“Hell,” I said, “why go to Strasbourg? We could go up to Bruges, or to
the Ardennes.”

Cohn looked relieved. I was not kicked again. I said good-night and went
out. Cohn said he wanted to buy a paper and would walk to the corner
with me. “For God’s sake,” he said, “why did you say that about that
girl in Strasbourg for? Didn’t you see Frances?”

“No, why should I? If I know an American girl that lives in Strasbourg
what the hell is it to Frances?”

“It doesn’t make any difference. Any girl. I couldn’t go, that would be
all.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“You don’t know Frances. Any girl at all. Didn’t you see the way she
looked?”

“Oh, well,” I said, “let’s go to Senlis.”

“Don’t get sore.”

“I’m not sore. Senlis is a good place and we can stay at the Grand Cerf
and take a hike in the woods and come home.”

“Good, that will be fine.”

“Well, I’ll see you to-morrow at the courts,” I said.

“Good-night, Jake,” he said, and started back to the café.

“You forgot to get your paper,” I said.

“That’s so.” He walked with me up to the kiosque at the corner. “You are
not sore, are you, Jake?” He turned with the paper in his hand.

“No, why should I be?”

“See you at tennis,” he said. I watched him walk back to the café
holding his paper. I rather liked him and evidently she led him quite a
life.