A Rose At The River Styx
I really am quite cheery about the whole thing, and, to be honest, why wouldn’t I be? Gallivanting around on boats with friends in an exotic country, away from the wife and responsibility: if I were a man I’m sure I’d love that. Oh, how fresh the breeze must be, when it doesn’t smell of petrol or of machine gun fire, or of bodies piled high, used as sandbags for the rich waves of democratic and peace-loving bullets, needling through confused but calculating men and women. The life of a soldier in nineteen sixty-four must be quite extraordinary. I wonder if he’ll bring me anything back fromTonkin? I suppose, though, there can’t be many gift shops there, and he probably won’t be able to pick me up a carved bamboo shoot or an exotic spice mixture in time. He and all of his friends were joking about how he wouldn’t come back. Only him as well; none of the others weren’t going to come back. Only him, left in the jungle, or like a floating buoy leaking red ink in a sea full of a bizarre array of predatory and exotic fish. Oh, how hilarious they all were, and their wives, sat nattering inanely about how hilarious the thought of Billy or David getting shell-shock would be, leaving only poor Scarlet Vincere to sit pondering her father’s return from war in nineteen forty five - how he looked at her like he were turning her to stone, and never spoke to anyone again. If he were to die then I suppose I would have to plan for the future now. How long would he be? If he were to die out there, I would like to be a quiet widow. Like the spider, I mean. I do like
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