Chapter Fifteen

The old clichés are the best ones; that’s how they got to be clichés.

It was dusk when we emerged from the gare. In the shelter of the overhanging roof in front of the open courtyard, a street musician with a saxophone was leaning against the wall, playing sweet and sad. A lonely saxophone playing in the night is a magical thing, and this kid was good. Honey sweet melody poured out of him, filling up the space around him, driving back the street noises and transforming the garish lights and the tawdry shops into something exotic and exciting. We were arrested by the music, hesitating between the bright lights and the dimness of the coming evening beyond.

Then thunder came down and walked about on the rooftops until it seemed as if the pavement shook. The rain came quickly, and there was an audible, collective gasp from the hundreds of pedestrians on the streets and in the square. Like runners at the opening gun, they sprinted for shelter in the gare, and under the overhanging eaves of surrounding shops. The light was lambent and flawless; every tiny detail was clear in those first moments before the rain haze dulled the details. A hundred thousand droplets danced on the street, as water moved in sheets ahead of the sudden wind.

The thunder sounded again, more distant now, and the hiss of rain played a background harmony for the sax. There were twenty of us waiting in the doorway of the gare. Some had been drawn from within by the excitement. Some had taken shelter; they were shaking the rain from their clothing and wiping sudden moisture from their faces. Raven moved closer still, until we touched from ankle to cheek. Her breath was warm against my breath as we spoke softly. She was trembling with excitement, and something more; so was I.

She put her hand on my cheek and turned my face to hers. She leaned up to kiss me, sliding her fingers around behind my head. Her lips squirmed, her tongue came in, and I felt an electric shock from head to heels. When we broke, she whispered, “I can’t wait.”

Sweet Jesus!

Primeval rains were still falling. Across the square, people were sheltered beneath the arches of the Hotel Concorde-St. Lazare. Raven grabbed my hand and we ran. We were wet through in an instant. Her laughter rang out. She kicked the puddled water up in drenching sheets, caught me around the waist and dragged me to a stop in the middle of the square. With the rain driving against our heads we locked together.

In the lobby of the hotel, Raven held center stage. She marched up to the desk and demanded a room. Her cloud of hair had come down around her shoulders in one wet mass. The thin, light material of her tied off blouse had turned to cellophane. The old clerk smiled in appreciation. Two young men in jeans made no pretense of savoire faire. Their heads swiveled right around as Raven passed, and their girlfriends’ faces turned dark with envy.

In the room, she stood back from me, to see me and be seen by me. The rain was beaded on her face, and made twisted runnels on her long, lean legs and her bare arms. Her blouse was wet to absolute transparency – stirring memory. She said, “I was this wet when you first rescued me?”

I nodded.

“But not so much clothed.” She raised her arms and locked her hands behind her head. She said, “Untie me.” more tomorrow

In the cold, damp air of morning, the sleeping bags’ warmth was too comfortable to leave. We dozed and woke and dozed again until the morning was half gone, then dashed through the rain to the shower block. An hour later, we were on the bus back into Paris, wearing plastic ponchos and sharing a fruit and bread brunch out of a paper sack.

Raven called American Express from a public phone. She had called her father twice since we got to Paris, but there had been no answer. Finally, she had called her sister to have money sent. The Amex people said it was in, so we took the metro to Place de la Concorde and walked up to the 9th arrondissement. Twenty minutes later, Raven came out holding up a new credit card and wearing a grin a mile wide. “Now!” she said. “First clothes, then food, then a room that doesn’t leak.”

“You don’t like my lifestyle?”

“I like you. Your lifestyle is for bag ladies.”

Raven would never make a bag lady. That soon became clear. I followed her around Paris for three hours while clouds played tag with the sun. The streets were wet and shining, the rain came in brief showers, then retreated before brilliant sunlight. The clouds above the buildings were piled high and menacing. The leaves of the sycamores sagged with dampness, and sent quick showers out of a clear sky every time a breeze disturbed them. It was a Paris for lovers, and a day I would never forget. 

Despite her threats, Raven bought sparingly. When I pointed out that she could only carry one back pack, she said, “I know, silly, but don’t spoil my fun.” Her fun consisted of trying on two dozen blouses in order to buy one. My fun came from watching her model them. She bought ugly, chic, mannish suits and frilly dresses, and had them shipped to America. She bought a pleated miniskirt that let her navel peek over and barely covered her rump, along with a blouse that she left unbuttoned, rolled up from the hem, and knotted beneath her breasts. That outfit took the place of her jeans early on, and made my day infinitely more stimulating.

We dodged rain showers, moving from store to store. She vowed that she was going to treat us to a dry room tonight. Late in the afternoon, Raven bought us a meal in a sidewalk cafe. We made a ceremony of it, laughing and flirting for two hours while we people-watched. At the end, she said, “Now, isn’t this better than a burger at MacDonalds?”

“Sure.”

She cocked her head to one side and said, “Do I detect a bit of hedging.”

“It was delicious.”

“Then why the hesitation?”

I didn’t quite know how to explain. I was afraid that talking about it would make it more important that it really was. “The food was wonderful, the company was delightful, the conversation was sparkling. It’s just that being in Paris with you was equally wonderful this morning when we were eating bread and fruit out of a paper sack.”

“Equally . . .?  Oh, come on, Ian!”

“Look,” I said, “I heard a woman talking to her friend today while you were trying on dresses. She had just been to the Louvre, and all she could talk about was what she had eaten in that little cafe that overlooks the bookstore. When I remember the Louvre, I will think of the paintings, not what I had for lunch. When I remember today, I will think of you and the way the rain felt, and the sunshine, not the food we ate.”

“Ian, you’re deeply deranged.”

We went out to walk around in the fading sunlight, holding hands.

We talked about the weeks to come. I told her about Rouen with its cathedrals, half-timbered buildings, and monuments to the passing of Joan of Arc. Raven agreed to a day trip, so we walked up to Gare St-Lazare to get tickets for tomorrow. She walked so close beside me that the swinging of her hips was sweet music against my thigh.

The train station was a huge, crowded, echoing barn filled with overpriced fast food booths and sleazy magazine stores. We bought tickets, and headed back toward the street. Over the crowd noises, I could hear the sound of distant thunder. Raven was squeezed close to my side and I was as happy as I had ever been. I could see no end to that happiness.

*****

I spoke of foreshadowing in 230. Blackie Ryan. The end of this post is a subtler form of foreshadowing. I didn’t say, “If I had only known!” or something equally cliche, but the reader can still sense that all is not going to work out well for our lovers. more tomorrow

We retired to a small cafe on the square behind Sacre Coeur for wine. Eric was a jovial companion. I enjoyed him almost as much as Raven did, although I would have felt more comfortable if he had had a girlfriend with him. Blue-eyed, blond, tanned, and ruggedly handsome, with Raven hanging on his every word – I was feeling an irritation that had become all too familiar.

Raven and I were living frugally, camping outside Paris and taking a bus into the city. What a typical American tourist would spend in a day, would keep us alive for two weeks. On the ladder of affluence, we were near the bottom.

Eric was one critical step lower. We knew that we could not eat in a restaurant; Eric did not know where his next meal was coming from. We knew that if we were not careful, our money would soon run out. Eric was broke any day he did not make enough tips to cover that day’s expenses. He was staying in the youth hostel on Blvd. Jules-Ferry, but would have to move on soon. They had a four day limit in midsummer. “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” he laughed. “I’m not making enough to eat and sleep. Paris is a tough gig.”

Eric was originally from Bodö, just north of the Arctic Circle, and had gone to school in Oslo. Now he was a refugee from the winter-long northern nights, but there was a homesick longing in his voice as he described the beauties of a northern summer. Raven hugged my arm and said, “We have to go there!”

“Suits me.”

“If you go to Bodö,” Eric said, “you must see the maelstrom. It’s not far from town.”

“Maelstrom?”

“A gigantic whirlpool. It inspired your writer Poe to write his Descent into the Maelstrom.”

Raven had bought a cheap camera in Nice. Now she talked a waiter into taking a picture of the three of us, promising to give a print to Eric.

It was after midnight when we got back to the campground. We had to take the metro to the end of the line and then take a bus out to the edge of the countryside. I had forgotten to pay last night, so I stopped in at the office to correct matters. We were on the list of delinquents, and the manager made nasty remarks under his breath until I paid for the rest of the week. Then he dropped the matter, satisfied, and went on to his next customer.

The French have a worldwide reputation for being actively unfriendly. It isn’t true. They just don’t give a damn if you live or die. If you want people to like you, you probably won’t be happy in France. On the other hand, if you can go about your business independently, not expecting courtesy from strangers, you will do fine. I never have any trouble in France because I don’t expect much, and that is exactly what I get.

The campground was a sea of tents, jammed edge to edge with their guy lines overlapping. Walking among them was like stepping over limbs in a blown down forest. Ours was a small blue two-man dome. I stayed outside until Raven had undressed and crawled into her sleeping bag, taking off my shoes and shirt while I waited. Then she squeezed over against one side of the tent while I struggled out of my pants. Once we were both horizontal, the tent was big enough, but dressing and undressing on a rainy day was a major undertaking. Fortunately, it had not rained much so far.

An hour later, I woke to the sound of rain. more tomorrow

Chapter Fourteen

We met Eric on our third day in Paris. It was evening. We had spent the day doing the classic tourist rounds, with morning at the Versailles, a late afternoon stop at the Eiffel Tower, and then the long walk up from the Champs Elyse to Monmarte, where the architecture was lovely and the vaunted street artists would have been kicked out of Disneyland for incompetence.

Eric was set up at the base of the steps that lead up to Sacre Couer, with his violin case at this feet, playing gypsy tunes on a Hardanger fiddle. That was a feat of cultural integration about the equivalent of Sioux in full headdress playing accordion, but Eric made it work.

We sat down on the steps to listen. Raven said, “What is he playing? That isn’t a regular violin.”

“Hardanger fiddle, from the Hardanger region of Norway. An old Norwegian fellow in the town where I grew up used to play one.” It had four sympathetic strings that ran beneath the fingerboard, an extended pegbox, and instead of a scroll it had the carved head of a stylized lion. It was heavily decorated with intricate ink drawings.

“Where is Hardanger?” Raven wanted to know. I explained that it was near Bergen, and she said, “Will you take me there?”

Her eyes were glowing. She had been frenetically gay since we reached Paris. I enjoyed her happiness and her energy, but there was an underlying note of falseness to it. I said, “Sure. Tomorrow?”

“No, silly. Someday.”

“Someday it is.”

Monmarte is a hilltop community where the steps of Sacre Coeur form a sort of informal amphitheater for street musicians. As Eric played on, Paris made a hazy backdrop behind him. He was quite good, and it had been a long day. We were both content to watch the sun go down and listen. When he finally finished his set, Raven whispered,”Can we afford something for him?”

“Sure. Street musicians have a hard life.” I passed her a twenty franc note and followed her over as she dropped it into the case. 

He looked up, then looked harder. Raven is spectacular. He said, “Grazie, Signorina.”

“Not Italian,” I informed him. “American Hispanic.”

“Ah. Then gracias and thank you.” He looked at me and added, “You are both American?”

“Yes.”

“Of you, I would have said Scottish.”

“Scottish ancestry, American nationality. I’m Ian Gunn and this is Raven Cabral.”

He said he was charmed, but I’m sure he meant by Raven. His name was Eric Sangøy. He spoke English with a clipped British accent, for which he apologized. In Norwegian high schools, he explained, one took either British English or American English as a second language, and he had chosen British.

“Raven and I were admiring your fiddle, as well as your playing,” I said.

Eric passed it to Raven for inspection. It was well worn but the ink drawings were supple and intricate. He explained where it came from and how it differed from a violin. Raven listened intently, as if I had not just explained. more tomorrow

The picture next to it was stranger still, subtler, and therefore more terrifying. Here the woman was crowded up into the corner of the picture, but still filling most of it. Her eyes were huge and catlike, her skin as pure as alabaster, and covered. She wore a cloak of bird wings, that at the same time were a part of her. The short upper feathers surrounded her face like a ruff and the long pinions trailed down her front like arms, covering all but a hint of cleavage. A bit of tail showed from behind, black tipped white feathers. Below her, part of her, though it could never have connected with her human parts in any conventional anatomy, was a single bird’s foot, orange and russet colors shining like jewels, with huge bloody talons. Her front teeth showed in an ingenuous half smile. There was a tiny spot of blood marring the white perfection of her cheek and a thin, double runnel of blood came from the corner of her mouth, disappeared beneath her sharp chin and reappeared to trace its way down her throat, between the hint of her pale breasts and disappear beneath the pinions. The white feathers which were her arms and her cloak were bespotted with blood in thin red circles surrounded by radial spatterings, blood that had struck with force and clung. Behind her was the sea, with a clutch of twisted, surrealistic islands. On one of the islands was a wrecked ship with red sails. No survivors could be seen; she had eaten them all.

The painting was called The Satiated Siren.

Raven tugged me away from the room and out of the museum. Her face was hollow and her mouth tight. She said, “I want to go back to the beach. Now.”

We went. When we reached the beach, she ran ahead of me down the line of hard sand where the water reaches the shore. I caught up, but she waved me away, so I followed twenty feet behind while she walked off her attack of the horrors. Finally she reached the place beneath le Chateau where the beach turns rocky and sat looking out to sea. I sat beside her and took her hand. There were tears in her eyes. She said, “Am I like that?”

“What?”

“Like those pictures.”

“No. Of course not.”

She just shook her head. Then she began to cry outright, little snuffling sobs that came from way down. I pulled her closer and she collapsed against me with her arms around my waist. We stayed that way for a long time.

#          #          #

We did not make love that night, nor in the morning. Raven remained withdrawn until the second night, and when she came to me then, there was a tentativeness about her that I had not seen before.

When our lovemaking was finished, and she lay naked next to me, she said, “Take me away from here. Take me to Paris.” And I did. more tomorrow

We moved on past paintings of lesser quality, among the frolicking marble nudes that the pompiers did so well. We passed into a room devoted to Gustav-Adolf Mossa and stopped at the doorway. It was overpowering. The colors were vibrant, almost harsh after the gentle treatment of the pompiers, and the subject matter was grotesque. The paintings were hard edged super-realism, all portraits of women, or rather of one single woman in a dozen horrifying guises. Her face looked like a Mucha face that had taken up devil worship. The size of the eyes was exaggerated; the mouth was tiny and perfect, smiling just a little and self-satisfied. In one painting she sat, quite nude, with her legs together and her upper body turned toward the viewer. Her breasts were enormous. As she leaned forward, with her weight on her hands and her elbows together, her breasts jutted, round, rich and full, with huge aureoles that faded imperceptibly into the white flesh beyond. Her only adornment appeared to be a Victorian hat and she sat on a pile of hay, or perhaps seaweed.

As we approached, the hat resolved itself into two ravens perched on either side of her coiffure, and within the nest of hair on top of her head were three tiny human skulls, resting like raptor’s eggs.

The painting was masterfully constructed. The eye was caught by the painter’s skill, and carried through the picture on a cunningly conceived path. From the shock of the hair nest, one’s eyes could only return to the ample breasts, down the arrow formed by her arms, past the darkness that lay at the base of her belly, to her thighs where they rested on the sea wrack.  They were splattered with tiny drops of bright red blood. And then the sea wrack resolved itself into what it really had always been:  hundreds, thousands, of bloody, broken, twisted human bodies.

Repelled by the pile of bodies, the eye darted back to the breasts and face, but there was no relief. Instead, the serene, enigmatic look had lost it’s mystery. Now one knew exactly why she looked so self-satisfied.

All of the bodies were male. This was no allegory of war. This was the all-devouring female.

Raven’s fingers dug into my arm as we stood before the picture and she whispered, “Horrible.” But neither of us could look away.

The picture next to it was stranger still, subtler, and therefore more terrifying. more tomorrow

We rinsed off under the open fresh water showers, then walked down the beach carrying our outer clothing until the sun had dried us. Raven pointed up to the top of the concrete wall that lined the beach. American tourists with long lensed cameras were recording the scene below. I wondered if any of them saw the beauty, even vaguely, or felt a deep ache in their belly from knowing that they could have come down those narrow stairs and joined the dance, instead of watching and sniggering from above.

Life is not a spectator sport.

We left the beach and hid from the sun among the tree shaded streets. Raven mailed her letter, and we talked. She wanted to know more about the rest of Europe, so we could plan the weeks ahead. She only knew the Europe of tours and hotels, not the Europe of streetwandering.

We found ourselves climbing a narrow street in the south end of Nice, where the sun beat down directly out of a pale blue sky. We hid from the heat in the Musee des Beaux Arts, and wandered around the vast converted mansion admiring the delicate marble statues and sumptuous paintings. 

At the turn of the century in France, impressionism swept the art world and changed the face of painting forever. The victory was so complete that those they ousted from prominence, the pompiers, were all but forgotten. It was too bad. The pompiers had their faults; their subjects were antique, their treatment was too romantic and studied. Yet they produced a body of beautiful work, far more to my taste than the impressionists.

There was a Clement, Egyptian orange merchants, depicting two women, dark skinned and richly robed with a spill of oranges that glowed against the darkness of their clothing. The Nile behind them was shadowy, faded tan, almost like a mirage.

Down the wall was Thamar by Cabanel. It showed a powerful, robed, dark skinned man with a half nude white woman collapsed in his lap. She appeared to be sleeping, or lost in grief, but she might have been dead. The pompiers had a romantic view of death.

“I wonder if Thamar is French for Othello?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” Raven said.

“The colors are warm and rich. His face and outstretched arm are powerful statements.”

“Yes, but the girl is a half-fat, pasty wimp. I can’t get past her to enjoy the rest of the painting.”

“How about the next one?” That was Thaïs by Tanoux.

Raven laughed. “Come on, Ian. Great fruit, great cloth, great leopard skin on the bed, great background. And she’s not fat, but why is she naked while he is fully clothed? And what has he just asked her to do that she should look so shocked?”

“I can imagine.”

“Me, too. But if I were her, I wouldn’t listen to a word he said until he stripped down and joined me on the bed. Two people clothed is ordinary; two people nude is erotic; but a naked woman with a clothed man standing over her whispering shocking suggestions is pornography. It reminds me of an off-color Victorian novel.”

I smiled. “Feminism has just ruined a whole school of art for me.”

“I’ll bet.  You’d love to be him.”

“Do you really think so?”

Raven gave me her full attention. “You probably don’t want to think so, but in your heart, you would.” more tomorrow

Chapter Thirteen

Nice is an exchange point where trains from France and Italy meet. When we got off at six in the morning, it was busy. Three hours later, it would be jammed.

When I had been released from the Army, the first place I visited was the Riveira. Palm trees, secluded beaches, beautiful women, bright air and warm water in an ambiance of riches – everything a kid fresh out of Wisconsin could dream of. I had spent a week in and around Nice, so there was a certain feeling of homecoming when we stepped off the train.

We stowed our packs in a locker, ate breakfast at the Freetime – France’s equivalent of McDonalds – and headed down Avenue Jean Medecin. Nice is a major city, with all the virtues and vices that implies. The storefronts displayed the latest haute coture but the gutters were filled with garbage. We shared the street with high fashion ladies and kids in ripped denim.

A lot had happened to us in twenty four hours, and a few hours sleep on the train was not enough to wipe it away. I felt gritty and irritable and Raven was keeping long silences. My mind was like a VCR stuck on replay; the events we had experienced kept repeating themselves in my mind as we walked. Raven on the beach, the night attack, the sight of tendons moving at the bottom of my wound, the night ride with Will, and the man with the newspaper. Had he only been an innocent traveler?

Probably, but I wished I had been awake when we passed back through Marseille.

Most of all, I remembered Raven’s statement that I didn’t know myself – implying that I was still trying to win a contest of wills with her. We had been happy on the Wahini, during the crossing, when I had known everything and she had known nothing. Once we were on land, it all started to fall apart.

Enough! Too little sleep and too much philosophizing are a bad combination. Mind, I said, shut up!

I began to just enjoy the day. Nice was never intended for deep thought, but for grasshopper enjoyment of the sun, the sea, women, and the day at hand. Perhaps Raven was made the same way, and I was trying too hard to understand what we had.

Raven bought a change of clothing while I waited on the street, people watching, and we went on down past the Place Massena. For several hours we alternated walking the beach and wandering through the streets near the Promenade des Anglais. We ate fruit and bread from an outdoor market, then went down to the beach and lay in the sun for an hour. I slept while Raven wrote her father a full account of all that had happened to her.

Peace, time, and the sun warmed some of the irritation out of us. Raven woke me from my nap with a gentle kiss on the forehead. When I opened my eyes, her lips moved on down to mine and we lay for a long time just holding each other.

She had gone topless again, but this time as a French woman would, quietly, naturally, and without the bravado that reveals uncertainty. As she sat up from our embrace, I saw her against the sea and sky, full breasted, smiling quietly, serene and at peace with herself. I took her hand. It would have been gauche to touch her intimately in so public a place. It embarrassed me to remember what we had done only yesterday. Like dogs rutting; not like love at all.

A little girl of six or seven was playing nude in the sand at the water’s edge. A boy of like age was chasing seagulls, his tiny penis bouncing as he ran. Old men and young men were lying in the sun; young women had wound down the tops of their one-piece bathing suits and sat by twos and threes with their boyfriends, talking and laughing. Bare breasted grandmothers followed their naked grandchildren from place to place. It was not a scene of Playboy titillation, but of serene beauty. more tomorrow