My mother once showed me a crude drawing I had given her as a small boy. It was a woman in profile with arms ending far above her waist, a figure too rigid and slim to support life, and long hair that curled like waves on the shore. She showed it to me with a smile, and I was startled to simultaneously remember the angel I had dreamed up in youth and recognize my coy Marthe.
Marthe. I could almost picture her perfectly, painstakingly painted on the back of my closed lids. A beautiful woman, dark hair curling about her ivory shoulders and pooling in her lap, perhaps with her chin turned away and eyes fixed heavenward as in a portrait, one hand curled around... around fat yellow grapes, or a shining apple.
As a child I had spoken of my guardian angel, drawn that clumsy little sketch, called her Marthe. It was not a name that I had ever liked, putting me in mind of one of my aunts (a squat, red-faced little woman with frizzled hair the color of lamplight). But somehow I had passed on the romantic names that come so easily to little ones, and that blunt syllable had attached itself to my angel. Marthe.
But as I grew, I had forgotten about the angel. Now I see there is such coincidence that I wonder if I was given the gift of foresight.
When my lovely Marthe slips into my room, I can feel her presence before I turn to look for her. Her soft hands glide to my wrist as I try futilely write, bringing things out of me that I never thought possible. My head is only clear when she is with me: the moment she leaves I cannot recapture any of it. When she has possession over me, I understand bliss.
But she is wicked. I wish I could go on without her. She knows when I need her most, and those are the times she leaves me alone with the swelling of emotion in my heart and the words that mix together into a solid mass of feelings with no way to let them free. Her visits are so rare that I force myself to continue without her, but everything is shallow and false. I can never find her. Marthe finds me.
She stayed with me last night. Perhaps we both knew that it was going to end. I always assumed, though, that she would be here with me at this final moment.
The rough bricks of the wall behind me cling to my clothes, and I carefully slip one hand into my pocket, fingers numb with fear, and I touch the old parchment with the drawing I made so long ago, the first conception of my Marthe, who failed me now as I stare down the barrel of a gun.
My soul screams for her to join me, to give me the words in the face of Death, to leave the world a little flower of poetry before the rapport, but nothing comes to me. She gives me nothing. My Muse has failed me.
Long live France! Long live the future!