Chapter 10: Edith and Olney

Early December winds swept down the boulevards and little streets. Old trees, branches clawing for life from a wet-clay restless sky, stood naked beside the muddy Seine. The river tore through the city, swollen by days of rain and run-off from glistening pastures along the slopes of faraway valleys, where trickles and freshets moved leaf and twig over spreading ponds through dark inclines of forest, where little streams burst from underground to fill pebbly beds with purling dazzle as they coursed across fields, down gentle hillocks to embrace the Yonne, the Marne, the Aube, each leaping and foaming into confluence with the Great Mother, a generative gathering of energy surging past earth's static limits in triumph and splendour beneath the bridges of the chastened city, and on, through the verdured cow-staring and peaceful north, to pick up the Eure and merge once again with freedom, illumination, extinction in the sea of love, the ocean of bliss, the vapours of nothinglessness....

§§§

Olney Garkle and Maggie Bebette wandered the winter city in search of its light. Beginning with the nearest streets and quartiers, they fanned out in all directions, following their noses and a pocketsize Plan de Paris. The wind and rain dominated their every move. Bent at vaudeville angles, they followed the prow of an old umbrella lent by Gaston as they cursed and leaned into sheets of face-prickling fury. Curses quickly changed to squeals when gale-force gusts suddenly changed direction and blew them, skittering, into rush-along Charlie Chaplin steps. The umbrella--reduced to a flapping tatter within days--was vehemently cast under the wheels of an oncoming bus as they descended the steps of the nearest métro, forced at last to encounter its vast bicameral caverns. Incurving walls angered their neck muscles with advertisements of everything from long underwear ("Froid, moi? Jamais!") to bare-legged blondes smelling with delight their now odour free knee-high boots. The trains rattled in (or hissed on modern rubber wheels) from a mazy darkness known only to troglodyte maintenance men. Passengers were transported to destinations whose names were still legend to Olney and Maggie: La Motte Picquet-Grenelle, Ménilmontant, Bir Hakeim, Jasmin, Gaité. At Montparnasse-Bienvenüe, connections to other lines were made by hotfooting it through a labyrinth of stairs and tunnels with a truly sense-modifying interlude along a lengthy trottoir roulant, moving motionless commuters cavernous distances at robot speed. Surfacing again was always a shock. All above ground had been forgotten. The métro erased the world.

On one of these excursions they were returned to reality at the cemetery Père Lachaise. The rain had stopped and the sun was trying to inch its way through a Sauce Mornay of thick clouds. Entering the famous graveyard, they noticed a smokestack in the distance, "attached no doubt to a sinister columbarium," Olney quipped.

"How weird," Maggie said, "it seems pinned to the sky."

"You mean," Olney whispered, "the sky is pinned to it."

Indeed, Père Lachaise held an atmosphere independent of the whims of celestial saucery; the smokestack may have been standing there since the founding of the cosmos.

Well kept and justifiably eerie, this multi-contoured home of the well-known deceased gave the impression of incorporating into its vast acreage a representative terrain from all parts of the globe. Included were jungles, plains, deserts, valleys, hills, forests, everything, it seemed, but an ice cap.

They passed a cottage-like sepulchre reminiscent of rural England; perhaps tea was being served if one dared to step inside. They walked at the edge of landscapes out of Magritte, expecting to witness hatted but headless souls taking their unseen strolls. Cats, mangy and wild, slithered into and out of broken-down tombs, staring at the chilled tourists from skewed, unblinking eyes.

Pausing before the marbled resting-place of Chopin (whose life and music had always moved Olney in ways that never seemed to fit anybody he, Olney, had ever been) they noticed a red arrow painted on the next gravestone. Maggie saw another one further along the path. The markings soon gave way to inscriptions. "Jim, Jim, come back to us." "Jim, oh, Jim, we're waiting for you...." A poem to Jim-in-the-land-of-the-soon-to-be-resurrected covered the front of a stone slab and ran around its corner to finish on the other side. Signatures, including the dates of their adulation, were left indiscriminately across the gravestones of Parisian dead. Other graves were painted in gaudy colours with devils, genitals, and bleeding hearts. In a moment they stood beside the unmarked tombeau of Jim Morrison. Two young women knelt at its foot, weeping with devotion. A cameraman hovered nearby, slowly panning the scene with documentary seriousness. Olney could almost hear the narrator: Ici repose Jeem Morreeson et tout l'espoir d'une génération . . . Flowers, withered and fresh, were strewn everywhere, thickening the air with pungent scent. An impassioned plea for Jim to return and save the world was scrawled in royal purple acrylic on the tomb of some minor dignitary next to him. "All this graffiti seems to be written by females," Olney whispered to Maggie. To himself, he added: Jim Morrison knew what the little girls wanted, all right. They wanted to be maenads.

§§§

It was time for a break. The sun had finally broken through to warm the Magrittian plain before them. They took shelter in the passage leading to Sarah Bernhardt's tomb. Maggie reached into her oversized handbag, producing a half baguette, some grizzled paté, and a few tart clementines.

"Creepiest cemetery I've ever seen," said she, browning a slice.

"It's a masterpiece," Olney said, grabbing it.

"So you're a connoisseur?"

"Profoundly so."

"Uh huh." She layered and devoured her own piece of bread.

"You know they shot hundreds of people against that wall over there." Olney pointed to a distant corner of the cemetery, the place where one of history's numerous revolts by the poor against the rich had come to the usual end.

"Oh? Who shot who?"

"The French shot the French, of course."

Maggie busied herself with the skin of a clementine.

"You're supposed to ask why," Olney reminded her.

"Right. So they wouldn't have far to bury them?"

"No, shooting them in the cemetery was just a coincidence."

"This paté is off."

"Tastes fine to me."

"Do you love me, Olney?"

"Of course I love you. The question is, do you love me."

"I don't know. I think so."

"How can you be so vague about something as strong as love?"

"I like making love to you."

"Wanna make love here?"

"No! Someone'll see us."

"Maybe she can come with us."

"Stop it, Olney. Someone'll hear."

"Maybe we can lick her ears."

"Arrète ça!"

"See, you do know other French words." He fumbled around in her handbag for a bit. "How is it we have nothing to drink? Not even a pop top red." He raped a clementine. "The difference between you and me," he continued, "is that I love making love to you while you just like it. In fact, you don't love anything."

"I wonder if that's true."

"Well, sound bland about it, why don't you. Maybe you prefer women?"

"No."

"Sure?"

"Yes."

"Women are softer and more attentive to sweet little needs and longings."

"You can say that again. But they weren't born with dicks."

"A woman can always strap one on."

"I suppose you think that revolting idea is sexy."

"I must admit it's lengthened my growing hard-on."

"Now, don't try anything, you pervert, we're in a cemetery!"

The sun warmed the stones around them. They munched slowly, enjoying the idle moment. Nothing seemed to matter all that much, not even their conversation. Freedom from the worry of making something of themselves was a fine thing. If only they were rich enough to wander like this forever.

"Even your resistance turns me on today," Olney resumed, searching for ideas to entertain them. "Why don't you lay back with your knees together and your feet slightly apart, so I can look at your white knickers and lovely thighs. Pretend that I'm--"

"Olney, I want you to stop it. Besides, I'm wearing beige panties today."

"Beige! Now why'd you put on a utility colour like beige on a day when we're out in the world and I'm bound to become inflamed? You really are a prude, aren't you."

"Why am I supposed to be a prude simply because I don't want to expose myself to the world?"

"If you loved me, you'd at least consider it."

"That's not fair. And I honestly don't know if I love you. I'm not even sure what love is."

"You got a problem, chicky-poo."

"Ever occur to you that maybe you're the problem?"

"Hey . . . "

"Let's find Edith Piaf's grave." Maggie threw the scraps in her bag. "She knew about love."

They moved on. Passing along one of the transversales, the grave of a certain Victor Noir caught their attention. "How about that," Olney said. "This may come as a surprise to you, but I know who Victor Noir is."

"Oh? Tell me while we look for Edith."

"No wait, just look at this thing. Victor Noir has to be one of the highlights of this cemetery." The life-size image, weather-streaked and vert-de-grisé by time, lay on its back, staring at the sky. After a hundred years, a dull patina covered the still form, except, as Olney pointed out to Maggie, for the bulge between its legs. Victor's crotch was so shiny Olney could see his astonished face in it. For Maggie's resigned edification he launched into one man's reason why.

"Imagine a moonlit night. A female form scales the cemetery wall, treading softly and surely among the murmuring entombed. 'See?' whispers a goatish shade nearby, 'I told you. She never misses a night, that one.' Shuddering before her manly Victor, the woman disrobes, naked, but not cold. Fire burns in her loins as she mounts the icy--"

"Olney, I don't want to hear your fantasy, ok?"

"By the way, did you know that Victor Noir fell victim to a terrified Second Empire gone mad in the last stages of decline?"

"No." The syllable fell from her lips as if the hollow-earth theory were suddenly fact and she was it; not one overtone escaped the great vacuum of her indifference.

"Indeed, acting as a second, young Victor, who was a radical journalist by trade, issued his friend's challenge to duel a relative of the Emperor." Olney waited a moment for a response from his loved one. As none was forthcoming, he continued: "Prince Pierre Bonaparte, upon receiving this challenge, shook with the kind of rage hubris always exhibits when it's about to get what it deserves and shot poor Victor dead on the spot. Riots broke out all over Paris. In fact, Victor's murder helped bring about the downfall of the Empire. Of course, the Franco-Prussian war--"

"Olney!"

"Fire, my darling Pootie, burns in her loins as she mounts the ice cold hero. Perhaps a slight hissing may be heard as hot juices meet dry, freezing metal. She moans and humps--"

"Stop!"

"--and kisses and whimpers against his unfeeling shape. He never responds, dear Victor, but he is always there: Victor Noir, the man who never lets her down, who can bring her to orgasm more powerfully than any living man in all of Paris. Afterwards, she slides off, licking up the love she has left, as if it were his own. She leaves it on his closed eyes, his sealed lips, his deaf ears--look, they're shiny, too. Then, light on her feet, as only a woman in love can be--I notice you walk like a moose--she puts on her clothes and runs, fulfilled and jubilant, back to the wall . . . that very wall against which the mad Empire shot its best citizens. 'Hee-hee-hee,' snickers a hidden troll, 'she banged off in no time tonight. Uh-oh, here comes another one. Shhh, don't scare the poor thing. Ummm, even prettier; get a load of those gams....'"

"Can we go now?"

"Allons-y!"

§§§

Edith Piaf was buried near the infamous killing wall of the Paris Commune. Theo Sarapo, the last of her lovers, lay next to her. Had they never met, he might still be alive today, or so many would believe. To Olney it was more likely that Piaf was fated to loss, a fate that was almost grotesque in its unrelenting repetition. To serve such a fate, she was forced to fall in love with men who shared complementary fates. Not that Edith was there to finish them off, but, as the old saw goes, someone had to do it.

In the end, tragedy was her most faithful lover, and the most jealous. It drove her to an artistic intensity unparalleled since Vincent van Gogh. Many lovers had survived her embrace, of course; perhaps they were stronger than she, in command of their own lives, with other, more positive fates to follow.

Olney was sure he too would have died from the sheer force of her presence. As to loss, he really hadn't much to lose (except for the usual gobs of daily sperm), so he wouldn't even have qualified. Indeed, Olney was grateful that he'd been spared the love of someone whose needs were so powerful. Yet, the one thing he demanded of the women he loved--besides the normal requirements, such as thin wrists, long legs, and smooth, nearly poreless skin--was that they too should love Edith Piaf. In his book, she was one of the ten top beings of the twentieth century.

Maggie qualified on all counts, including her lack of powerful needs. Like any woman with a soul, Maggie burst into tears almost every time she heard Edith Piaf sing. She burst into tears now, as they stood before the grave.

"Why does she move me so much," she wondered, sobbing quietly.

"Because Piaf had more life in one toenail than you or I have in the sum total of our wildest dreams."

Maggie blubbered.

"Her curse was that her other toenails were painted by death. All she wanted was to be safe in the arms of her one true love, but in looking for him she suffocated everyone else. I hope Theo was up to it. If so, the gods should honour him for eternity."

"They are," Maggie said passionately. "And I know they're looking after Edith, too. She was little, but her heart was as big as the world. It all came out in her songs." Maggie threw her arms around Olney. "I do want to love you."

"I know," he said softly. They held each other at the feet of the woman whose bittersweet songs were the essence of life, and loved her with all their hearts.

§§§

They wandered awhile longer. Modigliani, painter of those long, slender necks Olney so loved, was nearby. Olney stood with hand over heart for a few moments, until Maggie slugged him in the arm and dragged him in the direction of home. As they passed Victor Noir again, he reached between Maggie's legs with the paws that satisfy. She leapt a foot and cursed him.

On the way out, Olney wondered if any female counterparts to Victor were lying around, perhaps in a more secluded spot. Maggie had certainly been mum on his well-attended crotch. She would never admit to any weird sexual interests, but he knew she had them. Everyone did. The whole world was seething with repressed perversion, he was sure of it. On the métro home he kept feeling her up. She blushed furiously when he stealthily unzipped her pants, trying to get a finger on those panties he knew were damp. She didn't dare tell him to stop. "Oh, pardon, mademoiselle," he murmured, using the frotteur's plea as he pressed himself against her. He could tell by the slot machine roll of her eyes that she was coming to the rhythm of the fast-moving train.

§§§

Chapter 11: Departures

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