Story: Belleau Wood VII - Epilogue.
Clockwise from upper left: Viajero - well presented but still a little fekked, Paris circa 1920, an overly young and healthy-looking Morrow supposedly circa 1920 (please add +10 years and a little haggard-ness, thanks), Paris cafe culture, Cait.
Significant music to listen to quietly whilst reading if you so wish:
Click to viewCafé Royale, Paris, May 14th, 1920.
She was on her way back from the bar, had skirted the dance floor and was adroitly navigating a path through the many tables, when a thin hand caught at her dress.
“Eh, ma chère, do I know you?” The words were English, the accent a well-travelled linguistic disaster.
She looked round and down to the equally thin young man with a shattered smile and sunken eyes who seemed quite as astonished as she at his daring. “No,” she said kindly with a shake of her head that set her earrings and beads jangling.
Europe had a surfeit of broken, hollowed-out young men who had limbs, soul or sense obliterated in the trenches; nevertheless she was quite surprised to see one so obviously convalescent at the Café Royale on a Spring evening. The place was packed with bright, boisterous young things intent on living every second in a ruckus of noise and laughter as if to make up for what the War had done to the world scant years before. It was not an atmosphere conducive to calming jagged nerves.
The man’s hair was unfashionably disarrayed, his dinner jacket too large and his shirt-studs mismatched which leant him the air of a lunatic trying to play dress-up as a gadfly, or perhaps a Dada artist. “I do,” he insisted, shaky but determined to hold his ground. “I do know you, devitza.” He blinked. “Belleau Wood. 1918.”
The candle light of her eyes hardened to an unforgiving gold as she strove to place him, needing to figure out if he was a threat.
The young man’s confidence was fragile; he recoiled, startled, but with enough sense to try to pass it off as an act of self-deprecation. “Ain’t after trouble, devitza. The old memory’s a little shot, just after checkin’ facts is all. Field Punishment takes it’s toll on a man, eh?” He tried for a smile and mostly missed.
It was the way his smile slid off his lips that did it; she recognised him, recalled his grey eyes used to shine silver but they, like he, were now a sad and leaden shadow of their former selves. Corporal Viajero with the French 167th Infantry Division - although he wasn’t French and his name had been many things before ‘Viajero’.
The first time she had seen him had been when he was tied to a cart wheel in a provincial town square on a frosty March morning without his coat - punishment for being drunk on duty. He was tied there for two hours a day for a week straight; an inconvenience that didn’t seem to dent his spirits in the least. He whistled when bored and despite his tied hands made an effort to salute all passing officers and cordially greet anything in a skirt. On the last day the town was bombarded - and he unintentionally left still tied in the midst of it - until he managed to break his bonds and run back to company lines. Even that ordeal had not quashed him, although it had left the narrowest of fractures running clean through his character. A month later, the horrors of Belleau Wood had cracked the fracture wide and pulled his mind asunder.
Remembrance washed about her feet like a tide of abattoir slurry; so real was the clammy touch of the past rushing round her ankles that she had to resist the urge to stand on a chair to escape it.
The last time she had seen Viajero was at Bezu, bloody, blank-eyed and mumbling, tied down on a stretcher amidst other broken men. The hospital had been set up in the ruins of an old church; soldiers said a statue there of the Magdalene had wept. Her own eyes had been dry: she’d felt pity for him, enough to choke on it - and had she stayed she could have helped. Could have sung back the lost souls of the soldiers huddling in the nave. But three nights of walking untouched though hell was never without its price: she was running past empty. She had enough power to save one and one only, and the Corporal was not the one in her arms and so not the one she chose. Perhaps she could have returned - perhaps she should have. But she knew the sly-smiling Dolya had his own protector standing stone-still in the chapel, and so had trusted that was enough.
Her earlier exuberance leant from the champaign and music was soured; she thought the Great War a matter of viciousness and gross stupidity on an unspeakable scale. It had turned healthy men into ghosts - both living and dead - and had tried to snatch away her ibhyka until she had stalked through a wood full of bullets and wire and corpses to fetch him back. All in all she disliked being reminded of it. She saw little good in prodding Viajero’s thoughts back to such a time either; they would get there on their own or not at all and forcing him to recall all he’d once been and all he’d been through would only break him anew.
She said nothing, but her expression softened and she neither moved away nor brushed his hand from her hem, but loitered instead, even going so far as to put down the drinks she was holding. “Belleau Wood,” she admitted reluctantly, sounding guilty.
“See now! Got holes in my mind you could drive a tank through, but you’re hard to forget, chère. I knew it - I knew you were there.” His certainty faltered. “You were - you - you were lookin’ for someone. Movin’ through it all like Gabriel himself had cloaked you in his wings, no one sure if you were a dream or a ghost.” His eyes unfocused, his attention mired in a memory he didn’t want but couldn’t quite pull away from.
She closed her eyes briefly against his pain, uncertain how to extricate herself from him and he from his past with anything resembling ease. She’d never given thought to how she must have looked to the soldiers who had seen her. She’d been more focused on remaining alive and reaching her goal: everything else had merged into a crimson-hazed mess that was either screaming for death or deliverance. The first of which she frequently granted.
Hers had not been the only power to warp the battle field: she’d seen fog behave as it should not, clouds and sleet too (in June!) and known it was one of the Dolya who shaped it. Heard horrific stories of a ghoul that rose from the earth and dragged whole units down one by one to suffocate beneath the mud... The War had produced many such stories. In the bleak nightmare of No Man’s Land where the shells obliterated scores of men without trace and bloated corpses surfaced days later in foxholes, it was easy to believe dead comrades clawed up from shallow graves to claim old friends for company. In this instance at least she knew it was no grim fancy; rather it was the work of Seraphim, repaying a debt she owed to the Dolya.
Wide pewter eyes snapped to her face with sudden intensity, interrupting her thoughts. “Did you find them?”
“Who?”
“The one you were looking for. Did you find them?” The repetition was pitiful; a desperate tone of voice seeking reassurance that she had succeeded, that whoever she had set out to rescue had been saved. A happy ending amidst so much carnage.
She smiled, some of her joy returning. “Yes,” she told him. “I did. I found him and I kept him safe and brought him home.”
He gave a twitchy look, an attempt at humour and need for further reassurance. “Not inna mess tin?”
She laughed gently and shook her head, the beads that festooned her shivering in the light. “Not in a mess tin. He was hurt, but he healed.”
He nodded, unblinking, gaze not quite latched on to anything. “Good. That’s good devitza.” His voice had turned ragged and his countenance become that of one whose control is slipping. “Must be nice, eh?” he whispered. “Have someone look out for you. Wish I...”
“You did,” she interrupted.
The closeness of his skull beneath his skin made his expressions all too easy to read. His mouth twisted, not wanting to hear platitudes about God and who He in His Infinite Wisdom watched over and chose to save. But his eyes, glassy with sorrow he refused to let fall, held a spark of want, of hope for a true miracle.
She leant towards him, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder, her face stooped to the level of his ear, the dangling marcasite of her earrings almost close enough to brush his cheek. “You did have someone watching over you. She watches over you still. She’s saved your life twice that I know of. She’s waiting for you to remember her.”
He was still enough to have been carved from marble and near the same pallor. “Who...”
Not meddling had never been her strong point; she’d been obnoxiously precocious by the age of ten and further years had not changed her. If Viajero was in Paris then so was Seraphim, and she knew where. “If you want your guardian angel back, you should pray. Go to the St-Etienne-du-Mont in the Latin Quarter at dusk. The carved staircases are very grand - breath taking - but if I were you I’d go instead to the chapel where seven statues weep over Christ on his bier. Seven statues,” she insisted quietly. “Count them. Perhaps for you there will be eight.”
He flinched then, a violent shock that ran through him as if she’d prodded him with a live wire. In his mind, seared behind his eyes like phosphor, was the vividly clear image of a statue - more Roman Goddess than saint - whose eyes opened in the twilight and whose lips smiled at him. “Moje krásny´ kamení seraf,” he uttered. And then a cry as the memory solidified: “Serafové!”
She stood to the side in the same moment that he scrambled to his feet, knocking over his chair in his haste, moving like one in a fever. Toes were trodden on and drinks spilt by the thin and now wild-eyed man as he fought his way from the crush of the Café Royale and into the chill of the Paris evening.
The young woman with ash-white hair and sun-gold eyes watched him go, her expression fluctuating between satisfaction and worry. With a sigh she reclaimed a crystal tumbler of whiskey and a tall narrow glass of something virulently green and made her way through the throng to her table and the man she’d left there. She placed the whiskey on the crisp linen table cloth in front of him, sipped from her flute of absinthe and sat, familiar, companionable and close to the narrow-limbed and dapper gentleman of her long-standing acquaintance.
He was sat at an angle, legs stretched to the side so as not to disturb the other two members of their party: the large wolf-dog and the wildcat that were currently curled together beneath the table. He draped his arm lightly across her shoulders and then looked down his nose at her, storm-blue eyes just visible above a pair of dark straight-temples. “Cinnamon-Cait, how come you can cause trouble jus’ walkin’ to a bar?” Neither time nor geography had eroded the soft gravel of his Georgia accent. “Did you proposition that poor man t’dance with you?”
She snorted.
“I thought maybe that was why he lit outta here in such a hurry.”
“There’s nothin’ wrong with the Charleston.”
“I beg t’differ - there’s nothin’ wrong in the least with me watchin’ you dance the Charleston.”
She huffed. “Preach, it’d be fun...”
“Be the death o’me!”
The metropolitan polish came off her words. “I don’t wanna dance wi’ some flat fella from the bar, I wanna...”
“You hair’s all mussed,” he murmured, catching his fingers in the spider-silk ends by her neck. “Tsk. Time was a young lady took care in her appearance.”
She gave him an impish look. “Bothers you so much, you can brush it.”
“I might jus’ at that.” He spared the room a glance from half lowered lids. “How is it I ended up with the most beautiful woman in this establishment perched at my knee? There’s plenty here who’d give their eye-teeth t’have you.”
She made a dismissive noise, balanced between irritation and amusement.
“That fella there, he’s a handsome devil. He’s been tailin’ you all evenin’ hopin’ you’d look his way.”
“Why in the hell’d I do that?” she enquired.
The slightest of shrugs. He was teasing, but his games held a kernel of truth: some nights he could no more believe that Cait was with him than believe an angel of the dawn was walking at his side.
She didn’t even bother to look at the hopeful dandy Preacher had referred to. “Goddamn silk flowers an’ paper moons,” she muttered dismissively.
He was smiling. “An’ you don’t give a shit for ’em?”
“Damn straight,” she affirmed.
“Who was that boy you scared off?” His curiosity was still piqued; the fact Cait had stopped to speak with him at all marked him above the usual bunch of swells.
Another sip of emerald and aniseed. “Viajero. One of the Dolya. Met him at Belleau Wood.” There was a suggestion of strain and reproof that hadn’t been in her voice before.
Preacher Morrow sighed. “You still sore about that?”
She bristled like a cat rubbed the wrong way and struck out with her free hand at his left shoulder. “You still sore?” she demanded, putting her drink down and glaring at him all the while.
“Ow,” he admitted somewhat wryly - he’d asked for that. His shoulder had healed well but it had taken its damn time, a fact he blamed on the devil in his lungs. “I gave you my word I’d never do anything o’the sort again.”
Yellow eyes narrowed, figuring he’d find trouble of a differing sort to get in to.
“An’ I’ve done all you asked. You said I needed a rest cure, so off we go chasin’ the sun. It’s been two years,” he needled gently.
She sniffed. “Do somethin’, it’s worth doin’ right.”
“Well there’s been quiet - or as quiet as the world gets these days - warmth, rest and restorative travel. Theatres, galleries, scenery and wonders aplenty. I can’t think o’anything from this damn city I’m lackin’.” He pocketed his dark glasses with a manufactured air of contemplation. “You think I should go find myself a girl from the Moulin Rouge?” There was mischief in his voice.
Cait gave him a tilted look, perplexed. “What on earth’d you do with her?”
He raised an eyebrow in consideration and then pulled her closer to him, swift and hungry. “I have no damn idea,” he growled with perfect sincerity, kissing her deeply and swinging her round into his lap as he did so.
One of her arms was wound around his neck, the other about his waist as she enjoyed the taste of him - like bourbon and sassafras, like a cigarette smoked under the stars, like a summer storm. After several long moments she pulled back just far enough to murmur, “You’ll get us kicked out if we carry on.”
“Thought these times were meant to be modern and forward thinking,” he rejoined, his lips brushing against hers, reluctant to move away.
“That don’t mean we get t’cash a cheque on their velvets.”
“Cash a cheque?” he echoed with just a hint of suggestion. “Ain’t sure I’m familiar with all that fast talk you come up with...”
“Se jeshney-en senaq em pen a’t,” she warned, “sen dewa haal a’ah t’yaz bin-hess.”
Morrow laughed, amour turned to humour in an instant and loosened his hold on her, allowing her to shift around and drape herself on him with more decorum. “You’re right. Would be nice t’be addressed as ‘sir’ without them addin’ ‘it’s time f’you t’leave now’,” he complained.
“Ha! Reprobate,” she accused.
“It’s your fault darlin’,” he countered. “What else am I t’do when you’re all I ever want?”
Cait leant her head on his shoulder. “T’meri et ej,” she whispered.
He smiled, a narrow curl of the mouth denoting utter contentment. “T’meri et ej, bradoar.” A pause. “Still ain’t gonna dance the Charleston,” he informed her.
She laughed. “No?”
“No. There are some things this old man can’t be swayed on.”
She was still laughing. “Old man?”
“Goddamn methusaleh,” he agreed.
She hopped off his lap in a scattering of grace and a rattle of beads as the music drew to the close of a song, standing before him in stockinged feet, hand held out expectantly.
He shook his head.
Her hand remained.
With a put-upon sigh and a roll of his eyes he stood, his mouth quirked down at the edges at the thought of the coughing fit he’d have to weather after the manic exertion of the Charleston. To his surprise the next piece to start up was a languid slow-step. His eyebrow raised. “You plan this darlin’?” he asked. He wouldn’t put it past her.
She pressed herself close into the circle of his arms. “No. Was gonna fit a jig t’ I Go Like The Raven, the music go hang.” A brief grin that quieted to a smile as she breathed him in and felt his heart beat close to hers. “This is better though.”
“Set my dancin' feet to fly,” Preacher whispered against her hair.
“O'er the dark and dervish sky...”
Their words entwined. “I go like the raven!”
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NOTES:
Devitza - Sweetheart (Czech)
Ibhyka - Heart/soul mate. (Kachina)
"Moje krásny´ kamení seraf." - My beautiful stone angel (Czech)
"Se jeshney-en senaq em pen a’t, sen dewa haal a’ah t’yaz binhess." - If we have sex in this room, they will become greatly fekking vexed. (Kachina)
"T’meri et ej, bradoar." - I love you, darlin’. (Kachina)
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