Gary - Promise at Dawn

It is over. The beach at Big Sur is empty and cool and the gentle sand is kind to the fallen. The sea mist blurs all things except memories; between ocean and sky not a mast to be seen; on a rock before me, thousands of birds; on another, a family of seals; the father keeps emerging from the waves with a fish in his mouth, a shiny and devoted parent. Sea gulls land, often so near that I hold my breath and the old longing stirs in me again; in a moment or two, they will settle on my shoulders, in my arms, press their feathers against my neck and against my face, cover me completely.... At the age of forty-four, I still catch myself dreaming of some universal and total tenderness. So long have I been lying motionless where I fell that cormorants and pelicans have formed a circle around me, and, just after sunrise, a seal let the surf carry him close to my feet. He stayed there quite a while, raised on his flippers, staring at me, before returning into the sea. I smiled, but he kept staring at me seriously and a little sadly, as though he knew.

The day war was declared my mother drove five hours in a taxi to say good-by and to wish me, in her own words, A hundred victories in the skyI was at that time gunnery instructor at the Air Force Academy in Salon-de-Provence.

The taxi was an ancient, flat-nosed Renault, ready to breathe its last. At one time my mother had owned a twenty-five percent share in the vehicle, but for many years now the taxi had been the exclusive property of her former partner, a chauffeur named Rinaldi. She still considered, however, that she had a moral right to free use of the car, and since Rinaldi was a gentle, timid and impressionable soul, whenever he saw my mother walking toward his taxi with a determined air he usually took refuge in flightboth from her and from his own good nature. Long after the war, dear old Rinaldihe still runs a taxi in Nice and you can hire him at the comer of the rue de France and the Boulevard Gambettatold me with grudging admiration how my mother had requisitioned him.

She flung open the door of the cab and, with a commanding sweep of her cane, told me: Take me to Salon-de-Provence. I wish to say good-by to my heroic son. I tried to arguea ten-hour drive it was, there and back, and I knew that she wasnt going to pay me. She told me I was a bad Frenchman, because there was a war on and I was refusing to do my bit. Then she just climbed into the cab, loaded with all those parcels for yousausages, ham, pots of jamand sat there sternly, waiting. I refused to budge, and so we both sat there for I dont know how long. Then she began to cry, looking suddenly like a dumb, hurt and lost animalyou know the way she looked sometimesand still blubbering something about her heroic son. I held out for a moment; but then, what the hell, I told myself, I was too old for the war, no son of my own, and the whole world had gone crazy anyway, so I might as well do my bit, as she had put it. All right, I told her, adding, just to save face, but youll pay for the gasI damn well knew she wouldnt. She always thought she had a claim on the car, just because we had been partners years back. Yes, Monsieur Romain, you can say that youve been loved in your lifethere is nothing she wouldnt have done for you....

I saw her step down from the taxi in front of the canteen, leaning on her cane, a Gauloise in the corner of her mouth, under the interested eyes of the assembled soldiery. It was too late for me to hide; I rose from my table, buckling my belt and smiling bravely, while, with a fine theatrical gesture, she threw her arms wide and stood there, her face radiant, waiting for her little boy to fling himself into her embrace.

I walked over to her slowly, rolling my shoulders, with my cap tilted cockily over one eye and my hands stuffed into the pockets of one of those almost legendary dashing leather jackets, which did so much to recruit young Frenchmen into the Air Force. I was thoroughly embarrassed by this intolerable intrusion of a mother into the virile world in which I enjoyed a hard won reputation as a tough and even a slightly dangerous, devil-may-care character.

I remained a moment locked in her arms, sweating profusely, and then with all the amused and protective nonchalance of which I was capable I tried to maneuver her discreetly out of sight behind the taxi. But no: she took a step back to gaze at my face and into my eyes with nave admiration, sniffing noisily, which was always with her a sign of deep satisfaction. Then, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, and with a strong Russian accent, she announced:

Guynemer! You will be a second Guynemer! Your mother has always been right!

I could hear the roar of laughter behind my back and for the first time she, too, became aware of the mocking audience. She grabbed her cane and, with a threatening gesture toward the soldiery, she delivered, in an inspired tone, another prophecy: You will be a great hero, a general, Gabriele dAnnunzio, Ambassador of France! This rabble doesnt know who you are! The rabble was enjoying itself thoroughly. As for myself, I dont believe there ever was a son who hated his mother as much as I did at that moment. But when I tried, in a furious whisper, to tell her that she was ruining me in the eyes of our Air Force, and made a renewed effort to push her behind the taxi, her lips began to tremble, a hurt, bewildered look came into her eyes and I heard once more the words that I had heard so often and dreaded so much:

You are ashamed of your old mother!

That did it: all the trappings of sham virility, of laboriously assumed toughness collapsed to the ground. I put an arm around her shoulders and held her tight, while my free hand defied the soldiery with that rude but expressive gesture known to all armies of the world, with the difference that in Anglo-Saxon society two fingers are necessary, while one suffices in the Latin world. It is all a matter of sunshine and temperament.

I no longer heard the laughter or saw the mocking faces of my Air Force buddies; we were back once more, the two of us, on our secret and private planet, a wonderland where all the beauty lies, so completely fanciful, and yet so much more real to us than the very earth of Provence on which we stood, a magical world, born out of a mothers murmur into a childs ear, a promise whispered at dawn of future triumphs and greatness, of justice and love. I held her shoulders tightly with my right arm, looking confidently at the sky, so empty and thus so open to my future deeds; I was thinking of the day when I should return to her victorious, having given a meaning to her life of self-denial and sacrifice, in a world I had freed, at last, from the grip of those dark enemies whose names and faces I had come to know so well.

Even now, when the battle is over and all has been said, as I lie where I have fallen, on the shore of Big Sur, in the vast and soothing emptiness on the oceans edge where only the seals utter their cries and a lone whale passes by with its minuscule and derisory jet of white water like a fleas jump into immensityeven now, I have only to raise my eyes to see the enemy legions leaning over me, eagerly watchful for any sign of submission and defeat.

I was only a child when my mother first told me of their existence; long before Snow White and Puss in Boots, before the Seven Dwarfs and the Wicked Fairy, they crowded into my nursery and have never left my side since; my mother pointed them out to me one by one, whispering their names; I was too young to understand, and yet I knew already that a day would come when for her sake I would challenge and destroy them; I felt scared, and bewildered, and yet determined; with each year that passed I became more aware of their presence around me, and their ugly features became more apparent to me; with each new blow they struck at us I felt growing in me the heart and soul of a rebel; today, when I have lived, I can still see them grinning in the darkening shadows of Big Sur, and the sound of their mocking and triumphant laughter rises above the oceans roar; their names, once more, come one by one to my lips and my aging eyes challenge them with all the earnestness of a child six years old.