"We were always seeing the same little boy before the war." He was telling of it again.

"He waved in a way that seemed he was waving both good-bye and hello." Sitting still and so barely speaking only she could hear him any longer. She had a way now of speaking her mind along as it came when they were alone. "The doorway where he stood was in London or Berlin. In Berlin--Luce wherever have you gone to now?" He hadn't hear the door. "I didn't hear the door. She was leaving again. "Didn't you find him odd? Didn't he catch your eye?"

Luce brought in the bulbs. She put the tray of them on the table behind the ferns where they would not be seen until their stalks rose again, perhaps next year. Never mind how she washed and slit them, the bulbs would let their stalks down slowly until they had wilted against every window. Who could stand passing by such a house? What would the odd eye catch shushing the curtains? Luce came around with her tray. This is the way it had worked every year. She pushed him more into the sun, which came stronger just then. He turned his face to it. She blinked a little herself and looked about. Flowers formed dark holes in her estimation.

He leaned.

"It would be well for you to remain still today," she said. How was it that he managed to move at all? He was opening his mouth too wide for it to be about words. For a time, she supposed, she would understand him. Then, one supposes, a time when she would rather not. She pressed him back fully into the chair. He seemed to be at breakfast, for some reason.

When there was a chill upon London, a chill would often settle on Berlin It was obvious to us when the balloons rode slightly lower. Those days we ourselves rose later than usual. Oh the hotel eiderdown. Luce, you will recall our rooms. How funny it would be to catch sight of ourselves in those windows again, how funny it would be to see ourselves in our paper hats again, close the window that gives to the platz, raise the sash the looks upon the circus. I could pace it out yet. Didn't we pretend those balloons had been reeled up for our garden parties? Allow me to explain about enemy aircraft again--I'm still in love with the romance of enemy aircraft. I could pace the rooms out yet if I could pace. We passed birthdays in both places. Trust me with scissors, Luce, and I'll crown you again this year.

In the London doorway he waved his good-byes and in Berlin he waved his good-byes too, but there he was also a little cloud haunting his doorway.

He is harder now to see.

Snow had threatened all day. Whatever was in store had certainly made the leaves between the heap and the house very restless. She tended to geraniums, camellias, paperwhites, and marigolds. (The lily died on anyway and had long since refused to put out new pads). It was always an impossible season within. She crossed behind him and hovered for a moment over envelopes of old seed.

It had been possible only last spring to discern carrots from peas from husks by illustration alone. May as well a handful on the heap and have Mr. Bauer keep watch over what rose. From the sinks she could see the gardener had thrown the remains of the summer's moonflower. So this is what was so restless after all. She turned an iron tap. Spray rose and made her shiver. (She still hoped to rehabilitate the ferns).

He was the sort that roamed where he pleased, in circles perhaps, lollygagging through the slush. Behind the door in Berlin was no wall, nor anything other than bright sun if the day was clear. The day was clear. There was always sun on the platz in the summer before the war, in memory. We came to think of the walls behind the doors in London as belonging to the same long, impossible building. Maybe it was his home. So, you see, it was hard to say from where he might have come.

The sun came stronger. Luce turned sand in the bay. Her thought was to draw the door closed. She removed her gloves and stood them on the sill, so old and stiff they were. She shuffled through the chill she had raised and pushed him fuller into the sun. Funny how, as the sun moved, he turned his face to it. She was glad about the door just then. He would hear somehow. It would distance him from Berlin or wherever. She trembled pebbles onto a screen. It became very warm and she had to wipe her eyes out before going on. She put the pebbles aside to rest in a plastic tun and yellowed a towel in a sink full of lemon. The hinges only wanted oil and she could fade and glow around him, a balloon, the silence of light itself on its way somewhere else.

Now, Samuel Moon, tow me past all the sights of Russia, for example. I will do a dance so you will see me. Pirouette, minaret. Do we want to see the closet where they keep the statesmen? I will dance, ta, ta, ta. I have known so many statesmen. The root cellar where the family held its hands out? No need, I know the underground areas very well already. I am an American of Ohio and I am in full possession of my senses, ta, ta, ta.

He would only wave. We named him after me, Charles Rosen. Who was I to argue? Who was he to say? Wavewavewave. We decided he wore his father's shockproof watch. When he wasn't waving, he was pointing out a gray balloon humming its way over London. His father's watch stopped in May of nineteen fifteen. (Our hearts tick in time). He howled out a bad sky that became a story.

A German tumbled into London and died. He was found by a boy where the roads ended in the river, where the barges put in with their loads. It is only natural for boys to play in such places, the coal and rags and horseshit. His head was broken in most horribly but, his watch still keeps time in the Imperial Museum. (They got it off him with garden shears).

Charles, how on earth can I explain this to you? Where streets are blocked by rubble is a natural place to find boys bent upon destruction. He was a large man dressed in hides, your father, as Germans dressed in hides.

Old seed of carrots, peas, salads of days they never spent on the veranda, the envelopes they came in would at least make nice scenes. Her thought was to press them in glass and hang them above the sink. No matter. The sun had washed them out past recognition. Luce--a silly thought. Silence is the soul of light.

Luce, you said yourself there was always a pall hanging over Berlin. We were surprised how soon it snowed after the barges on the Spree were extinguished. We were surprised again when we swept the sill of ash. There had been quite a strafing. We called Charles Rosen after his German father.

She closed the tap and the air cleared. A chorus gleamed out in her head. See the tap again, now brass in the form of a starfish. In her head now the glimmer of early days, the director arching her back in the way it always made her arch her own in sympathy. They always lit the nave upon a perfect natural A. Irish servicemen would stand back in the gloom, attracted, and slink out once they had had enough. Every good boy deserves fudge, as they say. She could never resist arching her back under the gaze of the Irishmen when the director did the same.

"...," she sang. He moved this way and that way.

"...," she sang, as she cut a piece of cardboard to fit the spot where the pane had come away. She walked gingerly across the shards. It had rung out in a perfect natural A when it fell a moment ago. She closed the tap and the air cleared. Once there had been a brass starfish that had since been replaced by and iron cross. The whole house had come about that way. Even the greenhouse had been an afterthought.

In Berlin the streets were blind. In London they often ended in circuses. When we looked down from our balcony, do you remember a gathering of children in the oleanders? We did walk a ways down a blind street--and didn't it seem of a long while we would be arriving at the party? Now, in the garden, not hosting a party, do you remember an English boy who would not surrender your hand? Someone had tied a balloon to his wrist--do I recall the courtyard correctly? The garden path meandered after the same fashion as ours, oddly, past paperwhites nobody could stand the smell of, belatedly. Once inside, we listened to the footfalls of a couple who never found their way within. Let's see, the gate gave to the street that led to the platz. It was an English boy for whom we tied balloons in the branches. I blew until my head felt like a balloon, balloon, balloon.

Why today, of all days, was there no weather to prattle of? A slight pall settled, had, soon enough, burned. Seemed a good day to spend in the greenhouse at first.

She put down paper drawn off a butcher's roll and tacked it to the table. She fanned the pebbles out, fanned through them again, saving out the blacks.

(The phone, far off, in the house). She supposed she would still hear it when it rang again.

She trowelled sand into yet another windowbox. She took down her gloves from where they stood in the sill, slid them on, trowelled sand into the windowbox, placed black over the sand itself until she couldn't see it, until she was reminded again of Russia.

To lift you would mean the help of at least four men.

(The phone far off again, in the house and in memory).

Hello Charles. Hello Walter, Scott, and Donovan. Hello Mangan. Hello Mercer. Do all your names have to be so Irish? If so, why? Oh, yes a regiment of Irishmen all enlisted into rifles one Saturday afternoon. Hello Megley, hello Clay. So many things have happened since then. It is simply impossible to tell--Mr. Samuel Moon, we thought you abroad in the Argentine. Now, I can barely hear you all when you talk at once. My sweetie Luce will help you all be heard.

She had seen blossoms in a dell. But all that had been back in Ohio.

Now Charles. Tell us what do you hear of Africa and the canal?

They had better not attack Ohio. Introduce me to Samuel Moon.

Walter supplies that every clock on the continent has been set to Berlin time, thank you Walter.

There is a whole village of Germans living in Columbus. I know which street. Don't make me do a dance. Introduce me to Sammy Moon.

Scott and Donovan are amused to relate that the Italians have decreed that the prime meridian now runs through Rome. Well, didn't the band in Singapore play "The World Turned Upside-down."

Now there is some boy roaming around in the back yard. Should I say something myself? Ta, ta, ta.

Mercer wonders to whom the boy running around the back yard belongs. But what about Italian cartography? Won't their navy be annoyed? What navy? asks Mercer to general laughter.

Who cares as long as he leaves my roses alone.

He finds his way through the wall, I suppose. I don't know, but wouldn't you agree, Luce, that beneath a trumpet vine is a natural place for a boy to arrange his soldiers? Where else in the world?

Ohio. Now introduce me to--

Luce, have you met Mr. Sammy Moon?

Enchanted.

It was I who introduced them.

The window boxes in the corner will need attention again, but for now let's leave them. The shape he is in deserves more--she has come to think of the way he sits as the shape of a song sung poorly. He is also, she supposes, a bulb gone inward into its own black paper. There are so many ways the mind moves. It wars upon itself, though he has never been in any other conflict. Black words on black paper turned inward. The barges on the Spree threw themselves high in fire. The coal still burning made a wide spread of roses all night on the riverbed. Perhaps this year she will instruct Bauer to forget about the windowboxes.

Sammy Moon came to him in London to say everything he knew. The Russians are down to casting bullets from ice and sawdust. Though it might have only been a way of speaking about the weather.

Every year she had them painted either robin's egg or white. Either shade complimented the eaves. She stood at the sinks and looked at the cicatrix the oak had left. Said Sammy Moon once: "Let's all argue about the language of the future--it won't be Irish in any case.

She had wanted them in little glass frames, the seed packages. Pictures of truck foods would have brightened rooms.

What do you think, Luce? Chinese.

She hummed eight notes of "Les Marseilles."

Oh come now, Luce, you can't be serious.

She supposed he was growing inward, leaving more paper outward of him, shielding a green shoot he bore further in.

A certain straightness of bearing slowly overcame her. She did not lean. A natural A, in memory, always. Flowers in a dell in Ohio.

They had lived in such bright rooms and hotels. Mister Samuel Moon now came for weekend visits to sit and tell of his unhappy life in the Argentine. Nearly passed on in the back of an oxcart, it seemed. Or so he said. But one only had to say "Do you even remember London?" or "When are we expected in Berlin?" and everything was business and everything in those rooms would find its way into crates. From that moment on, Luce would start planning the best of all possible gardens for a place she had yet to see. Windowboxes at least. And what if they overlooked a public garden? She was not so unlike her husband. She was unsure.

They looked down together and watched the Russians ranked on the platz. Then she thought of stones in a windowbox. Many years later she wondered if she would be reminded of their curious helmets while pebbling over a windowbox with blacks. In an hour she came back to the window alone. They had not changed. You couldn't see the cobblestones for their heads.

We came through an artful gate. Remember the footfalls of that couple who couldn't find us? We called to them for an age. They were just outside. The gate gave to the street that led to the platz. The knob was a brass starfish or something. It was an English boy, call him Charles Rosen, for whom we tied balloons in the oleanders.

The sun came stronger and stronger.

One day the lads took off their uniform jackets and carted a sundial up the gravel drive. Someone's boy had got through and was in a world unto himself under the trumpet vine. He was laying the guns for the defense of an entire regiment. Sun and snow that stays inside itself and a supersonic smell in the heavens. It is good, thinks Luce, that the windowboxes have been washed a simple white and will last out the year well. Sammy Moon was at sometime lying sick in an oxcart. Someone hushed a blade into his belly that he had to survive as well. Fleets submerged in Singapore, River Plate, and Scappa Flow. (Samuel Moon pushed pins into Singapore, River Plate, and Scappa Flow).

When was this war we talk about anyway? Where is it we were together?

Luce is happy to see the windowboxes have been painted robin's egg.

In memory, a German tumbled into London and died. His watch is there for all to see in the Imperial Museum.

Above Bavaria, in memory, a little Englander fell from his tailgun, roared trough the branches in his shearling suit. He swore, years later, that for a while he had been falling upward.

This is how the day divides itself with no dial or meridian or shockproof watch or tuning fork.

She floats past him in the light, shadows him one hour in advance of the German future. The windowboxes can abide in their robin's egg or whatever. Judging by the sun she is headed toward Ohio, and we should assume no restriction to this glass house, these graveled grounds, this picketed estate.

She took them up beneath the trumpet vine, prone and entrenched and--one of them is waving to you Luce! From horseback! Always sing and dance for a cavalier! His hand is not open and he is molded to his saddle. His sword is the needle she finds rising from the beetle's back. It slides out just so. The speed it makes for the shadows is remarkable.

for Dou