5. We'll always have what

        we’ll always have Paris, you said, and

        yet,

        all we could bank on, and swear

        by,

        was what the flashback scenes told, growing

        out of your cigarette smoke,

        Sam’s astimegoesby being drowned first in La Marseillaise (no

        lyrics

        this time,

thankgod)

        as you drive us along the boulevard in a convertible, with the top

        rolled

down,

leaving the Arc de Triomphe behind,

the March dissolving into some mellow tune when we reach the countryside,

“the car, of course, was

stagebound,

the environs of Paris a back projection”,

and “the spring breeze” ruffling our hair “provided by an off-camera fan”[1],

now we’re on a boat excursion,

        on the Seine, I

        have this cute woollen French-style cap on,

        you’ve bought some peunuts from the vendor,

take one out of the packet, throw

it

at

me,

like I’m some kind of circus seal,

and I catch it,

laugh,

and all this time we don’t say a thing,

Curtiz dropped the dialogue,

it is a (stammering) silent film within a talky, made out of two

short

dumb

shows,

now we are in your apartment, you

ask

me,

whoareyoureally, and-

what-

were-

you-

before, whatdidyoudoandwhatdidyouthink, huh?,

and I say, wesaidnoquestions,

and you come up with the here’s-

looking-

at-

you-

kid

phrase,

now we’re dancing “inside a swank Paris café”, now

it’s my apartment,

now

we’re sitting in a café,

reading the paper, glossing over the bad news, the Nazi Army

just outside the city,

and now we are in La Belle Aurore,

our

last

date,

the Gare de Lyon scene I can only guess about

so

this

is

all

we’ll-always-have,

we don’t even know how we met, how

we played the scenes leading to our first kiss,

how long it took us to reach what you yankees fans call home base,

but then that happened off the script,

so it doesn’t really count,

or does it?

       

       

---

[1] Lebo (1992: 140).