Remembrance

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A tomb is only an empty box. The one I love exists entirely in my memory, in a handkerchief that's still scented when I unfold it. in an intonation that I suddenly remember and listen to for a whole long moment, my head bent …… and what bitterness at first—but what calm relief later!—to discover, one day when spring trembles with cold, uneasiness and hope—that nothing has changed: neither the smell of the earth, nor the quiver of the brook, nor the shape, like rosebuds, of the chestnut shoots … to lean down in astonishment over the little filigree cups of the wild anemones, toward the carpet of endless violets—arc they mauve, arc they blue?—to let one's gaze caress the unforgotten outline of the mountains, to drink with a sigh of hesitation the piquant wine of a new sun … to live again!Colette

A Retreat from Love

1

The train rolled relentlessly into the Italian darkness, its wheels chattering rhythmically against the rails. There were fat peasants crowded everywhere, and skinny children, and seedy-looking businessmen and hordes of American GI's. There was a sad, musty smell in the train, like a house that hasn't been cleaned in years and years, and added to that the ripe smell of tired bodies, long unwashed, unkempt, unloved. Yet no one had thought to open a window. No one would dare. The old women would scream as though they had been assaulted, faced with a rush of the warm night air. That would have offended them. Everything upset them. Heat, cold, fatigue, hunger. They had reason to be disturbed. They were tired. They were sick. They had been hungry and cold and afraid for a long time. It had been one hell of a long war. And now it was over. For three months now. It was August 1945. And the train rolled on relentlessly as it had for two endless days.

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