Lovesong by Alex Miller

willow tree. The great old tree leaned far out over the river. It formed a canopy of restless shade on the water, the water glinting and delayed in its smooth run against the bank, the ducks looking about as they sailed upstream. John Patterner lay on his back behind her, his big hands clasped under his head. He was looking at her, his eyes half closed. She was watching the vivid green weeds trailing in the water, imagining them to be the long tails of exotic fish. She broke another piece from the remains of the baguette and crumbled the soft bread between her palms. She tossed the crumbs out onto the sparkling water. The two adult ducks with their five chicks paddled after the crumbs. Sabiha hugged her knees and watched the ducks feeding onher offering. The river’s breath was cold, metallic in the shade of the tree, as if the water carried the approaching evening. She hugged her knees tighter to her chest.
    John Patterner’s voice came from behind her softly. ‘I love you.’
    She turned and looked at him. ‘You mustn’t keep saying that. You can’t love someone you’ve known for less than a day.’
    ‘I’ve known you forever.’
    She smiled at the idea, knowing it carried its own mysterious truth for them. It
was
forever. This morning on the train was a faraway time. Those two people sitting beside each other in the carriage like awkward strangers this morning were not these two people lying under the willows by the river. And at the door of the cathedral, when he stopped her as they were about to enter and said solemnly, ‘Through this portal is the way to eternal life.’ Not yet certain of him, she asked, ‘Are you religious?’ His mother, he said, had been brought up Catholic, but had not bothered with religion after she met his father. ‘And you?’ he asked her. She told him proudly of her father’s hopes for the people, and of his devout atheism. ‘I’ve never been inside a mosque.’
    ‘You’re glowing in this light,’ he said.
    She lifted her head and pushed back her hair with both hands, and she closed her eyes and declaimed inher mother tongue, ‘I am the colour of the sands of the desert at evening.’
    He was awed by her, enchanted by the mysterious sound of her language. ‘That’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘What does it mean?’
    She told him the meaning of the words. ‘That is their meaning and it is
not
their meaning,’ she said. ‘Their meaning is in the Arabic only. It is not in the French. In French these words mean something else. Something less.’ It was from her grandmother she had received these words, from her mother’s mother. The opening line of an antique song. She felt his admiration like sunlight on her body and she wanted to sing for him, but she was too shy.
    ‘I’ll always love only you,’ he said seriously.
    She laughed at him. ‘How do you know that? You might meet a beautiful woman one day who will seduce you.’
    ‘Don’t joke about it,’ he said. He reached and gently pulled her down beside him.
    She was unresisting and lay back on the grass with him. ‘I’ll sing my songs for you one day.’
    He took her in his arms. ‘I’ll learn your language,’ he said. ‘So that I will understand them.’
    She loved the feeling of his strong body against her.‘My language is too difficult for you. You will never understand it,’ she said. ‘It is better not to try.’
    They were silent in each other’s arms, the whispering of the breeze in the branches of willow overhead.
    ‘There will never be anyone else, Sabiha,’ he said. ‘That’s my pledge to you.’
    She said nothing to his earnestness, his desire to impress her with his belief, his urgent need to acknowledge between them a binding commitment. She was thrilled to hear it on his lips. But it was too much. It was too soon. It weighed her down. She wanted to hear it and she didn’t want to hear it. What she wanted was to laugh with him. To run and play and hide with him, the way children play and