In Holland my crutches introduced me into another family circle. This time, a very old gentleman in Amsterdam started talking to me at a great rate in Dutch. Grandma, dear old cynic, had especially warned me against foreigners.
"Don't believe a word they say. You mustn't trust a man who can't speak English. You never know what nonsense he may be handing you.
"It is true, I didn't know one word of Dutch, but I am sure even Grandmother would have understood the old gentleman. For one thing, he held his two hands folded together on his chest--a protuberance which blended and lost itself in a tremendous stomach--and he bobbed his head and smiled in a manner completely benign. As his conversation continued--or rather his monologue. for I didn't say anything except,"American, American" --he made gestures.
He pointed at my leg and then made a violent slashing motion at his own, and surprisingly enough for one of his age and bulk, he did a few deep-knee bends. I decided he must wear an artificial leg or which he was obviously an agile performer.
He grinned broadly, pointed into space and made a beckoning motion. "Speak English." he put in as a lure, but there was no doubt he was referring to some one else's talents. I followed him across the street and halfway down the block where he paused in front of an orthopedic supply shop. The window displayed the usual obscenely naked legs, trusses, braces, crutches, bizarre corsets, etc. At the door we were met by a square, blond Hollander who wore a leather apron and who limped slightly Here apparently was the artificial leg--not on the old man. The elderly gentleman still beaming contentedly once more gave out a great mouthful of his own language.
The younger man then turned to me and spoke in excellent English. "This is my old father. He brought you here because he believes that in America they do not have the artificial legs. My father thinks only the Dutch are so smart." He laughed. "He wanted you to see the Dutch legs such as I wear. My father believes the Indians still fight the white people over the sea and that maybe you were shot with the poisoned arrow. He thinks I am the very important people because I make the legs."
"Well, I think you're very important, too," I agreed. "I'd very much like to see your shop. Do you have your knee? You walk very well."
This is a question always of prime interest among artificial-leg wearers.
"No knee," he told me. "Do you have the knee?"
This conversation between strangers may seem somewhat off the polite path of small talk, but it is a typical opener between amputees.
The young Hollander took me into the back room and gave me a stool to sit on while he proudly demonstrated his machine tools by shaving the epidermis off a couple of halffinished thighs. His father got out some polish and carefully rubbed a shine on my rosewood crutches. As he worked he muttered, "Good, good, speak English, good, good," under his breath, smiling all the while in a way that would have satisfied even Grandmother.
The old man followed us around and once more began pouring out his Dutch. He raised his voice to a higher and higher pitch, apparently of the conviction that if be spoke loud enough I'd eventually understand him.
"My father wants to give you the beer or the chocolate," the younger man interpreted.
Again I was the cause of a shop closing at an odd hour. The three of us walked down the block to a confectionery where we imbibed a thick delicious chocolate drink.
The incident wasn't, I suppose, especially significant. I have seen many shops similar to the one in Amsterdam, and I had the price of a cup of chocolate in my purse. But during my European travels, stopping in the favorite tourist hotels and invading museums that had already thoroughly bored the local citizenry, I met only Americans. I like Americans. They're dandy, but they weren't exactly a novelty. I'd been running into them for years.
It was fun to meet the natives, a privilege that was mine merely because I didn't wear two shoes. The fact that the Hollanders behaved precisely like Americans put special meaning in the incident. It gave me evidence that there are no national boundaries to the appeal in a pair of crutches.
My prize experience, in which the crutches played the leading role, occurred in Paris. It was a very startling case of mistaken identity. I am frequently taken for some other onelegged girl. In Los Angeles, for instance, I have a friend, Ruth Wright, a very clever decorator, who also has a right leg amputation. I have been mistaken for her upon a number of occasions for no reason at all except that we both use crutches and frequent the same haunts. We don't resemble each other in the least. She has been mistaken for me, too. On several occasions acquaintances of mine have asked me, "Who was that distinguished-looking bearded man I saw you with the other night?" Ruth's husband is a distinguished gentleman with a beard, but I don't go out with him in the evenings.
I should have remembered this tendency to mis-identify, that day in Paris, but it didn't occur to me. I was strolling along the Place de L'Opera one afternoon, decked out in my best navy and white print, my white hat and white crutches. I was happily minding my own negligible business which consisted in gawking at people and marveling at the continually amazing fact that I was in Paris strolling along the Place de L'Opera, in my best navy and white print, etc.
All of a sudden, I felt someone touch my arm. Startled, I turned to look into the serious face of a thin, bespectacled young man. He looked as if he'd been reared in a library and eaten the leaves from dictionaries in lieu of lettuce. Except for the fact that he seemed to be speaking fluent French, He might have been an academic genius from almost any American college.
"Je ne voudrai que causer avec vous, mademoiselle," he said. Je vous payerai l'honoraire habituel. Je suis écrivain vous voyez et je vais écrire un livre dans lequel il y a un caractère comme vous."
His recitation seemed to cause him acute discomfort, but I didn't recognize his complaint from my avid study of a valuable volume entitled, "BRIGHTER FRENCH, Colloquial, Idiomatic, and (mildly) Technical for BRIGHT YOUNG PEOPLE" (who already know some). This was a splendid little collection of witty repartee, and although I learned a bright saying from it daily, I never seemed to choose one that came in handy.
The young man appeared to be suffering from something-frustrated love, I decided, or a bilious attack.
Being loath to admit my shocking ignorance, I said, "Oui, oui," and pointed off vaguely in the opposite direction. Apparently this was a satisfactory reply.
"Epatant!" the young man said, and hung onto my arm like a leech. He seemed increasingly distressed about life.
"Epatant, your own self!" I shook myself free. "What's the matter with you anyway?"
I fell naturally into English since I couldn't fall naturally into anything else.
"My gosh!" he gasped and blushed to the roots of his blond hair which, incidentally, could have stood the services of a good barber.He pulled himself away from me as if I were a fallen woman who'd threatened his spotless celibacy. "You're an American girl!"
"What do I look like--Ethiopian?" I snapped. "You don't look so Latin yourself."
"Oh, I'm an American, certainly. And honestly I do beg your pardon. But, you know, really--let me tell you something. 'You shouldn't use those white crutches. My goodness, I should say you shouldn't--not in Paris!"
"I certainly don't know what concern it is of yours." I said primly, and stiffening my back I hastened off down the street. But he came plodding right along behind me.
"Honestly, I'm telling you--do what I say--" he gasped. "Don't use the white crutches. I'd say the same thing to my own sister."
"Well, you just run along then and tell your sister not to wear her white crutches."
"Oh, my sister doesn't use crutches. You see--"
"I see all right," I announced righteously. "You are intoxicated and if you don't let me alone I'll call a cop--I mean a gendarme."
In sheer desperation I got in a taxicab. Nothing was so distracting to me as trying to count the proper tip for a Paris cab driver. The dejected lad just stood on the sidewalk shaking his head sadly while I drove away.
I almost forgot this peculiar performance in the excitement of getting ready to go out that evening. I was invited to a very gay and very "Latin" party with Benny Tompkins, a dreamy-looking boy with a beard from Brooklyn. That is, Benny was from Brooklyn. The beard was pure Parisian. He was in Paris studying art. He was cleverly learning to paint familiar things so they couldn't be recognized. I imagine he came in mighty handy in camouflage during the war.
I dressed myself up all fancy, including a horrible pair of dangling, bizarre earrings. It struck me pleasantly that I looked exactly like an exotic temptress. I was very elated over this pending festivity since it was going to be just terribly "Frenchy." As a matter of fact, there wasn't anything there more French than a four-year major in the subject from Harvard, U.S.A. Still, it satisfied me. I felt that I was living dangerously -part of the fast International Set. We sat on the floor in a dank apartment and drank wine, and the girls didn't look quite nice to me. However, when I recall my own getup for the occasion, I suspect we all looked about the same.
Shortly after I got there, in came the woeful-faced complainer with the white-crutch complex.
"My goodness!" I whispered to Benny. "that man who just came in is crazy."
"He's nuts all right," Benny agreed. "He's trying to write a book that is just chock-full of sin and I don't think he's ever done anything more daring in his life than get intimate with an irregular verb."
"Well, he acted very queer to me today." I told Benny all about it.
"Oh, my Lord!" Benny howled. "He probably wanted to interview you. I bet he mistook you for the famous one-legged French prostitute. She always uses white crutches."
"A pros-" but I couldn't even say the word. "One of those?" The very idea appalled me.
This was precisely the case.
I didn't regard the confusion as flattering. My idea of a prostitute was none too glamorous. I pictured a figure by Reubens, with a hip-swish like Sadie Thompson, packaged in sleazy satin and draped with a feather boa, and over it all a suffocating aroma of cheap perfume. Since then I have heard about and read the sketchy accounts of this same French prostitute's courageous activity and leadership in the Paris underground during the Nazi occupation, and I am quite proud of that brief mistaken identity.