Portrait of a Girl

As strangers in the night, they met. It was one of those unassuming English private hotels. In the brightly-lit foyer stood an American girl in a beige-coloured raincoat, a restless soul wandering about in the middle of the night looking for someone to talk to – behind the plate glass door that Gavin the night porter spent the whole night locking and unlocking to let the residents in and out. The girl was leaning with her elbow on the desk of the porter’s lodge, taking an occasional offered puff from his cigarette – she didn’t smoke, but just to be polite. A picture so comely as almost to be homely.

That’s the scene that’s seen through the plate glass window. Warm and inviting. Outside in the chill and wind, Fred the fisherman’s son walked by, cold boots on the cold paving stones, shoulders hunched and collar turned up against the inclement weather, on the way to his equally cold room. He was drawn to the light and the inviting scene behind the plate glass window. He stopped and looked in. She looked out and saw him. She approached the plate glass from the inside. He approached the plate glass from the outside. And so the American girl in a beige-coloured raincoat wandering about in the middle of the night looking for someone to talk to found someone to talk to.

It was a time when all the young people flocked to the metropolis. Because the streets were paved with gold, weren’t they? That’s what everyone said. So the young people were going there to fill their pockets with gold and get rich. We all were.

We were strangers in the night, come to the metropolis, all of us in boots meant for walking. Boots that would criss-cross continents. Boots for American girls who rated the capitals of Europe not by the number and quality of their art galleries, but by the number and quality of their Wimpy Bars (“Paris, pas si mal”; “Nice, not so nice”). Boots for boys from Australia and New Zealand and South Africa exploring the northern hemisphere.

In the African veld, lions roar, elephants trample, buffaloes charge. Walking around in that foreign veld is not recommended for American girls. There the face of the American girl is seen looking up through the green leaves of a peach tree in a safe domestic garden. Green eyes, ripe mouth, its corners just touched by the trace of an enigmatic smile. Lips that have mouthed French vowels?

In the self-confident continent, the dangers are more of the human kind. Outsiders quake, but American girls, brought up within shooting distance of Central Park and subway stations have the sophistication to deflect the threats. Outsiders, with their more straightforward approach, tackle the confrontation head-on, with more catastrophic consequences. The panache of the American girl is one of the wonders of the modern world, and traveling with her takes you on a trip to other worlds. The continent of the mind is the realm in which she excels. She opens unexplored vistas, plants seeds that will grow for many years. That’s the bequest of the American girl.

Numerous questions are raised. Endless debates are opened. Many topics without simple solutions are brought to the fore.

And so we got rich, because the gold was there and we filled our pockets, even though you couldn’t see it.

The face through the green peach tree leaves.

The question now is: Rank the following in order of importance as North America’s finest product: Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Henry James, the girl in the beige-coloured raincoat.

And all you have to do is carry on like this a bit longer and you’ll have a story by Donald Barthelme.

Errol Collen

Home