Les Etes A Paris

Summer stayed late in Paris that year, the sun still burning as the seasons blushed their change. The ground blistered and cracked with thirst; the grass wizened and yellowed as the leaves flushed gold, then scarlet, dancing in a breeze that wasn’t quite in existence. The city was bruised with summer, as autumn tried to heal the wound.1

Already, the grave was untended; the stone smeared with dirt; the tone set for the centuries to come. His name borne beneath the mud, a grave on foreign soils. 2

Few had seen the funeral, attended by only the occasional whore and drunkard, as befriended in the squalid taverns of the back streets; the few contempories he had gleaned, as ill known and as embittered as he. The odd murmur of condolence, to no one but the air. 3

He was, like many of his time and off all time, unknown in life, save by the few as disregarded by society as he. The years would pass and his name be near forgot before graced and his ink not wasted. Only in death was he to be honoured. 4

***5

Summer, as though indebted to the seasons, came late the year Giselle Rosen came to Paris. The air was dank, reeking of rain and smog and storms spat frequently, dispersing the few tourists who remained. Feet smacked the sidewalks, belching grimy water from pools at the kerbside; umbrellas danced and kissed together, sparse colour amongst the melancholy grey. Cheated, the tourists slunk, defeated, into squalid cafés to bemoan their fortunes. Paris had proved nothing of the promises: the glory, the beauty, the romance. 6

Giselle, who had held no such expectations, suffered none of their indignation. 7

***8

She slipped away, evading the crowds and worked her way through the back streets, winding and darting until the traffic’s chunder was a distant snarl. Rain clung limply to black railings and shadowed glimpses of grimy tombstones. A Parisian graveyard, the cliché that had driven them all wild as horror obsessed infants. Graveyards no longer held the fascination of her childhood years but everything that was left in echoes. A solitude that enveloped her, threatened to choke her. She drifted among the stone, admiring the statues that, she felt, held no relevance to the person’s life. She would pause to pick moss off a marble hand; dig the dirt from the stark letters on a headstone. She would hunt them down, search for the rows of pale stone and soft mounds. Seek the lonely, the ignored, the neglected. Clear the mud, scrape the clay and steal flowers from better-tended graves.9

For this grave, she stole daffodils from the railings. Worked without noticing the engravings, nor the man who sat nearby, insolently perched upon a neighbouring grave. There was no misgiving about his beauty: he retained still the perfection of youth, the exquisite precision of one who looked to be carved of flesh. Tall, even of today, with a slender manliness that echoed arrogance. A poise of elegance, of decadence, which ran deeper than superficial splendour. Long legs, perfectly sculpted, crossed in the most effeminate of manners, which few men of today can hold; hands of ivory, with tapering fingers that swayed like the breeze, ink stained by the nails. Indifference, yet charm upon his face, with his pastel silken skin and high cut cheekbones, framed with soft mahogany locks, that licked the nape of his neck near erotically. Soft lips, plump as the youths’, enticing and rosy against the porcelain. And the eyes, his eyes that changed with his mood: like white at times, they grew so pale; or black as the ocean depths; forget-me-nots and irises, sapphires and robins’ eggs, spring skies or storm clouds, his mood dictated their shade with which to pierce.10

On occasion, when provoked to despair, his face would twist and show a savage bruising about his eye and cheek, the gash upon his lip; he would writhe as his ribs splintered and his shirt seeped red: the lingering effects of the tavern brawl that brought about his death.11

Since that brawl, he had seen a thousand seasons echo past and yet, nothing moved him. Death left him crueller and more embittered than in life, the trivial no concern of his; the fame, sheer frustration: he had been born to wallow in glory and slaughtered so he could not. Isolation consumed him, clawing and teasing until he grew near mad.12

In Giselle, he saw nothing; nothing but a plaything, with whom he could do as he chose. Her china features put him in mind of the dolls he had left behind as English girls; in her gangly awkwardness, he perceived the Americanisms of desperation, the all too eager mannerisms, frantic to please and thus easy to seduce and cast off. He failed to perceive her determination, her tenderness, her elegant gracelessness that evoked in him the memory of a long-forgotten lover; instead stoking only a vicious cruelty. 13

He had haunted many in Paris but few had seen him, believed in him, putting the disturbances down to the wind, the cat, their imaginations. Frustration bubbled in him, burning passageways in his soul. He grew angry, resentful and despised the living.14

He watched her, stealing lilies and sunflowers, providing, he mocked, a Robin Hood service for the dead. He laughed, mirth at his own wit fizzing past his lips. She started and he waited for the inevitable; the shake of the head and the thought that she were paranoid, hearing things.15

“Que’st ce c’est si humoureuse?” Strange, he thought in the seconds before shock, that such dogged, inept French could yet sound so sharp. 16

“I am now seen?”17

She blinked. “Seen indeed. You speak English?”18

“I was English. A long time ago.”19

“I see.”20

“You do? You see me?”21

“Yes.” A testy reply. “Why would I not?”22

He ignored her question, asking instead, “Why do you tend that grave?”23

“It looked lonely.” She wiped the dirt on her hands, offered her right to him. “Giselle Rosen. And you?”24

“Louis Alexander.” Again, the wait for the shock, the double take.25

Again, it was he that was shocked. “Like the poet?”26

“I am the poet.”27

She laughed softly. “A ghost? Which of us is mad?”28

“Neither.”29

“Prove it.”30

“Believe it.”31

She smiled and turned away. A new fury welled in him; never had he thought he would be believed in but not believed. He turned on his heel and fled out across the city; his own storm as infuriating to him as the storms of the sky to the public. Loneliness consumed him once again; it’s savageness threatening to overwhelm him. He crumpled and wept, tears blistering over the faint bruises that once again reawakened. 32