Lesbian Pulp Fiction. Katherine Forrest V.

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СКАЧАТЬ in which one always was in the position of deciding how other people should behave, she had been born into the aristocratic sex, for it was the woman who could always decide, always command, in relationships with men. It had been a pleasant discovery. Jacqueline had been seventeen at the time.

      The dance was in full swing when we arrived. The men welcomed us with shouts and cries of joy; they were mostly French, though there was a scattering of uniforms from other nations—Polish, Norwegian, and Belgian. I liked dancing, and found myself in a little circle of swing enthusiasts. Everybody was learning the Lindy, and I danced with one after another in a strange exhilaration so that I scarcely knew or remembered with which boy the dancing went well. They were still all boys to me.

      Mickey was seized by a master sergeant of the Air Corps, who squeezed her tightly as they danced. He was short and slightly bald, but Mickey said he was nice enough. Mickey was never especially particular. She liked to have fun and was willing to taste out of any dish, finding them all pleasant. As she danced, soldiers called to her. They assessed her with an expert air. Her mouth especially excited them—an arched red mouth with the upper lip slightly advanced, as though the girl were constantly ready to be kissed.

      While they danced, the sergeant kissed her throat. For form’s sake, Mickey pretended to be shocked. But even the sergeant could see well enough that she was not at all offended.

      I looked around for Ursula, but she didn’t seem to be anywhere in the room. I learned later that, after having danced with a fat soldier who was nearly drunk, she felt that she had had enough, and sought to escape. The cigarette smoke was so thick that it stung her eyes almost to the point of tears. She was afraid of these men, didn’t know what to say to them, and was terrified merely at the idea of being touched by any one of them. She saw a door and fled outside. There was a little courtyard, and the fresh evening air made her shiver. Ursula sat down on the steps. The cool air caressed her cheeks, and she shook out her hair, relieved in her escape. Then she noticed that a soldier, quite young, was sitting on a crate in the courtyard, and watching her. There it is, she thought. I have to leave this place, too.

      But in order not to appear ridiculous, she told me with her quaint nicety, she remained for another moment, planning to get up and leave as though she had just come for a breath of air.

      She kept her eyes averted from the soldier so as not to give him an excuse to speak to her. The music came from the hall—muted, but reaching them nevertheless. In there, a voice was bellowing “Madelon.”

      Suddenly the soldier said to her, “It’s better out here than inside, don’t you think?” And as soon as she heard his calm voice, tinged with a slight foreign accent, Ursula felt reassured. Now she looked at the soldier. She could scarcely see him in the darkness, but he had a very young air and seemed rather small in stature. She replied, “Yes,” and didn’t know what else to say.

      They remained silent for a long while. Ursula was suddenly quite astonished to hear her own voice break the silence.

      She said, “Have you been in England long?”

      The soldier answered, “I’ve been here three days. Last week I was in Spain, and it’s only about fifteen days since I was in France.”

      Now Ursula looked at him with a kind of awe. He came from France! Only fifteen days ago, he had walked on the earth of France and spoken to the people of France and looked at the trees, the sky of France. It seemed to her that she had been in London for years rather than months.

      She raised her head and watched the searchlights sweeping the sky. It was beautiful to see. The alert had sounded, just as it did every evening, but there had been no sound of aircraft. The German planes must have headed somewhere else instead of coming over London.

      “Aren’t you cold?” the soldier asked. He spoke so nicely, with so much gentleness in his voice, that Ursula said she was touched. She shook her head. He was probably not French. He had an accent, but Ursula couldn’t tell from what country. And yet he spoke perfect French.

      He was silent again for a little while, and then he said, “I admire you for joining the Army. It’s not much fun for the men, but for women it must really be hard.”

      And now Ursula began to speak. Whenever she knew she was to be in the company of young men, she worried her head for days in advance to prepare some conversation, and she confessed that her voice always sounded affected to her own ears. Young men had always seemed members of another race to her, mysterious beings with whom she had no point of contact.

      But this evening in the dim courtyard, Ursula found herself talking freely to the unknown soldier. She told him about her life in Down Street. She described Jacqueline, “absolutely ravishing, but a little bit artificial.” Mickey, “a good comrade, and so funny”; Ann, “everybody thinks she’ll be the first to get her corporal stripes”; Ginette, who “talks nothing but slang, used to be a salesgirl, and can sew her own uniforms to measure.” She spoke of Claude, “very intelligent, very generous,” who was her protectress. Then suddenly she saw it all, all of her comrades as we were in the mornings, tense, badly adapted to this life, ready to find distraction in anything, hungry for love, each hiding her homesickness at the bottom of her heart. Ursula saw the main hall of Down Street, and her little sentry table. And all day long the phonograph that we had just acquired kept playing the same records, “Violetta” and “Mon coeur a besoin d’aimer.” She spoke about our captain, hurried and distant, a smile always on her lips, calling us her “dear girls,” always giving the impression that she was really going to do something, that she was going to help us somehow, that she was going to create an atmosphere of friendship in Down Street. She talked about this at every opportunity, but after each of her speeches one found oneself just as lonesome and empty as before.

      The soldier listened without interrupting her, and when she had finished all he said was, “I understand,” and Ursula felt herself to be truly understood, although she didn’t really know what there was to understand. It seemed to her that this boy comprehended things even before she had grasped them herself. This comforted her, like finding a schoolroom problem solved without having to trouble over it.

      We were all ready to go home, and had been hunting for Ursula. Jacqueline opened the door to the courtyard and called, “Ursula, are you there? Ursula, where are you?”

      Several voices shouted, “Blackout!” But we just had time to make out two forms, like little children clutched together in the dark. They started up, coming toward us.

      “Hurry!” Jacqueline called. “What a relief! At last we can leave,” she said to me.

      Ursula came slipping through the door.

      The truck was waiting outside, and we piled in. This time I suppose the driver was too tired for his game of jolting us against one another. It was far past midnight, and some of the girls slept, leaning their heads on each other’s shoulders. Suddenly I heard Ursula murmur, “Oh. I forgot to tell the soldier good-bye.”

      Just across from us sat Claude; she was holding Mickey’s head on her shoulder. I could feel Ursula stir unhappily. It must have seemed to her that Mickey had stolen her place.

      We jumped from the truck, one after the other, and were swallowed in the barracks hall. The house seemed to come awake, invaded like a beehive. Doors slammed, women ran up the stairway, women called to each other from room to room.

      Mickey, in pajamas, began to dance in the middle our dormitory. Jacqueline was dressed in one of СКАЧАТЬ