NOIR-vember_ DEATH IN THE HIDDEN VALLEY OF PARIS

 {From the journal of Samuel McCord}

(Couldn't Karl Urban play McCord?)

The birds were singing in the many gardens of the City of Lights this spring.  

The leaves were green and ripe, the fragrance of life thick in the air.  

The multitudes of fountains sparkled under the eternal sun seemingly laughing with the sheer joy of being alive.

And I was sitting on a park bench in the Swiss Valley deciding whether or not to let myself bleed to death.

(photo courtesy of Lionel Allorge)

The Swiss Valley -- 

it was located just a stone’s throw from Champs-Élysées and hidden beneath a dome of green so tall and vibrant 

you might not see the stone staircase that winds between the ivy, chestnut trees, and drooping flower petals. 

 I certainly did not.  

But then, my eyes weren't working so good right at the moment.

I watched the splatter the drops of my blood made on the pavement at my boots.  

I stopped watching. 

I had seen that particular grim rain too often in the past.  I always endured.  

But of late I had started to wonder why I bothered.

This “Swiss Valley” was built from scratch in the late 19th century by the park designer Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand. 

It is a lovely illusion, where nothing is quite what it appears at first sight. 

In that, it was a lot like my life -- 

which I guess is why I chose it as a spot to die -- 

that and it was close enough for my wobbly legs to take me -- and I liked its pond.

 The rocks that form the pond and waterfall are sculptured from cement; so is the “wooden” footbridge.

(Photo Courtesy of Remi Jouan)

  But the space, nearly 2 acres of semi-tamed wilderness in one of the most urban swaths of Paris, has always been a favorite spot of mine.

On the park bench, I was enveloped by evergreens, maples, bamboo, lilacs and ivy. 

There were lemon trees; a Mexican orange; a bush called a wavy-leaf silk-tassel, 

with drooping flowers that belonged in an Art Nouveau painting; and another whose leaves smell of caramel in the fall. 

A 100-year-old weeping beech shades a pond whose waterfall pushes away the noise of the streets above. 

The pond, fed by the Seine, can turn murky, 

but the slow-moving carp don’t seem to mind, nor does the otter that surfaces from time to time.

I wondered if the carp or the otter would mind when I toppled over dead into their pond.

I heard a scampering of tiny feet and a little girl's voice speak in French.  

I had to shift gears mentally to translate.

"Oh, God is good.  I am so lost, Monsieur.  Could you help me, please.  Oh, no!  You are bleeding!"

I turned with difficulty to see her clear, or as clear as I could manage in my present shape.  

How many fashions had I seen come and go?  Too many.  There was a time little girls wore dresses. 

 No more.  

Now, this small street orphan wore torn jeans, dirty T-Shirt, and scuffed tennis shoes more holes than fabric.

"No, Little Lady.  I am dying."

"You mustn't die!"

Her eyes grew wet.  

"I have seen too much death, Monsieur ... and who would see me home?"

She rubbed an angry hand over her wet eyes and pulled herself up as tall as she got, 

"And it would be rude!" 

I smiled drily, "Reckon it would at that.  Can't have a Texican be that, can we?"

I wrenched myself to my feet.  

"Now, first to a doctor and then to a bank."

"Why a bank, Monsieur?"

"So you'll never be hungry ever again."

And she never was.