Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

"I imagine so," Christian said, sparring, wondering: What is this woman up to?

"How about you?" She spoke abstractedly, not really to Christian, but into the warm, dusky air.

"Perhaps I share Brandt's opinion," Christian said.

"You're very tired, too, aren't you?" Francoise sat up and stared at him, her lips straight and quite sympathetic, but her heavy-lidded green eyes contracted in what seemed to Christian to be a hidden smile. "You probably want to go to sleep, too."

"Not just now," said Christian. Suddenly he couldn't bear the thought of this long-limbed, green-eyed, mocking woman leaving him. "I've been a lot more tired than this in my time."

"Oh," said Francoise, lying back again, "oh, what an excellent soldier. Stoical, inexhaustible. How can an army lose a war when it still has troops like that?"

Christian stared at her, hating her. She turned her head in a sleepy movement of the cushions, to look at him. The long muscles under the pale skin of her throat made a delicate new pattern of flesh and shadows in the lamplight. Finally, Christian knew, staring at her, he would have to kiss that place where the skin swept in an ivory, trembling, living sheet from the base of her throat to the half-exposed shoulder.

"I knew a boy like you long ago," Francoise said, not smiling now, looking directly at him. "A Frenchman. Strong. Uncomplaining. A resolute patriot. I liked him very much, I must say." The deep voice murmured in his ears. "He died in ' 40. In another retreat. Do you expect to die, Sergeant?"

"No," said Christian, slowly. "I do not expect to die."

"Good." Francoise's full lips moved into the semblance of a smile. "The best of the best, according to your friend. The hope of the new Europe. Do you consider yourself the hope of the new Europe, Sergeant?"

"Brandt was drunk."

"Was he? Possibly. Are you sure you don't want to go to sleep?"

"I'm sure."

"You do look very tired, you know."

"I do not wish to go to sleep."

Francoise nodded gently. "The ever-waking Sergeant. Does not wish to go to sleep. Prefers to remain awake, at great personal sacrifice, and entertain a lonely French lady who is at a loose end until the Americans enter Paris…" She put her hand, palm upward, over her eyes, the loose sleeve falling back from the slender wrist and the long, sharp-nailed fingers. "Tomorrow," she said, "we will enter your name for the Legion of Honour, second class, service to the French nation."

"Enough," Christian said, without moving from his chair.

"Stop making fun of me."

"Nothing," said Francoise flatly, "could be further from my mind. Tell me, Sergeant, as a military man, how long do you think it will be before the Americans get here?"

"Two weeks," said Christian. "A month."

"Oh," Francoise said, "we are in for an interesting time, aren't we?"

"Yes."

"Shall I tell you something, Sergeant?"

"What?"

"I have remembered our little dinner party again and again.

"'40? '41?"

"'40."

"I wore a white dress. You looked very handsome. Tall, straight, intelligent, conquering, shining in your uniform, the young god of mechanized warfare." She chuckled.

"You are making fun of me again," Christian said. "It is not pleasant."

"I was very much impressed with you." She waved her hand, as though to stop a contradiction that Christian had no idea of voicing. "Honestly, I was. I was very cold to you, wasn't I?" Again the small remembering laugh. "You have no idea how difficult it was for me to manage it. I am far from impervious, Sergeant, to the attractions of young men. And you were so splendid-looking, Sergeant…" The sleepy, hypnotic voice whispering musically in the soft-lighted, civilized room, seemed remote, unreal. "So ripe with conquest, so arrogant, so beautiful. It took all my enormous powers of self-control. You are less arrogant, now, aren't you, Sergeant?"

"Yes," said Christian, feeling himself between sleeping and waking, rhythmically adrift on a soft, perfumed, subtly dangerous tide. "Not arrogant at all any more."

"You're very tired now," the woman murmured. "A little grey. And I noticed that you limp a bit, too. In '40 it did not seem you could ever grow tired. You might die, then, I thought, in one glorious burst of fire, but never weary, never… You are very different now, Sergeant, very different. By ordinary standards, one would never say you were beautiful now, with your limp and your greying hair and your thin face… But I'm going to tell you something, Sergeant. I am a woman of peculiar tastes. Your uniform is no longer shining. Your face is grey. No one would ever believe that there is a resemblance in you to the young god of mechanized warfare…" A final hint of soft laughter echoed in her voice. "But I find you much more attractive tonight, Sergeant, infinitely more…"

She stopped speaking, her opium-like voice dying among the shadows of the cushioned couch.

Christian stood up. He went over and stared at her for a moment. She looked up at him, her eyes wide, smiling with candour.

He knelt swiftly and kissed her.

He lay beside her in the dark bed. The window-curtains were blowing gently in the summer night wind. A pale silvery wash of moonlight draped and made soft the outlines of the dressingtable, the chairs with his clothes thrown over them.

The German-hater… He smiled and turned his head. Her hair tumbled in a dark, fragrant mass on the pillow, Francoise was lying beside him, touching his skin lightly with the tips of her fingers, her eyes once more mysterious in the wavering pale light.

She smiled slowly. "See," she said, "you weren't so terribly tired, after all, were you?"

They laughed together. He moved his head and kissed the smooth, silvery skin where her throat joined her shoulder, drowsily submerged in the mingled textures of skin and hair, swimming hazily in the living double fragrance of hair and skin.

"There is something to be said," Francoise whispered, "for all retreats."

Through the open window came the sound of soldiers marching, hobnails making a remote military rhythmic clatter, pleasant and meaningless heard in this way in a hidden room through the tangled perfumed strands of his mistress's hair.

"I knew it, as soon as I saw you," Francoise said. "The first time, long ago, that it could be like this. Formidable. I could tell."

"Why did you wait so long?" Christian pulled back gently, turning, looking up at the pattern the moonlight, reflected from a mirror, made on the ceiling. "God, the time we've wasted. Why didn't you do this then?"

"I was not making love to Germans, then," Francoise said coolly. "I did not think it was admirable to surrender everything in the country to the conqueror. You may not believe this, and I don't care whether you do or not, but you are the first German I have let touch me."

"I believe you," Christian said. And he did, because whatever else her faults might be, dishonesty was certainly not one of them.

"Don't think it was easy," Francoise said. "I am not a nun."

"Oh, no," said Christian gravely. "I will swear to that."

Francoise did not laugh. "You were not the only one," she said. "So many magnificent young men, such a pleasant variety of young men… But, not one of them, not one… The conquerors did not get anything… Not until tonight…"

Christian hesitated, vaguely troubled. "Why," he asked, "why have you changed now?"

"Oh, it's all right now." Francoise laughed, a sly, sleepy, satisfied, womanly laugh. "It's perfectly all right now. You're not a conqueror any more, darling, you're a refugee…" She twisted over to him and kissed him. "Now," she said, "it is time to sleep…"

She moved over to her side of the bed. Lying flat on her back, with her arms chastely at her side, her long body sweepingly outlined under the white blur of the sheet, she soon dropped off to sleep. Her breath came in an even, healthy rhythm in the quiet room.