"Leaves" Chapter 5

"Look at the ducks!"

Shizuka pointed down the slope past the two houses.

"Yes," Paul said. Strangely, he was thinking of Coq au Vin. A girl he'd been dating a while back - a girl with plenty of money and a fondness for "foreigners" - had taken him to a fancy "dining bar" in the metropolis. The hostess-cum-waitress had brought slices of mimolette and Paul told the girl it was from Switzerland. But the waitress had corrected him. "It's from France," she'd said. "Oh," Paul said and felt foolish. Then they ordered Coq au Vin and he told the girl "coq" means chicken and the waitress had to correct him again, although he was pretty sure about it this time. "It's duck," she'd said. Well, at least this "dining bar's" version was duck. Things aren't always as they seem.

The dogs had finally stopped barking. Shizuka had insisted they go to view the cherry blossoms on the weekend and Paul, for his part, had insisted they find some place where there weren't a thousand people saying "It's beautiful, isn't it?" melodically, cloyingly, repeating it like a mantra. He'd tried to explain to Shizuka his thoughts on "codified beauty" and she'd just smiled at him, so he gave it up. But she liked the idea of finding some place secluded and so that morning he'd led her up a path in the forest to a little hill overlooking a nice river where he knew there were cherry trees. He'd forgotten about the caged hunting dogs and the stench of the drying boar pelts at the two houses on the way, but they were above that now and the dogs had shut up. The stream running in the valley below was pretty.
Continued...

"This is a nice place you found," Shizuka said.

"It's not bad, huh."

"Let's have some wine."

"OK"

She opened her backpack and took out a soft insulated case with three little bottles of wine "en screwcap". She had clear, hard-plastic cups and poured out some of the red wine for Paul and then waited for him to take the bottle from her and pour for her. Then he capped the bottle and leaned it up against her pack.

They tapped glasses with a little sloshy click of plastic and Shizuka said "cheers!" as she'd learned somewhere, smiling prettily with her beautiful lips.

"Prost" Paul said.

They sipped at the wine. She was watching him to see if he liked the wine she'd chosen.

"Not bad!" he said and smiled. Shizuka looked relieved.

They looked out over the valley and both took a second drink of their wine. Then Shizuka lifted her head up to the blossoms spread over them, casting the two of them in speckled shade, sitting on her mats below the trees.

"It's pretty isn't it?"

"Yes," Paul said and smiled. It was pretty, he had to admit, codified or not...

"I wish there was someone we could ask to take a picture."

Paul smiled. "Yeah, it's too bad." He shook his head and winked at her.

Shizuka had put together quite an impressive picnic lunch. Paul thought she'd overdone it a bit, but he sensed that she'd been waiting for this opportunity for some years, so he told himself to keep quiet and just enjoy the nice lunch. And they both did enjoy it.

After they'd finished eating sandwiches and salad, camembert with nice crusty rolls and the second bottle of red wine, Shizuka took out two little cakes on foil doilies.

"Where did you get these?" Paul asked.

"I made them!" she said.

"Wow! They're beautiful!" He leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek and she smiled.

They ate the little cakes with plastic forks and when they'd finished, they were both feeling full and they drank the third little bottle of wine - the white wine, since no one was there to lecture them on the proper order of red or white or whatever. Then Paul was sleepy and Shizuka was a little drunk and she wanted to kiss him. And although he was worried someone from the houses below might be watching, he still let his hands move over her where they wanted and he let her do all the things she wanted to.

They were lying back on the mats and looking up at the blossoms and the blue and white of the sky overhead.

"These are like death," Shizuka said.

At first, he was surprised but then he quickly knew what she meant and said, "oh".

"The cherry blossoms are beautiful. But they only stay a week. Then they fall," she said.

"Yes," he nodded up and down against the mat.

"What do you think?" she asked as she looked over at him. But before she gave him a chance to answer, she was propping herself up and leaning over to kiss him.

They were kissing a long time and Paul indulged his bad habit of opening his eyes and when he did, he saw her wonderful face, her closed eyes, reading her feelings in that beautiful face and the white-pink petals and he thought how odd, but how fitting. Her mouth. Beauty. Death.

Later, they'd packed everything and were walking down the path, the dogs snarling and barking at them again. The smeared boar pelts, hung over the guardrail by the snaking, one-lane road. They were down near the stream and walking over the wooden bridge. Shizuka was very happy. Paul was quite happy, too. However the afternoon had taxed him for some reason he couldn't pinpoint. He sensed it might be what she'd said about death. Cherry blossoms and codified beauty.

I could tell you a story about death, he thought. But he didn't want to poison the feeling because she was really a rather nice girl and he didn't want to be a bastard.