Fiction: Haunted, Part Two

                                                      II

“They used to carry our bodies down the hill over there from the hospital tents to the cemetery on mule carts. My remains are somewhere in there but they couldn’t find any identification, so my grave is unmarked.”

Sabrina wouldn’t be listening even if she could hear me. She is bent over the neck of her guitar. Her expression of intense concentration is partially concealed by curtain of inky curls. She strums a chord pattern, pulls a face, and tweaks one of the tuning pegs.  Another attempt results in another grimace.  I find myself telling Sabrina things I would never say to anyone else, things about the horrors of battle and secret places from my childhood. I wonder sometimes if it is because I know she cannot possibly hear that I feel so free to unburden my soul.  

We are resting beneath what I have come to think of as “our tree”, a magnificent ancient spreading oak that is starting to blush with the first green of early spring. Sabrina enjoys coming here to pretend to study.  I believe that she always intends to concentrate on her coursework, but within twenty minutes of settling here, “The Essays of Montaigne”, “Practical French Grammar” and “The World in the Twentieth Century” are usurped in her attention by a bottle of wine, bread and cheese, and whatever novel has managed to slip in the bag along with the notebooks. Sometimes the distraction is provided by the cat, a half grown piebald animal that is transparently devoted to her. Often Sabrina just lies back on her blanket, contentedly watching the sky drift behind the branches. In these moments I wish more than anything that I could ask her what she was thinking, but I would hate to disturb the sublime tranquility.

Even if you had seen these fields torn asunder by violence as I have, it is nearly impossible to imagine on days like this. How very strange it is to watch time pass without you. During my life this massive oak was a mere sapling.  In Sabrina’s bag and pockets are wonders that even the wildest imaginations of my generation could not have conceived.  I’ve seen her use a small rectangular device with no wires that can act as a camera, telephone, radio and a myriad of other functions, a computing device barely larger than a magazine, and speakers so miniscule that they can fit into a person’s ears and allow them to listen to music privately.  Everything has become so much smaller and more complex now.  While these nearly magical contraptions make me feel ancient and out of place, nothing brings the impossibility of my situation into sharp relief like music. Nearly every song Sabrina knows is unfamiliar to me, played in unusual rhythmic patterns and lyrics that ring oddly in the ear.  She has a pleasant soft singing voice and plays well, so far as I can judge, but the fact that we know almost none of the same songs saddens me greatly. How many millions of songs, paintings and books have been created since my demise? I ache to know what the world has become. Oh, to be able to pick up and read “the World in the Twentieth Century” for just ten minutes!

“Merde!” 

Sabrina’s sudden expletive sends a brace of turtledoves whistling terrified into the air.

“All this time I’ve been playing it in the wrong damn key!”  

“Darling,” I told her once I had stopped laughing “I don’t know why, but it is the funniest thing in the world when you curse!”

She chuckles ruefully and with a shake of her head starts the song over. It is a pretty French tune that she is learning it to improve her French. La Vie en Rose, I believe it is called. About halfway through the second verse, a woman’s voice with a heavy local accent interrupts.

“Your pronunciation is becoming less horrible, I think’ the voice observes dryly.

Standing by the fencerow is a willowy girl with wheaten hair and lynx eyes. She is exactly the sort of fragile looking young lady my contemporaries would have called a hot-house flower.

“Bonjour Yvonne!” Sabrina grins like a sunbeam, getting up to greet the newcomer with a kiss on either cheek. “What brings you out into the wilds?”

“You are again not answering your mobile” accuses Yvonne.

“Reception is awful out here. I usually just shut it off” Sabrina explains.

Yvonne examines a leaf that she has plucked from her sweater with mild distaste before flicking it away.

“The girls from our floor are all in the café on the square. They sent me to find you and bring you there.” she sniffs.

“Let me gather my things. I’ll just take a minute.” The books, blanket, and half filled bottle disappear into Sabrina’s shapeless black bag.  Yvonne leans against a fencepost disinterestedly fiddling with a small flat black device.

“Bridgette tells for you to hurry” she announces. “She misses you”

“Tell her I’m on my way” Sabrina replies snapping the latches of the guitar case. She looks around straightening her jacket “I think that’s everything. C’mon”

The two young women start off on the path towards the village arm in arm.  Yvonne gestures critically at the landscape.

“I can never understand for what you always want to come out here. Out here, there is just nothing” she complains.

“Maybe there is and you don’t know how to look properly “teases Sabrina. “Besides I like it here. It’s peaceful”

Sabrina smiles back over her shoulder with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. The two friends soon vanish around the bend.  I stay rooted to the spot until the sun is touching the horizon, unable to believe what I have just seen. It cannot be possible. It must have been a trick of the light or an illusion created by my hungry desires. Yet I can’t shake the impression that when Sabrina glanced over her shoulder, she looked directly at me…

…and winked! 

John A. Ryan 2011