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= Woman in the Moon =

Mona Lisa Novel, or: Nocturne in Paris

by John Argo

Page 26.

“Yes, and when he left, Stana barely said goodbye. Like her mother many years earlier, she was already flirting and running around with other American soldiers, including one whose marriage she ruined after Danny was gone from the picture; but she had been flirting with that next guy in Danny’s presence before his ETS. Stana and her trashy family were all relieved to see Danny go, for reasons that can only be explained by the fact that they were ignorant peasants, and Danny was different, so they didn’t understand him. He was studying for his Master’s with a major U.S. university’s overseas division, and they accused him of laziness because he studied for hours rather than doing village work like cutting and stacking wood or cleaning the yard. He brought an air of change, and they hated it. All Americans are on drugs and no good, they told him openly, Chetko with that chin in the air, prodding and bullying to cause insult and hurt. So Danny left, and…”

“Yes?”

“I never saw him again. I worried about him all these years. I am so happy to hear that he had a beautiful life after his horror here.”

“He never got over it,” Rob said. “I understand it now, finally.”

“Me too,” Hannah said.

“Stana did run around with a few other men, but nothing lasting. She kept drinking, stayed at home, and died as an older village spinster with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of raw vodka in the other. Maybe she got drugs also down in Heidelberg running around with stray G.I.s. Who knows. They are all dead and gone now. All of them.”

Almost all, Hannah thought, thinking of the mature woman whose voice had sounded in Danny’s head as his baby daughter died. Her ghost: an angel from another world, where she lived, and grew up into a strong woman of great accomplishments. The word ángelos, she knew from her readings and studies, was ancient Greek or Hellenic, meaning messenger, carried forward in ancient times to Latin as angelus. Those studies were a little breath of life left in his daughter by Dan Wilson, who had such esoteric interests in common with Claudette Vervain, the brilliant scholar (love of Dan's life)—whom Dan had abandoned on that Bridge of Regret in Paris, in favor of Stana in that dark village above the Neckar River in Germany. The concept of a messenger originally referred to human couriers (e.g., legatus, nuntius, ángelos, and only very late in the game referred to spiritual messengers. Speaking of divine messengers, that point on the Pont des Arts over the Seine River is within an echo of both the Louvre Museum and the magnificent façade and bells of the Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral.

“Now we know,” Rob and Hannah said in one voice, being twins.

Frau Jones added: “There are still mysteries. Like who was the woman in Paris? I think her name was Claudette something. And… what I often remember as I already said. Danny told me that, at the moment when his baby girl was dying, he felt a terrible urgency to run across the street to get his parents-in-law and drive to the hospital. But then a wonderful and strange thing happened.”

“What?”

“A woman spoke in his head. He knew in his heart, without any doubt, that it was Klara, or Claire, but it was the voice and persona of a grownup woman with a life of her own, a good life from the sound of her, a solid and decent woman with a wonderful personality like the baby had. It was her adult self, that she would have become, and she said to Danny in his head: It’s all right. Don’t go. Everything will happen as it must, and there is nothing we can do. Farewell, until we meet again. There are other chapters yet to be written in this book. Or words like that. Danny told me all about it. They weren’t words exactly, but thoughts, and they came from her mind to his mind by some form of ESP or ghost language. Angel talk. Angel means messenger in Greek, you know…”

At that, Frau Jones tapered off. She looked worn out, overcome, and shaken. Irma and another woman helped her rise. She said her goodbyes, whispering that she was overjoyed to see Danny’s two beautiful twin children, and hoped that Danny and Nancy were happy together in heaven looking down on Rob and Hannah.

After Frau Jones had been helped to her home, Frau Hagel told Rob and Hannah not to worry—the bill was on the house. She even offered to pack ham and cheese rolls for them, along with cold coffee in a thermal bottle that Jack would bring back whenever it suited him. “And do not forget your father’s journal, which he forgot here so many decades ago.”

They thanked her, but declined her generosity, and after hugs and kisses as if they’d known each other for years, they headed back down the mountain to Ödendorf. Hannah clutched Dad’s Journal II to her chest with both arms.

Along the gloomy road, thick, dark trees rustled their crowns all around them in a disturbed, nervous wind that seemed full of messages and portents. More of those autumn leaves roiled around on the road as the van drove downhill. Something more was yet to come, Hannah thought. What had Frau Jones said—a woman in Paris named Claudette. But what did it mean? And how did one scratch at the surface of that deep mystery?

At his village, they thanked Jack profusely. He admitted this had been one of the most profound days for him in recent years. From there, Rob drove his car back down to Heidelberg. They hung out together for an hour or so, but had no real desire to be tourists or play. So Rob drove back to Frankfurt, and Hannah took her train back to Paris with the precious Journal II in her suitcase.

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