Read Online The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday - Free Book Online

yellow tulips dipping away from us and then back in our direction. A cloud passed over the sun, dimming the world around us and honing sharp teeth in the cold air. I almost spoke, almost said that I didn’t want to hear about her American. Perhaps if I had then, if I’d admitted that feeling, things might have gone differently in the days ahead. But the smallest thing can change us if we let it, and I did not speak. The cloud blew past, left the sun, and our world again warmed.
    â€œI’ve never told you why I left Leitmeritz when I did,” I said. Françoise looked up from her guitar, where her left hand had begun to form chords again while she listened, though she did not strike the strings with her pick. The skin around her eyes drew slack, bearing relief at having told me about her American, and gratitude for my not pursuing it when she’d finished. “That afternoon,” I said, “I came upon my mother in the drawing room of our house with, well, with a painter. Some man. Some man who wasn’t my father.”
    â€œAnd you didn’t know of your mother’s infidelities.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t know! Of course I didn’t.”
    â€œHow did you know he was a painter, then?”
    I told her that I’d seen his paint-splattered pants in the corner.
    â€œI’m sorry, Poxl,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I do hope you’ll think about what must have pushed your mother there. I hope you’ll consider how complicated a marriage must be, years down the road.”
    Now I stopped talking as well. No cloud came to darken those fields, but I drew inward. What did I want in those moments? To argue with Françoise, to defend my father or defend my mother? To parse that old memory of seeing them in the leather yard when I was a kid, to understand what had passed between them? What I found was not what I expected: I simply felt as if my burden had eased, having spoken it aloud. The bright sun lit the tulip field beside us like a sail filling with wind.
    Françoise’s left hand gripped the guitar again. She struck the chord.
    â€œThat’s the G7,” she said, and she handed me the guitar.
    I suppose there are men who know to call it love when they’ve fallen. Though it’s pained and even ruined me over the years, I know only that if I’m happy in a moment I don’t want it to end—only to move on the next day, to the next desire, then the next. I have much reason to long for forgiveness, but for that I’ll never apologize. I took the guitar back and played the new chord myself. I moved slowly, putting down my ring finger on the high E string, my index finger on the first fret of the low E string, fumbling only to grasp it later. My hand didn’t yet have the muscle memory to get it at once. Only time and practice could make that happen.
    9.
    One evening a month later, as spring was just fully upon us, my gaze fell to the harbor, whose waters were choppy in the wind blowing out to the great open water along the longest port in Europe. Thirty feet below my perch, Françoise, Greta, and Rosemary were standing next to a small dinghy that bobbed along the choppy surface. I saw Greta stick out one of her legs toward the boat and nearly fall forward until Françoise grabbed her arm. Rosemary followed. Then Françoise got in.
    I called out to her, this woman I’d stayed in Rotterdam to be with at great personal risk. “Françoise! Up here!” But with the sound of the wind she did not hear me. I tried to return to my work. Ten minutes later three men passed in their sailors’ woolens. These men were around my age, perhaps more properly boys than men, as I now understand I was at that moment. They, too, entered a dinghy to return to their boat out in the harbor—the same boat Françoise had just paddled out to. I could swear to this day that one of those boys was the same boy I’d seen talking