Morning Is a Long Time Coming by Bette Greene

Author:Bette Greene [Greene, Bette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-2584-4
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2011-04-01T11:00:00+00:00

16

AS THEY MOVED with an almost mechanical gait toward me, the growing crescent of my townspeople chanted, “Jew Nazi lover ... Jew Nazi lover ... Jew Nazi lover.” I moved away while calling back to them, explaining that really Anton was never, NEVER in his whole life a Nazi! Only a not-very-brave man who was too decent to kill and too scared to die for the fatherland.

But it wasn’t until now, now when I could see the tightness of their lips—“Jew Nazi lover! Jew Nazi lover! Jew Nazi lover!”—and the narrowing of their eyes that I came to understand that I was soon to die because not even one of them would ever allow himself to listen. And I was going to die in a way that nobody would ever describe as merciful.

When the crescent moved to encircle, I felt a damp, astringent blast from their collective breaths as they shouted with an absolute on-the-beat precision, “JEW NAZI LOVER! JEW NAZI LOVER! JEW NAZI LOVER!”

My eyes jerked open to gaze upon the Hotel Vaucluse’s paint-is-a-peeling ceiling and older-than-thou wallpaper featuring tiny garlands of no longer fresh pink flowers strung together with whimsical blue ribbons.

“Nobody’s going to hurt me,” I whispered to my rapidly beating heart. “I’m not there ... there in Jenkinsville anymore. I’m here. Here safe in Paris, France.”

But all of my bad dream wasn’t only a dream because outside on the street there was real commotion, real chanting going on: “Legumes du jardin ... bon marché! Legumes du jardin ... bon marché!”

Slowly shifting my reclining body into a sitting position on this strange, soft-as-a-pillow mattress, I looked at my watch. Only quarter to six. Morning had been a long time coming, but still I felt comforted that I had, in some fashion, made it through the night.

I spread the curtains apart and threw open the almost floor-to-ceiling French-windows to look out upon a day that hadn’t as yet been completely lit by the sun. Two stories below, a triangle of intersecting streets was coming alive with open-air stalls and pushcarts being loaded with small mountains of primary-colored fruits and vegetables. Practically all of them were roofed by a slant of weather-worn tarpaulin, but here and there a fringed bi-colored beach umbrella crowned the enterprise.

A street smell of incredible sweetness wafted up. Cantaloupe! I searched the marketplace to match the olfactory with the visual, but the closest I could come to matching was a barechested man unloading boxes of bananas from a battered farm truck.

As I systematically searched the mounds of produce for those elusive melons, my eyes stalled on a row of bloody white rabbits and a single dun-colored lamb dangling in eternal serenity on meat hooks in front of the store-a large sign announced “Boucherie.”

Then close, but unseen, cathedral bells began ringing so celestially that my first thought was that something momentous must have happened. A pope had died? Or been born? But my second thought was to check my watch. Precisely six o’clock. Nothing even semi-momentous about that.

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