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HABITS OF MOVEMENT
?
They died only a few years apart, Germaine kicking the bucket first, before the war had ended, Eloisa following later when Italy had been liberated, though not from its poverty, so Niflheim was, if nothing else, a step up from all that. All that miserable pessimism. Hopes that had been disappointed, a hopefulness that had been lost, irrevocably.
The view down below was grey as well, but the underworld’s version of Paris had theatres, and Loki liked her style, as Eloisa liked him. They flirted harmlessly, while rehearsing Shakespeare together. He made for a better Titania than even her, she had to give him that. In this new Paris too, though, she became a sight to behold. Sure, maybe some optimism had been sacrificed in the process, left at the roadside of the way that had taken her there, but a bit of fame went a long way and made up for most lost things.
Such was Eloisa’s reasoning.
In the few years that separated their deaths, an eternity down below, after all, Germaine had come a long way in Niflheim, she had won the reputation of some strange creature of legend. Everyone knew her, as she seemed to know everyone, their comings and goings, details from their past lives. Like some collector of things that existed no longer, and which shouldn’t be deemed relevant anymore, yet here they were. After Hel had woken Eloisa up with her name, her real name, the one Sylvie used to call, silly girl, Germaine had been immediately at her side, papers to fill, sign, arrangements to accept, there was no declining anything in Niflheim. What would you go back to, if you didn’t want this?
Only, Eloisa wanted it, she wanted another chance at life, couldn’t get enough of Paris looking like everything she remembered it to be and evidently, everything everyone else remembered as well. Like so, Paris was constantly updated. Paris had, overnight, really, become delightfully modern.
What an afterlife, yes, that kept giving like that, who’d have thought?
In between new premieres and chaotic rehearsal schedules, even more chaotic than they had once been, because Loki didn’t operate with rules and regulations much, Eloisa watched Germaine. Unlike most of Paris, infamous for its crazes, its revolutions, its days of men being separated into their own little pens, and who was any poorer for such security measures, truly, the secretary of the realm’s queen was quiet and solitary, and one could be fooled to think she simply was not very interesting, a dull wallflower, but Eloisa wasn’t fooled.
It was the one time, when Eloisa Paolo had been fooled, and the trickster in question had been love. Ah, but no one can outwit love, can they? She tried, she spent most of her life that way.
Germaine, for sure, didn’t fool her, with her sad affairs and professional attire. She was Hel’s secretary now, but what wouldn’t that woman give to be more than that, to be to her what her nice, blind guy was, eternally. Eloisa knew nothing of divine matters, but she could certainly divine that it did matter. To Germaine.
That sad, silly woman.
So, Eloisa found her one day, when she had sent out surveys to all of Paris (and London, too, but no one on this side cared far enough to bridge the misty strait), her answers an ugly scrawl that she didn’t doubt the other woman would decipher as easily and elegantly as she did everything else.
“Chérie,” she greeted her, “You don’t truly care about my habits of movement, Friday through Sunday.”
Lips pursed, not a smile, not a single amusement offered her in return for her cheekiness, Germaine took her paper and skimmed it, reading at a speed that was perhaps not divine but impressive, nonetheless. Eloisa had never been one to belittle the parts of a person that were most human. Other things bored her, terribly. Give her the surprises, the imperfections, the little mistakes that shifted the world beneath your feet. Ah, she had known a girl once who had been especially gifted at that. She knew that girl, and then she didn’t know her any longer, as life goes. The French have a saying about that, still.
“What I care about is irrelevant,” Germaine told her, folding the paper on the middle. “It is necessary to the planning of new infrastructural solutions for the Parisian sector.”
“Oh, principessa,” Eloisa sighed melodramatically, throwing up both hands into the air, colourless, foggy. She called her princess, because they both knew there already was a queen, yes? “My only concern is how you’ll find your way to see me perform as Ophelia tonight. Hamlet must have some allure for you, it is so dreary and sad.”
A couple of other citizens came over to turn their papers in, Germaine taking them with curt nods. “Is that an invitation?” she asked, neutrally. Whether it was or not seemed not to be very important at all.
Yet, Eloisa wasn’t fooled. That silly woman.
“It’s an order, mademoiselle. Do not leave an empty seat in the front row, it looks awful. As if I don’t have admirers enough to fill the whole theatre.”
Turning away, perhaps others would have missed the smile ghosting across Germaine’s lips, but Eloisa had spent her life reading people like particularly inspiring paragraphs in particularly inspiring books, she gladly spent her death doing the same. Naturally, she didn’t miss it. “If I can have the streets rearranged before then,” was the reply, to the point and without promises.
When the curtain rose in the evening, however, there were no empty seats as far as you could spit, no less that you could see. And later, the Champs Élysées ran the other way, as they walked home together, Germaine and she, dead three years apart, but not apart now.
The view down below was grey as well, but the underworld’s version of Paris had theatres, and Loki liked her style, as Eloisa liked him. They flirted harmlessly, while rehearsing Shakespeare together. He made for a better Titania than even her, she had to give him that. In this new Paris too, though, she became a sight to behold. Sure, maybe some optimism had been sacrificed in the process, left at the roadside of the way that had taken her there, but a bit of fame went a long way and made up for most lost things.
Such was Eloisa’s reasoning.
In the few years that separated their deaths, an eternity down below, after all, Germaine had come a long way in Niflheim, she had won the reputation of some strange creature of legend. Everyone knew her, as she seemed to know everyone, their comings and goings, details from their past lives. Like some collector of things that existed no longer, and which shouldn’t be deemed relevant anymore, yet here they were. After Hel had woken Eloisa up with her name, her real name, the one Sylvie used to call, silly girl, Germaine had been immediately at her side, papers to fill, sign, arrangements to accept, there was no declining anything in Niflheim. What would you go back to, if you didn’t want this?
Only, Eloisa wanted it, she wanted another chance at life, couldn’t get enough of Paris looking like everything she remembered it to be and evidently, everything everyone else remembered as well. Like so, Paris was constantly updated. Paris had, overnight, really, become delightfully modern.
What an afterlife, yes, that kept giving like that, who’d have thought?
In between new premieres and chaotic rehearsal schedules, even more chaotic than they had once been, because Loki didn’t operate with rules and regulations much, Eloisa watched Germaine. Unlike most of Paris, infamous for its crazes, its revolutions, its days of men being separated into their own little pens, and who was any poorer for such security measures, truly, the secretary of the realm’s queen was quiet and solitary, and one could be fooled to think she simply was not very interesting, a dull wallflower, but Eloisa wasn’t fooled.
It was the one time, when Eloisa Paolo had been fooled, and the trickster in question had been love. Ah, but no one can outwit love, can they? She tried, she spent most of her life that way.
Germaine, for sure, didn’t fool her, with her sad affairs and professional attire. She was Hel’s secretary now, but what wouldn’t that woman give to be more than that, to be to her what her nice, blind guy was, eternally. Eloisa knew nothing of divine matters, but she could certainly divine that it did matter. To Germaine.
That sad, silly woman.
So, Eloisa found her one day, when she had sent out surveys to all of Paris (and London, too, but no one on this side cared far enough to bridge the misty strait), her answers an ugly scrawl that she didn’t doubt the other woman would decipher as easily and elegantly as she did everything else.
“Chérie,” she greeted her, “You don’t truly care about my habits of movement, Friday through Sunday.”
Lips pursed, not a smile, not a single amusement offered her in return for her cheekiness, Germaine took her paper and skimmed it, reading at a speed that was perhaps not divine but impressive, nonetheless. Eloisa had never been one to belittle the parts of a person that were most human. Other things bored her, terribly. Give her the surprises, the imperfections, the little mistakes that shifted the world beneath your feet. Ah, she had known a girl once who had been especially gifted at that. She knew that girl, and then she didn’t know her any longer, as life goes. The French have a saying about that, still.
“What I care about is irrelevant,” Germaine told her, folding the paper on the middle. “It is necessary to the planning of new infrastructural solutions for the Parisian sector.”
“Oh, principessa,” Eloisa sighed melodramatically, throwing up both hands into the air, colourless, foggy. She called her princess, because they both knew there already was a queen, yes? “My only concern is how you’ll find your way to see me perform as Ophelia tonight. Hamlet must have some allure for you, it is so dreary and sad.”
A couple of other citizens came over to turn their papers in, Germaine taking them with curt nods. “Is that an invitation?” she asked, neutrally. Whether it was or not seemed not to be very important at all.
Yet, Eloisa wasn’t fooled. That silly woman.
“It’s an order, mademoiselle. Do not leave an empty seat in the front row, it looks awful. As if I don’t have admirers enough to fill the whole theatre.”
Turning away, perhaps others would have missed the smile ghosting across Germaine’s lips, but Eloisa had spent her life reading people like particularly inspiring paragraphs in particularly inspiring books, she gladly spent her death doing the same. Naturally, she didn’t miss it. “If I can have the streets rearranged before then,” was the reply, to the point and without promises.
When the curtain rose in the evening, however, there were no empty seats as far as you could spit, no less that you could see. And later, the Champs Élysées ran the other way, as they walked home together, Germaine and she, dead three years apart, but not apart now.
