Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico Read Free Book Online Page B

mocking eyes of the drab and went out of the room leaving them there. She thought again of dying, but was so confused she no longer knew how to die. For a time she wondered about in a daze through the streets, not knowing where she was going.
    Then she came upon the Citroën. Golo was sitting at the wheel smoking a cigarette, his white patch standing out in the light of the street lamp. He appeared to be waiting for her. He got out and took her by the arm.
    “You come here and rest, Miss Mouche . . .” he said. He had seen Capitaine Coq go in with the woman and Mouche emerge from the inn, and had followed her. He opened the rear door and she climbed in unseeing and slumped onto the seat. Golo drove to the nearby fairgrounds and parked. The chimes of the musical clock of Besançon announced the hour of three. Mouche began to weep.
    Golo reached back and took her small thin hand in his calloused mahogany paw with the fingers hard and scaly from the steel strings of the guitar. But his grip was infinitely tender and his voice even more so as he said, “Do not cry, my little one . . .” only it sounded even more beautiful and touching in the soft Senegal French, “Ne pleurez pas, ma petite, Ca fait vous mal aux jolies yeux.”
    Mouche continued to weep as though she would never be able to cease.
    Golo got out of the car, was absent for a moment and then returned. “Mouche,” he called gently. “Miss Mouche. You look here. Please Miss Mouche, you look . . .”
    The insistence of the soft pleading reached through to Mouche. She took her hands from her face and did as she was bidden. She stared, unbelieving for a moment. Carrot Top and Mr. Reynardo were looking at her over the top of the front seat.
    “Carrot Top! Rey . . . ! Oh my darlings . . .” Mouche cried, her heart near to bursting.
    The two stared at her woodenly. Between them shone the face of Golo like the mask of an ancient African god carved out of ebony, but an oddly compassionate God. He said sadly, “They not talk for me, Miss Mouche. But they love you. That’s why I brought them here so you remember that. They always love you.”
    Mouche reached over and took the two puppets from his hands and cradled the empty husks in her arms and they brought her comfort until her sorely tried spirit rebelled in an outcry that came from her depths, “But why does he hate me so, Golo, Golo? Why is he so cruel? Why is he so evil?”
    The Senegalese reflected before he replied. “He bewitched. His spirit go out from him. Another come in. Golo see magic like this many years ago in Touba in Senegal when he was a boy.”
    Mouche could understand this for she herself came from a country where the supernatural was accepted.
    She said, “Then you don’t hate him, Golo?”
    The Senegalese produced another Gaulois and lit it and the match illuminated the cream of his eyeballs. He replied, “Black man not allowed to hate.”
    Mouche drew in her breath sharply, “Ah,” she cried, “I hate him! Dear God, how I hate him!”
    Golo’s cigarette glowed momentarily and he sighed likewise. The noises of the city and the fair were stilled except for the occasional shattering protest of the mangy and hungry lion caged at the far end. He said, “It good sometimes to hate. But I think it better not to. Sometimes, when you hate, you forget if you sing . . .”
    His guitar was by his side and so softly that it was barely audible he plucked out the melody of a Breton lullaby and he hummed it softly. Goodness knows where he had picked it up during the long, rough years of his perpetual exile from the land of his birth, in what camp, prison or country he had heard it sung by another lonely expatriate from the hard-rocked sea-fringed shores of Brittany. He remembered the words after a moment or two:
“My young one, my sweeting,
    Rock in your cradle,
    The sea rocks your father,
    The sea rocks his cradle,
    God grant you sweet sleep,
    God grant him return.”
    When he played it again, Mouche