Falling Through The Night

Madeline can see the body floating there. Just beneath the velvety surface of the Seine, just beneath, it floats. The shadows of the ancient buildings ink a temporary tattoo of early evening on the lapping waves of the river, on the stone walkway and its stairs that lead to the water’s edge. People are scrambling across the cobbled embankment.

The body is floating in the current, an underwater hummingbird filled with artful stasis. The body is floating in the current and people are scrambling, flocking en masse. Madeline is not. She is frozen. Madeline is frozen, watching the body beneath the water. It is just inches beneath the water. People are now scrambling from the embankment to an elegantly carved stone bridge. People are scrambling! And Madeline cannot move. In the background, the sirens begin their high-low keening. The sirens swirl. The sirens rise and fall, a score for the wave of people who are scrambling, scrambling to save the body. The sirens wail, a score for Madeline, statuesque in the window of her mother’s French boutique.

Underwater, the body is weightless. It floats very near the slick moss of the concrete riverbank. It floats in the chilled slow moving river, and it doesn’t flow anywhere quickly. It simply drifts, drifts in its own kind of peace. It is entirely unaware of the commotion it causes, the commotion that roils the banks of the river.

When the wind blows, when the branches of the riverside trees shift, waning light cuts through the mere inches of murky water that separate the body from air. The light sheds those gallons of water; the light displaces them. The light shows a leg one moment, shimmering and pale. The light displays pure, unblemished skin. The light reveals what is most definitely a girl, her slender pixie feet closest to the surface, her torso pointing down into the furtive depths. She’s floating and flowing and drifting, so slowly, gracefully, her torso pointing down.

“Dear God!” an American tourist, husky and balding, exclaims to his petite wife. The shutter of his camera clicks. The shutter clicks and clicks.

To be sure, there is a sense of urgency—a thick sense that a clock is being raced. Madeline can feel the adrenaline running through the crush of people. It fills her too. Madeline feels that human emotion, the ache those people must feel. Madeline can feel the shock of the men, their tailored navy blazers thrown to the ground as they skitter along the water’s edge, following the body inch by inch. The sun is falling and it will take a sharp eye to keep the girl from disappearing into darkness. Yes, Madeline knows a form of this feeling, the feeling of wanting so badly to save something, desperately, at all costs. And as soon as she recognizes that feeling as that which these strangers following the girl must feel, as soon as she puts her finger upon that feeling, it is replaced. That distinct feeling is replaced with an overwhelming sense of futility!

The girl has been under too long. The people that are scrambling down to the embankment, the people that are shouting to their friends, the people that are pointing—the tourists with their flashbulbs popping—they are not jumping in the water. And Madeline thinks, with relief, that soon the people will have to realize the body is just a body. Madeline hopes they will stop imagining it a sinking girl. She isn’t named Greta. They won’t call her Rebecca. She is an “it.” It is just a body form. Madeline wants them to realize the girl, whoever she is to them, is no more. Beneath the waves is just this thing. Beneath the waves, this thing falling heels over head through the night, this thing twisting and somersaulting in the current—it is just a thing. Understand: It is not a girl. Madeline wants them to understand.

And yet they all keep following the girl down the Seine.

Madeline wants to tell them all. She does. She wants to rip open the shop door and run down to the water’s edge. She wants to tear down to the water’s edge, screaming bloody awful. She is moments from doing it. She is moments from racing to the water, her long sapphire scarf flying behind her like the streamers of a kite. She would grab that gentleman, the one on his belly now, the one whose ankles his friends are supporting, the one who is on his belly with his arms outstretched, the one who is reaching, reaching for the arm of the dead thing. She would race to that man, her hair wild, her silk dress drenched with wind, and she would pull him back in. She wants to pull him back in, pull him back in and press her small finger to his lips. She would stop him screaming for help. She would silence him, and at that moment she would quiet those sirens, too. It would be still, then. Quiet as the riverbed bottom.

“It’s not a girl,” she would whisper in her best English. “It is not a girl. And none of this matters.”

That’s exactly what she would say. That’s exactly what Madeline wants to say. But she is frozen. She cannot. And then, sudden as a sneeze, she is laughing, hand at her slender side she is laughing. The laugh comes crashing down. Oh, what has she done? She can’t ever tell them. And so, below her, down the embankment in front of her mother’s dress shop, the people will continue their frenzied panic. The people will scream. The sirens will wail. The man, the one on his belly, the one anchored by the strong arms of several American friends, that man may reach the body; he may grab it and pull “the girl” to dry land, pull her to some sort of safety. But Madeline decides she simply cannot tell them.

With a click of her high heels, Madeline finds herself once more. She soothes her dress down to her sides. She calms her alarmed expression, tucks it away. And she steps outside. She locks the shop up tight, noting the stiff orange placard hanging from the shop door, noting the plywood board beneath it that reads Cessons nos activités in cursive purple paint. Madeline frowns at this particular sign. She frowns at the sign and further pushes the commotion from her mind. Her keys jingle. She places them in her purse. And off the stoop, she walks. She walks and her footsteps echo out into the narrow street. She walks away. She walks away and the dress shop, its window display eerily empty of its mannequin model, simply recedes into the night.

Inspired by “In My Sleep, Falling Through The Night,” an original Ian Dingman illustration.