ROMULUS LINNEY

Fugue

Joe I won five hundred American dollars in a Dusseldorf crap game got my thirty day leave and took off tried Copenhagan first caught cold went to London couldn't relax tried Paris all that brandy made me sick said oh hell I want to go to the beach took the Mistral to the Riviera

Betty I went to the beach that day threw baseballs at bottles like a man and won a bunny rabbit with the rabbit came a meal ticket at a country cafe so I went there too the woman waiting on me saw my bunny rabbit and said did you win that at the fair and I looked up saying yes and she said I won one too and I felt oh I don't know a little funny she was so homely and countrified

Mireille it was the year I entered the Sorbonne I studied so hard I won a prize and my grandmama tripled it so I had that summer deux mille francs all my own I always knew what I would do in my life never marry be a marine biologist swim every day for my heart have friends like Prokoviev for my soul So I went to Avignon to visit my mama swim hear concerts watch plays The Palace of the Popes

Sue Ann the beach where I worked had chain swings a loudspeaker playing you are my sunshine over and over a shooting gallery with wooden ducks I shot the ducks and won a prize it was a bunny rabbit I took it to work with me at the cafe all by herself she was sitting there like a doll in a shop a rabbit like mine on her table I took her order and said something about the rabbit I saw she had this little line of sweat above her mouth like a moustache then she smiled at me and I smiled back

Joe a buddy in K Company told me go see Avignon if you can the countryside looks like French painting so I stopped off there to sit outdoors in a town square cafe where I had a citron pressay she looked like a Massachusetts tomboy she wore a US lumberjack shirt flaps out over blue jeans but she was French all right formal a little and my God intelligent

Betty I came back to Frenchy's Fishfry the next day and I saw her again all hard work and business said hello remember me and what I meant was I want you to touch me I just do she said said well hello again so I went back every day she waited on me and every day I blushed right up through the roots of my hair

Mireille I liked Americans my friends did not but I did that soldier that day in the square at Avignon I liked especially he was so agreeable he didn't talk very much but when he did he had good taste he didn't know it but he did

Sue Ann she was just a baby, thinking I was a game she wanted to play but I saw different and most near dropped the fried fish on the floor it's her momma I said to myself she don't have one the poor child but she said no she had a momma that's not what she wanted at all

Joe she asked me would I come swimming with her friends in a river under a Roman bridge she was a student at the honest to God Sorbonne studying marine biology the sea she said the sea we drank brandy that night under that Roman bridge built by soldiers like me centuries ago and we talked oh soberly and sensibly

Betty all her teeth seemed broken lines cut everywhere into her face there were scars on her arms on one side of her throat and deep shadows made her eyes look hard I asked her why why she looked like that she told me her life was like that I was a child was I coming back tomorrow

Mireille so we swam with the others in the river under the Roman bridge but when he saw me in my bikini he was no longer interested in the others he took me home where I stayed with my mama I shook hands with him like a good soldier said it had been a pleasure what was he doing tomorrow night

Sue Ann it was like that for a long time I was scared to be seen with her town country club child about to make some debut somewheres I never let her drive me home when she wanted to or God save us see where I lived but we would sit some on the beach when I got off work commence to jabber one to the other and a body couldn't stop

Joe I thought about it thought about it what she was seeing in GI ordinary me but damn if I didn't think she was seeing something pale she was splotches of crimson high on her cheeks like a woman in the kind of painting my K Company buddy said I ought to find she told me she was the daughter of a French aristocrat descended from a Field Marshal of Napoleon I believed her said sure that was why she liked soldiers

Betty on the beach by the ocean after she got off her hard work I told her how it was with me I could talk to her I could talk to her I wasn't a small town girl spoiled silly with the right clothes and hair do and nothing else matters not with her why I asked her why was that oh why was that why can I talk to you like to no one else ever ever in all my life

Mireille my American soldier told me I was beautiful no I told him no it was my sister who was the beautiful one because that is the way our mama knew it would be one with the beauty one with the brains I had the brains not the beauty and my fine soldier then told me my mama was wrong which nobody ever said to me before because I had both and for him I did I did

Sue Ann then I took her hands in mine the way I took my two daughters hands in mine when they was little the way I held my three boys by the hands when they was all little I told her there wasn't nothing not nowhere in this whole wide world she couldn't say to me she took a mind to it wherever she went whatever she did long as I lived

The next night in Avignon we saw a play in a courtyard in a Palace used by the Popes when they weren't in Italy for reasons I didn't understand then she took me to this Gypsy night club it was closed but all the Gypsies were there and let us in three Gypsy children got up in front of their mommas and poppas and all the Gypsies to dance and sing and get trained like soldiers in their survival one boy did all right singing a little girl did better than that dancing and singing, then a third boy couldn't do anything right it made no difference all three Gypsy children got the same cheers from smart mammas and poppas training them and my smart French aristocrat squeezed my hand under the table so I asked her come away with me she said no she had to visit her Grandmother in Venice but she kept on squeezing my hand while children danced and sang

He took me to Nice to the Bataille des Fleurs he would beat me with flowers I knew he had good taste

I got her off the train at Nice to the Flower Fight Festival my K Company buddy told me about where it was all fresh air and marble and sunlight dazzling hectic you wanted to dance Gypsy children that's how this GI felt there were these big floats in the streets at night covered with flowers beautiful French-Italian girls riding them and I mean big strong men slapping each other with flowers

People passing each other in the night singing throwing confetti in your face if they liked what they saw he got us the last hotel room in Nice I was happy to see he was not only agreeable he was capable

Hotel des Anglais for God's sake huge overpriced room blood-red wallpaper paintings of roses up one side down the other big as cabbages I saw the roses and knew what to do run out into the street

He tore roses off the floats and brought them to me piled high in his arms he tore roses all to pieces and scattered them all over that ugly room rug bed and in the old big bathtub we jumped in together wet naked happy and he said why are you here with me and I said first man you are my first man I plan my life I picked you for that as long as I live I can never forget you now give me the soap and kiss me

I told her all that about myself how being with her was like the best of church which was always singing in the choir when I can feel wonderful when great feelings rise up inside of me could she understand that the singing all of us all together and she said yes I understand it all right I sing like that too sometimes honey but not in church

What was I going to do with her and what was she doing to me not knowing and maybe not even caring nothing about me while I was hardly able to know where I was or who I was dead drunk as a slut on the floor with her chit chattering away not seeing how far down gone I was just looking at her chit chat with my arms burning up to hold her

She lost her job at the cafe because her husband wanted her to work in a mill factory more money I didn't see her for the longest time thinking it was for the best until oh God one Sunday morning Methodist Church I stood up to sing my solo Only A Rose Will Do and I saw somebody come in the back of the church and oh God there she was in that congregation like some old black sheep with her broken teeth looking for me

In that spotless place roses and lilies on the altar smelling so sweet all that rich perfume and fur pieces on blue haired ladies well I paid all that no mind she commenced to sing all by herself and she was my flower then my rose my own

Oh yes I gave her the soap and kissed her all right and the next evening we sailed from Nice over the sea she studied in school on a night boat to Corsica where she'd never been which I'd hardly heard of

Where we lived ensemble for a month in little hotels on the beaches under the Corsican sun among the palm trees and the flies and the bad wine and the beautiful cleansing sunsets and winds

And three months later, after my wedding I stood a stupid bride scatterbrained in taffeta and lace thinking of nothing in the world but her and Almighty God here she came again in a cheap flower-print dress with a pink hat preposterous absurd with dime store white gloves and all her scars and broken teeth

That boy she'd married was fixing to dance with her I knowed I'd never get to her after that so I went up to her did it proper as I knowed how gave her a kiss on the cheek handed her a silver spoon for her a baby and a bottle of whiskey for the wedding night she said thank you I said you're welcome

Would you care for some champagne I said like a fool she said no not now I best go then she did see I was upset and she put her cheap white glove on my arm told me it was all right she knew what it was all it was I'd just been scared about getting married that was it all there was to it why I had done what I had done to her me dying to say out loud no no no but couldn't so I offered her cake coffee have something but she said no and kissed me again and left

When I left I didn't know where I was not for the longest time

We were swimming I was running away from her she was supposed to chase me but kept stumbling I yelled she could do do better than that she said no she couldn't and started choking gasping gulping air hands on her chest I said hey now you all right? she said yes I just can't go that fast well I said why not you weren't going all that fast she said no and I said cramps time of month she said non maladie de coeur tu comprends

Heart trouble he said and I said yes in my family very spectacular we live passionate youths perform miracles then our hearts turn to rubber we wear them out for the great Na-po-le-on flap-flop flap-flop flap flop and flop dead yes I will have surgery soon they tell me I am not so bad as my father was at this age he died forty-one his father thirty-eight I am twenty-three so I have a long time I will live a long long time he said really this is the truth I said oui vraiment

Who was that my groom said laughing the hotel orchestra played I was swept out onto the ballroom dance floor away from my mother my father my life as a child to my husband my children and to the day I had to see her again

And we said to each other are you sure yes we must know best not yes I'll die no it'll hurt yes you think I don't know that no you think you do but you don't yes I can't live without you no please honey, yes or I will die, then yes yes we both said yes all right all right then

What kind of surgery he said to me and I to him open heart le denier cri he it's dangerous me bien sur they must take a knife and go whop then pull my chest and bones open and say voila Monsieur le coeur a ha ha ha and then they must do this and that to it well yes dangerous are you sad for me and he was sad just saying aw shit honey and I said oui vraiment aw shit honey well he said but what they do know I mean doctors can do almost anything now almost you got a good doctor I said the best he said hospital I said the biggest he said well great and I said so be my Budi your what he said and I said to him you know like soldiers have I like that what you call each other hey-boo-dee like that he said Buddy I said yes Budi remember your old Budi and he said I will I will do that

And so that is what we did in beach blankets in the back seats of cars through twelve years of motel bedrooms married to Walter Richards and loving her and to each other we said we can stop no never we can never stop

We said goodbye in the train station at Marseille making jokes flip and cheerful until we saw the train
She came in the motel room without knocking
I was going to be a scientist and have friends like Prokoviev but when I saw that awful train zut tears
I just couldn't come no sooner
My God this is hard I can't get my breath
You're going to leave me
It is hard to breathe yes I'll never see you again.
You can't leave me I won't let you
It is not in the heart or in the head but in the stomach like being beaten there
Hush now
Will we live
I will leave my husband I will leave my children
I think we will I'm not sure
You know you can't I wouldn't let you
You won't forget me
I will live on the floor at your feet
No Budi I won't forget you
You got to accept it do it for me
All right for you goodbye
My first man goodbye My little girl goodbye It was wonderful you were wonderful For you I accept I don't care what it is or how it hurts I'd do it again I don't care neither I am glad too It was wonderful goodbye God bless you I'll never forget you goodbye it was wonderful you were wonderful goodbye wonderful goodbye