In this sad story, there are no names. There were once, but they got lost, dragged by the autumnal wind of time. Nobody remembers them. Nobody really knew about these clandestine scenes, but the urban legend is recounted.
Everything started in a cold night at the beginning of the XX century, when cabarets spread through Europe, especially in Germany and France
That night, the cabaret had already closed its doors and the workers were tidying up the place. Our protagonist was lost in thought, rubbing a cloth on the bar, until the strident sound of her colleague’s laughter woke her up.
On one of the small and old sofas were two of her colleagues sharing more than words and groping in front of everyone. Others probably would be behind the scenes doing the same, others finishing their Absinthe glasses sitting around one of the tables while playing cards and smoking, Meanwhile the rest were picking up their sorrows, instruments and outfits to go home. She was one of these. You have to drown your sorrows as you please. Because, obviously, working and living the way they did was not a delight.
She took her worn out leather handbag, where she carried her street clothes and without saying goodbye, she went out by the back door, which was exclusive for the workers. Wearing the work outfit, she headed to the guesthouse where she was staying. She was walking swiftly, not because of the fear of something happening to her, but because of the cold. On her way home, she thought how crowded the cabaret had been that night, full of obese bourgeoises with long moustaches, accompanied by their also fat wives…
But, when she came to perform, between all those awful and greasy faces, she noticed a smooth and fair face of red lips, green eyes and copper-coloured ringlets. She was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen: our second protagonist.
During the performance she couldn’t stop observing her until a trip made her stumble, falling over on stage, making the woman disappear from view and unleashing the laughter of the audience. When she came back to the bar, she didn’t find her between all those grotesque faces. She was gone.
***
Months passed by and she found again the redheaded young girl. It’s told that they fell in love at first sight, one of those forbidden kinds of love that pushes you from the inside and makes you fall into temptation. It’s said, and that’s a fact, that they became lovers…
Their meetings never took place in the bourgeois young girl's magnificent house. The flaking walls, the old furniture, the small bed and the yellowish sheets of the room rented by the cabaret dancer were mute witnesses of their love.
One of those starry nights, the young girls wrote their love on their skin with caresses, loved each other with faltering words and soft moans. Both naked bodies moved sensually between the rough sheets. Hands going everywhere, pushing and scratching, victims of their passion; tongues trying to smother the heat of their bodies; breaths attempting to escape … They were drowning on themselves, full of passion, full of love.
When everything exploded in white and their eyes were able to see the flaking walls – the spark of the streetlights coming in through the window, illuminating their culminated sin – and their mouths breathed the heavy air, and when their bodies, still resting relaxed over the messy sheets, felt the cold piercing through them, the women covered between the yellowish canvas and, embracing each other, tried to get to sleep. Cuddling tenderly under the sheets, they helped Morpheus on his task of wrapping them up in a placid dream. And so they dreamed.
It is said that many other nights, after making love, they both stayed naked, embracing under the sheets and talking about their lives, their fears and wishes, their fantasies. About themselves. About their love.
***
After long months of furtive visits and ardent encounters, a night of brightly stars and waning moon, after making love - which had a bitter taste for both of them – our second protagonist, sitting on the bed, contemplated how the other woman, naked and standing on the cold floor, was looking at the stars and saying that they were as gleaming as her. That was her last beautiful image before the storm.
The silence carried on for minutes and finally, the bourgeois whispered the words that the dark-haired girl never wanted to hear. She was getting married to a man of reputation, prestige and, of course, wealth, things she lacked. With the eyes hard closed, holding the anger emerging from her inside, she heard but not listened to the reasons why her lover was leaving her for a better positioned man.
After the silent and strained seconds that followed the explanation, the naked young girl, without even looking at her, approached the clothes stand and took a dressing robe. Suddenly, in this summer night, her body had frozen, like if everything around her were snow, ice. After a deep breath, she reproached her, without raising the voice and in a whispering and sharp tone, of all the times she had proclaimed her love and faithfulness. She gave her a hurt, broken and furious last look and shut herself in the bathroom.
After a couple hours, when she got out – more haggard, broken and desolated, with her eyes full of tears – the only thing left from her lover was the subtle perfume of her hair and skin wafting in the air. It’s told that the foundations of the old and small guesthouse shook because of the bloodcurdling scream that followed.
***
It was a day like any other in the cabaret: drunken obese ugly men, over-perfumed women wearing more make up than the dancers, alcohol, music, singing and dancing, waiters coming and going from the bar with drinks and food... Oh grotesque and bizarre cabaret! The same old cabaret.
After the last show and the last man leaving the entrance, began the battle in pursuit of the place’s cleanliness for the next day.
She was still dressed up in a doll costume, with her face painted white, coloured cheeks and carmine lipstick, eyes outlined in black and hair tied up in two bunches. She helped placing some chairs and tables, washing and sweeping the filthy floor, tidying up the stage and putting away the clothes in the dressing rooms.
She said goodbye to one of the musicians and left the place by the back door, like the first time she had seen the young ginger girl, long time ago. Carrying her leather handbag, but now wearing black and brown street clothes, she walked through one of the main streets of the city. Just before turning the corner that would take her to the guesthouse, she saw a car – one of the very few there were in the city – stopping on the other side of the street and two people stepping out of it: a man and a woman.
She never thought the streetlights would be so cruel to illuminate that degrading, sick, humiliating and painful scene. That man wearing a long winter coat and an English top hat was walking arm in arm with her nymph of copper-coloured ringlets, who was answering with a smile on her face to his anodyne comments of the opera they had just seen…
Our dark-haired protagonist felt like if her heart, sewed with fragile thread, exploded in smaller pieces that sunk brutally into her skin and flesh, scratching her soul in a bloodcurdling way. She couldn’t hold her tears and a throttled wail while she was running to the guesthouse.
When she arrived running to the bathroom, she started removing her make up furiously, bruising her sensitive skin. Black stained tears running down were drawing dark lines on her cheeks. She burst with rage and smashed the old mirror with her fists, shattering it, like what had just happened to her heart. Pushed against the wall by the strength of her actions, she let herself slip to the floor, with silent and bitter groans, feeling broken, devastated, used, hurt and furious with herself, with her. With everything. With the stars.
That’s why (they say, talk about, whisper) she hates so much the stars. They gave and took everything, without mercy, from her. Her love, her life, snatched by the stars.
Bloody stars…
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