If the Inuit have twenty words for the concept of snow, then perhaps it is because they live in a realm where the differences between each type of snow are of vital importance to them, and the minutiae of their specific vocabulary reflects that central importance. Love seems like such a deeply inadequate word for a concept with so many complex shades and shapes and degrees of intensity.
“Perhaps it is the scarcity of vocabulary that is the root of the problem. I will conjure her unpaid from the street below the hotel and cloak her in the romance and the sadness of Rostand’s play, and her creation will change my life.” That night I will go to my room and write a song about a girl. He is a man who loves but is not loved, and the woman he loves but cannot reach is called Roxanne. He is a man entrusted with a secret an eloquent and dazzling wit who, having successfully wooed a beautiful woman on behalf of a friend cannot reveal himself as the true author when his friend dies. He is a tragic clown whose misfortune is his honour. It is a laughing portrait of a man with an enormous nose and a plumed hat. I will stand for a few moments to take in its fading gaiety. Cyrano de Bergerac, it proclaims, a play by Edmond Rostand. In the dingy foyer of the hotel is an old poster from La Comédie Française, sadly peeling from the all behind the desk.
The younger, prettier girls seem to do the least business, apparent innocence being only a minority preference, much as it is for the aging crones in the alley who seem as if they’ve been standing there for a thousand years. Most of the commerce is centred on the slightly older women, as if the majority of the clients prefer experience and worldliness. Some are young and pretty, and some are older, and some of them are very old, with facial expressions ranging from sullen to wry. In their shiny open raincoats, short skirts, cheap boots, and high-heeled shoes they watch the street with hooded eyes, like spies in a B movie. “The alley is a pitch for about twenty women leaning in doorways, chain-smoking.
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