Dancing with Air (Still Life with Memories Book 4) Read online

  ❋

  At the bus station I look at her, surprised to discover something that I had not noticed before: a thin strand of silver running in and out through the shine, the red shine of her hair. In my eyes Natasha is beautiful, even though her figure seems more fragile than ever.

  Strong is what I need her to be. What we are facing now, I’m afraid, is a different kind of battle.

  Her doctor cannot be right. Can he? The only reason I’m taking her to that procedure is to rule out what he is considering, to prove him wrong. That word he used is trembling on my tongue. It is too tough for me to say, too painful to imagine. It cannot be true. I can’t let it! Any calamity will be better than that, even cancer, because that can, perhaps, be cured. Not so Alzheimer’s.

  Someone’s crying, and I think it’s me.

  In the distance I spot the bus. Turning to Natasha I say, softly, “Hold on to me, dear,” but I have no idea if she heard me, because a sudden gust of wind has stolen away my words.

  She smiles, leans her head against my shoulder. For the duration of the touch, everything around us seems to vanish, even my worries. I gather her gently into my arms, holding her like a breath.

  Instinctively Natasha nuzzles up to me.

  In a heartbeat I cup her face in my hands and there we stand, both of us in awe of the moment, kissing. Her lips are both sweet and salty.

  Then I whisper, “Hold me holding you.”

  And in my mind I add, You must, my love! Because if this disease, which I don’t even want to name, gets hold of you, then... Then, what will remain between us? What will I do but wonder, and be ashamed of myself for wondering: which one of us is about to stop living? Is it you or is it me?

  The most cherished thing you gave me, Natasha, the one I can still rescue for us, is this: our past. I should capture each moment, wrap it up—ever so carefully—in words, so our passion may continue to blossom on this page, even as we decline.

  That Old GI Jive

  Chapter 1

  How should a soldier who had been away for three months begin to describe what he was thinking, what he was feeling upon returning to duty? Frankly I had no idea. I could not truthfully tell the fellows, “Oh, it’s wonderful to be back,” because I hadn’t had a moment to decide whether it was wonderful or not.

  Yes, it felt right to be among them again. On the other hand I longed to be on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, with Natasha. The memory of that magical evening, the evening at the Wellington hotel in New York, when I had made love to her, started to turn into a vague sense of regret. I must have done or said something wrong, or else it was for no good reason that my luck was turning sour, which was miserably clear to me, because as far as I knew, she had not come to the airport to kiss me goodbye.

  Our last meeting was vivid in my mind, but already seen as though through a film of air, rippling, becoming thicker, turning into a haze. And the wild, desperate quiver of the flesh had subsided by now. Had it really happened?

  In my mind I could still hear the sighs—raw, erotic, and oh, so stirring—that had passed her lips before she could bite them back. They evoked a vision of that night, bringing it from its distance back into a sense of intimacy. I closed my eyes and painted it in full detail, over and again, starting with the bedside lamp, with its oatmeal-colored, bell-shaped shade, shedding a soft glow over the half-open chocolate box, over the carved headboard, and over the curve of her shoulder.

  The light had caressed her, slinking into the red curl behind her ear, rolling all the way down from her neck to the small of her back, and from there hopping over to her hip.

  Afterwards, I had risen from the bed, casting a look back. There she was, already asleep. Her arms around the pillow, the fingers open upon the design, the intricate design in gold and deep purple, which flowed in and out of the folds of the sheets, giving a glint here and there. Her nose lightly freckled, on her cheek a hint of a dimple, and the lips parted, ever so slightly. If she weren’t lost in slumber they might have flickered into a smile.

  Even in her dream, had she felt me, putting on my leather jacket, covering her up to her ears with the comforter, then turning off the lamp? One last time, in the dark, I had taken in the scent, which smelled of chocolate bonbons and of her flesh.

  Now, in my first two days in London I got no sleep at all, ruined the only photograph I had of her, in circumstances that could only be described as downright embarrassing, and—perhaps punished for it by some ominous cosmic powers—caught a bad case of cold.

  Here is how it happened.

  ❋

  Soldiers of different stripes huddled together in Piccadilly Circus. I spotted my friend Ryan, an enlisted man from Detroit, standing there among them. I was just about to pull him aside, to tell him that quite by accident I had crossed paths with his good-looking, extremely blond girlfriend, Lana, back in New York. On second thought I considered her pronounced admiration for all men in uniform, and the mischievous glint I had caught in her eye, especially when looking at me. I knew not to talk about that incident, because he might, quite rightly, get the wrong idea about us.

  Before I could make up my mind whether to say anything at all about that woman and if so, in what manner, Ryan came over with a big, toothy smile and a wink. He was making up words as he went:

  Girls say you’re too hip

  So put on your suit

  Don’t forget to salute

  You’re going to war

  To fight up the shore

  March till you arrive

  Take the jeep for a drive

  You’re too hip for singing that GI Jive

  Ryan gave me a huge pat on the back and asked, “Well? Don’t you agree?”

  I answered by asking, “Agree? With what?”

  “Everyone does it!”

  “Does what?”

  “Cheat!”

  “No!” I said, quite vehemently. “I sure don’t!”

  “Oh, what’s the point talking to you,” he muttered, waving his hand at me. “What was I thinking?”

  And the fellows behind him chuckled, as if to say, just let him be! There’s nothing more boring than a man in love.

  “You may not want to believe it,” said Ryan. “But even for you, it’s only a matter of time. For all of us, there comes a point when, for one reason or another, we have no choice but to bend the truth a bit.”

  And I said, “Why?”

  And he said, “Because.”

  “Because what?”

  “Because naturally, out of a genuine, gallant consideration, we don’t wish to hurt the feelings of our sweethearts, and they know it. Yes, the little darlings know it all too well!”

  I could not help but say, “Oh, stop it! Haven’t you given any thought to one simple thing—”

  “Such as?”

  “Being true! Being faithful!”

  “First of all that’s two things, neither of which is as simple as it may seem, at least for me.”

  “Simple or not, Ryan, have you never considered devoting yourself to a single woman?”

  “Yes I did, only to reject the notion of it as soon as it crossed my mind. Life’s short! And during war it’s shorter than short, so I’m determined to make the most of it, every minute of it, with any woman who’ll show the delightfully bad judgement of having me, because who knows what’s coming, what’s waiting for me around the corner.”

  I said nothing, but thought that what was waiting for him, without a doubt, was a game of deflecting blame.

  Ryan caught my look.

  “According to you,” he said, rolling his eyes, “I would have to apologize profusely to whoever I’m dating, clap a hand to my chest, promise to behave differently in the future and to be sincere, and accept that forgiveness may take time, all of which is terribly, excruciatingly dull and moreover, utterly unnecessary! Trust me, for their own sake these babes end up forgiving us our occasional mischiefs and in no time forgetting all about them.”

  “Do they?”<
br />
  He shrugged. “I hope so. Since you left I got me not one, not two, but three English sweeties! One doesn’t suspect a thing about the other, or at least I hope so.”

  “I don’t envy you.”

  “Well, you should!”

  “Yours is a tricky life.”

  “Oh, it is! Like last evening: I took Kate home, called Julia to let her know I couldn’t make it, and if she doesn’t mind terribly let’s call off our date, and sweet dreams, honey, I’ll be going to bed soon. Which I did, mind you—with Liz, after we came back from the pictures.”

  “I bet you can’t remember anything of importance about any one of them, such as the first date. It must all be a blur.”

  “You’re quite mistaken,” he said. “Want to know about Liz?”

  “Not really,” said I. “Forget I asked.”

  “I met her about two years ago,” he said, and his eyes caught an odd expression, which I had never seen on him before. “I ended up in her room that night and gave thanks to my lucky stars—until I heard the noise.”

  “What noise?”

  “I’ll never forget it. The German planes came in waves, just after dark. You could hear their motors grinding overhead, rattling the city with an angry pulsation like a bee buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, as if in blind fury. Somehow we could sense from the firing of guns and wailing of sirens that there was to be no monkey business this night.”

  From my own experience I knew just exactly what he must have gone through. At present, the threat of an invasion of Britain had already passed, as Hitler's attention had turned to attacking the Soviet Union in the East. But just a few months ago, a bomb had dropped close to the River Thames moments after I had crossed it. My knees should have been strong enough to support me, and my stomach had felt in some danger of letting me down.

  Now I tried to cut into his description with a bit of mine, to no avail. Ryan would not listen. He was too occupied with talking.

  “So, about Liz,” he went on. “Oh how she clung to me! In her room, with those black curtains drawn across the windows, we felt the rattle from the explosions. You could hear the boom, the heavy, stabbing boom of bombs at their work, crumpling buildings into rubble not too far away from us.”

  “Did you take cover?”

  “At first I did, but then I became curious. So I stepped out onto the balcony to look at the view, and a sense of vast excitement came over me.”

  “Fear I would understand,” said I. “But excitement? Really?”

  “Yes,” said Ryan. “How can I make it clear for you? Perhaps you’ve seen big fires before, but I doubt you’ve seen the whole horizon of a city ringed with great fires, scores of them. The closest ones were close enough for us to hear them, not only through our ears but through the bones as well: flames, crackling! Firemen, shouting! A huge blaze died down under their dousing, only to flare out again.”

  “And Liz? What about her?”

  “She stood behind me, pressing her hands over her eyes and shaking her head in great shock. But I, I kept gazing at the sight. There was something awe-inspiring just in the savagery of it all.”

  Both of us fell silent for a while.

  “So,” he said at last. “Don’t you tell me I can’t remember a thing about Liz, or any of the other girls. Boy, the stories I could tell!”

  It was then that the idea of writing his story, and the stories of the other fellows, first occurred to me. After all I had this ambition, a burning ambition to become a writer one day, which would not only fulfill my need for expression but also impress Natasha.

  Back then I believed that in a sense, being an author is akin to being God, or some other deity making up a sequence of events and letting the characters find their way through them. And so, recording accounts of real life seemed of a lesser value to me. Such accounts would demand less creativity than spinning a tale out of pure imagination, or so I thought.

  In my world, even the Almighty had doubts, especially about his creation, and so, why not me? I worried that the yarn would need to adhere not only to the facts but also to the truth, I mean, to the version of truth as seen by each one of my subjects, which would inhibit my artistic freedom.

  While I was pondering all this Ryan glanced at his watch.

  “Oh, it’s late,” he said. “Want to join me tonight?”

  “No, I’m too tired. Must get some sleep.”

  “Suit yourself. I’m going to the flicks again, this time with Julia, because I feel bad about letting her down the other night. The movie is one I’ve already seen, once with Kate and a second time with Liz. Fittingly it’s called, ‘They Met in the Dark,’ which incidentally is how I met all three of them.”

  By now Ryan must have noticed that I was no longer capable of listening to him, as the exhaustion caught up with me. Even so, he droned on, telling me that the plot made use of every cliché from recent spy films, such as the encoding of messages into music, a spy ring in a port, and of course the obligatory missing corpse, but in spite of all that, it was a lackluster movie, nothing exciting compared to Hitchcock’s ‘Saboteur,’ which was made the very same year in Hollywood, and who should be starring in this thing but Alan Curtis, who began his career as a model appearing in local newspaper ads, but here he played some Royal navy Commander tricked by a pretty girl, played by Michèle Morgan, who was a French beauty, but here she was working for the Nazis, and the poor guy ended up revealing military secrets to her and before he managed to get his wits about, there he was, in court martial, which made him vow to track her down.

  “Oh yes,” I muttered, ready to nod off but still, doing my best to keep my eyes open and stay on my feet, which seemed like a near-impossible task, becoming more complicated by the second. “I’ll have to track her down.”

  “You what?” For the first time since the beginning of the conversation Ryan stumbled, somehow, into confusion. “Why? I mean, who?”

  “Because,” I mumbled. “She didn’t come to kiss me goodbye. Natasha, I mean. And by the way, I met Lana—”

  “My Lana?”

  “Not exactly. She doesn’t love you anymore.”

  From the corner of my eye I noticed his jaw falling open. For a moment he had no idea what to say, which gave me the perfect opportunity to take leave of him.

  ❋

  By now it was dusk, and a light drizzle started coming diagonally at me. The street lamps were dark, and there were no neon lights on buildings, no lights at railway stations, on the trains or the buses. Luckily I had a small torchlight and started swinging it about, finding some pleasure in rediscovering London of the night.

  Perhaps it was because of my mood or the way things looked at this dim hour that the city seemed to exude a sense of suspicion. Warnings about spies were displayed on posters everywhere, using the slogan, ‘Walls have Ears.’

  “You,” someone shouted. “What d’you think you’re doing?”

  “Who, me? Nothing—”

  “What’s the matter with you? Want to aid enemy pilots in their navigation?” demanded the man, not expecting an answer, which was why I gave none.

  He was wearing a set of overalls and a black steel helmet with a single letter written in bold white across it: W, which stood for air raid precaution warden. He put his hand on my torchlight, pushing it down, just like his own, which was when, in a flash, I noticed the shoes—three pairs of them, tramping down the street in my direction and coming to a stand at the lip of a puddle, just outside the dimly lit area underfoot.

  These women’s shoes were anything but elegant, as heels were limited, since the beginning of the year, to a height of only two inches. The look of them reminded me of the ‘make do and mend’ suggestions, published in many British magazines, which explained how to extend the life of your footwear by having extra rubber stick-a-soles fitted and adding toe and heel metal tags.

  There they stood, three pairs of long, shapely legs, shielded by a large black umbrella. Behind it I heard three voices, speaking in a Cockn
ey accent.

  In a nasal tone, “Poor thing, you’re all wet,” said one girl to me. “Shall we take you home?”

  The second one giggled. “Everyone does it!”

  “Yeah,” said the third one. “Take my American boyfriend, for instance. He thinks I don’t know he’s cheating on me. How dull-witted can a guy be?”

  Covering her cough with a handkerchief, “Oh, mine is just the same,” said the first girl.

  “Mine too,” said the other.

  And the third one waved her hand. “Oh, they’re all the same.”

  “Except, perhaps, this one!” said the first girl, pointing a lacquered nail at me.

  She bent under the edge of the black canopy to come near me, and now I could see her face. It was, for the most part, pretty. Her lips were red and so was her nose. Vapors billowed from it into the cold air. Her pointed bust pressed against me when she lifted her hand and in a heartbeat reached inside my leather jacket. That was when I realized she was up to no good.

  My mistake was not taking a step back to avoid her, but by now it was already too late. She reached up to my shirt pocket and out of it plucked a picture, which I had been carrying during the last few months right here, next to my heart.

  I leapt forward. “Give it back,” I cried, “right now!”

  In a playful tone, “Not so fast,” she said, quickly distancing herself from me. And to the warden, who had been standing quietly behind the three of them in his Wellington boots, all this time, she called out, “Hey, you! Come over here!”

  “What for?”

  “Give us some light, will you?”

  He raised his right hand to point his torchlight at the image, and at the same time cupped his left one over it for protection, as raindrops were drizzling, rolling—drip, drip, drip—down the metal rib of the umbrella.