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warning: this has no plot. this is not a story.
Marius is copyrighted Anne Rice, Plainte D'Amour is copyrighted
Fridiric Chopin and Louis Pomey.

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Paris in the winter.
One must first imagine the dark sky with stars and moon clouded
over; the biting chill of the wind and one's breath appearing as
curled puffs of smoke; large drops of rain rapidly falling on heads
and hats, sliding off umbrellas and roofs. Then, one imagines further,
not only Parisians but people of many nations huddling underneath
their wide umbrellas; storekeepers who have just closed their stores
and were now returning home in their Citroens, jingling their keys
in their left hand while their right hand rests on the steering
wheel; armies of peddlers, displaying their hula-dancing dolls and
toy soldiers on card tables, who have set up shop for the night
beneath what cover there is; furtive-looking wet ladies and gentlemen
with their hands in their wet coat-pockets.
There is a gentleman without an umbrella now, his hands not in his
pockets but clad in smooth black gloves. He is walking on the pavement
beside the Kebab shop, passing the Alimentation and reaching the
curb. He crosses the road easily without so much as checking for
cars. His blond hair is thick and drips with rainwater that trickles
down his coat. He is dressed with typical Parisian style. The coat
he wears is a fine one of black leather, its small round buttons
are of gold, its cuffs and collar-edges gilded with gold in the
old Florentine way. His cowl-necked shirt is equally dear, being
one of red velvet, and his plain black trousers are a well-cut pair.
The man himself seems to possess an air that claims he is of indeterminate
age though this cannot be, a glance at him tells one that he is
thirty, perhaps even forty years of age. His eyes are the shade
of blue that a poet might describe as the azure of sunny skies.
His skin is hard to the touch, with a faint rosiness to it. He stands
straight and tall, poised in his black leather boots. His composure
is stately and regal; he is a dignified and elegant man, a handsome
and well-formed man. Time, that has broken down so many men younger
than his years, has been kind to him indeed.
He sings softly to himself as he walks down that pavement. The people
that pass him and hear him smile to themselves and think: 'Ah, here
is a man in love,' or, 'Here is a man with a beautiful voice. Listen to his tenor.'
But there can be no doubt about his countenance. Tonight he is happy.
It is evident in the way he moves, poised, not hunched like so many
in the drenching rain, also by the catch in his voice as he repeats
his favourite phrase of the song: "Cette nuit dans un rjve, je croyais te voir."
He has dreamt a strange dream, and as if still in that dream, still
in that time, he walks and sings. He knows when and where he is,
but it seems like it does not matter, for the memory of days long
gone has seized him tonight as it seizes everyone at times. Memory
lies tight in one's throat, and like fear and love, it lightens
one's head of common matters but burdens it instead with peculiar
notions or romantic fancies about the past.
He yet remembers when every schoolboy in Paris sang the Plainte
D'Amour on the street, and before that, how every schoolboy had
his opinion on Bonaparte, due to what the people around him believed.
He remembers conversations in the Piazza San Marco of Venice after
dusk, and how he painted murals depicting Ancient Roman scenes on
walls of quiet French rooms that were to be let. He remembers that
he came back years after, only to see the paint peeling and walls
stained, for time ruins what is tangible and destructible no matter how beautiful it is.
Now he reaches the next Alimentation, one of many Alimentations
with their many apples and dates lined up in boxes before their
doors. The owner of this particular store and his friends laugh
beneath a street-light. The glow of that street-light falls on our
well-dressed man in a curious way which makes him look somewhat
beyond normal men, somehow almost immortal; but one is uncertain
of it as the light's glow gleams too queerly on rain, puddles, and cracked window-panes as well.
If one watches him, and one is a curious person, then perhaps one
asks who he is, this man with the almost perfect countenance? It
seems he is a man who might be a god; or might he be a god who only
seems like a man? What is his name or his line of work? Is he honestly that which he seems to be?
Perhaps one asks these questions, but being a simple onlooker, one
would never know. Will one wish to know what he truly is?
What if he truly is more than a man, little lower than a god, as
he walks in the streets of Paris? What if he truly has walked in
the rain-washed streets among centuries of mortals in uncountable
rainy nights? Then what does one say of him? What can one say of him? What can one say to him?
If one knows of why he still lives after all that time and what
had nourished him then and continues to nourish him now, would one
still speak to him on the street? Would one murmur a blessing to
him as one passes him with lowered eyes?
"May it rain sun rays, may the day's all-seeing eye bathe you in
its warmth. May you see the ocean as something other than the inky
torrent it is, may you see the sky blue as you paint it. May you
see the redness of the sun-rise. May blood possess not its alluring
scent. Though all these may never occur, may the Lord bless you still."
If one says that to him, will he look up, startled, and stare for
a moment before saying quickly, "thank you," and walk rapidly away?
Will he sing the last line again under his breath as he hastens away from one?
"Hilas! la mort, la mort est dans mon coeur."
Will he sing that as he walks away in the pouring rain?