A Table of Green Fields Read online

  That is all that's on the fragment.

  We follow awhile in our imagination: the people running to keep up with the trees, as in a dream. Did the trees sink into the river? Did they flow out of sight, around a bend?

  The Lavender Fields of Apia Julia

  There is no such thing as time on a summer afternoon. The green and blue of the lavender fields, the tumbled clouds over the pine wood, the Roman bridge neither slide along the river of time nor feel its current pass through them.

  —It's the drone of the bees, Julie said, stops time. And the fragrance of the lavender drenches it, and puts it to sleep.

  They had built their boxcar beyond the lavender fields where the woods begin.

  —Raise sweet children, bright children, Anne-Marie said in her grandmother's raspy voice, and what do they do? They build a boxcar.

  —Well, Grandma, Bernard said with tenor innocence, it's to play in.

  —It's not being able to keep an eye on us that bugs them.

  Julie, Bernard, Anne-Marie, and Marc built their boxcar beyond the lavender fields where the woods begin. Five metres long, two wide, it sat knee-high above the pine-needle floor of the wood on corner posts braced with diagonal studs.

  —A shoebox to the power of fifteen, Marc said, with doors in the middle. It has the feel of a real boxcar. The doors are sort of permanently open.

  —Boxcar doors are sometimes open, Anne-Marie said, sometimes closed, even when the train's moving. We got the proportions right.

  Knocking apart the packing crates salvaged from back of the factory had been as much fun as building the boxcar: floor, walls, top, pie-pan brake wheels, the ladder up.

  The light in the boxcar was neither room light nor tent light. At the doors the light was that of the wood. The dark ends of the inside were brightened by small high windows.

  —Ours, Julie said, patting her knees, all ours.

  —Lavender fields out one door, the wood out the other, Marc said. It's a tree house that's a boxcar. Along the river, on the tracks, in all kinds of weather. Let's all hug.

  —The Autumn Crocuses, Julie announced.

  Marc sighed, crossed his eyes, and twiddled his fingers. —The meadow is splendid and lethal in autumn the cows grazing there are placidly poisoning themselves.

  —Apollinaire.

  —Anne-Marie's underpants are a meadow, Bernard said, what there is of them, cornflowers, buttercups, daisies.

  —Crocuses the lilac of a black eye.

  Bernard had entered the boxcar with high elbows and a bound. He lay on his side in the straw, hands under his cheek, eyes alert.

  A bird whistled a trill, went silent, and began again with dotted notes and sharp rests, like a dripping faucet, before another trill.

  There was a distant dry rasp of crickets.

  He had known where Honduras was in class. And M. Brun had said that General de Gaulle had never talked over the telephone.

  A sulphur butterfly flew at changing heights through the doors of the boxcar, from the lavender fields to the wood.

  —Your eyes are like these flowers, violet and dark as autumn. They poison me as the crocuses poison the cows.

  —Poor sick cows.

  —M. Brun explained why the crocuses are like mothers who are daughters of their daughters and if Apollinaire had any more punctuation than Marc has hair in his britches you could follow him better.

  —The crocus blooms before it has any leaves. There's an article on it in the Encyclopedia under Sons before Fathers.

  —School children come in a fracas elves in winter jackets with hoods playing harmonicas and pick crocuses mothers that are daughters of daughters and are the color of your eyelids. Anne-Marie began a dance to the poetry.

  Bernard pretended to be asleep.

  A Roman cart drawn by two white oxen crossed the stone bridge.

  Marc was General de Gaulle refusing to talk over the telephone, batting at gnats.

  —The children bob like flowers in a demented wind.

  —The cowherd sings, Anne-Marie joined in.

  —And the cows, they recited together, abandon forever, mooing and shambling slow, this autumn meadow beautiful with deadly flowers.

  Marc grunted.

  Beyond a march of sunflowers, laundry on a line, fragrant with lavender, Marc recognized his summer shirts, socks, underpants, jeans. Sunflowers like Aztec kings in green mantles.

  The abrupt bluff. The stone bridge, over which the Romans passed in carts laden with sacks of lavender.

  Apta Julia in Provincia Gallia.

  And in the river, once, in the time of the painters of Lascaux, seals. Back when trees walked, owls spoke oracles, and the moon gave signs.

  —Wolves, Marc said, at the dark of the moon.

  —We could make a film here, Anne-Marie said. A shoebox on a tripod, with round candy boxes for the Michel Mouse ears on top. Lights, and the little board with 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 breath away.

  —Your peter's up.

  —It was your idea that we show all. Haven't you seen one before?

  —Does it feel good? Yours is the first. You're as red as a tomato. I mean I've not seen one up before. Your balls are as pinky purple as a pomegranate.

  —Two limbs higher, come on. By the good God, you can see the horizon all the way around up here.

  —Can I get on the same limb with you? You can hold me around the waist.

  —As long as we're trading secrets, we are, aren't we, I didn't know that girls had such a big notch.

  —I know two girls my age who have hair already. I'm slow, I guess.

  —Does Julie?

  —No. Can I feel your peter? I mean, put my fingers around it.

  —I guess so. I mean, sure, Anne-Marie.

  —Marc.

  —Pull its hood back, Anne-Marie.

  —Le prepuce. It slides easy. Does it hurt, pulled back, I mean?

  —Does chocolate cake with Chantilly cream taste good? Hold tight for another kiss. Slide it up, and back.

  —And only God seeing us.

  —And some interested angels, I hope. Can I touch, too? I know there's a place. Anne-Marie.

  —Marc, cher Marc. Here.

  Bernard's voice, from below:

  —Anne-Marie! Marc! We heard something drop, and we looked all around, our hearts stopped, till we found your duds in a bundle. You're up there? Where? Don't scare us like this! —At the very top! can't you see us?

  —Merde. At the fucking top of which tree?

  —The one you're under. Look up. We're Adam and Eve by way of dress.

  —Anne-Marie! Julie called. Marc! You're shameless! A scandal! Who would have believed it?

  —We're OK up here, Marc hollered down. Go on with your smooching. There are lots of pastilles left.

  —Come down! It's dangerous to be that high.

  —Go wiggle your toes.

  —We may stay up here for an hour or so, Anne-Marie called down. If I lose my hold, I'll float around awhile before drifting to the ground.

  —What if somebody comes?

  —They won't look up. Can you see us?

  —Barely.

  —I can't, Julie said. Show me where.

  —What are you doing?

  —Guess.

  They were in the tree half an hour. At one point Bernard climbed halfway up, and was shooed down. Marc first, Anne-Marie right above him, they climbed down, whistling in duet Colonel Bogey's March.

  On the ground, Marc said:

  —Step onto my back, and jump.

  Which Anne-Marie did.

  They stood grinning, arms around each other's waists. Julie pretended to be shocked, and hid her eyes. Bernard divided his inspection between the two, for information. They were speckled over with sprits of pine bark.

  —Have a good snuggle? Marc asked. Where's our bundle?

  Julie fetched it from the boxcar, and tossed it to Anne-Marie.

  The next afternoon, the summer keeping its blue sky, after Julie had helped her mother shell peas and hang out a wash, after Anne-Marie and Marc had been into Apt with Marc's mother to price school clothes on sale, and after Bernard had bicycled to the parsonage to pick up and deliver his share of the parish magazine, a chore farmed out among his scout troop, they each went by a different and deceptive way to their boxcar in the pinewood.

  Bernard, the first to arrive, had washed his wheat-blond hair, and studied himself in the mirror for longer than ever in his life, except to make monster faces. He chinned himself ten times on the boxcar door before he realized that he was making his armpits smelly, quit, sat and cupped his hand over his crotch, shuffled his sneakers in pine needles, untied them and promptly tied them again. A billow of white clouds was piling up over the lavender fields from the east. He turned quickly. Marc was behind him, through the other door.

  —Boy! are you sneaky!

  —Wanted to see if I could slip up on you. Where are we all?

  —A matter of who gets away when.

  Bernard slipped his hand down into his pants.

  —Like that, huh?

  —It's awful.

  —Whatever you're scheming won't happen. It never does. Going up the tree just happened. I couldn't have planned it in a hundred years. I see Julie coming through the lavender.

  Big smile, and a skip in her walk.

  She sat beside Bernard, hugged him around the shoulders, and kissed him on the cheek.

  A bird whistled a trill, was silent, and began again with dotted notes and sharp rests, like a dripping faucet, before another trill.

  Dry rasp of crickets.

  —I didn't, Bernard said, know where Hondur
as was in class. Put my underwear on inside out this morning.

  —Are we different? Julie asked.

  Bernard lay back, fainting, his arms as far back as he could reach, legs straight up, pigeon-toed, eyes wide open, dead. Julie traced a circle around his navel with a compass of finger and thumb.

  —Where is Honduras? Marc asked, picking at his shoe laces.

  Julie, watching a ride of midges and a turn of motes in the diagonal shaft of light between the doors of their boxcar while teasing the tongue of Bernard's belt from its buckle, said that Honduras, full of parrots and Mayan ruins in its jungles, was one of the jigsaw countries in l'Amerique Centrale.

  —Other people in other places, Marc said, are instructive to think about, as there are millions of them all doing something, the Chinese up to their knees in rice paddies reading Mao, Mongolians in ear-flaps riding yaks, and so on, with never a thought about us way on the other side of the lavender field, inside the pinewood, in the wilds of France, minding our own business. —Like, Bernard said from his collapse, fallen from the sky, saying poems. Everybody listen.

  Sur le chemin de Saint-Germain

  J'ai rencontre trois petits lapins

  J'en mets un dans mon armoire

  Il me dit: il y fait trop noir

  J'en mets un dans mon pantalon

  Il me suce mon p'tit crayon

  J'en mets un dans ma culotte

  Il me ronge ma petite carotte

  —That's vulgar, Marc said after a silence in which they could hear through the cricket racket somebody approaching.

  Anne-Marie.

  —I saw a lizard on the Roman wall, she said. He let me look at him for two seconds. And there's a stand of blue chicory just before you get to the old pear tree, as pretty as Monet. What was Bernard's poem about, sucking pastilles a deux?

  —Nothing so refined, but sort of, Julie said.

  Bernard fished around in his pockets. Pastilles. Anne-Marie flopped down beside Marc. Grinning stare, eyes laughing.

  —Progress, Bernard said, is what we made yesterday. Never look back.

  —Zipper's stuck, said Julie, tugging.

  Bernard propped on his elbows, watching.