L'Affaire: The Eternal Frederic Post

Frédéric gazed at the softening greyish mauve of the encroaching dawn resentfully, blaming it, at least in part, for his present troubles. The inevitability of sunrise had spurred him into bitterness – why must it be so insistently stubborn in spreading across the sky in that sparkling peach hue, dispelling cool blue-grey for mauve and orange and yellow? And what had he done to deserve such misfortune as to fall asleep at so inopportune a moment? All for a paltry three hours of slumber – even though he knew that a bolder voice inside him objected to those three hours being labelled ‘paltry’ at all. His eyes closed themselves to the spectacle of the blooming dawn as he remembered his dreamless sleep, and the unearthly contentment he felt as he had gently stirred into consciousness, just before peace was wrested from him by the recognition of dawn, and the guilt which immediately followed.

He opened his eyes, returning himself forcefully to the present – the reality and difficulty of which struck him like the cold wind momentarily forcing itself against their faces. Walking two paces ahead of him, Giselle shuddered, and barely contained her lithe legs from breaking out into a run. He noticed that every few steps her feet would take a seemingly involuntary skip forward. Frédéric frowned, attaching his inability to match her pace to the long list of his failings.

The few times he had attempted to speak had ended with a muffled cough, the apologies catching in his throat. As they cut across the corner of an empty, shuttered cafe, the necessary words again seemed to well up within him, but yet again failed, scarcely after he had managed to stutter her name.

It had no other effect than to cause her to turn back her head, and Frédéric observed with a pang that her eyebrows were knotted together in the middle dolefully. The faint glow on her cheeks matched the dawn in hue, and it bloomed deeper still as she met his eyes.

He attempted again to gaze blankly at the dawn, hoping to forget his discomfort for even the briefest of moments; but he found that the sweeping mauve which gathered itself gradually over every direction reminded him too much of her – the delicate balance between cool and warm, and light and dusk. It was too inconvenient that his artist’s mind had long ago dreamed up a colour palette characteristic of Giselle; and most inconvenient of all was that it had been composed of all the colours of dawn. Frédéric almost groaned in his frustration, though stifled it in fear of provoking the danseuse further. There could be no escape from the guilt – best to suffer it gallantly.

And yet there was, again, that bolder part of his mind which argued that such an innocent mistake need not be equated with shame, nor, even, should any intimacy cause such scandal. Still gripped by the naive throes of the hope kindled last night, he believed himself so near the success which he needed to secure at least the beginning to financial stability that he allowed himself a concession that he had scarce dreamed of before: that this ‘distraction’, as Henri would have put it, would not end in the agony of untimely separation for him, and shame, or perhaps even boredom, for her.

By the time he had decided to withstand his shame nobly, the Opéra was in view, and he realised, too late, that he dreaded being parted from her after so many hours consecutively spent together. Instead of walking down Rue le Pelletier to reach the entrance through the foyer which Frédéric knew, she turned quickly down a narrow lane that ran, as he soon observed, beside the same cafe that housed last night's party -- the very locale that had set them on the course of near-disaster had occurred the night before. His eyes fell on the empty crates lining the peeling walls – the same ones, he did not doubt, that had once housed the bottles of wine which last night’s revellers had dutifully emptied.

He soon observed the reason for Giselle’s detour through the lane: a door set into the dead end before them, unmarked except for a fading brass plate upon which the Opéra’s archaic name, ‘Théâtre de l’Académie Royale de Musique’, was engraved. Nearing her destination, Giselle’s hurried gait faltered, and Frédéric fell into place beside her, gasping for shallow breaths. He feared leaving her to gather her dignity and prepare for the day ahead with no resolution to their error. The thought that their parting might further be tainted by their shared guilt left him with a considerable burden. He knew he could not bear it – something had to be done to bridge the distance which he had imagined multiplying between them since they had left the studio. His fevered mind viewed the two paces of cobbled ground which separated them as a vast chasm of which he was on the wrong side.

Impulsively, Frédéric reached for her hand and tugged her into a corner, into the gap between two sombre buildings which lined the lane. They breathed the faint waft of the mud underfoot, the damp odour of rainwater, decomposing leaves and wet stone. An unpleasant place for a parting, he thought, wishing he had chosen more wisely, rather than acting upon a sudden and persistent impulse.

Frédéric watched her face carefully, noting the soft, scarlet flush lingering beneath her skin. Her toe circled an arch on the ground, a movement which appeared to require much concentration on her behalf, as she kept her gaze lowered to the earthy floor. Frédéric, not as skilled in the art of reading her discomfort as he believed himself to be, was certain that she was anxiously anticipating the untruths she might have to make to explain her early arrival to the other girls. Frédéric could not contain himself from pressing her cautiously into his chest, whispering the long-delayed apology into the dark curls on her temple. But bafflingly, it had no effect at all. Lifting his head a little, he came to the perplexing realisation that she was shaking her head. He assessed her face with greater care than he had before, noting that despite the same lingering flush, no trace of the shame remained which had so marked her furrowed brow and grimacing lower lip before.

Ah, he thought, but she was not guilty at all! She showed him a reassuring smile, though a new glint in her eye proved that she recognised the daring progression of their outings. But now the rosy hue in her cheek seemed no longer a discrediting mark of shame, but merely the natural consequence of a walk from Montmartre to Rue le Pelletier during a crisp dawn. The guilt which he had imposed on himself was lifted so easily that it should have caused him to worry anew, but he found his unrepentant eyes followed Giselle slipping away from him with a confident, fluid grace towards the plain door, lifting the latch quickly and disappearing from view. Now filled with the knowledge that he had been deceived by the scarlet of her cheeks, his newfound calm was quickly replaced by the giddy realisation. There had been something almost gleeful about their frantic dash towards the Opéra which reminded him of the mischievous dealings of his childhood – though now the threat loomed more severe than a stern scolding from Henri.

The only thing which marked the moments as they slid by was the rhythmic ticking of Henri’s old watch in his breast pocket. The moments which ticked by were marked by the rhythmic scolding of Henri’s old watch in his breast pocket. Tch, tch, it chided him for every second he delayed before the closed door. Tch, tch. Frédéric lifted the annoying thing from its nest, gazing at his partial reflection on its scuffed and battered surface. Its brassy lid glared back at him accusingly. Was he so far gone a Bohemian that he would stoop to such depravity, that, had circumstances been altered but slightly, his actions might have guaranteed a burden of shame for them both? He smiled a little wryly, and let the chain, and its watch, slip through his fingers. It landed on a muddy patch with a satisfying plop.

He wondered, with a tinge of grim amusement, whether he had been in Antoine’s company so long that he had acquired the same brazen disregard for ‘decency’; and he was aware that his barefaced glee at having so narrowly avoided disaster reflected too strongly his friend’s bold accounts of his own close calls. But an even bolder voice reminded him that it was only true if he indeed did brag on his exploits – which he, with respect both to his unblemished name and Giselle’s, had no intention of doing so.

A faint anxiety troubled him as his eyes caught the gold glimmer of the pocket watch, lying in damp repose. Few people could manage their lives without a little device that ticked away passing moments, and in the days when he had worked on commissioned, mind-numbingly simple portraits, Frédéric had found a timekeeper indispensable. His brow furrowed, and he stepped towards the ticking object, which, for so long, had been the solitary voice of conformity in his disordered life. His back turned to the silent theatre door, he bent to pick it up.

His purpose was thwarted, however, by the quiet swing of the stage door. Forgetting the pocket watch, he straightened cautiously, but a faint hope dawned in his eyes. He was not as surprised as might be expected to find a pair of arms wrapped around him, and soft lips pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck. Within the fluid passing of a moment, whether by his movement or hers, those lips had trailed across to his mouth. The warm kiss of those lips made him forget his original purpose entirely.

Their wordless farewell spanned a few, gloriously guiltless moments. He cared not now that the sun had almost crested the roofline, and at any moment would cast its golden, mocking rays over them. It mattered not that the pocket watch, gleaming amidst the wet puddle, ticked on disapprovingly. Frédéric was vaguely aware that he had transcended something, which had before been an invisible barrier, the existence of which he had never acknowledged. He had transcended shame and guilt, and it left him with the glowing impression of newborn innocence.

He pressed a final kiss to Giselle’s forehead, and her arms, if reluctantly, unwound themselves from his. When she turned, and flitted back towards the half-open door, Frédéric too turned towards the main street, and walked, with steady purpose, in the direction of Montmartre.

And, forgotten amidst the events of the dawning day, Henri’s watch languished in its damp seat in the now-empty alley, waiting for the next opportunistic beggar, or curious child, to pick it up.