A Table of Green Fields, Guy Davenport [ebook reader screen .TXT] 📗

a hinged stick that snaps at Lights! Camera! Action!

—Better than reciting poetry, that's for sure.

—A film about Russians on the way to Siberia. Overheard saying that Stalin's feet stink.

—The tundra, gray and brown. A hundred kilometres and nothing but the flat tundra.

—With warps and waves in it. A long shot with our train as small as a string sliding along.

—Or we could bring in the cow, dogs, and cats, and be Noah's ark.

—Jews on the way to Drancy. We could escape. Pig-eyed Nazis shooting at us.

—Time to kiss, Julie said.

Bernard began searching in his pockets.

—Licorice, he said. They're the best. Besides, Julie likes 'em too. —Better than yesterday's lime.

—I think I'll climb the pine tree, Marc said. All the way to the top today. Off your shoes, Anne-Marie, and come up after me, bet you won't.

—Bet I will.

Bernard pinched a licorice pastille from its box with a shepherd and shepherdess pictured on it in eighteenth-century rustic finery, with laundered sheep watching in innocent wonderment as the seated shepherdess accepts a pastille from the standing shepherd. Bernard nevertheless put the pastille in his own mouth. Other times, other manners.

Marc, shinnying up the pine barefoot, said over his shoulder to Anne-Marie, hair flopping across his eyes, this is the first good hold. It's easy. Then, watch me, you go around to the other side, holding on good. The next best hold is right there, see? I'll wait until you're on the limb I've just left, so we'll be together all the way up.

Anne-Marie, untying her shoes and watching Julie and Bernard begin their long kiss, passing the pastille back and forth in their mouths, monkeyed up the limb Marc had climbed beyond.

—Don't look down, Marc said. You'll get swimmy-headed.

Julie and Bernard, hugging, sank to their knees in a slow topple sideways.

—They're going to kiss lying down. We're going to kiss when we get down, huh?

—It gets easier as you come up. The limbs are closer. I can see the barn and the horses.

—I can see your underpants real good.

—Don't go to any limb I haven't been on. If it holds me, it'll hold you. What does kissing get us?

—They're playing footsie. I can only see their sneakers from here.

—Why did Julie recite that poem by Apollinaire? Guillaume. He was in Grandpa's war, with the Boches, the tanks, and the trenches. Wore a big bandage on his head.

—We had to learn it for Ma'mselle Trudeau. He had a girlfriend named Annie, who moved to Texas and became a Mennonite.

—What's that?

—Some species of the culte baptiste. We could gross out Julie and Bernard by throwing our clothes down from the top of the tree.

—Crazy. Would they notice?

—In time. They can't kiss forever.

—I can see the top of the bluff. Old Barzac and his donkey are on the ridge road, loading up with firewood. Higher, and you can see the shine on the river bend, like silver.

—I think I'm ruining my knees.

—Keep your legs stiff. Don't try to climb with 'em. Climb with hands and feet, like me. Watch.

—Our tarpaper roof on the boxcar is practically covered with pine-needles, like the thatched houses up north.

—There's a squirrel watching us, over in the next tree. We had to learn a poem by Jules Supervielle, about a math class, with a triangle and circle on the blackboard, and how an angle looked like a wolf's mouth. We're better than halfway up. When do we start being Tarzan and Jane?

—We've done that Supervielle too. He's from Uruguay. I like his poem about the creation of the world. God has the mountains moving around, which he decides won't do, and makes them stand still. Marc, are you feeling this tree sway, or am I getting dizzy?

—It's swaying a little. The branches up here are stronger. They're newer.

—The lavender's lovely from this height. Hallo, you've got a seat across two limbs.

—See how I've got my ankles locked around each other? I'm offing my maillot here. I'll have to throw it wide, or it'll catch    j

on a limb. I don't think we can shed our togs by throwing them one at a time. We'd never get 'em out of the limbs. Come on up. I see another seat just there. I'll show you what we can do.

—D'accord, but what?

—Once we're bare-assed, we make a bundle, all knotted together, of both our togs, and that'll have the weight to be chucked clear, out, over, and down. I'll kiss you at the top, or as high as we can go. Tie your maillot around your neck. Pull off your shorts and underpants together.

—I'm getting dizzier.

—Quit looking down.

—My knees and elbows have turned to water.

—Come up here. I'll slide around to the other side.

—I think I can. You're naked.

—Nothing to it. Hug the trunk, and I'll get your things off for you. Bernard and Julie are probably feeling pretty good about now, wouldn't you say? They got a little wild yesterday with their hands when they'd had their tongues in each other's mouths, icky, for what seemed like an hour but was really, what, twenty minutes? I'll have to hold my clothes in my teeth till I get you buff. Have you got a good hold?

—I'll stare at your peter. Let me do the button and all you have to do is pull. What? Oh, lift my foot, got you.

Holding all their clothes in a wad against his chest, Marc

said:

—OK now, hold me around the waist, hugging me and the tree together, and I'll knot everything in my maillot, and pitch it down. There!

—Did it clear? I couldn't look.

—I can't see where it went. Sit down across the limbs you're standing on, or do you want to climb higher? I can. I've got a good hold on you. You can't fall.

—I'll go as high as you want. I feel weightless, you know, and strange.

—Lean around for a kiss.

—Open mouth, like Bernard and Julie?

They slid jutted tongues into mouths as wide as nestling birds, Marc's eyes crossed for comedy to help his blush. He kneaded Anne-Marie's shoulder blades. She held the back of his neck, for dear life and affection together. The kiss was experimental and brief.

—Hallo.

—Hallo!

—Two limbs higher, Marc said. We'll have a view to take your