In Paris servants live at the top of the house. True love
rarely descends below the fifth floor, and then sometimes
it jumps out the window...since 1830, love is one of the
worst disgrace for a young man...
--Stendhal (1783-1842), Memoirs of a Tourist (1837)
A gramophone record of a French pianists
Private sonata playing is handed down to her
Although it has been re-recorded several times,
With scratch sounds and murmurous noises
Like shadows flickering on a busy sunset boulevard,
Its capriccioso theme yet is as lively as a spiraling swallow
Flying hugging the ground as if its going to peck her eye...
Many years later
When she accidentally broke into
His secret room, his epoch
She cravingly searched every corner
For the treasure once she gave to him
But it was just another usual day
Outside the window bicycle bells were ringing serenely
Finally saw how his room is decorated
She could not help but trying to contaminate, to defile
Every single thing, including the most trivial bric-a-bracs
She believed nothing in his room is not insinuating
Some subtle details of his new lover
But she did her best to keep the setting intact it seems
She carefully restored all the wrinkles and draperies
Even a tiny dust on a flower
At the beginning she simply heard the record frequently
But gradually she found something strange behind the music--
Some frizzling sounds like clothes rubbing each other
Or two embraced lovers trying so hard to hold their breath
She doesnt know whether it is from the original sound track
Or left carelessly by somebody else during re-recording...
Then she pretended to live his life--
Reading his books, lying on his bed, opening his fridge--
She realized that he is just a common old guy
But a faint siren from afar generated her acousma, at which
High-pitched giggles and cynical sniffs rendezvoused
She couldnt find any clue of her own past
In his second-empire-style room, as if she never existed
So be its completely indifferent now
At least, he and his lovers intimate photo
No longer provokes against her
When she escaped, she felt so lost yet so relieved...
Mnemosyne has bulimia,
Purging history after binging memories
Her crime of love, after all, couldnt compete to
His perfect alibi...
The glossy surface of the piano is like the slick skin
Inviting the slender hands with pale blue veins to sink
Another young man of this same southern town was even more heroic.
To save the honor of a woman he adored, he undertook to descend
from the sixth floor with the help of a single bed-sheet, which
meant that he jumped down...
--Stendhal (1783-1842), Memoirs of a Tourist (1837)*
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