Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein (81 page)

If they are between thirty and thirty five and alive who made them see Saturday.

Between thirty-five and forty-five between forty five and three five as then when when they were forty-five and thirty five when they they were forty five and thirty five when they were then forty five and thirty five and thirty two and to achieve leave relieve and receive their astonishment. Were they to be left to do to do as well as they do mean I mean I mean.

Left to their in their to their to be their to be there all their to be there all their all their time to be there to be there all their to be all their time there.

With wed led said with led dead said with dead led said with said dead led wed said wed dead led dead led said wed.

With be there all their all their time there be there vine there be vine time there be there time there all their time there.

Let it be why if they were adding adding comes cunningly to be additionally cunningly in the sense of attracting attracting in the sense of adding adding in the sense of windowing and windowing and frames and pigeons and ordinary trees and while while away.

ACT III

Did he did we did we and did he did he did he did did he did did did he did did he did be categorically and did he did he did he did he did he did he in interruption interruption interruptedly leave letting let it be be all to me to me out and outer and this and this with in indeed deed and drawn and drawn work.

Saint Ferdinand singing soulfully.

Singing singing is singing is singing is singing is singing between between singing is singing is between singing is.

Theirs and sign. Singing theirs and singing mine.

With a stand and would it be the same as yet awhile and glance a glance of be very nearly left to be alone.

One at at time makes two at a time makes one at a time and be there where where there there where where there.

Saint Ignatius. Might be why they were after all after all who came. One hundred and fifty one and a half and a half and after and after and after and all. With it all.

Saint Chavez. A ball might be less than one.

All together one and one.

ACT IV

How many acts are there in it. Acts are there in it.

Supposing a wheel had been added to three wheels how many acts how many how many acts are there in it.

Any Saint at all.

How many acts are there in it.

How many saints in all.

How many acts are there in it.

Ring around a rosey.

How many acts are there in it.

Wedded and weeded.

Please be coming to see me.

When this you see you are all to me.

Me which is you you who are true true to be you.

How many how many saints are there in it.

One two three all out but me.

One two three four all out but four.

How many saints are there in it.

How many saints are there in it.

One two three four and there is no door. Or more. Or more. Or door. Or floor or door. One two three all out but me. How many saints are there in it.

Saints and see all out but me.

How many saints are there in it.

How many saints are there in it. One two three four all out but four one two three four four four or four or more.

More or four.

How many Acts are there in it.

Four Acts.

Act four.

Encouraged by this then when they might be by thirds words eglantine and by this to mean feeling it as most when they do too to be nearly lost to sight in time in time and mind mind it for them. Let us come to this brink.

The sisters and saints assembling and reenacting why they went away to stay.

One at a time regularly regularly by the time that they are in and and in one at at time regularly very fairly better than they came as they came there and where where will they be wishing to stay here here where they are they are here here where they are they are they are here.

Saint Chavez. The envelopes are on all the fruit of the fruit trees.

SCENE II

Saint Chavez      Remembered as knew

Saint Ignatius      Meant to send, and meant to send and meant meant to differ between send and went and end and mend and very nearly one to two

Saint Cecile      With this and now

Saint Plan      Made it with with in with withdrawn

SCENE III

Let all act as if they went away.

SCENE IV

Saint Philip      With them and still

Saint Cecile      They will they will

Saint Therese      Begin to trace begin to race begin to place begin and in in that that is why this is what is left as may may follows June and June follows moon and moon follows soon and it is very nearly ended with bread

Saint Chavez      Who can think that they can leave it here to me

When this you see remember me.

They have to be.

They have to be.

They have to be to see.

To see to say.

Laterally they may.

SCENE V

Who makes who makes it do.

Saint Therese and Saint Therese too.

Who does and who does care.

Saint Chavez to care.

Saint Chavez to care.

Who may be what is it when it is instead.

Saint Plan Saint Plan to may to say to say two may and inclined.

Who makes it be what they had as porcelain.

Saint Ignatius and left and right laterally be lined.

All Saints.

   To Saints.

Four Saints.

   And Saints.

Five Saints.

   To Saints.

Last Act.

Which is a fact.

We were spending the afternoon with our friends, Madame Pierlot and the d’Aiguys, in September ’39 when France declared war on Germany—England had done it first They all were upset but hopeful, but I was terribly frightened; I had been so sure there was not going to be war and here it was, it was war, and I made quite a scene. I said, ‘They shouldn’t! They shouldn’t!’ and they were very sweet, and I apologized and said I was sorry but it was awful, and they comforted me—they, the French, who had so much at stake, and I had nothing at stake comparatively.

Well, that was a Sunday.

And then there was another Sunday and we were at Béon again that Sunday, and Russia came into the war and Poland was smashed, and I did not care about Poland, but it did frighten me about France—oh dear, that was another Sunday.

And then we settled down to a really wonderful winter.

We did not know that we were going to stay all winter. There is no way of heating this stone house except by open fires, and we are in the mountains, there is a great deal of snow, and it is cold; but gradually we stayed. We had some coal, enough for the kitchen stove, and one grate fire that we more or less kept burning day and night, and there is always plenty of wood here as we are in wooded mountains, so gradually we stayed the winter. The only break was a forty-eight-hour run to Paris to get our winter clothing and arrange our affairs and then we were back for the winter.

Those few hours in Paris made us realize that the country is a better place in war than a city. They grow the things to eat right where you are, so there is no privation, as taking it away is difficult, particularly in the mountains, so there was plenty of meat and potatoes and bread and honey and we had some sugar and we even had all the oranges and lemons we needed and dates; a little short of gasoline for the car, but we learned to do what we wanted with that little, so we settled down to a comfortable and pleasantly exciting winter.

I had not spent a winter in the country, in the real country, since my childhood in California and I did enjoy it; there was snow, and moonlight, and I had to saw wood. There was plenty of wood to be had, but no men to saw it; and every day Basket II, our new poodle, and I took long walks. We took them by day and we took them in the evening, and as I used to wander around the country in the dark—because of course we had the blackout and there was no light anywhere, and the soldiers at the front were indulging in a kind of red Indian warfare all that winter—I used to wonder how anybody could get near without being seen, because I did get to be able to see every bit of the road and the fields beside them, no matter how dark it was.

There were a number of people all around spending the winter unexpectedly in the country, so we had plenty of society and we talked about the war, but not too much, and we had hired a radio wireless and we listened to it, but not too much, and the winter was all too soon over.

I had plenty of detective and adventure stories to read, Aix and Chambéry had them left over, and I bought a quantity every week, and there was an English family living near Yenne and they had books too, and we supplied each other.

One of the books they had I called the Bible; it was an astrological book called
The Last Year of War
, written by one Leonardo Blake. I burnt my copy the day of the signing of the armistice, but it certainly had been an enormous comfort to us all in between.

And so gradually spring came, a nice early spring, and all the men in the village had leave for agriculture and they all came home for a month, and nobody was very uneasy and
nobody talked about the war, but nobody seemed to think that anything was going to happen. We all dug in our gardens and in the fields all day and every day, and March and April wore away.

There were slight political disturbances and a little wave of uneasiness, and Paul Reynaud, as the village said, began to say that there were not to be any more Sundays. The post-office clerks were the first to have their Sundays taken away. The village said it as a joke, ‘Paul Reynaud says that there are not to be any more Sundays.’ As country people work Sundays anyway when there is work, they said it as a joke to the children and the young boys, ‘Paul Reynaud says that there are not to be any Sundays any more.’ By that time all the men who had had an agricultural leave were gone again, and April was nearly over.

The book of astrological predictions had predicted all these things, so we were all very well satisfied.

Beside these astrological predictions there were others, and the ones they talked about most in the country were the predictions of the curé d’Ars. Ars is in this department of the Ain, and the curé, who died about eighty years ago, became a saint; and he had predicted that this year there would be a war and the women would have to sow the grain alone, but that the war would be over in time for the men to get in the harvest; and so when Alice Toklas sometimes worried about how hot it would be all summer with the shutters closed all the evening I said, ‘Do not worry, the war will be over before then; they cannot all be wrong.’

So the month of March and April went on. We dug in the garden, we had a lot of soldiers in Belley, the 13th Chasseurs and the Foreign Legion being fitted out for Norway; and then Sammy Stewart sent us an American Mixmaster at Easter and that helped make the cakes which were being made then for the soldiers and everybody, and so the time went on. Then it was more troublesome, the government changed—the book of prophecy said it would, so that was all right—and the soldiers left for Norway; and then our servant and friend Madame Roux had her only son, who was a soldier, of course, dying of meningitis at Annecy, and we forgot everything for
two weeks in her trouble and then we woke up to there being a certain uneasiness.

The book of prophecy said that the month of May was the beginning of the end of the Nazis, and it gave the dates. They were all Tuesdays—well, anyway they were mostly Tuesdays—and they were going to be bad days for the Nazis, and I read the book every night in bed and everybody telephoned to ask what the book said and what the dates were, and the month began.

The dates the book gave were absolutely the dates the tilings happened.

The first was the German attack on the new moon, the seventh, and that was a Tuesday.

Tuesdays had begun.

Everybody was quiet; one of the farmers’ wives—the richest of the fanners and our town councilor—was the only one who said anything. She always said,
‘Ils avancent toujours, ces coquins-là.
’ ‘The rascals are always coming on,’ she said.

There was nothing else to say and nobody said it, and then the Germans took Sedan.

That gave us all so bad a turn that nobody said anything; they just said how do you do, and talked about the weather, and that was all—there was nothing to say.

I had been in Paris as a child of five at school, and that was only ten years after the Franco-Prussian War and the debacle which began with Sedan, and when we children swung on the chains around the Arc de Triomphe we were told that the chains were there so that no one could pass under it because the Germans had, and so the name Sedan was as terrible to me as it was to all the people around us and nobody said anything. The French are very conversational and they are always polite, but when there is really nothing to say they do not say anything. And there was nothing to say.