That was the day he'd first seen dead
men wearing white ballet skirts and
upturned shoes with pompons on
them. The Turks had come steadily
and lumpily and he had seen the
skirted men running and the of ficers
shooting into them and running then
themselves and he and the British
observer had run too until his lungs
ached and his mouth was full of the
taste of pennies and they stopped
behind some rocks and there were
the Turks coming as lumpily as ever.
Later he had seen the things that he
could never think of and later still he
had seen much worse. So when he
got back to Paris that time he could
not talk about it or stand to have it
mentioned. And there in the cafe as
he passed was that American poet
with a pile of saucers in front of him
and a stupid look on his potato face
talking about the Dada movement
with a Roumanian who said his
name was Tristan Tzara, who always
wore a monocle and had a headache,
and, back at the apartment with his
wife that now he loved again, the
quarrel all over, the madness all over,
glad to be home, the office sent his
mail up to the flat. So then the letter
in answer to the one he'd written
came in on a platter one morning
and when he saw the hand writing he
went cold all over and tried to slip the
letter underneath another. But his
wife said, ''Who is that letter from,
dear?'' and that was the end of the
beginning of that.
He remembered the good times with
them all, and the quarrels. They
always picked the finest places to
have the quarrels. And why had they
always quarrelled when he was
feeling best? He had never written
any of that because, at first, he never
wanted to hurt any one and then it
seemed as though there was enough
to write without it. But he had always
thought that he would write it finally.
There was so much to write. He had
seen the world change; not just the
events; although he had seen many
of them and had watched the people,
but he had seen the subtler change
and he could remember how the
people were at different times. He had
been in it and he had watched it and
it was his duty to write of it; but now
he never would.
"How do you feel?" she said. She
had come out from the tent now
after her bath.
"All right."
"Could you eat now?" He saw Molo
behind her with the folding table
and the other boy with the dishes.
"I want to write," he said.
"You ought to take some broth to
keep your strength up."
"I'm going to die tonight," he said. "I
don't need my strength up."
"Don't be melodramatic, Harry,
please," she said.
"Why don't you use your nose? I'm
rotted half way up my thigh now.
What the hell should I fool with
broth for? Molo bring whiskey-
soda."
"Please take the broth," she said
gently.
"All right."
The broth was too hot. He had to
hold it in the cup until it cooled
enough to take it and then he just
got it down without gagging.
"You're a fine woman," he said.
"Don't pay any attention to me."
She looked at him with her well-
known, well-loved face from Spur
and Town & Country, only a little
the worse for drink, only a little
the worse for bed, but Town &
Country never showed those good
breasts and those useful thighs and
those lightly small-of-back-
caressing hands, and as he looked
and saw her well-known pleasant
smile, he felt death come again.
in.
This time there was no rush. It was
a puff, as of a wind that makes a
candle flicker and the flame go
tall.
"They can bring my net out later
and hang it from the tree and
build the fire up. I'm not going in
the tent tonight. It's not worth
moving. It's a clear night. There
won't be any rain."
So this was how you died, in
whispers that you did not hear.
Well, there would be no more
quarrelling. He could promise that.
The one experience that he had
never had he was not going to spoil
now. He probably would. You
spoiled everything. But perhaps he
wouldn't.
"You can't take dictation, can you?"
"I never learned," she told him.
"That's all right."
There wasn't time, of course,
although it seemed as though it
telescoped so that you might put it
all into one paragraph if you could
get it right.
There was a log house, chinked white
with mortar, on a hill above the lake.
There was a bell on a pole by the
door to call the people in to meals.
Behind the house were fields and
behind the fields was the timber. A
line of lombardy poplars ran from the
house to the dock. Other poplars ran
along the point. A road went up to the
hills along the edge of the timber and
along that road he picked
blackberries. Then that log house
was burned down and all the guns
that had been on deer foot racks
above the open fire place were
burned and afterwards their barrels,
with the lead melted in the
magazines, and the stocks burned
away, lay out on the heap of ashes
that were used to make lye for the big
iron soap kettles, and you asked
Grandfather if you could have them to
play with, and he said, no. You see
they were his guns still and he never
bought any others. Nor did he hunt
any more. The house was rebuilt in
the same place out of lumber now
and painted white and from its porch
you saw the poplars and the lake
beyond; but there were never any
more guns. The barrels of the guns
that had hung on the deer feet on the
wall of the log house lay out there on
the heap of ashes and no one ever
touched them.
In the Black Forest, after the war, we
rented a trout stream and there were
two ways to walk to it. One was
down the valley from Triberg and
around the valley road in the shade of
the trees that bordered the white
road, and then up a side road that
went up through the hills past many
small farms, with the big
Schwarzwald houses, until that road
crossed the stream. That was where
our fishing began.
The other way was to climb steeply
up to the edge of the woods and then
go across the top of the hills through
the pine woods, and then out to the
edge of a meadow and down across
this meadow to the bridge. There
were birches along the stream and it
was not big, but narrow, clear and
fast, with pools where it had cut
under the roots of the birches. At the
Hotel in Triberg the proprietor had a
fine season. It was very pleasant and
we were all great friends. The next
year came the inflation and the
money he had made the year before
was not enough to buy supplies to
open the hotel and he hanged
himself. You could dictate that, but
you could not dictate the Place
Contrescarpe where the flower sellers
dyed their flowers in the street and
the dye ran over the paving where the
autobus started and the old men and
the women, always drunk on wine
and bad mare; and the children with
their noses running in the cold; the
smell of dirty sweat and poverty and
drunkenness at the Cafe' des
Amateurs and the whores at the Bal
Musette they lived above. The
concierge who entertained the
trooper of the Garde Republicaine in
her loge, his horse-hair-plumed
helmet on a chair. The locataire
across the hall whose husband was a
bicycle racer and her joy that
morning at the cremerie when she
had opened L'Auto and seen where
he placed third in Paris-Tours, his
first big race. She had blushed and
laughed and then gone upstairs
crying with the yellow sporting paper
in her hand. The husband of the
woman who ran the Bal Musette
drove a taxi and when he, Harry, had
to take an early plane the husband
knocked upon the door to wake him
and they each drank a glass of white
wine at the zinc of the bar before they
started. He knew his neighbors in
that quarter then because they all
were poor.
Title : Snows of kilimanjaro (5)
Description : That was the day he'd first seen dead men wearing white ballet skirts and upturned shoes with pompons on them. The Turks had come ste...