In the pulsating Paris nightlife, two souls meet and become increasingly entangled, the energy around them electric. The world stands still as they drunkenly wander through the enchanting city, hand in hand, wishing never to let go of each other. This is part one of a four-part story, exploring the depths of our narrator’s heart until all we can see is a beautiful black hole.
Author: Elsa Godinho de Matos
Summer
I was young and full of life when I first saw her, in a club in Paris, partying with my friends. We had just finished our bachelor’s degree, enjoying our last summer as teenagers full of life, drinking and dancing the night away. We were still new to this, chaotically moving through the dim light, drunk on the euphoria of the deafening rhythm played by the band. Everything was imperfectly flawless when we were in the middle of the dance floor, feeling so good about ourselves, laughing loud and clear, flying between social interactions as if it were the easiest thing in the world, as if we were born for this very moment. Slowly, I watched my friends approach souls and bodies, leave the room, and get lost in the crowd, leaving me to dance alone. I stepped back to find the comfort of the wall, drink in hand, and started looking at those souls and bodies that perfectly synced to the music and each other, wondering when I’d be one of them, finding no answer in the ice cubes floating in my cup.
And then she came. She walked towards me; all the light of the room seemed to shine on her – it felt like a movie. I watched her approach, scrutinizing every detail of her face, examining the strands of hair that escaped her messy bun, admiring her clothes that fit her silhouette so well. Half expecting her to change directions at any moment. But she didn’t. And when she offered me that smile, that breathtaking smile, something in my stomach dropped.
“What are you doing here all by yourself?”, she screamed over the music.
I smiled back, intentionally leaving the question unanswered. Perhaps that was why we were so destined to break: it was over before it even began, for I watched people, and she talked to them. She asked questions, and I avoided them. I didn’t know, at the time. I didn’t have that feeling in my gut yet.
“Do you want to go outside? I need a smoke.” She gestured dramatically towards the pack of cigarettes in her front pocket, feigning to be desperate. Or so I thought.
“Yeah, sure.” A few seconds into this conversation, and she already made me laugh. “But let me warn you, I don’t talk much.”
“That’s okay”, she whispered in my ear, leaning in. “I can do all the talking.”
She grabbed my hand and never dropped it. Not when the crowd was so dense we couldn’t see each other. Not when she had to push the heavy door with her whole body. Not when we sat on the ground. Not even when she lit her cigarette.
We stayed there a long time, hand in hand, our bodies sore from the uncomfortable position, talking and getting to know each other. Her name was Marlène, she had come from the countryside to study French literature and loved Rimbaud’s poetry. At first, she asked a lot of questions, did all the talking, like she had promised. And then as the sky darkened and the music faded, as worlds collided and souls fell into each other, I became more comfortable. And she only had to do half of the talking.
“Why were you standing there alone?”, she whispered breaking the silence between us. I hadn’t minded that silence. It was comfortable. We weren’t talking, but we were still speaking. Or was it the other way around?
“My friends were all with someone else. And I enjoy my own company.”, I said with a shrug. She raised her eyebrows in admiration. I suppose not many people liked being on their own at parties. I wasn’t even sure I did.
“Are you leaving with your friends?”
“No, I don’t think so. They probably already left.”
“Do you… want to go to my house, later? It’s close to here, and that way you won’t have to go home alone…:” She met my gaze then quickly looked away, unsure if her suggestion was a good idea. After all, we had only met a few hours ago.
I smiled, the warmness in my stomach spreading to every living cell of my body.
“I would love that.”
That question settled, we stayed in silence for a while, looking at the sky. When I had told her all I knew about the Milky Way, named all its constellations, and told the stories behind them, when there was nothing else to say, I asked the question that had been trapped deep in my throat for what felt like hours.
“Why did you come to talk to me?”. What could such a beautiful, extroverted girl find in me?
“Because I came alone tonight. I wanted to make a friend.”
“Alright, but why me? Why me, out of everyone else?”
She looked up to the moon and explained that she was planning on going to the bathroom – it’s the best place to start a conversation – but that I kept staring at her.
“At first, I felt uncomfortable, but then I thought that maybe you didn’t know that people could see you. You looked so kind, so comfortable being alone, as if you were invisible. I wanted to show you that we can, we can see you. And what we see makes us have faith in humanity.”
I laughed nervously. I had never heard such beautiful words. Maybe that was what French literature did to someone.
She looked me in the eyes and whispered “You’re beautiful. Not many things touched by humankind are beautiful anymore. And you could say, some people there were prettier than you are. Sure, but that’s not what I’m talking about. You are very pretty, but that might be the least beautiful thing about you. You just… I don’t have words to explain – and that doesn’t happen a lot, trust me – but if there were more people like you, the world would be a better place.”
I smiled, moved to tears, and stood up quickly.
“Where to?”, I asked as I held out my hand to her. She laughed as she took it, pointing to a direction with her free arm.
We walked to her tiny studio, stopping at the red lights to dance, climbing up the stairs while trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake her neighbours – it was past four in the morning – containing our giggling until the door was locked. When we had let out all the laughter we had in us, we quieted and stared into each other’s eyes. She stepped forward and my heart pounded in my ears, blocking all the ambient noise, all the cars outside and the yells of drunk partiers, the voices from the balcony next door and the baby crying in another room. Everything went quiet, everything except my heartbeat and the sound of her voice as she asked if she could kiss me.
It felt like if we moved just a bit, if we got a little bit closer, our atoms would collide into each other, our bodies would collapse, and we’d become black holes. As my body reached for her and my lips found hers, I told myself that I had spent too many hours studying black holes to be afraid of them.
The rest is history.
There’s no need to tell the world about the weeks we spent together after that night. No need to mention the way my heart was so full of joy and love. No need to explain that we spent every awake hour together – and the others. No need to because the world knows. It was there.
It saw us as we explored every corner of Paris together, it was there when we held hands in the most platonic way we could, it heard me when I introduced her to my parents as “une amie de la fac”, and even though the door was closed, the world knows that I kissed her hard and soft that night, to make up for it.
The world was there when I read the love letters she’d write for me, when she recited Rimbaud’s verse at the Jardin des Tuileries, when I dove deep into her golden eyes as she kissed me in places I didn’t know existed. It was there when I drew pictures of her as she slept, when she asked me about foreign galaxies, when I described the colours of the sunrise we could admire from the bed when she was still too sleepy to lift her eyelids and welcome the light into her world.
The world was standing right next to me as I observed myself in the bathroom mirror and smiled, realising I had never felt this complete, this exultant, this warm before. This safe. I’d look myself in the eyes and smile because we both knew no man had made me feel that way. I’d watch myself as Marlène embraced me from behind, hiding her face in my curls, and from the sparks in my eyes, I knew this was right, so right. I was excited to find out what the world had planned for me.
Every day that she loved me was a day that I lived. I didn’t have that feeling in my gut yet.
Edited by: Hedvig Paulander
Cover image: IULIAN TUCA SIMINICIUC from Pixabay