Andrea Darvi

            On Thursday morning I gathered more images for a photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 133 so far. 

            I weighed 89.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the second of four sessions. 

            At around 13:15 I headed downtown to Mount Sinai and to Imaging on the fifth floor to buy a CT Colonography Preparation Kit for my CT scan next week, which costs $30. I asked the receptionist what I was paying for and she explained it’s the dye and the barium I have to combine and drink the day before the scan. I paid, took the package and left, but outside the hospital I looked for and couldn’t find the original letter I’d been sent with my instructions so I went back upstairs. The receptionist said no one else had been there so I must still have it. I looked in another pocket of my backpack and it was there. 

            I had planned on stopping at Freshco on my way home but I had to pee and the washroom at Freshco has been out of service for weeks so I decided I’d go there tomorrow instead. 

            I weighed 89 kilos at 15:25, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since January 16. 

            I took a siesta at 16:00, intending to get up at 17:30 but I slept until 18:00. 

            I weighed 90.05 kilos at 18:15. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:16. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive side 2 of the tape I recorded yesterday. Side 1 had pre-verbal sounds from my daughter, plus a rehearsal of my song “Seven Shades of Blues” with Yehudah Cullman playing his cello. Side 2 was a recording of the CBC radio show Brave New Waves with host Brent Bambury featuring the British anarchist punk band Chumbawamba. 

            I renamed some photos to match them with more similar images. I deleted several others. 

            I boiled my last two potatoes and then baked them with the last of the five-year-old cheddar on top. I ate them while watching the first season finale of Combat. 

            K Company is fighting Germans who have occupied a French town and they are tossing grenades into windows and doorways. But Caje throws a grenade that kills a Frenchman and he is extremely broken up about it. 

            At the man’s burial he learns that he lived in a barge by the river and so he goes there. Inside he sees the man’s wedding picture, which doesn’t help. Then the man’s 11 year old daughter comes home and Caje has to break it to her that her father is dead. It turns out that her mother died earlier at the hands of the Germans and so now she is an orphan. 

            Feeling responsible as he should he strikes up a relationship with Micheline and they bond. But Caje is neglecting his duties and even walks away from Lieutenant Hanley when he gives him an order. Sergeant Saunders assures Hanley he can snap Caje out of it but Hanley warns him the next time Caje turns his back on him he’ll have him up on insubordination charges. 

            An elderly Frenchman is found who is willing to adopt Micheline but Caje is angry when the man asks how much he will be paid. 

            The Germans re-invade the town and Caje wants to go to Micheline but Saunders convinces him to stay and fight because Micheline will be safer if the Germans are defeated. 

            He tells him he’s been using Micheline as a crutch to deal with his own guilt. 

            Later Caje meets the entire family of the elderly man and there is at least one woman the age of Micheline’s mother, so knowing Micheline has someone to care for her he is able to leave. 

            Micheline was played by Andrea Darvi, who made her TV debut at 8 in the Twilight Zone episode “The Night of the Meek”. She only appeared in two movies: Torn Curtain and The Night God Screamed. She mostly left acting in 1966. She earned a BA in English, a Masters degree in Journalism, and a Masters Degree in Social Work. She became a licensed clinical social worker at the department of Veterans Affairs. She wrote Pretty Babies: An Insider’s Look at the World of the Hollywood Child Star and Madness: In the Trenches of America’s Troubled Department of Veterans Affairs. She taught in the Sociology department of Loyola Marymount University.