Hell's Actor-Chapter 232: Marionette

Marianne sat by the window—her window. The little ivory stool she occupied was situated next to a canvas stand.

"Straight strokes, Maria," she said in a commanding tone.

The maid maintaining the statue garden nodded. "Yes, Miss."

Marianne turned away from the window. The sunlight was nice, but the sloppy work of the servants wasn’t.

With a steady hand, she stroked the canvas with her brush.

The finishing touch.

It was sacred to her and her father.

She took the complete picture and hung it on the wall, covered with paintings of a unique nature.

And her latest one wasn’t any different. It was an oil painting of her and Charles—of him sinking in the soft embrace of her bosom.

She was dressed in a white dress, and he wore a black suit. Thorned vines climbed up his figure. All the while, their expressions remained neutral.

The lines, the curves, and the colors—they were all rather surreal.

Marianne appreciated the painting without batting an eyelid.

The scene transitioned.

It was a bustling street. Lanters of Eastern origin hung on every stall and every slanted roof.

It was a far cry from the neon of The City Charles was used to.

Cheerful people were everywhere he looked. They were couples and families; none were single. He was the only one standing alone.

The vendors heckled and shouted to attract customers.

"Taste the heaven, good sir," one of them said with a smile on his face.

He beckoned Charles, and without a thought, he followed.

"Here, try this."

The vendor handed him a paper plate. The steaming piece of dessert on it looked half like chocolate cake and half like vanilla ice cream.

"No need to pay if you don’t like it."

With a fork, Charles scooped some. As it graced his tongue, he could feel the promised taste of heaven.

The vendor hadn’t exaggerated.

The combination of hot, melted chocolate and cold vanilla was something he could never have imagined.

The ecstasy overpowered his senses.

When he finally came to, the vendor was looking at him with clasped hands and subdued expectations.

Charles rummaged through his pockets and retrieved a coin.

Over the likeness of what seemed like a regal man were legible words embossed.

Charlamagne.

The vendor happily received the coin.

With dessert in hand, Charles walked the festive street.

All kinds of food lined the street. Their smells stirred the appetite.

Through the maze of stalls offering games and entertainment, he spotted her.

Dressed in the familiar Eastern dress of the theater, she was inspecting the stalls with the umbrella in hand.

Charles dropped the plate and ran after her. He chased her through the heavy crowds.

Through curves and bends, he followed her, keeping up with her whimsy.

The marketplace was a large place, but only Charles seemed to notice her peculiarity.

He was fast, but he couldn’t reach her. Every step forward seemed to take him a step away from her.

As if to tease him, she kept glancing back at him. Yet she never allowed more than half of her face to be exposed.

Somewhere near a small tent, he lost her.

The sound of applause attracted his gaze to the tent. Entering it, he found a makeshift stage.

A puppet show was on. Not the comedy kind. Not ventriloquism.

It was a marionette show.

And the human-sized marionette playing the tragic role of a noble lady was frighteningly similar to The Lady.

It stunned The Photographer.

He had assembled his camera, but he couldn’t dare to take the picture. If he tried, he feared that she would disappear.

"Was she just a thought?"

It was the voice of Les Vigne.

"He always wondered that."

He sighed.

"It frightened him, the thought. He wanted her to be real, so much so that he would moan about it to me."

Dazedly, Charles watched the marionette dance.

"I was happy for him. I thought she breathed life into him."

The heavy machine in his hands lowered.

"I never saw her, but her beauty, I hear, was exquisite. Charles often said: ’In the end, she is like a thought or a beautiful painting, a form that could be interpreted in infinite ways, mesmerising always.’"

Watching her, Charles imagined himself in a gallery, in front of a dignified portrait of her.

On the way back, he found an empty aisle seat but chose to stand by the glass door. He watched the scenery as the metro train zoomed past neon billboards.

The rail system ran twenty floors over the ground.

His silhouette was bathed in purple, and the shadow he cast was longer.

All sorts of passing signs reflected on his retinas, but that one woman he could not take off his mind.

She was still there, performing on the stage of his mind to the music that played sirens for the bassline.

But then, the piano crept in. It slowly took over the song. All other instruments faded.

The music became simple. It became graceful.

It was a piece familiar to all, one of the most familiar piano pieces in the world.

It was Beethoven’s Für Elise.

As Charles blinked, he found himself in an art gallery.

Rococo paintings covered the white walls.

The Photographer wanted to take a picture of them, but his satchel wasn’t on him.

Today, he had to capture the beauty with his eyes, but he looked to the side.

A woman at the end of the corridor was staring at him. She wore the dress of a 19th-century noblewoman. A veil covered half of her face.

When Charles moved towards her, she took off.

Like earlier, he once again chased after The Lady.

She took him through the corridors and displays.

Approximately half a minute before Für Elise could turn playful, the flow and direction of the song diverted. It turned frantic and violent.

The paintings, too, adopted a different style. They went from Rococo to Baroque.

One of them was a portrait of Anselme de Roschillian.