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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