An Acceptable Warrior

by Earle Looker

  Gaspard’s teeth clicked in his beard. “Comment donc! These women.”

  David said, “Anne, please keep out of this!”

  “Very well,” Gaspard said to Anne, disregarding David, “I have a reason. He thought my plan would not only mean peace for France, but for Europe and the world. He thought this as a soldier, as a journalist – an American journalist – and we will have to get credits to build these fortifications. Is that not an argument, hein? He alone, could get me to Paris quickly enough to take the first steps when they should be taken. Leaving his command and commandeering a train with pretended authority; his actions seemed fully justified. Are these not sufficient reasons?”

  “They aren’t bad …”

  “You’re not going!” David said emphatically.

  “Oh, but she will go,” Gaspard interrupted, “because she loves you and cannot be prevented from fighting in your defense! Is that not so, mademoiselle?”

  “Well, yes,” Anne said. “I do love him. But I make no promises to him – unless we settle some other ideas to our mutual satisfaction.”

  Gaspard gave no sign of whatever he had heard.

  It was not until Anne had left them, refusing David’s wish to walk with her during the few blocks back to Rue Perronet, and Gaspard had become silent and absorbed, a bear singeing his whiskers as he pawed his maps under the student lamps, that David saw the comparison between his own thinking and Anne’s. It was, he reflected, a tardy understanding yet fortunate in its simplicity, since they were meeting again in the Rue Perronet specifically. From eight until twelve midnight, and not later – an arrangement upon which Gaspard had expounded after she had gone was with a strange matter-of-factness, ‘prosaique,’ Gaspard had said. ‘This plan is down to earth and altogether North American, indeed exactly like a bourgeoisie to which she did not belong,’ he had continued with considerable eloquence, ‘for anyone could see with half an eye she was in every way of an aristocrat to keep any man, of whatever ardor, unless he was a complete fool, à distance.’

  7

  David awoke to the fact he had finished the story he had gone to tell. Anne had always listened with a composure, he reflected, far beyond his expectation. His feelings for her were now confused. He had thought he was in love, but it was really Alan – her connection with him that fought his feelings.

  The comparison between Anne’s attitude and his, David now understood, was that while he had thought with an emotion that was impassioned in every sense, she had succeeded in thinking beyond emotion, though she had given him some moments of tender affection to show him her feelings. It came down to the fact he had been thinking of loving while she had been thinking of living in a new world – with Alan’s child! – in which it would be more complicated and difficult to live than ever, in a world surcharged with bitterness and futility and all the cruelties that came from them.

  Gaspard burst into the room without knocking, all excitement and cigarette smoke. “Daveed, I have some sad news for you. I am sorry. She has committed a suicide, sometime around nine this morning. The room cleaner found her,” Gaspard said. “She took too many pills some damn doctor gave her for confort.”

  “No! How? Why? Gaspard, stop fooling around with me! That’s impossible!”

  “I am so sorry,” Gaspard said. “But, mon vieux, who knows really what passes in the thoughts of another?”

  ‘But why? How could Anne have done such a thing, and with Alan’s child’, David thought. ‘Their unborn child, who had neither breathed nor cried – a doubling up of death! Had I somehow pushed her to this? Had I provided just a bit too much information about Alan and his death?’ He felt more anger than sadness. ‘So, that was it then. Two more casualties to add to this insanity.’

  CHAPTER 8

  A Ride in the Bois

  “Love is always master everywhere.

  It shapes the soul, the heart and the mind wherever it exists.

  What matters is not the amount of love,

  but simply its existence in the mind and heart where it resides.

  And it truly appears that love is to the soul of the lover

  as the soul itself is to the body, which it animates.”

  ~ Madeleine de Souvré, Marquise de Sablé (1599 –1678)

  “Skaters in the Bois de Boulogne”, Paris, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 –1919)

  It was another Sunday – bright, clear and windless. The streets were quiet with snow not yet melted. It had been nearly a week since the news of Anne’s death. He needed to get fresh air, to relax, to forget. He needed to clear his head of the memory of last night’s dreams. He was happy to be visiting with Gaspard and his daughter today. David decided to walk. It’s easy to lose yourself among the history and beauty of the Parisian boulevards – the cafés, the museums, just strolling around made you feel special – entitled – and very lucky to be in Paris on such a day. So, it probably took him twice as long to get to Gaspard’s hotel had he gone directly.

  Being back in Gaspard’s room at Hotel Royal Elysées on Avenue Victor Hugo, just off the Champs Elysées, only reminded him of Anne and happier days. He would try to put that behind him now.

  After making his apologies for being late, he met her at Gaspard’s room. She was lovely. David was surprised how deeply he felt he already knew her somehow – from somewhere – but where? Celeste Gaspard seemed so familiar, certainly easy to be with. He felt an inexplicable sense of protectiveness brought out by being in her company. She was not like the other French girls he had met in Paris, not obsessed with fashion and makeup, a superficiality and coquetry not seen in Celeste. Celeste was deeper – more profound – than that. He was certain of that.

  Gaspard excused himself. He had some important affairs to attend to at the Ministry.

  “Papa tells me much about you. How you both were so very bad to leave you posts – oui?”

  David said, “Yes, well, we did get caught, not sure of our punishments yet. But it is a fact we cannot escape.”

  “Les faits sont bien reels – facts are real enough,” Celeste said. “And still they can be as intangible as – a premonition. A premonition, I think, is only imagination. It works backwards. Something startling or terrible happens. People fool themselves into believing they had a premonition of it. A good, live imagination can prévoir – how you say? – foresee a thousand things that never will happen – just one does, and they call it premonition. But not connaissances préalables – umm – pre-knowledge – at all, but pre-knowledge imagined after the event.”

  “Not always,” David protested with logic. “Pre-knowledge can be proved by later events. I saw what I am sure was pre-knowledge, and I’m sure because it was proved by the event. My friend Alan had a premonition of his death. But a great many men might have been thought to have had that. He was a professional soldier, and he knew it was not going to be a small affair. He must have understood the probabilities of his death.”

  “It was much more than that, Daveed. He had a premonition of its manner,” she said.

  “What in the world do you mean?’ he asked, as if having been prematurely recalled from a great distance.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what it meant really”, she said, “except that he had done something on impulsion of he wanted to do or else hardly had been conscious of it except that for him, it comforted.”

  “You know what it was now? He must have had a long look forward. I believe that was a true premonition,” David said. “Yes, I’m convinced, without argument. I’ve been looking away from such things, pretending to myself I don’t believe they happened. But I have plenty of evidence they do. I’ve tried to disregard them because they confused my ideas of reality. I know you are right now; they are part of reality.”

  “I do see something I think you do not,” Celeste said, “see before. These strange things should not confuse our ideas of reality. They should sof
ten them. I think that may be important.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean we shouldn’t disregard events we might feel honteux – shamefaced, telling, yes? – because we weren’t quite sure we would be believed. But you do believe me, and I do believe you, though the truth may seem mysterious, at times even surnaturel – er, supernatural. Our real experience, all of it, might make our reality seem less uncompromising, easier to take, non?”

  “That’s another way of saying if we look at all the facts then we might see a happier conclusion?”

  “Oui. Perhaps.”

  They spoke of many things as afternoon approached. Clearly, there was an interest in each for the other.

  Finally, David asked, “Celeste, would you like to go riding with me tomorrow in the Bois? To reawaken us, to shake us from our Sunday lethargy.”

  Gaspard entered the room in a flurry of beard and medals as David said this.

  “Mais oui! Bien sûr!” laughed Gaspard.

  “Not you, you old goat! But thanks. I mean your lovely daughter.”

  2

  The Bois de Boulogne had long been a large green space on the western edge of Paris. The Bois is a remnant of the ancient Rouvray oak forest that included the present-day forests of Montmorency, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Chaville and Meudon. In the 630’s, Dagobert, King of the Franks, hunted bears, deer and other game in the forest. During the Hundred Years’ War, the forest became a battleground and then a notorious sanctuary for robbers. In 1416-17, soldiers under the command of “John the Fearless”, Duke of Burgundy, burned part of the forest in their successful campaign to capture Paris. Subsequently, under Louis XI, there was much reforestation, and two roads through the forest were opened.

  Bois de Boulogne received its name during the reign of King Philip IV, when he built a replica there of a shrine to the Virgin Mary he had visited in the seaside town of Boulogne-sur-Mer. Following the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814, forty thousand British and Russian soldiers made their encampment in the forest; thousands of trees were cut down to build shelters and for firewood. From 1815 until the French Second Republic, the Bois was mostly empty except for ruined meadows, stagnant ponds and tree stumps where the foreign armies had camped. Finally, in 1852 when the Empire was declared, the new government ceded the property to the city of Paris, and work began on redesigning and improving the park. Napoleon III personally planned the new park and insisted there be a stream and lakes. “We must have a stream here, as in Hyde Park,” he observed, “to give life to this arid promenade.”

  The Bois became a very popular meeting place and promenade route for Parisians of all classes. Its alleys and paths were filled with carriages, coaches, horseback riders, men and women on bicycles, but thankfully no automobiles. The park had several lakes and a cascade, two small landscaped gardens, the Jardin d’Acclimatation, with a small zoo and amusement park, and the Jardin des Serres d’Auteuil, with a complex of greenhouses containing hundreds of thousands of plants. There were also two horseracing tracks in the Hippodrome de Longchamp, which also had a windmill, a vestige of the old Abbey of Longchamp, destroyed after the French Revolution.

  On weekends, its woods and lawns were filled with families having picnics. Parisians rowed boats on the lakes, while the cafés mostly catered to the upper classes. An island in Lac Inferieur, accessible by boat, contains the city’s only monument to the Park’s restorer, Napoleon III. During the winter, when the lakes were frozen, they were crowded with ice skaters. There were also two islands in the center of the Grand Lac, lovely and picturesque. In 1878, British horticulturalist, William Robinson, praised the site:

  “The islands seen from the margin of the lake are beautiful … they show at a glance the superiority of permanent embellishment over fleeting annual display. . . The planting of these islands was expensive at first, and required a good knowledge of trees and shrubs, besides a large amount of taste in the designer; but it is so done that were the hand of man withheld from them for half a century, they would not suffer in the least.” 4

  3

  David and Celeste rode mostly along the stream, Ruisseau de Longchamp, flowing through the Pré-Catelan, under the alley of Reine Marguerite, then to the Mare des Biches, one of the oldest ponds in the park, then to the Etang de Reservoir and the Grand Cascade.

  Riding beside her gave David a sense of inexplicable possession. Yet as they passed other mounted men, their covetous glances focused so intently upon her that David’s pride in being her escort was mixed with anger and his deep perceived need to protect her. She seemed entirely unaware of it. ‘They think,’ he reflected, ‘what I think: what clean slim legs she has in breeches up to the flaring skirt of her riding coat; how well it fits her properly buttoned up to her stock; how well she sits on her horse.’

  He touched a spur to his mount, and it leaped forward. Celeste kept abreast of him, riding her big bay with so sure a seat and such hands David could not resist swerving into the hedges of the hurdles, which she took without hesitation and a glance of approval to him as the white bars rose up to meet them.

  When they resumed a canter near the Grand Lac, she smiled, and David saw a blue haze spring to life in her eyes and more than indistinct suggestions, thoughts emerging like masses forming as if for an attack.

  “You give me temporary command over this little line of march?” David asked.

  “Why, yes, of course. Mais oui! Nous allons!”

  David remembered the irony, the simplicity of Gaspard’s comment and, as always, wise advice, when he was about to go riding with Anne last week: ‘It appears you have actually taken the field in that sector! Mon vieux, do not forget the action must be one of movement but not too direct – you must endeavor to sweep around with stealth by the flank. Hah! That is good, is it not? Now, toward the end of your ride, if you will go the way I describe, there is a pavillon. But there is nothing like a good canter first.’ David reflected that this time he had taken Gaspard’s advice, not against his will. ‘Funny,’ he thought. ‘Now that I’m with his daughter, should I be taking his own advice?!’

  They rode for about ten more minutes, making light, casual talk. Finally, they approached the restaurant of the Pavillon de la Grande Cascade, a popular meeting place for Parisian trysts and weddings. Since the lake was frozen, there were many ice skaters joyfully trying not to crash into one another.

  “Let’s halt. We can dismount here. This looks like a very pleasant place to rest our sore derrières.”

  Celeste laughed, and they stopped next to a large Cedar of Lebanon tree. As they gave their bridles to the Pavillon groom, Celeste’s gravity was not without a twist of amusement about her lips, David thought, and perhaps with some preparatory resistance in her eyes.

  She looked down at her ungloved hands upon the rustic rail of the pavilion. David, watching her finger the initials cut deep in the wood, saw she was pointing, whether intentionally or not, to evidence this had been a trysting place for much more than one generation. ‘Were Gaspard’s initials here, perhaps more than once?’ he thought. These whittlings had been done to the accompaniment of a more leisurely lovemaking than David had ever known. He was not getting far or fast with this, he thought, though her vitality and vibrancy, even though she was in repose and leaning against the rail, was enough to provoke any man who had been deprived so long of even the sight of a woman.

  “I was here once before, when out riding with my friend Anne,” he said. “Just last week – and in the snow when it was still new and fresh and even more beautiful.”

  “C’est triste,” she said. “Papa told me about the death of your friend – and such a tragic suicide. I am so sorry, Daveed, about the death of your two old friends. Was Anne sick, so sick that she be taking herself her own life?”

  “Thank you. So many tears I have cried. No, she was not sick, except in spirit. I killed her.”

  Celeste de
fended him by responding, “But your ami – best friend would never accuse you of meaning to do that – and not she either. And it was her choice. Is it not that all that matters, oui?”

  “Rumi, the Sufi poet,” David said, “once wrote that life is a balance between holding on and letting go. So I must learn to let go of them.”

  “Daveed, I think you perhaps have loved her very much, oui?”

  “Yes, er – well – I did.”

  “S’il vous plaît ne pas essayer de faire le deuil de façon. Please do try not to grieve so, Daveed. What we lose, always comes round again but in another form, sometime so – inattendu – how you say? – an unexpected way. That is what I do believe. And you?”

  “Well, I am not so sure. I just really do not know,” he said.

  David thought, ‘You’d shout too, if you could, but you can’t. You’ll never shout again. You’re just a whiff of cordite. You’re just a bullet in the back of the head! You’re just a letter to your next-of-kin. You’re dead. Born again!’

  “Parfois, quand je cours après ce que je pense que je veux,” said Celeste. “Sometimes when I run after what I think I want my days are enfer – a hell – of too much stress and anxiety. If I sit and be patient, then what I need comes to me, and with no longer pain. From this, I understand what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me – comme me tirant dans – like pulling me in. There is a great secret here to grasp it.”

  Celeste stood up too quickly and bumped her shin on the railing.

  “Merde! Baise moi morte! Fais chier!” Celeste cursed.

  ‘I like that,’ David thought, ‘so gentle, so sweet and delicate, and a philosopher to boot! Yet she can swear like a sailor! Definitely her father’s daughter – a true Gaspard!’

  “Oh, Daveed, Je suis vraiment désolé! I am too sorry. I hope you did not misunderstand my meaning. That hurt much! I shall have a big bruise tomorrow.”

  She rubbed her thigh and winced and then said, “Daveed, you are perhaps a Roman Catholic, oui? Do you not find some comfort in your grief?”