The two natives stared at each other a moment, then stared at me; finally the one who had not spoken yet stepped from beneath his little roof long enough to point to the sign over the doorway in which I was standing. “You do not read, m’sieur?” he asked, with that gentleness which one affects in humoring a lunatic.
I stepped out and looked at the old sign over the door. It read
LE CHIEN ROUGE
Pierre Lenotier, Pr.
“Merci, merci, m’sieur.” I laughed at him as I ran beneath the sign and into the café. Then I stopped, for there behind the bar was Lisa herself: a little older looking, fatter and perhaps harder faced, but I knew her at once. I started to yell across the room to her, but noticed that there were a few French and American soldiers at the tables, so I walked smilingly up to the bar.
I stopped in front of her and waited for her to say something. But she just stared at me, as if I were any other soldier wanting a drink.
“Lisa,” I cried out finally. “Don’t you know me?”
Apparently she didn’t. She had seen too many American soldiers to take much stock in any of them. I removed my cap and leaned across the bar. “Lisa, don’t you remember Leon Canwick?”
Her eyes gleamed at that and she smiled, but you could see that she couldn’t believe me, coming upon her so unexpectedly. Finally her grin broadened and she said, “C’est impossible! Mon petit diable! Leon! Non, non....”
But a good survey seemed to persuade her, for she led me then, amid a continual stream of happy chattering, into a back room which opened off the main room at the end of the little bar. Then she looked me over again, as if she couldn’t possibly believe what she was seeing. “Non ... non ... impossible!”