Love and The Great war- part I

Jean Renoir was sitting in Café ecstacy , Milan, Italy. He didn't know what day or date it was. Neither did he remember the time from which he had been frequenting the café. The red wine in the left hand and cheesed toast in his right had become a permanent feature of those long and dreary mornings.

He picked up the newspaper, La Avante, not out of curiosity but out of the pre mechanised habits he had developed over the past months. It was the newspaper that brought him back to the surface of war and reality. There is a thing about wartime that not a single soul can escape its gloom. The sun though bright lacks the energy and ferocity, the rain though comforting is melancholic, the rain though unchanged is contemplating. Jean saw the name of the dead and injured soldiers on the newspaper. Each day he saw the names and each day he longed to return to the war front.

After he had finished his breakfast and flipped through the blood stained wartime newspaper, he decided to go back to the hospital. He started walking listlessly towards the St. Claise hospital located in New Milan. The walk was twenty minutes long and Jean enjoyed it after the heavy early morning breakfast.He enjoyed watching the people of Milan going about their normal work of the as though nothing had happened. The cafes had started filling up and the few operas that were still open were preparing for the evening show. Jean noticed how the endless number of shops that lined the main thoroughfare  had dwindled down to a few grocery stores, all of them looked over by a woman or an old man incapable to pick a gun. The sight of a young and healthy man walking down the streets of Milan drew looks of disgust and contempt. All boys and men who could walk were expected to fight. But Jean with a crutch in his hands was spared of  these looks. At the end of the thoroughfare, he bought a couple of cigarettes from Mrs. Lambert’s everyday store. She helped him lit the cigarette and the first inhalation sent a chill down his whole body. The time between inhaling and exhaling sent him to a universe where his solipsistic existence marked life and its frivolities. Exhaling , he noticed the spirals of smoke in the clean Milan air of autumn. He paid her two lira and went forward towards his destination. The cigarette and the thoroughfare were finished in an uncanny unison. Hence, he found himself standing at the La Irdine bridge . The water beneath was glistening in the sun like a freshly forged metal sheet. So clean was the water , that he could see the silt and gravel on the river bed. The fishes of all sizes and hues were afloat almost oblivious of the prejudices of the world around. Leaning   over the rails, Jean threw the cigarette stub almost involuntarily. The stub was carried away by the light breeze in a doleful way as if the air was also mourning the loss of the loved ones in this fruitless and never ending war. The stub met the surface of water head on and pierced its silvery sheen with its hot and burning head. A tumultuous smoke went up as the stub drowned in the water, helplessly. It was only when the stub had settled with the slit that Jean moved from the spot.