Tribute to Her Love

Sometimes I get bored in French class...

Tribute to Her Love

Once in a while, they were spotted, pale faced and clothed in black, blatantly or defiantly wandering the streets of the city hand in hand. Everyone seemed to turn a blind eye to the duo, leaving them to be alone, grim spectres that belonged to the night and each other. We called them the pale lovers.

The longest they ever stayed in the city was one month, November, in the thirties. A month they spent rising every night amidst a soft snowfall in the churchyard, across from the park. Their long fingers left smooth prints on the tombstones, light feet leaving footprints that were covered almost immediately by snow, just like the little blood they let spill.

I think I romanticized them. Envisioned them, over their centuries, as murderers, thieves, embezzlers, actors, poets, musicians, aristocrats, but constant lovers, above all. I remember once during their longest stay, seeing them on the steps before the church, hand in hand, framed by the spires. A bit of light fell on them from the altar candles surrounding them, making them look like Caravaggio saints. They were as immobile as masks, her head on his shoulder, faces etched with lines. A single blood tear streaked down her cheek. He held her closer, the hands emerging from the black trench coat as white as the snow that refused to quit falling. It was vaguely terrifying; them, alone in the knowledge that they were forever.

I continued on my way, taking refuge from the night in the pools of light thrown by the street lamps.

Several days later, I happened to glance out the bar window at the hill where the church was, the city around it asleep yet so alive. And there she stood, alone, on the grassy knoll between the two sets of stairs that led up to the church. Her hand was on the face of the Virgin Mary, cupping her cheek, cradling her chin. There were faint red traces down her face, and even as I left the bar and began approaching her, another one fell. She turned to the Virgin Mary, the Madonna's head tilted in sorrow, hands clasped before her in a silent prayer for her lost son. And the vampire kissed the virgin on the lips, their faces mirroring each others, down to the blood tear streaking down both their faces. Alone.

In a whisper, scarce sure what I was doing, I asked her what had happened. She simply raised her hand, which seemed to cup the first rays of the ball of sun emerging from behind the church spires. Grabbing her lover's coat, covered in ashes, she turned, and just as the sun broke over the top spires, the church doors closed behind her. The image of her dark silhouette, outlined in gold by the sun as she took sanctuary was striking.

The blood tear is still on the Virgin's face, outside Church of Our Lady. The sorrow on her face is immense and incomprehensible. When the leaves begin to fall, the tears fall all day from her eyes, and on a certain day in November, the tear is a brilliant ruby red that stains the snow around her feet. No one else knows the vampire's story, but people gather to see the virgin weep. Roses are left at her feet, tribute to her love.

A few years ago, when the tear was that red, a figure in a black trench coat stood by the virgin, hand on her cheek, cupping her face. The figure kissed the virgin on the lips, dropped a solitary rose at her feet, and, pulling the coat tighter around her, left.

The roses at Mary's feet are withered now. But every year, on that day in November, the tear stains the Virgin's face. Tribute to her love