7. The Clubfoot of Notre Dame

If you wander down the Champs-Elysses today, or mosey over to Montmartre or the Trocadero or the Latin Quarter, you can still find a few people who remember me, even though I haven't been there since 1933.

Therefore, I think it's only fair that I tell youmy side of the story.

I hit Paris in late afternoon of a lovely spring day in April, and even before I had time to line up a hotel and hunt up a place to eat, I found myself in a mild disagreement with some of the locals concerning exactly how many aces there were supposed to be in the deck I was dealing from, and just as things were starting to get ugly, the local constabularies rescued me and thoughtfully lined up my room and board for the next week, all at public expense.

Now, while I wouldn't never want to complain about such generous treatment, I'd be less than my usual forthright and honest self if I didn't point out that the prison fare in Paris don't quite measure up to the quality of grub you get at Maxim's or the Tour d'Argent, and the beds weren't quite as luxurious as you might expect at the Plaza-Athenee or the Ritz. But given the price, I didn't have no real serious objections, and I was almost sorry to leave when they gave me my walking papers a week later.

I stopped at a sidewalk cafe, which didn't cater to no locals but was filled to overflowing with bearded American writers, all of ’em with tortured artistic eyes, and after I'd et some snails and washed them down with a bottle of wine, I realized that I still didn't have no place to stay.

I couldn't see no sense wasting any money on one of the more expensive hotels, so I started wandering around, kind of testing the waters to see if I could rent a room and a companion of the female persuasion for the price of a room alone, and pretty soon I found myself in an alley, and I came to this big door, and I could hear all kinds of laughing and clapping on the other side of it, like folks were having a real good time, so I opened it and stepped inside.

It was dark, and there were all kinds of theatrical-type props lying around, and about twenty yards off I could see a light, so I went in its direction, and suddenly I found myself face-to-face with this beautiful blonde lady who had evidently dressed in kind of a hurry, because she wasn't wearing nothing but a pair of high heels and a bunch of feathers in her hair.

“Howdy, ma'am,” I said. “I heard the sound of merrymaking out in the alley, and I just followed my ears.”

She looked kind of startled, and shot me a quick grin, and whispered, “Who are you?”

“The Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones at your service, ma'am,” I said. “If you ain't got no serious plans for the rest of the evening, I'd be happy to escort you to some of the finer night spots in town.”

Suddenly I heard a road of laughter off to my left, and I turned and saw a bunch of people sitting at tables, all of ’em laughing their heads off.

“Am I intruding in some kind of private party, ma'am?” I asked.

“You are intruding on the stage of the Follies Bergere, you fool!” she snapped.

“Does that mean youain't available for an evening of fun and frolic?” I asked.

“Don't you understand?” she hissed. “You're interrupting a performance!”

“Where I come from, ladies don't perform wearing nothing but a smile,” I said. Then I mulled on it a bit, and added, “Maybe that's why I left, now that I come to think on it.”

The audience laughed again, and then I was surrounded by maybe two dozen more ladies who weren't wearing no more than the first, and it seemed that as long as I was there, and a stranger in town, the least I could do was introduce myself to each of ’em. I'd gotten about halfway down the line when they all started dancing across the stage, and I was left standing there all alone, so I figured I might as well dance after ’em. Now, the waltz is just about the only dance I know, and it's right difficult to do without a partner, but I done the best I could, and just as I caught up with them a bunch of gendarmes started walking toward the stage, and even though I knew I was innocent of all wrongdoing, I didn't like the look in their eyes, so once I got near the curtain I just kept on waltzing, but the second I was offstage the audience started screaming something in French, and a minute later the stage manager ran up to me.

“They want more of you!” he said breathlessly.

“Well, of course they do,” I said. “With all the old guys who stare at ’em night after night, it's probably been years since they was approached by a good-looking young buck like myself.”

“I don't mean the girls,” he said. “I mean the audience!”

“I don't think I follow you, Brother,” I said.

“They think you're a clown, that you're part of the act. They want an encore!”

“An encore?” I repeated.

“What else can you do?”

“I'm a preacher by trade,” I said. “I suppose if push came to shove I could give ’em a rouser about the Song of Solomon.”

“Just get out there and dosomething !” said the stage manager, shoving me out into the spotlights.

The audience stopped yelling then, and settled back into their chairs.

“Howdy, folks,” I said. “I'm the Right Reverend Lucifer Jones, and I've come to bring the word of the Lord into your dull, lackluster lives.”

Well, for some reason or other, that brought forth a burst of chuckles, and I figured as long as they seemed to be in a partying mood, I'd warm ’em up with the story about the peg-legged whaler and the fireman's daughter before I got down to serious business, and they liked that one so much I followed it up with the one about the schoolmarm and the left-handed plumber, and by this time even the gendarmes were having a good time, and I figured I might as well put off any serious sermonizing til Sunday morning rolled around, and I told ’em a couple of more tales I'd accumulated during my travels to distant and exotic lands, and even though they didn't understand the one about the bow-legged jade merchant and the mandarin's daughter they laughed anyway, and we were having a high old time when the manager slipped me a note saying the girls were in serious danger of catching cold if they didn't start generating a little body heat, and I writ back that I may well have had the strength of ten because my heart was pure but I had counted twenty-five of ’em and he'd have to send fifteen of ’em home, and he wrote back to say I'd misunderstood him and what he meant was that he wanted me to get off the stage so they could go back to dancing.

Well, I didn't want none of them frail flowers coming down with a cold because of me, so I thanked the audience for being so friendly to a foreigner, and told them to stop by my tabernacle if they ever felt in serious need of salvation.

“Where is it?” asked one old geezer.

“I ain't had time to set up shop yet,” I said. “But if any of you gents or ladies can suggest a good location, I'm willing to listen.”

“Notre Dame!” said another, and everyone guffawed, and then I left the stage and the girls started working up a sweat, and the manager walked over to me.

“I don't know whether I should arrest you for interrupting the show, or offer you a long-term contract,” he said. “I think I shall settle for politely showing you the door.”

“Well, youcould do me one favor, Brother,” I said.

“And what is that?”

“Tell me about this Notre Dame,” I said. “I always knew they played football. I didn't know they saved souls, too.”

“It is the greatest church in the world,” he said, looking at me like I had some kind of rare tropical disease. “How can you not know of it?”

“I know of it,” I said with some dignity. “But I was under the impression that it was somewhere in Indiana.”

He shook his head. “It is at the Ile de la Cite.” I asked him to tell me how to get there, since I figured if I could get in tight with Knute Rockne or whoever was coaching the team these days I might get a little inside information that would help me beat the point spread, and then I thanked him for his help, bade him a fond farewell, and started walking down the lonely, deserted streets of Paris.

It must have been close to four in the morning when I got there, and let me tell you, it was one mighty impressive sight, even if I couldn't spot the stadium in the dark. There were gargoyles galore, one in particular bringing back memories of Honor Weinberger, a girl I'd known back in Moline, Illinois, and all kinds of stained glass windows, including a big rose-colored one, and finally I opened the door and walked inside. Someone was playing some mighty mournful music on the pipe organ, but I couldn't see who it was. In fact, it was so dark in there that I couldn't even see the ceiling, and after I'd looked around a bit and drunk in the architecture, of which there was an awful lot to drink in, I decided to see if I could hunt up the locker room, so I opened a door and started moseying down this corridor, which led to a batch of other corridors and doors, and pretty soon I couldn't hear the music no more and I was pretty well-nigh lost, so I figured I'd retrace my steps and wait until daylight and maybe hunt up Knute and the gang at their practice field, but as I turned I saw this ugly little feller kind of shuffling after me. He looked like he knew his way around a lot better than I did, so I walked over to him on the assumption that he might be able to help me.

“Good evening, Brother,” I said. “Was that you playing on the organ?”

He nodded. “I do it to relax, when nobody's around.”

“You're right good at it.”

He smiled a homely kind of smile. “Thank you very much.” He paused. “Who are you, by the way?”

“I'm the Right Reverend Lucifer Jones, and I'm looking for the team's headquarters.”

“Team?” he repeated. “What team?”

“The varsity, of course,” I said. “Can't make no money betting on freshman games.”

“We don't have any teams here,” he said. “This is Notre Dame.”

“I'm afraid that you been misinformed,” I told him. “It just so happens that you got a top-notch football team.”

He smiled. “That is the Notre Dame in America.”

“You mean there's more than one of you?” I said.

He nodded.

“You know,” I said, “I been thinking all night that it seemed like you guys scheduled an awful lot of road games. I guess that explains it.”

“Well, now that you're here, why don't you join me in a glass of wine?” he said.

“That's mighty neighborly of you,” I replied.

“It gets lonely here at night,” he explained. “You're the first person I've seen in weeks.”

“Well, you must see ’em when you go home in the mornings.”

“I live here,” he said. “My room is over by the belltower. I haven't set foot outside the church in, oh, it must be close to thirty years now.”

We reached this little room that had a table and four chairs, and while I sat down, he limped over to a cabinet and pulled out two glasses and a bottle of red wine.

“Looks like you twisted your ankle,” I said.

“It is a permanent condition,” he said. “I'm a clubfoot.”

“Well, I don't suppose it makes much difference, as long as no one's kicking field goals around here.”

“Ilike you, Reverend Jones,” he said, filling the glasses. “You are a very understanding man.”

“And you are a very generous host,” I said. “I want to thank you for the wine, Brother...?”

“Quesadilla.”

“Brother Quesadilla,” I concluded.

“You didn't laugh,” he noted.

“Did someone tell a joke?”

“No,” he said. “But my name ... the Spanish seem to find it amusing.”

“Well, the Spanish are easily amused,” I said. “Usually a dead bull will do the trick.”

“I like you more and more,” he said. “No one has ever conversed so freely with me.”

“Why not?” I said. “You seem like a friendly enough feller.”

“Who knows? They hear the rumors, and ... “ He spread his hands and shrugged.

“Uh ... just what kind of rumors are you referring to, Brother Quesadilla?” I asked.

“Oh, that I kidnap women and do grotesque things to them in the belltower,” he said with a shrug.

“Sounds noisy,” I allowed.

“On my honor, Reverend Jones, I have never taken a single woman to the belltower.”

My first impulse was to ask if he took married women there. My second impulse was to ask if he didn't take ’em to the belltower, wheredid he take ’em? Then I took a serious look at all the muscles on his arms and neck, and my third and most reasonable impulse was to change the subject, which I proceeded to do.

“Brother Quesadilla,” I said, “I been looking for a place to establish my tabernacle. As long as Fate has brung me to your doorstep, how much do you think your employers would rent this joint out for?”

He chuckled at that. “This is the Notre Dame Cathedral. It's not for rent, Reverend Jones.”

“Well, here it is, four in the morning, and not a soul is milling around except you and me,” I pointed out. “It seems a sorry waste of such a nice tasteful building.”

“You preach to your congregation at four in the morning?” he asked.

“Well, truth to tell, I had in mind something more in the way of maybe a nightly bingo tournament to help pay the overhead.”

“Bingo?” he said, puzzled.

“Well, if the French don't play bingo, I suppose we could set up a craps table and maybe a roulette wheel.”

“It's a fascinating concept,” he admitted with a grin, “but this is a place of worship.”

“Brother Quesadilla, you'd be surprised how often people call upon the Good Lord when they got a pair of dice in their hands,” I said.

He considered it for a minute and then shook his head sadly. “They'd never permit it.”

“Wouldn't nobody have to know about it except you and me and such various sinners as we manage to attract,” I said. “We could set up shop every night from, say, midnight til five in the morning.”

“We?” he repeated.

“As in you and me,” I said.

“Do you mean you'd really trust the notorious Clubfoot of Notre Dame?”

“Sure,” I said. “I just won't go to the belltower with you.”

“This is a most intriguing concept,” he said. “Would we split the profits down the middle?”

“One-third for you, one-third for me, and one-third for the Lord,” I said.

“As the Lord's landlord, I'll hold His share of the money,” said Quesadilla.

“I was kind of figuring on holding it myself,” I replied, “me being His spokesman and all.”

“Fifty-fifty?” he said.

I sighed. “Fifty-fifty,” I agreed.

“How do you plan to get word to all the sinners?” he asked.

“I met a batch of ’em tonight,” I said. “I'll just go on back to the same place tomorrow and announce that we're open for preaching, salvation, and craps.”

“We'll need some craps tables and a roulette wheel,” noted Quesadilla.

“Well, I figure if I'm supplying the sinners, the very least the landlord can do is supply the equipment.”

He mulled on it for a minute or two and then agreed.

We shook hands, and I left him playing on the pipe organ. Then I hunted up a nearby hotel, which had seen better days and probably better centuries. I figured I was moving up to more elegant quarters the next night, but I didn't see no need to insult the management, so I registered for a week and the next morning I tiptoed out while the desk clerk was otherwise occupied.

There wasn't much for me to do until after dinnertime, so I decided to mosey on over to the Louvre and soak up a little culture. I saw everyone clustered around this one painting, and I figured it must be something pretty special, so I stood in line until I could get a good close look at it, but it turned out to be a picture of this kind of plain woman who couldn't quite make up her mind whether to smile at the painter or not, and in truth it didn't hold a candle to the picture of Nellie Willoughby in the alltogether that they had hanging over the Long Bar of the New Stanley Hotel back in Nairobi.

I wandered around a bit more, and then I came to this statue of a lady who wasn't wearing an awful lot more that the ladies I'd seen the previous night, and it set my good artistic blood to boiling, because someone had busted off the arms out of sheer malicious mischief, and since it hadn't been covered up or repaired or nothing I figured the guards didn't know about it yet, so I hunted up a gendarme and grabbed him by the arm and led him over to the statue and pointed out what had happened and told him he'd better report it to his superior and maybe double their security until the culprit was caught. He just looked at me like I posed a serious danger, and right on the instant I realized that it was an inside job, and he didn't want to let his superiors know that he'd had any part of it, so I apologized for taking his time, and made a mental note to come back on his day off, and lay out the whole plot to whoever was in charge of the place after first finding out if there was a reward for exposing the culprits.

After I left the Louvre, I found I still had some time on my hands, so I wandered over to the Arc de Triomphe, which I'd always thought was horse race but turned out to be a kind of big stone arch as well, though for the life of me I couldn't see how you could bet on it. I saw a bunch of Frenchmen standing around not doing much of anything, so I walked over and told ’em that they looked like a sporting lot, and that they could now do their sinning and their repenting all in the same spot if they'd come to Notre Dame a bit after midnight. Most of ’em thought I was kidding, but three or four guys writ down the information, and I told ’em to make sure they passed the word to all their friends and relations.

I stopped at a sidewalk cafe for dinner, and got a little live entertainment with my meal when a couple of bearded Americans wearing turtlenecks and berets got into a knock-down drag-out over which of ’em looked more like Hemingway. In point of fact, the only Hemingway I knew was bald and eighty and ran a hardware store back in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, but I didn't see no sense hurting their feelings by enlightening ’em, and before long the gendarmes came along and dragged ’em both off to the hoosegow just as I was finishing my dessert.

By then it was time to go back to the Follies Bergere. I figured I'd just hunt up M. Bergere and ask him to make the announcement for me, but nobody'd in the whole place had seen hide nor hair of him, so I waited until the place filled up and then hopped onto the stage. Evidently I interrupted the very same blonde lady I had interrupted the night before, because she bellowed"You again!" and took off a shoe and started hammering me with it.

The audience thought it was all part of the show, and I recognized some of the same faces from the last time, so after I calmed the young lady down I told ’em a couple of more stories, including the one about the airplane pilot and the Tasmanian belly dancer, and then, when they'd all stopped laughing, I explained to them that Notre Dame had a new policy of one-stop sinning and salvation, and even though most of ’em laughed at first I kept explaining it over and over until everybody got right serious and the stage manager kept making a gesture with his hand across his throat, which I figured meant he was choking on a peach pit or something, and finally I thanked ’em for their time and hospitality and promised to greet any and all of ’em that came to Notre Dame later in the evening, and before I left the building I'd hired half a dozen refined young naked ladies to provide a little entertainment for our parishioners between midnight and sunrise.

I was thinking of stopping by the Lido and the Moulin Rouge and making the same announcement, but I noticed it was getting on toward ten o'clock and I decided I'd better get back to Notre Dame and see how Quesadilla was coming along with his part of the bargain.

Well, somehow or other, he'd managed to find a couple of roulette tables and three craps tables, and had even hunted up some poker and baccarat tables as well. I asked him if he knew anyone in the beer and wine business, so we could get a little liquid refreshment into them sinners what was running low on energy, and he said that he'd already thought of that, and couldn't see no reason to pay a middleman to set up a bar when we could do it ourselves, and just as he was explaining it to me in came a couple of deliverymen with our supplies.

We broke out a bottle of our best drinking stuff to celebrate our little enterprise, and then we settled back to wait for the sinners to start gathering, and sure enough, just after midnight, in they came, and by three in the morning we must have had a good four hundred evil men and painted women gambling their money away. Then at five o'clock we closed all the tables, and I stood up on a chair and forgave ’em in the name of my merciful and compassionate Silent Partner, and then they all went home, and me and Quesadilla paid off the young ladies and moved all the tables and supplies into a storeroom and counted up our take.

“Sixteen thousand francs!” he said excitedly.

“There's a lot to be said for working on the side of the Lord,” I agreed.

“I never realized how well salvation could pay,” he said.

“Well, it's all a matter of getting the right class of people in your congregation,” I said. “Them what's beyond redemption usually ain't got all that much pocket money, and them what's totally without sin are probably more likely to throw the first stone than place the first bet.”

Well, I found to my surprise that he liked talking religion as much as I did, so we kept it up til after sunrise, and then a batch of priests showed up and Quesadilla decided to head off to bed, and I watched the poorbox for a while and decided that the priests were missing a bet and that maybe once I got to know ’em better I'd explain to ’em how to run their church more like a business, but for the time being I decided they probably didn't want no outsiders interfering with the way they practiced their trade, so I headed toward the exit, and just as I did I bumped into a big roly-poly guy in priest's robes.

“Excuse me, Brother,” I said. “I hope I didn't do you no lasting harm.”

“I'm fine, my son,” he replied. “Didn't I see you here very early yesterday morning as well?”

“It's a possibility,” I said. “I hang around churches a lot, me being a man of the cloth and all.”

“Episcopalian?” he asked.

“That's right generous of you,” I answered, “but it's a little early in the day for me.”

He just stared at me for a minute. “Well, if you should ever need help, I'm Father Gaston.”

“I'll keep it in mind,” I promised him. “And if you ever feel the need of spiritual uplifting, I'm the Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones.”

Well, he kept on staring at me for so long that I figured he was a little bit near-sighted and had maybe forgot his glasses, so finally I just smiled at him and continued on out the door, after which I decided that I needed someplace a little more upscale to hang my hat, so I hopped a taxicab and pulled up at the Ritz a few minutes later. I found out at the desk that they didn't give no discounts to clergymen, but I figured that as long as I was already there I might as well rent myself a room, and I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon doing a little serious sleeping.

Business was booming that night, as word of our little enterprise seemed to have spread far and wide, and it kept getting better all through the week. Every morning I would leave just after sunrise, and bump into Father Gaston, and exchange a few pleasantries with him, and every evening I would round up the ladies from the Follies Bergere and cart ’em over to Notre Dame and make sure that Quesadilla didn't invite none of ’em up to the belltower for a little hanky-panky, and I was just about sure I'd finally found my calling, and was even thinking about scaring up some other churches and maybe franchising the salvation business, when one night, just when the young ladies were doing their artistic interpretation of an Indian love dance to Quesadilla's accompaniment on the pipe organ, and the mayor himself had two thousand francs riding on the next roll of the dice, Father Gaston burst into the church.

“What is going on here?” he demanded, and suddenly all our parishioners dropped what they were doing and high-tailed it for the exits, except for the young ladies, who weren't exactly dressed for going outside in the cool evening breeze.

“Well, howdy, Father Gaston,” I said. “What brings you here at this ungodly hour?”

“Ungodly is the word for it!” he bellowed. “I had a feeling all week that something strange was going on here. What are you doing in my church?”

“Acquiring a first-rate congregation of sinful men and loose women,” I explained. “After all, if they didn't have nothing to confess, you wouldn't need them little booths, would you?”

“This is outrageous!” he said. “Look at those women!”

“I can hardly take my eyes off ’em,” I agreed admiringly. “Especially the third from the left.”

“They're all naked!”

“Not much gets past your watchful eye, does it?” I said, figuring a little compliment, one clergyman to another, might help to calm him down.

“Why are they here?”

“Where else are a passel of naked ladies gonna go to find forgiveness?” I said. “I'd say Notre Dame has outdone itself tonight.”

“And what were all those other people doing here?” he continued.

“Getting all the sin and corruption out of their systems so they'd be fit for saving,” I said.

He stared at the tables. “Do you mean to tell me there's been gambling going on here?”

“No, I sure didn't mean to tell you that,” I answered.

“I didn't mean to tell him anything,” he said unhappily.

“I'm calling the gendarmes this instant!” said Father Gaston.

“It won't do no good,” I pointed out. “All our dealers and croupiers are gone. Tell ’em to come by tomorrow about midnight, and to bring plenty of money with ’em.”

“You are impossible!” he shouted at me, and then turned to Quesadilla. “I hold you responsible for this, you ugly little clubfoot!”

“I don't care,” said Quesadilla. “Reverend Jones is my friend. In fact, he's myonly friend, and I won't let you do anything bad to him.”

“He's a criminal and a fraud!” growled Father Gaston.

“Why don't you come up to the belltower with me and we'll discuss it?” suggested Quesadilla with a funny kind of smile on his face.

“We have nothing to discuss,” said Father Gaston. “I'm having you both arrested.”

“I don't think that would be a very good idea,” said Quesadilla.

“Nobody asked you your opinion,” said Father Gaston.

“If I go to court, they might ask me more than myopinion ,” said Quesadilla. “They might even ask me what I saw you doing with Madame Duchard.”

“That was seventeen years ago!” said Father Gaston uneasily.

“Oh, I'll just tell them what I saw,” said Quesadilla. “You can fill in the dates and other particulars.”

“All right,” said Father Gaston with a defeated sigh. “No gendarmes. Just get out of here and don't come back.”

“That suits me fine,” said Quesadilla. “Thirty years of this place is enough for me.”

“Hah!” said Father Gaston. “Where is an ugly little clubfoot like you going to find work? You'll starve within a month.”

“Father Gaston,” I said, “as one man of the cloth to another, I'm ashamed to hear you carrying on like this to a decent Christian like Quesadilla who never meant no one any harm, and we ain't going to listen to no more of it.”

I took Quesadilla by the arm and led him out the door, while Father Gaston just stood and glared at us.

“He's right, you know,” said Quesadilla, as we walked down the empty Paris streets. “I've been cooped up there for thirty years. How am I ever going to make a living? I don't have any job skills.”

“Sure you do,” I said. “And with a little help from me, you ain't gonna have no trouble at all.”

“What did you have in mind?” he asked curiously.

“Did you ever hear the one about the bullfighter and the fan dancer?” I asked.

“No, but—”

“Then shut up and listen.”

Well, I told it to him, and as depressed as he was, he practically fell down laughing, so I told him to get himself a pen and paper, and once he did I sat down and told him the one about the poet and the feather merchant's twin daughters, and then the one about the Sumo wrestler and the circus thin lady, and the one about the six-fingered gangster and the one-eyed manicurist, and by the time the sun had come up I've guv him about a hundred such knee-slappers.

Then, after we had breakfast, I took him over to the Follies Bergere and introduced him to the stage manager, and after he told a couple of jokes they hit it right off, and the last I saw of the Clubfoot of Notre Dame, he was providing the musical accompaniment for the dancing girls at the organ and telling the audience droll stories between acts.

As for me, I took my half of the money and headed off to London, where I hoped to find a church that was more attuned to my particular brand of salvation.