280
PARTISAN REVIEW
Tammuz' subject, perhaps a somnolent descendant of the seven sis–
ters whose fame had eclipsed even that of the Pleiades, but whose
announced ambition was to become a female psychiatrist, had been
sleeping happily and publicly in a double bed for the last three days
as an advance publicity stunt for tonight's performance.
Above Lost Lagoon on the road now mounting toward the sus–
pension bridge in the distance much as a piece of jazz music mounts
toward a break, a newsboy cried: "LASH ORDERED FOR SAINT
PIERRE! SIXTEEN YEAR OLD BOY, CHILDSLAYER, TO
HANG! Read all about it!"
The weather too was foreboding. Yet seeing the wandering
lovers the other passers-by on this side of the lagoon, a wounded
soldier lying on a bench smoking a cigarette, and one or two of those
destitute souls, the very old who haunt parks--since, faced with a
choice, the very old will sometimes prefer, rather than to keep a
room and starve, at least in such a city as this, somehow to eat and
live outdoors-smiled too.
For as the girl walked along beside the man with her arm
through his and as they smiled together and their eyes met with love,
or they paused, watching the blowing seagulls, or the ever-changing
scene of the snow-freaked Canadian mountains with their fleecy in–
digo chasms, or to listen to the deep-tongued majesty of a merchant–
man's echoing roar (these things that made Enochvilleport's ferocious
aldermen imagine that it was the city itself that was beautiful, and
maybe they were half right), the whistle of a ferryboat as it sidled
across the inlet northward, what memories might not be evoked in
a poor soldier, in the breasts of the bereaved, the old, even, who
knows, in the mounted policemen, not merely of young love, but of
lovers, as they seemed to be, so much in love that they were afraid
to lose a moment of their time together?
Yet only a guardian angel of these two would have known–
and surely they must have possessed a guardian angel- the strangest
of all strange things of which they were thinking, save that, since
they had spoken of it so often before, and especially, when they
had opportunity, on this day of the year, each knew of course that
the other was thinking about it, to such an extent indeed that it
was no surprise, it only resembled the beginning of a ritual when
the man said, as they entered the main path of the forest, through
