Chapter 30 II Departure from Montparnasse to join the war (1) Artists' cafeteria during the war

In Montparnasse we have artists' cafeterias, which make people forget for a while the pain of the nation and so on. Max Jacobs Paris was at war, food was rationed, and Paris was suffering from poverty and hunger.People lack food and clothing.The street lamps and car headlights dimmed.The glass windows of every household are pasted with tape to prevent them from being shattered by enemy plane bombing.The whole city is shrouded in a gloomy, flat, boring and lifeless atmosphere.People have to adapt to new situations, accept new realities, and develop new habits.The people have also started to lack food, and people of all walks of life have deeply realized the fate that has always belonged to the poor: life is just the digestive tract, and they are running around all day for food, but the money in their pockets is only enough for NFDA4: a serving of vegetables 15 sous for beef soup is equivalent to five centimes today. , 13 sous for a serving of spinach, 2 sous for a catty of pears, 1 sous for a piece of chocolate...

The war interrupted food supplies for foreign artists living in Paris.Merchants left the city, galleries were closed, remittances to certain artists from abroad could not enter France, and one had to wait patiently for some briquettes for heating in winter.Rodin himself had to suffer from the cold on his sickbed, because no one thought of fueling his recovery. However, it is an old tradition that artists help each other.Cabot had supported the Impressionists before by buying canvases for them, organizing exhibitions, and sending money to Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir. In the early 20th century, Russians in Paris organized benefit balls to help the poor among them. In 1913, Salmon, Billy and Valnow announced in the magazine "Poetry and Prose" that they had created a literary mutual to raise funds for writers who had no source of income.From 1914 onwards, at his residence on Rue Gabriel in Montmartre, Max Jacob often wrote to his friends who had gone to the front to inform them of the news.He also often received news from the front, which he then relayed to all his friends in the rear. In 1915, the poet (Max Jacobs) also organized a donation drive for the Italian painter Gino Severini, who was suffering from hunger, cold and tuberculosis in the south of France, and remitted the donations to him.Max Jacob's close friend, the Spaniard Ortiz Zarate (like Max, Zarate also saw Jesus appear on the wall of his residence): when he found Modigliani in When the studio lost consciousness, he did not hesitate to beat the drums and gather friends to send the painter to his home in Italy for treatment.

Some canteens are prepared for artists in Montparnasse, subsidized by the city government.Marie Vasilyev also runs a cafeteria for artists on Mena Street where she lives.Throughout the First World War, it was not uncommon to meet there the artists who had long lived in Montparnasse, the artists of the "laundry boats", recipients of donations, many prominent figures during and after the war. Mary Vasilyev is Russian.After completing his painting studies in Moscow, he stayed in Italy for a while and finally came to France in 1912.She once studied art with Matisse for a short time, and later opened a painting school on Rue Menor.Yugi Desnos once said: Mary Vasiliev was resting on a bench a few weeks after she first arrived in France, and there was a well-dressed, polite and unattractive woman not far away. The eye-catching old man sometimes plays the violin and sometimes paints, and his craftsmanship is extraordinary, which caught Mary's attention.Then the old gentleman proposed to Mary to marry her.His name is Henri Rousseau, he is 40 years older than the girl, and he is a civil servant of the Taxation Department of Commodities in Paris.

Mary Vasilyev did not refuse his marriage proposal.With his help she painted and sculpted, and provided generous assistance to friends, such as opening an artists' canteen, so that struggling artists could at least keep their lives from being miserable during the war years. Opponents of rumors that prior to 1914 the Empress of Russia sent Marie Vasilyev regular remittances of rubles said that she had been seen distributing Communist leaflets in Munich.So at the end of the war, she was suspected of working for the Bolsheviks in Russia. Since Mary Vasilyev's canteen occupies private property, the supper order can be exempted, and her canteen is known throughout Montparnasse.Artists frequently pushed the door to enter this cafeteria, and the joyful gatherings at night can greatly dilute the strong ideological and mental pressure caused by rumors of her betrayal during the day.

The walls of Marie Vasiliev's cafeteria are covered with paintings: Chagall, Lesche, Modigliani; the floor is covered with slightly damaged carpets; many shelves made by Marie Vasiliev , felt doll heads to be sold to the dressmaker Paul Poiré or to the bourgeoisie on the right bank of the Seine; everywhere are mismatched chairs, cushions with splits and hundreds of flea markets. Behind the bar, Mary and a female chef are busy preparing meals for the guests.There are two stoves, one with gas and one with alcohol.They prepare a bowl of vegetable porridge for each person, worth a dozen centimes, and sometimes provide a dessert.The wealthiest person can add a glass of wine and three ordinary cigarettes.

People ate and drank, played guitar and sang, and some people recited a few poems now and then.They speak a variety of languages: chatting in Russian, cheering in Hungarian, telling jokes in all languages.When the sirens sounded, they sang louder, hoping to mask their fear and impending danger. During the daytime of the next day, the painters met at Dom or Luo Tongde tavern.Because it's warm there, they can stay there all day.In these two taverns they could manage to steal as much food as they needed for the day.The boss, Libion, turned a blind eye to their behavior, saw it in his eyes, and remembered it in his heart, but never said a word.Before the war, his customers used to pack their dishes and cutlery into backpacks or pockets and take them away.Artists could use them in their paintings, so Libion ​​never intervened, except on two points: he forbade ladies from taking off their hats in his tavern, and men forbid opening bottles of ether or bags of cocaine to take drugs .In other respects, old Libion ​​is a model of a good old man.He ordered that waiters should not ask customers to spend more, because in times of food shortage, even a small piece of cream may be the price of a person's meal.Why is there coffee served with cream?Because this is the daily drink of poor people: it is not good to drink it in one go, it can only be tasted slowly in a cup, it is not expensive, and it is still hot.Everyone can stay as long as they like in the warmth of the tavern.Libion, the owner, even queued up at the tobacco shop to buy cigarettes for the artists that they couldn't get themselves.He likes them and does everything possible to protect them.What he did in Montparnasse, Fred did in Montmartre.

Most of the painters and poets of the "laundry boats" went to the front, and those who stayed in Paris also went to the Libion ​​Tavern.The artists who originally lived and worked in the Montmartre area found the faces of Montparnasse artists in the Libion ​​Tavern, and some of them still knew them.Brac, Derain, and Apollinaire went to the front to fight and left Paris, so Max Jacob, Vlaminck, Salmon and Picasso became representatives of the greatly reduced Montmartre La Vignan Front .The following artists they approached were about to take control of the Rue de Vavins and arm it with the same flamboyance and wealth as yesterday's Montmartre: the Polish Moise Kisling, the Japanese Fujita, the Italian Modigliani , the Swiss Sandras, and the Lithuanian Sudin... For those who are still in Paris, soldiers on vacation, retired soldiers, and soldiers on vacation, they feel particularly comfortable when they step into the door of the Rotonde Tavern , as if combining the two major battles fought in the Marne region of northeastern France during World War I.Enemies on the battlefield pursued to the edge of the world made them happy.