The war was far enough away now that the two soldiers could pass their mornings inventing the lives of others. They sat at the rear of the café, feet up, hats down, whispering their inventions to each other upon the arrival of every new patron.
“A great romantic,” Sasha said, as a big man with a straight jaw and a broken nose entered. “Travelled six out of the seven seas looking for his childhood sweetheart.”
“Her name?” Callum asked.
The Great Romantic ordered a small coffee and sat; paper unfolded on the table before him as a shield against loneliness.
“Eliza,” Sasha said.
“Details, details, friend, or this story is bound to have an unhappy ending, or no ending at all.”
Sasha took a sip of his rum and waited for the burn in his stomach before he continued.
“It’s a tale as old as love itself,” he said.
“Isn’t it always?”
“I’m afraid so. Our Great Romantic grew up poor enough to remember days with a belly as bare as his feet.”
“A shame for one so brimming with life.”
“But his hunger for Eliza could never be fulfilled.”
“Star crossed?”
“Worse.”
“Are they a countryside Romeo and Juliet? Did they live on the wrong side of the tracks from each other?”
“If they had tracks, which they did not in his village.”
“There are always tracks,” Callum said, lowering his voice to a mock sombre tone, “it is only that we do not see them.”
Sasha laughed. “You’re a philosopher, or maybe a poet.”
“I’m paid as well as both it seems, and so are you. Carry on with your tale of love and woe.”
“Two sides of the same mirror?”
“Always. On, on with it.”
“No tracks, indeed, but a house upon a hill and a girl in that house who our Great Romantic looked upon from afar.”
“She, Rapunzel?”
“Alas, her hair was not quite as long or golden, but still…”
“And our Great Romantic? Doomed to look and nothing more?”
“Doomed indeed, as all Great Romantics are. But he made himself a vow, you see.”
Callum scraped his chair forward. “Now we get to the meat of this tale of yours,” he said.
Sasha tipped his hat up and looked to the bomb shook, paint-flecked ceiling above and there he found his story.
“One moonlit night under the twisted arms of a lightning scarred tree he swore to the Heavens and all the Gods above he would make his fortune in some other land faraway and return. He would become a man who never felt his belly ache from hunger or from love, a man with shoes for every day of the year.”
“That’s a lot of shoes, Sasha.”
“Oh yes. Shoes enough so that every day he would wear a new pair and never feel the touch of the same leather twice.”
“And then?”
“Then, and only then would he return. No more gazing from afar, he would walk up to the door of that house where she who was not Rapunzel, but close enough, lived and he would knock three times. She would answer and he would sweep her from her feet. And by the Heavens he would make sure those feet never touched earth again. He would shower her with gifts and treasures for the rest of her life. He vowed all this that moonlit night.”
“Ahhh, it is that kind of vow is it?”
“And what kind of vow would that be, my dear friend?”
“The same as all other vows made under lightning scarred trees on moonlit nights.”
“Educate me.”
“Unfulfilled,” Callum said, his voice a low thunder.
They both laughed.
Louder than was polite in a time of war in a country that was not theirs, but soon might be.
The few scattered patrons of the café looked up, amongst them the Great Romantic, who tore himself away from his one-man-play of reading the headlines and caught them both in a stare.
Sasha and Callum retreated under their caps and waited for enough time to pass where a whisper might be permitted.
“The story? How does it end?” Callum asked after some time had passed.
“You see him do you not, our great romantic?”
“I see him now, but not what came before, that’s your job, friend. My turn to spin the yarn will come soon enough.”
“Look,” Sasha said, doing a bad job of pointing with an elbow while taking a sip from his rum, “a man defeated. Broken of heart. A fortune in one hand and the other hand oh so empty.”
“Eliza, his love?”
“Gone. Vanished. In the village there where whispers of a rival who took her away. A brutal man with only darkness in his heart.”
“Hence the ship our great romantic took out to the seas, I take it?”
“Six of seven seas sailed and still no love to be had.”
“And the seventh?”
“Soon.”
Their giggles were whispers.
“Will he find her do you think?” Callum adjusted his cap to see a little more of their invented man at his table.
The Great Romantic licked the dull edge of a pencil and filled out the top part of a crossword puzzle. Pride cut a smile from his hardened face, replaced quickly with confusion as he mouthed the next clue and found it far too cryptic for his liking.
“You see his face, don’t you?” Sasha said.
“I see, I see.”
“Defeat, my friend. Only one sea left to search and the smallest of all seas, you see?”
“That would be?”
Sasha stalled, searching for a sea small enough to fit his story.
“Ah, now, you see, it was the sea that is…you see…a sea that…”
Callum’s smiled in victory.
“You give?” he said.
“I give,” Sasha said.
“You couldn’t remember the name of one sea?”
“I could remember two, but the Atlantic and the Pacific aren’t small enough to keep my story afloat, as it goes.”
“My turn?”
“Your turn.”
And so it went.
With each new arrival a new story. Each story ended as the teller ran dry. From morning to early evening, the soldiers sat at the rear of the café filling in time in a war that they had not yet seen or heard. The enemy they were supposed to loathe were silent as only those in graves could be.
When the girl arrived, they did not see or hear her either.
She glided in silently, as if wearing socks on newly polished wood.
Both soldiers were busy under the warm shade of their hats and a half bottle of rum to notice, and when they did, they both saw the story they wanted to tell.
“My turn,” Sasha said, not knowing if this was truth or just another lie he wanted to believe.
“I think you’ll find you were last,” Callum said.
“No. It was you. The tiny giant, remember?”
“Now now, Sasha, we’ve not yet reached the bottom of the bottle for you to be forgetting that it was you last with your Mermaid Circus Troupe. And who could forget such a story so close to its telling? What with the underwater ballet and all.”
Sasha wished he could forget, for he had a story in mind for the newest patron that he so desperately wanted to tell. Another love story, for sure, but no doom and unfulfilled vows this time around. This was the kind of story that ended happily ever after where ever after was truly ’til death did they part.
“We’ll never agree,” Sasha said.
“This much is true.”
“We could argue until the war is over.”
“We might argue until it begins again, and that might take longer.”
“And I’ll think I’m right and you’re wrong.”
“And I’ll think the same.”
“Then how about we agree to agree that we can’t agree?”
“And the newest story, who tells it?”
“Both of us? You to me, me to you? We’ll take turns.”
They agreed without having to agree, each taking a gulp of rum as handshake.
Sasha began.
“An orphan,” he said.
“Her parents stolen from her by a bomb.” Callum fixed on the girl.
Her back was to them both, her soft black hair almost touching her pale white shoulders as she took sips from an unseen drink.
“A smart bomb,” Sasha said.
“She says there are no such thing as smart bombs.”
“She joined the revolution.”
“Fought with the rebels through the mountains and in the valleys.”
“Had no taste for revenge.”
“Chose peace instead.”
“After shooting a man.”
“Who looked like her father?”
“Didn’t kill him though.”
“Only wounded.”
“They became friends.”
“But he wanted more.”
“She refused.”
“He insisted.”
“She fought him.”
“This time he died.”
“So she ran.”
“Changed her name.”
“Became a teacher.”
“Literature.”
“Poetry.”
“Wrote some of her own, acclaimed now.”
“Left the country on a tour.”
“Missed home deeply.
“Returned and fell in love.”
“With a soldier.”
“From another country. Who—“
“Who has blue eyes,” Sasha said, tipping his cap enough to show the blue beneath.
“Brown eyes,” Callum said, mirroring the movement to reveal the hazel that seemed always in shade beneath his cap.
“I think you’ll find this soldier has blue eyes, my friend. Why, eyes just exactly the same hue as the ones you’re looking into right now.”
“It was my turn.”
“Mine, I think you’ll find.”
“This could go on for a while,” Callum said.
“It might. Unless…”
“Unless…?”
Sasha smiled.
“And the soldier’s name was—“ he began.
They both shouted out their names at the same time.
Almost all eyes were on them. The Great Romantic, the three members of the Mermaid Circus Troupe, the Tiny Giant. All except the girl they had not named just yet.
The two soldiers retreated beneath their caps.
“Your fault,” Sasha said, feeling guilty.
“Yours too,” Callum replied, just as guilty.
Time passed as time passes when you’re waiting for a war that was over before it had begun.
They finished the bottle, and when the glares had cooled, they decided to finish the story.
“How about an ending?” Sasha asked.
“I fear with the both of us fighting each other we have no chance of such a thing. Not a happy one at any rate.”
“We could cut cards?”
“Highest number gets the happy ending?”
“Lowest number gets what then?”
“To lose, gracefully.”
“No thanks.”
“What then?”
“To give her a name,” Sasha said, defiantly.
“Aye, that’s fair. Do you have any cards?”
“No.”
“Coin then?”
Sasha reached up and pulled out a silver circle from under the rim of his cap. He bit the edge.
“Solid,” he said.
“You’re a true gent.”
“Who flips?”
“We could flip to see who flips?”
“And do we also flip to see who will flip to see who flips for the flip?”
Callum shook his head, and fluttered his eyes.
“I’ve either had too little or too much rum for that to make sense. How about we ask her which of us she wants? Heads or tails. Blue eyes or brown.”
He nodded in the direction of their invented affections.
“You’re serious?”
Callum stood.
“I guess that’s a yes then,” Sasha said.
Callum adjusted his cap along with his posture. He puffed out his chest, mumbled a quiet motivation to himself and walked.
It wasn’t such a confident walk, but the walk of a man who’d just stepped off a boat and had not yet become accustomed to a world that was not queasy with motion. The rum helped stabilize some of the steps, but it was a rocky journey the twenty or so paces from their table at the rear to the table where the girl sat.
Sasha sat paralysed, unable to breathe for fear that somehow it he might be the one chosen from a distance.
He watched and he waited but there was no sign of victory for either. No heads or tails, no blue eyes or brown.
Callum returned.
He did not look happy.
“Who won?” Sasha asked.
“Nobody,” Callum said.
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“That there’s no happy ending for this story,” he said.
“You asked her on a date?”
“I did,” Callum sat, stiff backed with his stiff drink untouched in his stiff hand outstretched before him.
“She said, ‘no’?”
“No.”
“Then what did she say?”
~
The girl in the café dreamed of a better time.
A time before the war.
A time when her heart wasn’t broken.
Soon she would join her brother and mother and father, her uncles and aunts, her nieces and nephews in a place where that dream could be real again.
The soldier came to her side, interrupting the dream, all smiles and confidence. A reminder of what was lost, and what could never be returned.
“Miss, I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me some time?”
She closed her eyes, and ran her hands over the pregnant bulge of dynamite strapped to her stomach until it kicked, then said “Yes.”
Copyright © 2024 Paul John Lyon. All Rights Reserved.