Serafim and Claire Read Online Free Page B

conduct. There are things that, unfortunately, we must pay for out of our souls, and I am not a man who is rich in that currency. Brave acts, Mr. Audette, are at times done merely out of weakness.”
    Claire’s father chuckled uncomfortably, threw back the rest of his glass, and shouldered his way closer to the bar. “Of course, of course. Which I imagine is another way of saying I should buy you another whiskey.”
    Dr. Bertrand turned to him, gave him a hearty slap on the back. “And yourself one too, I hope.”
    But before the glasses could be poured, the song ended and another began, this one more upbeat, pulsing wildly, and Claire’s father was suddenly shooing his daughter and the doctor out into the centre of the room. “ Allez! Dansez, dansez! ” Claire, who had listened hungrily to the conversation, was now seeing the doctor, for the first time, in a duller, more human light; made even more so by his awkward dancing, his lack of rhythm and musicality. Claire soon stepped back from him, lifted one of his hands and passed beneath it, twirling, swaying, swinging her body gracefully around the dance floor. She was young and beautiful, and her dancing held the attention of the room. As the navy men clapped and whistled around her, Claire reached back and let her hair down, where it splashed over her shoulders with every spin, an auburn aura. As she danced, conversations stopped, sentences hovered, hanging adrift in the smoke, then dissipated, until the words were forgotten entirely.
    After an hour of dancing on and off, Claire sensed something troubling passing through the room. She saw her father and Dr. Bertrand exchange a few quick words, followed by a strained return to their previous jovial state. Not wanting to interrupt the two men, she asked one of the naval ratings what was wrong, and he told her that the war, in fact, had not ended. It was a mistake. No armistice had been signed, nor had negotiations even begun. Casualties were still being reported on the Western Front. Yet — and this was the strangest part for Claire — the dancing hadn’t stopped. Out in the street, where everyone had doubtlessly heard the news, people were still celebrating, and were now clearing the way for a float to pass. The float — a giant papier mâché Canadian soldier with his bayonet to the throat of a kneeling kaiser — had been prepared for the Victory Bond parade that was scheduled for the following Monday. Claire watched as two men jumped onto the float and began the process of cutting off the kaiser’s head.
    Patrons streamed out of the bar to watch the feigned execution, and in the flux, Claire found her father. “Papa” — she tapped him on the shoulder — “do you know that none of this is true? The war isn’t over.”
    He appeared unperturbed. “You’re right, it isn’t. But . . . can’t you feel how much everyone here wishes it were? We wish it. And sometimes that’s more important than what actually is. Can you see? Does that make sense?”
    And to Claire, it did. Perfectly. Though she had never told anyone about it, this was what she felt when she danced. It was as if there were some fragmented part of her that was perfect, sublime. It was that same part of her, the one that she constantly wished she was, that indeed she could become — though for only the most fleeting of moments — in the act of dancing. When the music and her movements lined up flawlessly, Claire experienced moments of divinity, glimpses where what she wished she was and what she actually was (even if only for seconds) became one. And for the first time in her life it occurred to her that this might also hold true for the world.
    Four days later, on November 11, 1918, when the real armistice was signed and the last war the earth would ever see ended, Claire realized that the collective wish of people could, perhaps, attain