L'Oiseau

Oh, no, no. Although I can see why you think that. The picture is a little ambiguous in that regard.

No, I’m not the fortunate man kissing the young woman in the photograph below. I’m the fellow in the background. The one wearing the beret. Rather allegorical, don’t you think?
My, I do appear so intense. Of course, it stands to reason. I was madly searching in vain for the woman I love. The bosch were on the move, and I didn’t want us to be separated at such an unsettled time.

There was a fellow . . . um, . . . Ronald, Ronsard, Robin, . . . no! Robert! It was Robert. Robert Doisneau. His last name is easy. It reminds me of “l’oiseau”. After all , it was late in the Spring.

Anyway, he snapped the photograph as I was hurrying by. He stopped me long enough to ask whether or not I would like a copy. Why not? I have so few pictures of myself, and one has to make a living as best one can.

I never did find out exactly what happened to that happy young couple. Doisneau told me that the man was rushing to his posting on the Maginot Line. I’ve heard variously that he either joined the partisans, or that he became a gendarme for the Vichy government, or even that he fled to Algiers, where he opened a café. I’d like to think the first is true, although the Algiers version has a sort of exotic charm. I do not dwell on the second possibility, as I consider the thought rudely discourteous.

Whatever happened to the young woman? Ah, that’s a sad story. Maybe at another time.

Espresso?