Read Online On Leave by Daniel Anselme - Free Book Online Page B

fun anymore is Japan. Let’s go to Japan, my brother.”
    She gives a little laugh and claps her hands on her thighs.
    â€œLet’s go and make our fortune in Japan. We could open a French restaurant … Do you know how to cook? Doesn’t matter! I know a boy who hadn’t any talent at all and still made a pile in Japan. He even swam there, if you see what I mean; all the capital he had was the underpants he was wearing. Now he’s rolling in it. His mother lives in Dortmund. You should see her all wrapped up in a kimono! She puts on a posh accent to say, ‘Ja , ja , Wolfgang always was a good swimmer.’ Swimming matters more than a Ph.D., Herr Professor,” Lena added with a laugh. “But do you actually know how to swim?”
    â€œYes,” he said ungraciously. “But how did that guy get all the way there?”
    â€œI don’t really remember … He was in the Foreign Legion in Indonesia, I think, then he jumped off the ship somewhere or other, maybe off Java. Anyway, there were sharks in the water … Anyway, that’s what his mother says, but she’s got a gift for embroidering things.”
    And the song goes on:
    Java!
    What’s he doing there
    With his hands in your hair
    That accord … ionist?
    Lachaume’s mind wanders back to Lasteyrie. He can see him outside Gare de Lyon hitting his forehead with two fingers by way of a salute, saying, “If you find I’m not on time on the third, don’t bother to wait for me…” What if he wasn’t bluffing? What if Lasteyrie didn’t turn up on the third? He can see himself in the station hall keeping watch for Lasteyrie, who still hasn’t turned up; it makes his mouth go dry, and he keeps on downing great gulps of Pernod automatically. He could just dump us, he thinks. He just could … He feels he’s been taken for a ride, betrayed; he would like to get his hands on Lasteyrie right then so as to get things straight. But he doesn’t know where his parents live, can’t even remember whether they live in Billancourt or Boulogne-sur-Seine. Upon which he reckons he’s not been fair to Lasteyrie. He’d found his constant grumbling and his skepticism irritating, not to mention his frequent vulgarity, especially his hand gestures, which embarrassed Lachaume … as if he was as pure as the driven snow! he thinks angrily.
    Empty glasses give way to full ones. The aniseed taste has become unpleasant; he drinks without thirst, as if he were doing a penance. And his thoughts rearrange themselves, so it seems to him, into one single idea: Lasteyrie has gone missing. (Never again will his captain address him with the familiar tu ; never again will his eyes meet those of villagers in mechtas that are being burned to the ground; never again will he hold his finger on the trigger, quaking with fear, and feel his heart rent by hatred and shame.) And what will you be doing, Lachaume?
    â€œLena! I am a maiden pure as the driven snow. It’s time to educate me.”
    â€œGladly!” she said through laughter. “I love educating pure young ladies … So, where do we begin?… What’s the most important thing in life? Guess.”
    â€œI’ve forgotten.”
    â€œLuck!” she declares, with her index finger raised as high as her nose. “Above and beyond all else, there is Luck … Let’s start with a game of 421.”
    The waiter fetches the board and the dice, and two more glasses of Pernod. Lena lights a cigarette, wipes her hands energetically with a balled-up handkerchief, raises the sleeves of her pullover, and winks.
    â€œWhat’s the stake?”
    â€œJapan.”
    â€œNo, Japan doesn’t exist, it’s a joke. Let’s play for a thousand francs.”
    She throws the dice first, then passes them on to him. If I get an odd number with three throws, he promises in silence, then