Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 8
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Gilda shared a walk-up over the outer canal with three other girls who
showed no surprise, and made no objection when David carried his single
Samsonite case up the steep staircase. However, the action that Gilda
provided was in a series of discotheques and coffee bars where lost
little people gathered to talk revolution and guru babble. In two days
David discovered that pot tasted terrible and made him nauseous, and
that Gilda's mind was as bland and unmarked as her exterior. He felt
the stirrings of uneasiness when he studied the others that had been
drawn to this city by the news that it was wide open, with the most
understanding police force in the world. In them he saw symptoms of his
own restlessness, and he recognized them as fellow seekers.
Then the damp chill of the lowlands seemed to rise up out of the canals
like the spirits of the dead on doomsday, and when you have been born
under the sun of Africa the wintry effusions of the north are a pale
substitute.
Gilda showed no visible emotion when she said goodbye, and with the
heaters blasting hot air into the cab of the Mustang David sent it
booming southwards. On the outskirts of Namur there was a girl standing
beside the road. in the cold her legs were bare and brown, protruding
sweetly from the short faded blue denim pants she wore. She tilted her
golden head and cocked a thumb.
David hit the stick down, and braked with the rubber squealing protest.
He reversed back to where she stood.
She had flat-planed slavic features and her hair was white blonde and
hung in a thick plait down her back.
He guessed her age at nineteen.
You speak English? he asked through the window.
The cold was making her nipples stand out like marbles through the thin
fabric of her shirt.
No, she said. But I speak American, will that do? 'Right on! David
opened the passenger door, and she threw her pack and rolled sleeping
bag into the back seat.
I'm Philly, she said.
David. You in show biz? God, no, what makes you ask?
The car, the face, the clothes. The car is hired, the clothes are
stolen and I'm wearing a mask. Funny man, she said and curled up on the
seat like a kitten and went to sleep.
He stopped in a village where the forests of the Ardennes begin and
bought a long roll of crisp bread, a slab of smoked wild boar meat and a
bottle of Wet Chandon.
When he got back to the car Philly was awake. You hungry? he asked.
Sure. She stretched and yawned.
He found a loggers, track going off into the forest and they followed it
to a clearing where a long golden shaft of sunlight penetrated the green
cathedral gloom.
Philly climbed out and looked around her. Keen, Davey, keen! she said.
David poured the champagne into paper cups and sliced the meat with a
penknife while Philly broke the bread into hunks. They sat side by side
on a fallen log and ate.
It's so quiet and peaceful, not at all like a killing ground. This is
where the Germans made their last big effort, did you know that?
Philly's mouth was full of bread and meat which didn't stop her reply. I
saw the movie, Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, it was a complete crock. All
that death and ugliness, we should do something beautiful in this place,
David said dreamily, and she swallowed the bread, took a sip of the
wine, before she stood up languidly and went to the Mustang. She
fetched her sleeping bag and spread it on the soft bed of leaf mould.
Some things are for talking about, others are for doing, she told him.
For a while in Paris it looked as though it might be significant, as
though they might have something for each other of importance. They
found a room with a shower in a clean and pleasant little pension near
the Gore St Lazare, and they walked through the streets all that day,
from Concorde to Etoile, then across to the Eiffel Tower and back to
Notre Dame. They ate supper at a sidewalk cafe on the Boule Mich, but
half-way through the meal they reached an emotional dead end.
Suddenly they ran out of conversation, they sensed it at the same time,
each aware that they were strangers in all but the flesh and the
knowledge chilled them both.
Still they stayed together that night, even going through the mechanical
and empty motions of love, but in the morning, when David came out of
the shower, she sat up in the bed and said, You are splitting. It was a
statement and not a question, and it needed no reply.
Are you all right for bread? he asked, and she shook her head. He
peeled off a pair of thousand-franc notes and put them on the side
table.
I'll pay the bill downstairs. He picked up his bag. Stay loose, he
said.
Paris was spoiled for him now, so he took the road south again towards
the sun for the sky was filled with swollen black cloud and it rained
before he passed the turn-off to Fontainebleau. It rained as he
believed was only possible in the tropics, a solid deluge that flooded
the concrete of the highway and blurred his windscreen so that the
flogging of the wipers could not clear it swiftly enough for safe
vision.
David was alone and discomforted by his inability to sustain
communication with another human being.
Although the other traffic had moderated its pace in the rain, he drove
fast, feeling the drift and skate of his tyres on the slick surface.
This time the calming effect of speed was ineffective and when he ran
out of the rain south of Beaune it seemed that the wolf pack of
loneliness ran close behind him.
However, the first outpouring of sunshine lightened his mood, and then
far over the stone walls and rigid green lines of the vineyards he saw a
wind-sock floating like a soft white sausage from its pole. He found
the exit from the highway half a mile farther on, and the sign Club
Aeronautique de Provence. He followed it to a neat little airfield set
among the vineyards, and one of the aircraft on the hard-stand was a
Marchetti Acrobatic type F26o. David climbed out of the Mustang and
stared at it like a drunkard contemplating his first whisky of the day.
The Frenchman in the club office looked like an unsuccessful undertaker,
and even when David showed him his logbook and sheafs of licences, he
resisted the temptation of hiring him the Marchetti. David could take
his pick from the others, but the Marchetti was not for hire. David
added a 500-franc note to the pile of documents, and it disappeared
miraculously into the Frenchman's pocket. Still he would not let David
take the Marchetti solo, and he insisted on joining him in the
instructor's seat.
David executed a slow and stately four-point roll before they had
crossed the boundary fence. It was an act of defiance, and he made the
stops crisp and exaggerated. The Frenchman cried Sacr6 blue! with
great feeling and froze in his seat, but he had the good sense not to
interfere with the controls. David completed the manoeuvre and then
immediately rolled in the opposite direction with the wing-tip a mere
fifty feet above the tips of the vines. The Frenchman relaxed visibly,
recognizing the masterly touch, and when David landed an hour later he
grinned mournfully at him.
Formidable! he said, and shared his lunch with David, garlic polony,
bread and a bottle of rank red wine. The good feeling of flight and the
aroma of garlic lasted David all the way to Madrid.
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