Mourning

A French peasant wanders the Paris streets at night, wondering how things could have gone so wrong, how her life had become so wretched.

She stumbles down the alley, her feet numb and clumsy with cold, striking her them on sharp icy cobblestones. She shivers, wrapping her ragged, thread-bare shawl tighter around her boney shoulders. Her hair, once long and golden as it swirled around her graceful figure was many weeks ago shorn to pay for food. Now it barely reaches her shaking shoulders. Carelessly lopped off, uneven, full of snow which falls but does not stick to the wet ground. Her nose and ears are frozen with chill, and ice sticks to her damp eyelashes. Her dress is worn and thin, offering little to no protection from the cruel world around her. The youth has been stolen from her face; the spring gone from her step, the only thing that remains is a shadow of elegance and proper manners.

            She stops now, her head spinning with fatigue and takes a seat on a rickety, empty box leaned against the wall of a building. She sinks down onto it as if it were the couch of the emperor himself. She draws her right foot up onto her lap to examine it. Bloody, battered, bruised with flayed, filthy skin and toes blue with cold. She feels a dull, weary sorrow at the pathetic state of her feet, which once gave her her greatest pleasure. If she closes her eyes and leans her head against the unforgiving brick wall, as she does now, she can see the walls whirling, alight with candles and gold, can hear the thunderous music of the orchestra, the raptured silence of the audience, can feel the other dancers move about her, as it was when she danced in L’Opera Garnier. She wraps her shawl tighter around her shoulders and turns her face to the sky. Why? Why? What have I done, what sin have I committed to earn this? Why, God, why?

            She has an idea now of where she wants to go. The snow has turned to sleet, which makes puddles on the potholed street. She slogs through the water, making her way to the crowded, crooked Paris cemetery. She kneels in the sodden grass, mud oozing through her dress to soak her legs. She stares at the grave and can hear echoes of her sister’s laughter.

            She hasn’t eaten in days and fancies she can see Lina sitting in the grass in a sunnier, better time. She throws herself into the vision with reckless abandon, closing her wide blue eyes to see it better. She leaves the soggy graveyard, thrown back into the summers in Nice, when she returned from ballet school and took Lina to the beaches and up flowery hills. It was like a dream. She could feel the sun on her face, smell the succulent flowers. The constant pain in her belly has ceased to exist, along with the sores in her mouth and the ever-present chills. “Arrivé, soeur, venir jouer avec moi*.” Lina’s voice caresses her ears, drawing a painful smile to her chapped lips, tinged blue, standing out vividly on her pale face.

There’s a loud thump and swearing and it snaps her back to reality with a jolt. And then there’s only a passing carriage, run into a rut, old graves and her soaking dress and a distinct lack of anything good. A fat raindrop hits her between the eyes and runs off her nose, falling into her open palm. She closes her hand around it, feeling tears burn her eyes, if she only had the energy to weep any more. She rises to her feet, managing to maintain the grace of a dancer even in her dilapidated state. She rises, shivering uncontrollably and goes to find shelter, wrapping her shawl tighter around her shoulders.