The world comes to an end the same way a woman puts on a dress

by Robin Wyatt Dunn

The world comes to an end the same way a woman puts on a dress—the same way that dress is in Greek the cosmos and our princess, on her way across the Seine in the tiny taxicab, our cosmopolitan little angel, puts on her cosmetics while driver after driver leers at her in the mirror, because she is half-Algerian but looks white, and her body is tiny and delicate, and she wears a small white dress with taffeta looped across her waist, like a ballerina—the same way that our city, our cosmos in which our princess cuts her way into the heart of the night to reach her nightclub, knowing all the while what is coming—the death of everything she has ever known.

Knowledge is a burden and we shall help her carry it. If something doesn’t make sense right away the thing to do is follow it a little further along, the same way that if the first driver refuses—no, elides in that very French way—exactly what his destination is ...

“Are we going to the palace, monsieur?”

“Oh, yes, yes.”

“Monsieur, this is not the way to the palace.”

“Oh, mademoiselle ...”

She negotiates her exit from the vehicle, handing him a wad of cash and standing in the middle of the bridge over the Seine, which, in different circumstances, would make her resemble a streetwalker or a suicide, or both—but a princess conducts herself in all circumstances so as to make it known that she is the mistress of nearly all she surveys, and the next taxicab arrives, right on cue, and she gets in ...

He twists his moustache and leers at her in the mirror and the Paris sun—suddenly bright—flashes through the cab. One after another the taxi drivers of Paris try their way—their last opportunity—to woo the finest specimen of young womanhood Paris has produced in their memory—old habits plunge to the surface, like a dying shipwreck suddenly uncapsized, but with the hands no longer on deck...they don’t know what to do with their hands. They are driving the taxicab.

“Monsieur! Please, watch the road!”

We arrive at an intersection of great forces—the same way a woman is an intersection of great forces—and Paris, yes, a great city, is nevertheless flotsam caught in the wake of this great sinking—this great princess putting on her chiffon, and turning, over the water ...

Nearby, on the Ile de la Cite—and Paris, the word, you must understand, means boat —the Island and Boat of the great city—a large London-style autobus is disgorging two sets of passengers: one brides, and one grooms.

To honor the end of this world (always the beginning of another, you understand—do not be afraid—or rather, be afraid, but know exactly why—) the brides and grooms of Paris, obeying the deepest logic possible to men and women—that is, marriage—simultaneously ascend and descend the complex staircases and doors of the large London style autobus, entering and exiting the conveyance right beneath the steps of Our Lady, with her roseate eye, Notre Dame on the Island of the City that is itself a Boat. They move almost like the figures in an M.C. Escher painting, but this is not fine art, this is reality, and the clothes on the men are getting tight, and the clothes on the women are getting loose, and the Paris sun is heating up, but in honor of the occasion and in obedience to their finest stars and manners imbibed and procured over generations in the salons and cafes of their city, they move like dancers out of the autobus that is blessed with their holy feet, and our brides and grooms themselves bless the nearby negotiations of our princess, almost now nearing the palace ...

The way a woman puts on a tight dress is she wriggles into it, like a cat, stretching her body to accommodate itself to the confines of the fabric, and this is how the world comes to an end, stretching just a little bit, but not breaking...

Kafka’s Castle, benighted for being in Czechia, where no idea ever escapes, and where no bureaucracy ever dies, must be distinguished from the mezzanines and arcades of our Palace here in the Ile de la Cite, but know too, please, that Paris’ bureucracy is just as ancient and fatal, and our princess, being raised within its halls despite her being half-Algerian, knows that its appetites and desires can be be delayed but never refused—it slumps like a tired waiter in the Paris sun below Our Lady. It is a trap, sunken like the Metro under our city. One thousand years previous, in the last ancien regime, the fatal Palace sank under the waves but our Boat rose above it, and they exist now in uneasy alliance, of ship and sea, bark and grave, riding each other around the moon ...

“Monsieur, you did say it was sixteen francs,” the princess says, and she pays the man, still agape at her beauty and at his own inability to do anything about it, and descends the stairs into the great subterranean Palace of Paris, the last of its kind, a nightclub pretending to the seat of royalty, which is, most naturally you understand, actually the seat of royalty pretending to be a nightclub...

The London style autobus has at last disgorged its connubial train, and while they are not the court of our little Princess in her taffeta you would be forgiven for mistaking them as such, as they sway like tourists waiting in line outside of the Louvre, gyring themselves slowly down towards the entrance of the nightclub for an aperitif before their returns home to their marriage beds ...

The pain of marriage is so great that not even Paris can bear it, which is why the world is ending, and being reborn:

Come now, my cousin, and enter with me, into the halls of the world on its last leash before snapping, and please, if you would, light the princess’ cigarette—it is a privilege every red-blooded man in Paris should enjoy, and for you ladies, please let the gentlemen light the fire, it is not old-fashioned, or rather, the age of that fashion belies another youth, one deeper and more unabashed youth, now rising over the chandeliers and tapestries of our ancien regime bedded and wedded here under our drowned city...

She thanks us with a delicate courtesy and disappears upstairs. The orchestra is still tuning their instruments. We have abandoned the modern habit of sitting still for this portion of the concert. The musicians tune, and we drink, and the king is coming down the steps, and the nightclub singers are standing in line, and the connubial festivities of the tourists—no, residents no, tourists and just where do these brides and grooms live, anyway!—it is all right. The end of the universe is just as well-appointed as its beginning.

There is nothing to be afraid of. Or rather, since it is so natural to be afraid of so great a happening, let it merely increase your excitement:

She has begun to sing.