From the coast she stops in Paris. Stays in the Latin Quarter. Visits Notre Dame, walks the quays in the light snow, browsing bookshops, standing under the Eiffel tower at night. A solitary diamond on the velvet of the night. During the day, she sips coffee, watching passersby as if the war itself were past, or perhaps just passed. A concupiscent city, untouched. A world unto itself. A magical snow globe. A jewel outside the circumference of death and destruction. A place as imaginary as real. Even in darkness, a city of light, of life.
On the silent eve of her last night, she walks the quarter’s old stone, jacket and beret sprinkled with a sugary snow, her heels as horse-drawn carriage upon the stone. From a distance she hears a lone trumpet holding a note without edge and enters a warmly lit chapel. The nave arches as bone, a sanctuary of robe and gown against the cold. Upon the alter, a couple. Black and white, a shimmer of gold. Vows en français. She stands at the back, the recessional a faded dreamlike river of smiles, of a life beginning, a flower of civilization amidst the barren landscape of carpet bombing and endless shelling.
15 comments:
Beautiful! Your powerful imagery transported me there. The beauty of that city, even during the hell that is war. . . .
Thanks Limes. I was in Paris, over christmas and new years, many moons ago. It snowed, was bitter cold, and to my dying day, I will remember the chapel and the trumpet that provided some warmth and beauty on a cold night. Glad you liked this one. :-)
Everyone loves that place. Bitterly cold in winter, hell for hot in some summers. Spring is best, which is why there are songs written about it. Yes, today's offering truly took me there and I appreciate you.
Here is my respond to a comment I received on FB. I thought I'd post it here since it adds information that was assumed by my eidetic mind:
Well, I'm not so sure Mary is quite as content as you imagine. What I didn't write in this chapter is the tears that fell, within and without, as the recessional exited the church. Or of the hollowness when she was left standing alone, feeling as empty as the nave, as cavernous as the belly of an hungry whale.
Limes, you are very welcome. :-)
The ambience that you create is so impressive, a haze of sights and sounds and aromas and textures, of mood conveyed so tenderly (more so through evocation than direct reference), one set of steps echoing, the lack of words, of exchange, of her watching. An island reflected in the city. This post is so very beautiful, poignant and beautiful and pure, as the sound of that lone trumpet one imagines. An exquisitely characteristic (in quality, in loveliness, in affect, in skill) flow of ink from your, fitting is the well-known phrase, from your mighty pen, rather from your special heart.
Ms Storm, just for you, a little prequel:
The nave emptied into the street, into the night, exhaling the last of its keep upon snow and cobble. I remain alone with the marbled saints, their tongues as silent as mine, as silent as the vestibule after the doors closed. Only the flicker of candles speaking of human hands, of the shiver of prayer, of hope, of beginnings and, perhaps too, of endings.
In the absence of joy, that tide of happiness released into those narrow stone corridors, I sat. Cold returned with the dark, my knees as a child before the father. And what had been held was released, my face a muddy mess, alive I knew by evidence of tear, the economy of the thorned heart, as productive as the bomb factories back home.
She is real, isn't she - Mary? It was all cool, serene, still. I know that snow that loses its white moments after it touches the shoulder. I'd like to walk there and watch Mary watching all.
Erin, in my mind, Mary is as real as the fingers that typed her into existence. I think I'd like to do more than just watch her watching it. :-D
I've never been there, but it all comes so brilliantly alive, and lived, at your touch.
Masterful...
Thanks S. Another paragraph for your reading pleasure:
There was no place to kneel, but I kneeled anyway. I wanted to feel the cold stone, wanted the pain to take my mind away from my own self-indulgent sorrow. I draped my arms over the chair in front of me, laced my fingers and looked toward the alter, toward the icons of veneration. I said a few words to myself that others might consider a prayer. But there was nothing. Nothing but silence and pain and cold. Just me kneeling in a cold dark church, alone. I felt as if God was in the forsaken business and I thought if he could do what he did to his son, what could, would he do with me? I was beginning to think I knew the answer. And I envied the ignorant.
After some time, my knees are numb and I no longer see the point of my self-inflicted pain. I return to the war tomorrow. There will be enough pain; as an ocean to my bucket, only what is wet is red and what burns is the realization there is nothing you can do to stop the tide. So we endure and don’t much talk about it.
Churches always bring out the confessional in me so I’ll say this too: we don’t much pray about it either. I pull upon the massive wooden door, a cold blast of winter rushes in, flickering candles and rustling a few missives. My hair feels frosted with a hairspray of snow. The streets are silent now and mostly dark under the clouded sky. My hotel is just a few blocks down the street. I walk alone. There is no sense that he is with me. There have been no visions or visitations. He left me memories but no more. My heels are my meditation, clicking stone like clock, my breath perfuming the air, my eyes dry in the cold.
I couldn’t sleep so I did what I always do, read. I read until I wept, such the power of Cymbeline, of this stanza:
‘Till the diminution
Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;
Nay follow’d him till he had melted from
The smallness of a gnat to air; and then
Have turn’d mine eye and wept.
And so I wept, wept for what I didn’t have. Wept for what I knew I’d never have. And in this way, upon my wet pillow, found slumber waiting.
When I woke, I returned to Cymbeline with my coffee as I sat before my window, ledged in snow. I read but a few lines:
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
And I wept again as if sleep were an interlude, a temporary respite. My tears as the snow, falling and falling without end.
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