Un sospiro S. 144

The moon was bright, the night sky was clear and the stars framed the Palais Garnier in Paris. The air was warm and dry even though the streets were shiny from a sudden and short lasting summer shower that had caressed the city earlier that day.

Marcus was bored, he had seen everything, been everywhere, and the thought of going to the opera on that fine evening seemed to him as dull as doing his tax report. Even for middle June the city was too hot. Marcus took is jacket off and held it with one finger behind his shoulder. He wanted to walk. Get his head cleared out, decide where to go next in life. He had seen the world’s most beautiful wonders, but still felt empty. Nothing had changed. He hoped that the void he felt could be filled by that tiny world of his, but as it was proven, he was wrong. Alone, bored and in the need of feeling something, he headed for the Louvre. He didn’t care if the place was closed -he could just make some calls, snap his fingers, and doors would open.

As Marcus was passing through L’arc de Triomphe du Carousel a stormy thought darkened his mind: “When someone has everything, when you are born with everything, you grow empty. You don’t have to fight for anything. Everything is handed to you on a silver plate with a colourful ribbon and a smile. So you grow, you change, but you are immersed in this fluid, and everything turns black and you feel cold and empty.” Marcus felt that way about himself, posed, snob and not even able to fight for his own life. That night, he felt he needed to be at the Louvre, he felt that something unexpected was going to happen, something that would have changed his life forever.

There it was, elegant and majestic, as one of the biggest museums in the world should be. The creamy colours of the stone, mixed with the light, set against to the night sky so that the building seemed to soar to the stars. The column emerging from the walls, the great arches and the big windows enriched the facade. The bas reliefs carved in the stone gave grace to all the building floors. The blue dome was supported by the figure of six women. All their looks seemed calm, as the structure wasn’t that heavy and they were perfectly able to sustain that weight. Not only that facade, but the rest of the wings, the pyramids, the column and the domes encircled every visitor, leaving a sense of splendour and monumentality that only that museum was able to give. Marcus was in front of the main gate, when he heard some voices and saw some lights shining inside. “Someone must still be inside”, he thought to himself. “Probably a new piece has just been collected”, he presumed.

A sudden bang exploded in the halls. Marcus, uninterested, started going back on his steps in search of a new place to relax, when someone run out of the building. A woman unexpectedly bolted out the main doors and run down the few steps followed by a long train. The train shined and moved heavily under what Marcus at first sight thought were sequins, but with a more accurate look realised were gems. That train must have cost a fortune. “What on Earth is a woman dressed like that doing here and why would she be running”, he thought.

Her hair, like a million ebony shards, seemed to be floating around her neck and her clavicles, sometimes getting trapped inside the enormous and shiny necklace that sparkled while she was running. The young woman picked up what she could from the dress skirt and various layers of tulles kept floating chaotically around her, as if she was trying to trap clouds inside the fabric. She saw him, smiled, winked and disappeared behind some bushes.

“Don’t let her get away, she has been on the run for long enough!”, someone shouted from inside the building. A group of people run out of the museum spreading in every direction in search of the woman. Who was she? Why was she on the run? Why were those people chasing her? He didn’t have any answers, but he knew that he’d never felt so alive. The black fluid which had surrounded him for his entire life, evaporated in a second, letting him see through the clouds of steam a glimpse of the colourful world that she carried with her perfume. And just as she came, with her expensive train and her smile, she disappeared into the Parisian night. That night, Marcus didn’t sleep a lot. He couldn’t forget all those colours, that energy, that lightning of life that broke the monotony of his grey world. She waltzed in, changed the rules, brought chaos in, and just as she jumped off those stairs, she crushed his world. What kind of life must have she been living, so full of adventures and interests. Marcus felt as though he had been woken up by this woman. He felt crazy, he didn’t know her name, he didn’t know anything about her, but he would travel all over the world again just to find her and see her running away one more time.

He felt trapped in that night, trapped in that memory, repeating, duplicating, changing colours, lights, forms but still it was her, and she kept going away, with just a wink. That wink was the sparkle of the chaos she pushed him in. Such a simple gesture, and that was enough. The glass case containing the black fluid was so fragile, a single wink was able to crack it letting Marcus breathe and see the amazing colours that filled this planet. She left him in a new world, where colours were real and tangible. A week passed. After the first days of colours, everything became dull again. People, streets, cities and again, the world was swollen up in black. Painted until every smallest rock and crack. She would have been far gone now, with her dress and her smile. Gone to light up someone else’s life, like she did with him in Paris the week before. Marcus knew he would have never seen her again. But still, the smallest part of him hoped to find her and stop her from running, or run along with her.