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May 31, 1900
Dear Jane,
I walk a lonely road, but it’s the only one I’ve ever known. Don’t know where it leads, but it’s home to me, and I walk alone.
Alone once more. How fleeting was my happiness. A blink of an eye. It slipped through my fingers. Dust in the wind.
When I arrived in Paris, I had never been in love. Can you imagine that? I was a boy, inexperienced in the ways of the world, naïve to a fault. And then Satine was in my world. Oh, what a lucky man I was.
Satine and I shared a joy most mortals will never have the luck to know. We had joy, we had fun, we had our season in the sun. But the wine and the song, like the season, are all gone. That moment of happiness was an all too brief detour. The woman I loved is… dead.
She is gone, but as long as I remember what we had, and tell our story to the world, she will always be with me. I promised Satine I would do that, but I did not even have the means to buy back my typewriter. Imagine my surprise when my old Underwood was delivered to me yesterday, along with your note! I’d thought I would never see it again.
Thank you, dear lady, for your generosity. You light up my life. You give me hope to carry on. But first, I must apologise for my dishevelled state when we happened to meet on the street last week. I was a disgrace, I know. It was partially the drink, I will admit, and partially the despair. I tend to wander like that, particularly when it rains. I can’t stand the rain against my window, bringing back sweet memories.
Actually, I am surprised you even looked at me twice, let alone recognised and spoke to me. Oh, dear, dear Jane. You are under no obligation, have no reason to be so kind, and to someone you barely know. It must be your romantic soul. We are kindred spirits, are we not?
I know about your own ill-fated love affair with Wordsworth’s grandson. It was terrible how his family rejected you, and I wish there was something I could say to ease your pain. I know all too well what it feels like to be tossed out, unwanted, of the wrong sort. Not good enough.
But, oh, Satine and I were so very good together. We were made for each other.
I cannot stop thinking of her, of the mistakes me made, of the chances we missed. Little things I should have said and done, I never took the time. She is always on my mind.
I want so much to tell the world of our love, but I have failed utterly. Each time I put pen to paper, only my dreams emerge. Every now and then I get a little bit restless and I dream of something wild, nightmares in which Satine is just out of my reach. She smiles at me, and she’s so beautiful, but then she vanishes, is whirled away, or sinks beneath the surface. My overactive writer’s imagination, I suppose.
Now I sit at the typewriter, ready to pour out my soul. But where do I begin? What do I say when it’s all over, and sorry seems to be the hardest word? I’m sorry for every tear she shed on my account. I’m sorry I didn’t see through her ridiculous lies and have more faith in her love for me. I’m sorry that there is no way to make any of it right again.
It’s sad, so sad. It’s a sad sad situation. And it’s getting more and more absurd.
Have you heard the news? Toulouse is gone. He died in the arms of his lover, or so the rumours goes. I thought I saw him this morning. Not Toulouse, of course. I mean Orlando, the English renter. I can’t imagine what he would be doing here. It probably wasn’t him at all. After all, there is no end of sad, despairing young men in Montmartre these days. All the lonely people. Where do they all come from?
I’ve seen Orlando so few times, mostly when I was half-blind from grief, but I should be able to recognise him from Toulouse’s descriptions. Once, when we stayed up all the night, Toulouse described his young lover in such heartbreaking detail I would have sworn I could see Orlando standing on the roof in front of us. Toulouse reached out to the empty air and sang Orlando’s praises until the sun rose.
I do not doubt Toulouse’s love for Orlando. I know how much he missed Orlando when they had to be separated. It was so hard for him to endure. It’s no wonder he drank so much.
But how could that beautiful, stunning young man fall in love with Henri? The Argentinean insists Orlando was devoted to Henri, but it is baffling to me. If it is so, why did he leave him so often? And what did he see in him in the first place?
Do not mistake me – I loved Toulouse dearly and he will be greatly missed by all, but Toulouse was not what I think of when I think of a lover. He was passionate, it’s true, but he was so odd. Almost unnatural, in some way. Tactless, at times, with a terrible memory, and his terrible overacting. That limp and that lisp and those ridiculous pince nez, and he was awkward. Plus, as if it should matter, he was… so short. When he spoke of Orlando’s physical beauty, of Orlando’s long, lithe limbs and graceful movements, it was difficult to imagine the two of them together.
But then, I was not tall, compared to Satine. And I was not beautiful, compared to her. I was not glamorous or stunning or rich or powerful. There was no reason for her to fall in love with me. Was it folly to think that someone like her could fall in love with me? Was it madness to fall in love with her?
Once upon a time I was falling in love, now I’m only falling apart. There’s nothing I can do, a total eclipse of the heart.
When Satine told me she didn’t love me, and that she’d chosen the Duke, Toulouse tried to make me believe things were not always as they seemed. He knew she loved me, because he believed in love.
Perhaps Toulouse and I had more in common than I thought. We both fell in love with people who sold themselves. It always ends badly.
I’ll never fall in love again.
Do you remember the first time we ever met? Toulouse was cooking one of his fantastical dinners for Satine and I. We were enjoying the privacy and peace of his rooms atop the Hotel D’Amour Fou, away from prying eyes, running lines for Spectacular Spectacular, laughing and playing like children.
We were frightened when your knock came at the door. Satine begged me to hide, not wanting our affair exposed. Toulouse told her not to fret. No one dangerous would come to see him, other than his mother, and she posed no risk, since she hardly moved in theatrical circles. She did not even know the Duke, which made Toulouse suspect the Duke’s authenticity, since “Mama knows positively everyone worth knowing”, he said.
How I hate the Duke. I don’t care how legitimate he is or is not; I hope he is suffering horribly right now. He made everyone else suffer so. All of us.
I don’t want to remember Satine suffering. I don’t want to remember Toulouse when he was suffering. I want to remember her beautiful and happy. I want to remember Toulouse as he was when he was not drinking so much. I will remember him smiling and laughing and being his better self, as he was when I first met you.
He was right that night, of course. It was not anyone dangerous; it was you. You were courteous to Satine, whom you might easily have viewed as a rival, even though you’d retired several years before. And you were ever so gracious to me, even though I was a nothing – an unpublished, unknown penniless writer. And Toulouse courted you gallantly, even though we all knew he was only playing a part, biding his time until his true love returned.
That was the night Toulouse and I sat on the roof and talked about our lovers. He described Orlando to me, and I saw a light in his eye I’d never seen before. I’m afraid I might have stolen a few lines from him for Spectacular Spectacular, but he never complained about it. I think he saw it as a way he could share his love with the world.
I was convinced of their love then, just as I was convinced that the love Satine and I shared would never die. Now, in the cold morning light, as I look at the unmoving blades of the Moulin Rouge, and its garbage-strewn courtyard, I am adrift.
If Orlando did love him back, then he must be suffering as I have suffered. I wish I could find him, comfort him somehow, but even if I did, what could I do to help? I would set a poor example, with all my drinking and wallowing. No, he will have to go through the heartache alone. He will feel empty and drained. He will feel lonely and unloved. But in time he will come to peace with his loss.
I cannot say how long that will take, since I have not yet come to terms with mine.
I type a page and put it on the wall, and accidentally read a fading line of dialogue from Spectacular Spectacular, posted there so long ago. I lie on my bed and imagine her perfume in the air. I look out the window and am tricked by the setting sun into thinking the Moulin Rouge is full of life. Oh, how the ghost of her clings. These foolish things…
The same thing must be happening to Orlando. That must be him, walking around above me, pacing the floor. Opening drawers and windows, bringing life back to the rooms. I can hear him as I write. Who else could it be? And is he here to wallow like me, or to be reborn?
It would shame me if he were capable of resuming his life so soon after his lover’s demise while I still flail about in despair. He must be stronger than I am. Or maybe he wasn’t as in love as Toulouse after all. I would love to know the real story behind those two.
How could anyone endure the loss of his lover without breaking down the way I have? Without being swept away by the pain and succumbing to the grief? For me, there is no other choice.
Yet Satine was supposedly in love with me and she walked out the door.
You see what happens when you spend too much time alone? You were right when you said I should get out and see people more. I question everything these days. Sometimes I even wonder if I imagined half of what passed between Satine and me. Is a woman who sells herself capable of such true love? The Argentinean was right – first there is love, then passion, but then suspicion, jealousy, anger.
Betrayal.
Can love truly return after all that? Is it even possible to love after such heartbreak? Am I broken forever? These are the questions I must face, for in the answers lies truth.
I can do as I’ve done all these lost months and avoid it; The Green Fairy is an alluring mistress, and much preferable to being alone.
Or I can decide it is time to rejoin the world.
But clean myself up as I might, I fear there will always be this ache. A little bit of soap will never, never ever ever begin, to take away the hurt that I feel, as I go through the lonely years. A little bit of soap will never wash away my tears.
Sincerely yours,
Christian
Next: Ten - Beauty
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