City of Light: Heaven, Hell, the Empire of the Dead

[smokingboot]

Tuesday saw us following the advice of november_girl, and seeking out the astonishing church of St Chapelle. St Chapelle is within the palace of justice and right next to the Conciergerie (sp?)The bottom floor has a gift shop in it and despite its fleur de lys and star patterns, does not feel very sacred, though it has a fantasy gypsy caravan vivacity which is enchanting. But the top floor...ah well. This is indeed the church proper, a sparkling jewelry box of rich and bright stained glass windows and prettily carved pillars. If I had children, this is where I would bring them to teach them bible stories (presuming I wanted to teach them such things at all), brilliant, inspiring, as the light tumbles down through coloured glass; the illustrations of Kay Nielson spring to mind, or memories of Puffin editions of the Narnian chronicles, innocent and beautiful.

We saw other things that day. On our way to the above, we found the memorial to the deported of France during WWII; again, architecture speaks. Narrow walls, barbed edges, no colour excepting those of the triangles explained: black for the anti-social, blue for the stateless, purple for the jehovah's witness, pink for the homosexual, green for the criminal...and of course, a very special yellow one with added points. No sunlight radiating coloured glass here, but a gallery with thousands, perhaps millions of tiny electric lights, one for every being who never returned.

Heaven and hell. We make these options, here on earth. Let us blame no other for the things we do.

None of these things matter in the Empire of death.

It was very odd; we had heard of the catacombs of Paris. In the 19th century, Paris had the same problem as London; mouldering bodies and cemeteries groaning to capacity full of corpses; the stench was unendurable. London's solution was to build great cemetaries on the outskirts of the city, of which Highgate became the most romantic; a land of the kindly dead, spirits waiting to greet you, dignified and poignant. The tombs are beloved albeit in neglect, and the trees grow wild. Even in Winter, they give you beauty.

And in the city of beauty? They dumped the bones.

Oh, it was all organised; should any chums recall reading 'The Vampire Lestat' you may recall that Lestat tells the Vampire Armand that the Cemetery of the Innocents is going to be moved, and Armand cannot believe it. Well, by god, Lestat didn't lie; the Cemetary of the Innocents is here, as are the contents of many cemeteries and hospitals and churches; you go down for a long way, down a spiral stair that turns widdershins with such monotony you fear you are in tesseract territory. You walk for a long way, under the earth, and you think you have been ripped off, cos you don't find a single bone. Then you find a doorway over which hangs a sign; it says something like, Here is the Empire of the Dead. And you enter the Ossuary.

They never jumble the bones; No, the corpses of St Laurent's cemetary are all together, as are those of St Genevieve's hospital and all the others, dates, times, only identity is missing. Limbs, rib cages, pelvises, vertebrae four, five, deep, skulls in patterns on wall after wall, brain pans split or cracked; All dead, all dead in the catacombes of Paris. It would be a lot easier to believe in the emptiness of those eye sockets if one didn't find oneself with one's back to them when trying to take photographs. I swear, they look over one's shoulder, they lean and they grin. They're interested, dammit!