A Country Road, A Tree Read Online Free PDF

hold?” she asks again.
    He rolls away and fumbles for a cigarette. He had been thinking, by association with the sheets, washing line, seen linen billow and snap. But she means Maginot. “I have no idea.”
    “They put too much faith in it,” she says. “I think.”
    “I daresay.”
    “The generals go on as though it’s the answer to everything. For them it’s the last war all over again. But it’s not the same war, is it? So that damned line is not the answer.”
    He lights up the cigarette, draws on it, then offers it to her. “It might be the same war. More or less.”
    “Times have changed,” she says. “Things have moved on, haven’t they? The world goes faster now. The war will too.”
    He watches as she takes a sip of smoke. Her lips, with the dip of a seagull in flight.
    Over a cloud of outbreath, she says, “They’ll go round, won’t they? Load up in their Volkswagens and just motor on through.” A pause. “Perhaps you should have stayed in Ireland.”

    He blinks at her, then rolls his head away and looks up at the ceiling, where a cobweb trails in the draught. He is not necessary here, though here is necessary to him. “Do you think so?”
    “It won’t go on like this for ever, nothing happening. It won’t last. The drôle de guerre. It’ll stop being funny soon enough.”
    “It’s not really funny now.”
    “The Legation would help you if you were to leave.”
    Mr. and Mrs. , the clerk had said.
    “I can hardly breathe back there in Ireland. I certainly can’t write.”
    “Well then.” Eyebrows up, lips pursed. “You must stay, whatever comes.”
    He takes the cigarette back and smokes it.
    She sits up, swings her legs out of the bed. “If I strip the bedclothes,” she says, “would you take the sheets down to the pressing ?”
    —
    Two streets away from the apartment, on the Place Falguière, one of those strays asks him politely for the time; he stops, consults his watch, tips it towards the other fellow, who nods. He also offers a cigarette. Eager thanks; a match is struck; he offers out the flame: the old man dips his head towards it.
    To the rusty crown of a once-black bowler hat, he says, “You’re not from round here, are you?”
    The old man looks up at him from under the brim, made wary. “What makes you say that?”
    “Your accent.”
    “You’ve got quite an accent there yourself.”
    “It’s not me that worries me.”
    The old fellow grins, reveals quite the worst teeth he’s ever seen. “Maybe it should be, my friend.” A phlegmy sound, which might be a chuckle. “We’re all dangerous, we’re all contaminated. We’re all sales métèques as far as they’re concerned. And if they lock you up now, when those Nazi lads get here you’re dinner. Kaput.”

    He baulks at the hard words, casually used: dirty foreigners. “I’ll have my papers soon.” His own voice sounds confident.
    The old man lets smoke go, touches a thread of tobacco from his pale tongue, wistful. “I had papers once.”
    “You don’t any more?”
    The old fellow shakes his head. “All obsolete; all gone.”
    “Can you get new ones?”
    “There’s nobody left to grant me them. I have no country now; no rights. No one will hear me.”
    “Oh God.”
    The old man nods, drags again on the cigarette and it crumbles to a coal. He lets out an appreciative huff of smoke.
    The urge to assist is visceral… the oldest hath borne most… but what can he do? This is massive and abstract and there is no way to get even a fingernail into it. He peers into the cigarette packet, shakes it, taps: there are three cigarettes left.
    “Here.” He hands the packet over. He waves aside the thanks.
    The old fellow fumbles the pack away before the offer can be retracted. “God bless you, sir.”
    “God bless you.”
    He turns away, rounding the corner on to rue d’Alleray, chewing at the inside of his cheek. The weather’s turning; it’s getting cold. Things can only get worse. His fingertips