1919

The Camera Eye (38)

sealed signed and delivered all over Tours you can smell lindens in bloom it’s hot my uniform sticks the OD chafes me under the chin

only four days ago AWOL crawling under the freight cars at the station of St. Pierre-des-Corps waiting in the buvette for the MP on guard to look away from the door so’s I could slink out with a cigarette (and my heart) in my mouth then in a tiny box of a hotel room changing the date on that old movement order

but today

my discharge sealed signed and delivered sends off sparks in my pocket like a romancandle

I walk past the headquarters of the SOS Hay sojer your tunic’s unbuttoned (f — k you buddy) and down the lindenshaded street to the bathhouse that has a court with flowers in the middle of it the hot water gushes green out of brass swanheads into the whitemetal tub I strip myself naked soap myself all over with the sour pink soap slide into the warm deepgreen tub through the white curtain in the window a finger of afternoon sunlight lengthens on the ceiling towel’s dry and warm smells of steam in the suitcase I’ve got a suit of civvies I borrowed from a fellow I know the buck private in the rear rank of Uncle Sam’s Medical Corps (serial number… never could remember the number anyway I dropped it in the Loire) goes down the drain with a gurgle and hiss and

having amply tipped and gotten the eye from the fat woman who swept up the towels

I step out into the lindensmell of a July afternoon and stroll up to the café where at the little tables outside only officers may set their whipcord behinds and order a drink of cognac unservable to those in uniform while waiting for the train to Paris and sit down firmly in long pants in the iron chair

an anonymous civilian