Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes

Sometimes the dream is different. It’s a nightmare that happens in the moonlight. In the dream I’m walking toward him, along an unfamiliar street, and just as I’m about to reach him, smiling, my hand raised to greet him, something happens. I’m not sure what, something urgent and inexplicable that forces me to run as fast as I can, to even climb over the wall at the dead end, and disappear. I don’t know what it could mean. The street, the wall, a moonlight so white, like a cold star … Perhaps I should ask René. There is something about love that short-circuits. As if we have to read the same paragraph twice in order to find a connection between the sentences. It’s a wild feeling that bursts into the other’s routine like a gale wind, causing everything to fly all over the place, like a house being aired out in the midst of a storm. It wants to erase everything. Re-create it, as if the world didn’t exist before it.”
    She shut the notebook and placed it in the drawer of her nightstand. She needed to rid herself of her thoughts.

Chapter Ten
    R eady, one, two, three. Gerta and Ruth each grabbed an end of the board and placed it onto the two easels. A string of colorful lanterns hung from the ceiling of their Rue Lobineau flat. They were getting ready for a surprise party for André’s birthday. October 22. The same day as John Reed’s.
    Ten Days That Shook the World left a strong impression on Gerta. She could still remember the book’s red cover on top of the table at the lake house, next to a vase of tulips, the white tablecloth, and everything else.
    She considered it a first-class testimony and could recite entire paragraphs by heart. That was the kind of journalism she and André yearned to do. To be right in the center of the events, seeing them firsthand, feeling the heart of the world pump through its veins.
    They covered the entire length of the table with white sheets. Ruth cooked a traditional lekaj in the oven. Honey, raisins, almonds, and cloves, just like it’s served on the Jewish New Year. She spent hours preparing it. Henri brought two bottles of Calvados from his native Normandy.
    Twenty-two. The two little ducks. An unforgettable birthday. All kinds of drinks, laughter until dawn, champagne, candles, cigarettes, paper lanterns, photographs out of focus. Henri Cartier-Bresson and Chim covered in streamers, drinking straight out of the bottle of Calvados. Hiroshi Kawazoe and Seiichi Inoue, two Japanese artists they had met on Île Sainte-Marguerite, who performed a traditional samurai dance. Willi Chardack dressed up as the man with the iron mask. Fred Stein, completely drunk, clowning around, his arms around a broomstick. Csiki Weiss and Geza Korvin, with their fists in the air. Comrades of André’s, two old friends from his years in Budapest, of the heroic times of stealing croissants from the bars of shops recently opened in Paris. Chim, frowning again, concentrated, trying to build an Eiffel Tower with toothpicks. The journalist Lotte Rapaport swearing never again to accept another job as a seamstress. Paris was full of lunatics. Gerta, cut out against the light of the window, wearing a tight pair of pants and a black turtleneck, laughing with her head thrown back. André’s profile in the gangster hat he’d been given. That cigarette appended to the corner of his mouth. The laughter in his eyes, that air of mischief. “Happy Birthday,” she said into his ear, softly. Their faces close, dancing to a new cabaret tune that was becoming fashionable on the radio. It was sung by a young girl who was as slight as a sparrow, named Edith Piaf. They were bidding farewell to their childhood. And they did not know it.
    That’s how they passed the time. On other occasions, they’d stroll through the quais of the Seine. Gerta loved looking at the boats all lit up along the waterfront. A boat is always a promising