swung with his left again and
landed and the gunner fell on
him and grabbed his coat and
tore the sleeve off and he
clubbed him twice behind the
ear and then smashed him with
his right as he pushed him
away. When the gunner went
down his head hit first and he
ran with the girl because they
heard the M.P. 's coming. They
got into a taxi and drove out to
Rimmily Hissa along the
Bosphorus, and around, and
back in the cool night and went
to bed and she felt as over-ripe
as she looked but smooth, rosepetal, syrupy, smooth-bellied,
big-breasted and needed no
pillow under her buttocks, and
he left her before she was
awake looking blousy enough
in the first daylight and turned
up at the Pera Palace with a
black eye, carrying his coat
because one sleeve was
missing.
That same night he left for
Anatolia and he remembered,
later on that trip, riding all day
through fields of the poppies
that they raised for opium and
how strange it made you feel,
finally, and all the distances
seemed wrong, to where they
had made the attack with the
newly arrived Constantine
officers, that did not know a
god-damned thing, and the
artillery had fired into the
troops and the British observer
had cried like a child.
That was the day he'd first seen
dead men wearing white ballet
skirts and upturned shoes with
pompons on them. The Turks
had come steadily and lumpily
and he had seen the skirted
men running and the of ficers
shooting into them and running
then themselves and he and the
British observer had run too
until his lungs ached and his
mouth was full of the taste of
pennies and they stopped
behind some rocks and there
were the Turks coming as
lumpily as ever. Later he had
seen the things that he could
never think of and later still he
had seen much worse. So when
he got back to Paris that time
he could not talk about it or
stand to have it mentioned. And
JOY FEELINGS | DECEMBER ISSUE
266