A/N: I have been messing with this for quite a while, but I finally decided to get it over with. Nothing belongs to me.
They say France is a romantic country. It is full of bustling, cheery cities and charming country sides covered in rolling green meadows and quaint little villas.
Well, it is. It may not be quite as wonderful as people imagine, but it is certainly a beautiful country. Everyone seems to take a certain pride in their reputation, and it adds to the appeal of the land. The cities are full of business men and fashionable ladies and cafes and artists and so many other things that the city seems to burst it is so full.
There are the back alleys, too, though. There are the city slums where everyday people die of starvation, thirst, or some disease. There are the bordellos, the whore houses where men and women with too little or too much spend too little or too much of their pitiful fortunes to sell their souls to the Devil.
Nowadays, most people, such as myself, seem to live between the lines of these two worlds. We are the business men who go home to a dying wife, we are the fashionable ladies who return home to be abused by their husbands; we are the cafes full of artists who stay there because we have nowhere else to go. We are the widows and widowers who seek out such an existence in order to try and forget, either in the city rush or the drunken desperation, those we have lost to the cruel world outside of our own minds.
I use the word we despite the fact that I am not truly part of such a collective. This is France, and I am an English lady, born and bred. My family was English, my money was English, even my speech was English; they say that you can never change who you are. I view myself as a living example of that.
I am a French woman now, for all appearances are worth. I speak French the way they do in Paris, and tourists who walk by me on the street would never guess it is not my native tongue. I dress as the French do, I act as the French should, and I feel a certain patriotism to my new country and the people in it.
I still feel my English heritage though, in my heart of hearts; that is why I feel you can never change who you are. I still catch myself doing things that a true French woman would not do; I laugh like an English girl. I feel all of my sorrows and insecurities, but it is the guilt that pierces my breast with all the agony of a twisting knife.
I still feel guilt over what happened, especially to her. She was so young, so beautiful, so beloved; she could have gone so far in life. But, I loved her, I still do, and I stole her away from everything she could have been. It is my fault that she is not here any longer.
I am just thirty years old and I feel as melancholy as an old grandmother.
I sit here in my patron's studio as he mixes his paints; reds the exact hues of blood and red wine, blues like the English Channel, purples like my lover's eyes.
Today I am to be Hera, Greek Queen of the Heavens. Goddess of marriage and wife of Zeus himself, she is an image of power reclining on a luxurious cushion. Peacock feathers gather in golden vases behind her and dishes of grains and animal fat sit in the distance as ceremonial offerings. Despite the nymphs carved into the wood of her recliner and the marble pillars, she is alone.
Raising his paintbrush to the canvas, my commander tells me that either I must smile or forever be known as the unhappy goddess. He is always telling me such things. He has been for years now, ever since he found me posing naked in a café for a gathering of artists.
I have been working with him since that day. Day after day we sit in his studio, growing quickly madder from the smell of the paints. Mostly we sit in silence, although he occasionally hires a penniless street-wanderer to read us poems from a beat-up volume. I love those days; they remind me of my school days. He never likes to speak when we are working, and he hates when I attempt to start a conversation. He says that I am to be the painting itself, and painting say all that they need to in appearance alone.
I think he has simply gone around the bend. It is impossible to tell everything you need to know about a person simply by watching them.
Everyone has a story. Everyone has a reason to do what it is that they do. Every single person walking down a street has a reason for walking on that particular street at that precise time. He has a reason to pick up that paint brush every morning and I have a reason to continue posing for him.
In Paris, I have come to see this.
For a painting a few years ago, I was posed staring out of a window down at the street below. Hours upon hours, at all times of day, I had nothing to do but watch the people below me going about their business. They fluttered and scurried and strode past my window like mortals in a divine scrying glass. It made me understand the sheer loneliness and desperation so often depicted in the face of the Lady of Shalott, only I had no Lancelot waiting for me in Camelot; all that awaited me was more of the same until death.
When you watch people, ordinary people that pass you on the street, you see only certain aspects of them. You can watch a man's behavior and critique his appearance, but the most you can gather about him is the contents of his present and the probable contents of his future. You can see from the ironed suit and un-shined shoes that he is married, but his wife is not pleased with him. The lady with bare ankles slinking out of the door behind him with a smug, yet somehow guilty, look shows you that the wife's displeasure is justified. In all likelihood, he will spend his nights in the future going home to a cold meal and an even colder bed. The fancy watch on his wrist points out why the wife will not leave.
However, there is no way of knowing his past. There is no way of knowing why he married his wife only to cheat on her, or why he continues to work at the law firm despite the bags under his eyes and the pistol in his left pocket. You can only see so much as an outsider looking in.
Sometimes I wonder how people see me, when they witness me from the perspective of an outsider looking in. Do they see a Paris lady like so many others, beautiful and charming? Do they see an English girl struggling to find her way in a city so different from, and yet so similar to, her native home? Do they see a woman just past her prime fighting every day with a broken heart and the feeling of the heavens on her shoulders?
In my years with my master, I have been many things and I have had many faces. I have been a young Artemis staring up at the heavens in the light of the motherly moon. I have been Andromache praying for the survival of her Hector. I have been Aphrodite playing with the hearts of mortals and watching my own remain unattached. I have been many things, but I have always been alone.
I think that my painter sees it in me, this loneliness, though he knows nothing of my past. No one here knows my story, and I like it that way. I like the solitude it offers. Maybe that is all he sees.
Do I seem lonely to you? You cannot see my face, only my words, so you can not be fooled by a coy smile or a subtle wink. Do you think I am lonely?
Well, I will tell you something, I am not alone. Never alone. I spend most of my hours with my painter, and when I leave him I am always surrounded. It is hard to be alone in Paris; it is even harder when your very existence is dependent on the whims of others. Even at night I always have at least two other bodies keeping me warm.
It does not matter to me how many people surround me - men and women, artists and politicians' wives. None of them matter to me; the only one I long for is gone. No money, dresses, or lovers can substitute her place in my soul.
I suppose I have friends. It depends what you call a friend. Is it someone who feeds you, clothes you, and lends you money I times of hardship? Is it someone who spends all their time with you and knows you more intimately than any other? Is it someone who knows all you secrets and still does not betray you? The people around me fill these roles and many others, but I feel no love for them, no affection. Jamais honteux n'eut belle amie.
If they were to disappear one day I would merely replace them. The loss of my master might give me pause, but I would soon find a new patron to pose for.
Life is fleeting. I have learned that lesson well. For now, I will stay as I am. I will remain the lonely lady in the paints, as what is left of my soul slowly blows away like the heat in October. I will remain.
A/N:
Felicity – n. A cause of happiness; good fortune.
It seldom happens that any Felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.
Miguel de Cervantes
Excuse any errors in my single French phrase. I speak none and found it online. Allegedly it means 'The shameful never have dear friends.' In addition, this may be the first chapter of a story, I have yet to decide. I will have no plot, really, so it shall be marked as complete regardless.