Storytellersunplugged

Lyon.

Autumn

Night.

This is the city of ancient sorceries and Blackwood’s “Ancient Sorceries”, of churches on hills and walls of fire-blackened stone houses huddled in close alongside them. It’s the city of grand avenues and cobblestones, of streetcorner vin chaud in the winter and constant rain in the spring, of a hundred tiny bouchons tucked into even tinier streets where the galumphing American tourists dare not go lest they accidentally eat something strange.

It’s where I was that evening. A brief rain had washed everything clean, made the cobblestones shiny and black. Work in Lyon was tiring, was frustrating, was long and wearying and singularly unproductive on this occasion, and I had it in me to walk. I’d walked to my hotel from the office, of course, a jaunt of a mile or so through new neighborhoods and past signs advertising the great chefs of Lyon; up and over the Pont de Guillotine and into the massive stone architecture of the old city. They’d set up the guillotine there when the Revolution came to power. One man died on it, or so I’d been told, the one who’d brought it to town. Still, the memory lingers.

As I first set foot upon the bridge, a man coming the other way saw me and stopped. Stared as if in recognition. I’d never seen him before, this man wearing a black suit and a brightly colored cloth around his head. I nodded, I didn’t slow down, I kept walking.

And he hissed. Leaned forward, head down like a snake, and he hissed. Three times, his head turning impossibly to follow me. I hurried on as he shouted something after me, something I did not wish to understand.

I hurried on, past the great plaza of Bellecour and to my hotel, as much to get away from the memory of the hiss as to drop off my sadly overstuffed backpack. Evening had fallen by the time I came out again, the streets filling with tourists and revelers and the lost and the curious. I lost myself in the throng, the way I do when I travel. See where the crowd goes, see which streets call my name, see which hills want for climbing – when I can choose my route with confidence and calm, then I know I’ve been someplace too long.

That night, it was up one street, down another. Zig-zag, back and forth. I walked a sawtooth edge, admiring architecture and ignoring restaurants. Thoughts of work popped up, and I squashed them quick as I could. It wasn’t their place, it wasn’t their time.

And suddenly, on a white stone wall ahead of me, a sign.

A stencil, really. On the façade of one of the lovely ancient structures that lined the street I shambled down, there was a black shape. I looked closer, and it resolved itself – a headless skeleton, formally dressed, bearing a cane.

Baron Samedi, perhaps, or someone like unto him.

He didn’t wink, not that I expected him to - him being headless, to say nothing of his being made of spraypaint. Hesitantly, I reached out and touched the figure. It was dry, and cool to the touch. The surrounding stone was warm; the black paint not.

A mystery.

I nodded my head to pay my respects to the Baron – no hat to tip, not that night – and wander off. I saw a thing I did not expect, tasted something odd and magical, and that was what the night needed. All around me, the others walked past. Not one noticed the black shape against white stone. We shared a secret, the Baron and I.

Eventually, I walked off and left the image behind me. There were other places to explore, after all. Other things to see.

A hundred feet on, there was another stencil. This one was on a pillar at the side of a massive wooden door, daring passers-by to see it. One did, one stopped dead in the middle of the street. That would be me. To everyone else, it was just graffiti, if it was anything at all.

I looked around. Up ahead, near the corner – yes, it was another one. And beyond that? I’d just have to see, wouldn’t I?

So I chased the Baron. I found him on the sides of steps, on white walls made in the days of kings whose names I’d long forgotten, on the doorposts of ancient houses and upon their gates. They were never close together, and never did the path split, the line diverge.

I was being led.

In books, in movies, we know what happens at times like this. We holler at the hapless protagonist, soon to be the hapless victim. It’s only a painting, we say. Walk away! Turn around! Don’t be stupid!

But we say that from the comfort of our wingbacks, our stadium-seated movie theaters, our cars and our coffeeshops. Put us in front of the mystery, let it whisper in our ears so that no one else can hear, and suddenly it seems reasonable to follow. Logical.

Appropriate.

So it was with me, so it was with my mystery. Where the images led, I would follow. Where they went, I would go.

That night, they led me to the river and along it to the Pont Napoleon. “Across?” I asked. Ahead of me, I saw a figure stenciled onto the ancient stone of the railing.

Across.

They were closer now, more densely packed. I thought of the Smoot markings on the bridge over the Charles in Cambridge, and dismissed the comparison as inappropriate. Science there, magic here, and never the twain shall meet. Ancient sorceries, or something very much like them.

And in the middle of the bridge, they stop. Two figures together, right up at the edge of the railing. They are barely a finger’s width apart. They are together. Someone has drawn faces for them in black indelible marker, round and hideous and misshapen. One looked angry, one looked sad.

I stood there, paralyzed, convinced somehow that the spray paint and ink was going to gather itself up and fling itself – themselves – into the water below. A tourist boat, all striped awnings and bright lights, cruises on below and I realized I’d been holding my breath. I let it out, slowly, the sound hidden by the drinking and shouting and engines from the ship below.

Drawings. They were, of course, just drawings. I’d had my taste of mystery and would treasure it, would wrap it up and guard it so that I could take it out when needed. So that I’d have a well of mystery and wonder and helpless fascination to reach into when something I was writing called for it.

Maybe it was all the hissing man’s doing. I could take that speculation, too, the fear that it inspired and the wonder at the cause, and save them away as needed. I could wrap up the skepticism – Lord knew there’d be a need for that – and the fear, and the moments when I’d told myself aloud that I was just being silly. There would be a place for all of them. All the wonder and mystery of the night, all the strangeness and magic, would live on. It would be inspiration, imagination, memory – a story, or perhaps more. Bits and pieces of that night would inform so much, or at least I’d hoped they would. Otherwise, they’d come home to roost in my nightmares.

I finished crossing the river, suddenly glad that the trail had ended. I’d find someplace to eat, someplace with bright lights and lots of people and despairing waiters who liked tourist dollars but not the tourists who came with them, and that would be enough. Dinner, and then home, and to bed.

After all, I had seen enough for one night.

I never saw the hissing man again. And in the morning, all the skeletons were gone.