Response – the Fishwife, by Jim Doran
Inspiration Piece by Maureen O’Donnell
The Shadow of Saint-Quentin
Maureen O’Donnell
The fountain twisted high over a pool studded with tiles of blue and yellow and white. Three stone fish with forever-gaping mouths froze in the air, twisted together in mid leap toward the sky. They laughed water. Anna knew the fountain in her mind, well before she saw it in the square of the town that lay just outside Saint-Quentin. Her black-laced shoes, too-tight from long walks over several days, scuffed over broken cobbles. She had not planned to come back to the Square, but that morning she stood in line, bought her ticket, and another for her son. They were not due in Paris until tomorrow.
She followed a near-invisible path, tugged on by something that fell just shy of memory. She chased the mimic of memory, but it danced ahead, easily outpaced her shuffle. It drew her through the remains of a stone arch that presided over weeds and a discarded bottle.
A pair of small feet tapped out hop-skip-jump on the broken road behind her. Jump. Thud. Thud-thud. She turned and caught sight of the boy, all long limbs and knobby elbows and a mop of brown curls that she couldn’t bear to shear away.
He disappeared behind the tumbled-over wall, and panic squeezed Anna’s chest. Then she saw him, twisting and leaping through the neglected space.
#
Children dash through the square. They shriek, the fountain laughs, adults whisper words that escape loud anyway. Somewhere a siren complains. Anna squirms inside the dry, starched weight of a white pinafore. The crisp white folds lock her down, reflect the sunshine with the cheerful reminder that she’s not to go and play. Fingers pull her hair into barrettes, but curls and girl resist. She makes a bid for freedom, toward the fountain. A record crackles to life and spills a woman’s voice from above the Square.
“There’ll come a time, now don’t forget it,” she croons around faint crackling sounds. A record she hasn’t heard before. Anna looks up, and tries to count the open windows, find the new sound. One. Two.
#
Time had battered the windows above the town square into listless black eyes that stared down on an abandoned space that made the grown woman small. She tugged at the lace collar of her dress, and felt the pull of the fountain and the fish.
#
“Non! Anna!”
Her mother’s cry was a thing of the past, a thing to be dodged if she was quick enough. She felt the collar of her pinafore loosen and laughed.
“There’ll come a time, when you’ll regret it…” The music rambled on. The little girl wove between people great and small, and burst through a knot of children gathered around the tiled pool. She dipped her hands into clear, cold water, and it flew off her fingertips and over their heads. Motors coughed and sputtered; bodies twitched; people and sirens screamed.
A woman sang, en Anglaise, “when you grow lonely, Your heart will break like…”
The record skipped to a stop. Anna clung to the fountain and stared, wild-eyed, at knees and shoes. The world was motion, all but her. She was frozen, mouth gaping, frozen like the fish above her head.
#
Her fingers scrabble dust. The world explodes into fire and became a cheerful afternoon. She tastes grit and metal in her mouth, realizes her lower lip is between her teeth. Phantoms tug at her messy, little-girl curls. They run across the square, shout like people, then ghosts, then like people again. Planes drone overhead, through the thick cotton-fuzz she now feels in her ears. It is Sunday, but Anna cannot hear the bells of Saint Quentin, or the singing.
#
Loam-brown eyes, mimics of her own, meet hers. She clings to a fountain that today has neither fish nor tiles.
“Maman,” the young boy says. “Maman, do you know this place? Do you know it from before the war?”
They are in the Square: she sits, he stands, in the broken space that makes her feel small again. Open windows eye them suspiciously. It is 1914 in the town outside Saint-Quentin, and pointed helmets wink at the sun. It’s 1918, and bombs strip skin from buildings and shatter foundations of men, and the world becomes just a little more like hell. 1934, and her son stares at her with a child’s eyes, eyes that can never know war.
“Do you know this place, Maman?” he asks her. She clutches a fountain that is hers but has no fish.
October of 1918, the Germans run: she is a child, one of many refugees. One of many and all alone. Music plays in a funny-smelling army tent while she sits on a cot and swings her feet, asks for her mother. Still alone.
Summer of 1934, somewhere in the town that is not so empty, an old jazz record spins to life, and the American woman sings. The boy doesn’t seem to notice.
“Your heart will break like mine and you’ll want me only, After you’ve gone…”
“No,” Anna says to her son.
The singer answers, “after you’ve gone away.”
—
“After you’ve gone.” (1918) Music by Turner Layton, lyrics by Henry Creamer. Broadway Music Corporation, New York. (Public Domain)
The Shadow of Saint-Quentin
Maureen O’Donnell
The fountain twisted high over a pool studded with tiles of blue and yellow and white. Three stone fish with forever-gaping mouths froze in the air, twisted together in mid leap toward the sky. They laughed water. Anna knew the fountain in her mind, well before she saw it in the square of the town that lay just outside Saint-Quentin. Her black-laced shoes, too-tight from long walks over several days, scuffed over broken cobbles. She had not planned to come back to the Square, but that morning she stood in line, bought her ticket, and another for her son. They were not due in Paris until tomorrow.
She followed a near-invisible path, tugged on by something that fell just shy of memory. She chased the mimic of memory, but it danced ahead, easily outpaced her shuffle. It drew her through the remains of a stone arch that presided over weeds and a discarded bottle.
A pair of small feet tapped out hop-skip-jump on the broken road behind her.Jump.Thud.Thud-thud.She turned and caught sight of the boy, all long limbs and knobby elbows and a mop of brown curls that she couldn’t bear to shear away.
He disappeared behind the tumbled-over wall, and panic squeezed Anna’s chest. Then she saw him, twisting and leaping through the neglected space.
#
Children dash through the square. They shriek, the fountain laughs, adults whisper words that escape loud anyway. Somewhere a siren complains. Anna squirms inside the dry, starched weight of a white pinafore. The crisp white folds lock her down, reflect the sunshine with the cheerful reminder that she’s not to go and play. Fingers pull her hair into barrettes, but curls and girl resist. She makes a bid for freedom, toward the fountain. A record crackles to life and spills a woman’s voice from above the Square.
“There’ll come a time, now don’t forget it,” she croons around faint crackling sounds. A record she hasn’t heard before. Anna looks up, and tries to count the open windows, find the new sound. One. Two.
#
Time had battered the windows above the town square into listless black eyes that stared down on an abandoned space that made the grown woman small. She tugged at the lace collar of her dress, and felt the pull of the fountain and the fish.
#
“Non! Anna!”
Her mother’s cry was a thing of the past, a thing to be dodged if she was quick enough. She felt the collar of her pinafore loosen and laughed.
“There’ll come a time, when you’ll regret it…” The music rambled on. The little girl wove between people great and small, and burst through a knot of children gathered around the tiled pool. She dipped her hands into clear, cold water, and it flew off her fingertips and over their heads. Motors coughed and sputtered; bodies twitched; people and sirens screamed.
A woman sang, en Anglaise, “when you grow lonely, Your heart will break like…”
The record skipped to a stop. Anna clung to the fountain and stared, wild-eyed, at knees and shoes. The world was motion, all but her. She was frozen, mouth gaping, frozen like the fish above her head.
#
Her fingers scrabble dust. The world explodes into fire and became a cheerful afternoon. She tastes grit and metal in her mouth, realizes her lower lip is between her teeth. Phantoms tug at her messy, little-girl curls. They run across the square, shout like people, then ghosts, then like people again. Planes drone overhead, through the thick cotton-fuzz she now feels in her ears. It is Sunday, but Anna cannot hear the bells of Saint Quentin, or the singing.
#
Loam-brown eyes, mimics of her own, meet hers. She clings to a fountain that today has neither fish nor tiles.
“Maman,” the young boy says. “Maman, do you know this place? Do you know it from before the war?”
They are in the Square: she sits, he stands, in the broken space that makes her feel small again. Open windows eye them suspiciously. It is 1914 in the town outside Saint-Quentin, and pointed helmets wink at the sun. It’s 1918, and bombs strip skin from buildings and shatter foundations of men, and the world becomes just a little more like hell. 1934, and her son stares at her with a child’s eyes, eyes that can never know war.
“Do you know this place, Maman?” he asks her. She clutches a fountain that is hers but has no fish.
October of 1918, the Germans run: she is a child, one of many refugees. One of many and all alone. Music plays in a funny-smelling army tent while she sits on a cot and swings her feet, asks for her mother.Still alone.
Summer of 1934, somewhere in the town that is not so empty, an old jazz record spins to life, and the American woman sings. The boy doesn’t seem to notice.
“Your heart will break like mine and you’ll want me only, After you’ve gone…”
“No,” Anna says to her son.
The singer answers, “after you’ve gone away.”
—
“After you’ve gone.” (1918) Music by Turner Layton, lyrics by Henry Creamer. Broadway Music Corporation, New York. (Public Domain)