Sacré-Coeur
A Short Story
By Leigh Christopher Stroh
The world has a heartbeat. It breathes and whispers.
When Daniel stood still enough and focused, he could almost hear it. Beneath the wash of the wind through the trees, between the voices bouncing through the crowd on the wide white steps above him.
The three domes of Le Sacré-Coeur glowed in the spring sun like the white dazzle of diamond shine. It had always been their dream to see Paris, the City of Light. Here on Montmartre, the great basilica rose so brilliant against the bluest of skies they realized just how comparably dim their dreams had been.
No dream could match the sweet smell of flowering cherry trees, the perfection of the finch’s song, or the dance of butterflies above the flowers that lined the steps. None could capture how it felt to be there; none could prepare them for what was to come.
Daniel pulled Angela up the wide steps toward the church and away from the buzz of tourists and the glaring music of the carousel. At the height of this clamorous tide, Daniel looked back just as the wind ran its fingers through her red curls and could do nothing but smile.
She beamed back. “Could this day be any more beautiful?”
“Impossible,” he said, thinking of the effect she had on him. Like a spotlight, she focused him on all the beauty in the world.
Tucked between thick dark shrubs and cherry trees in full bloom, cool shade invited them to another set of stone steps that reached up the side of the park to the basilica. Daniel coaxed Angela that way, away from the crowd.
A small group of students splashed up the same stairs behind them. In a thick French accent, their guide spoke quickly. “Montmartre, the site of Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, is the highest natural elevation in Paris. Begun in 1875 and finished in 1914, it is made entirely of the travertine stone, mined here in France. This stone constantly—how you say—seeps calcite, which is why this national treasure is always the purest white.”
She cast a glance at them, frowning as if they owed her for their brief inclusion in her tour. Daniel looked away, but Angela smiled in gratitude as the guide turned, and the students scurried along behind her.
In the wake of the tour’s exit, three young men ran up the stairs after them. The smallest of the trio, a wiry man wearing sunglasses far too big for his face, was the first to stop. The two following him immediately began to study the couple, each rattling a ring of small golden Eiffel Tower key chains.
The man in the middle, the biggest, wore a dark suit coat, sleeves rolled to the elbow, over a filthy t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops. “You buy,” he said, more of a command than a request, holding up his ring of key chains.
“No, thank you,” Daniel said, gently pulling Angela along behind him up the stairs.
Then it all turned. The world seemed to draw its breath, readying a scream.
The third of these men, a heavy man with a shaved head wearing a soccer jersey two sizes too small, spoke softly. “You buy.” He raised his ring of key chains in front of them.
Daniel and Angela had been told to watch for pickpockets and to avoid the peddlers. They had been warned to stay in crowds. The little wiry man with the big glasses reminded them why. He spun Angela around by the shoulders and shoved his ring of trinkets inches from her face. “Buy!”
With that touch Daniel exploded. “Don’t. Ne le faites pas.” He firmly pressed his right hand into the little man’s chest and shoved him away from Angela. But he pushed too hard.
Tiny metallic pings cascaded down three or four stairs along with the wiry man.
The big man stormed up the few steps to Daniel, screaming at him in words that were not French and not English. The bald man stepped forward, voice raised and arms flailing. He stabbed his flat hand into the air at the couple, then down to where the wiry man had climbed to his feet, and then back to the couple again.
Daniel stepped in front of Angela, her rapid breath on the back of his neck. Hands clinched into fists at his side, he could feel the shudder of adrenaline surging, taste its bitter alkaline rising to his mouth.
The world seemed to stop and hold its breath along with him. And then, he heard it: church bells.
All at once, everything just stopped. Everything except a bright flash reflected across the wiry man’s sunglasses. The smallest peddler removed his glasses, stared at them skeptically, then looked back at Angela, eyes wide and brow furrowed. Grabbing the biggest man by the lapel, he pulled him further away from the couple. The men exchanged a few agitated phrases, then turned abruptly and ran up the stairs after the tour, the jingle of cheap metal sounding in their wake.
Angela threw both arms around Daniel and cried into his chest. As he held her, he felt the world slowly, steadily calm. He drew a deep breath and asked in a whisper, “What just happened?”
Angela struggled to catch her breath. All she could manage in reply was a single shake of the head and a few more tears.
“I think we should go back down and climb right up the middle, where all the people are,” Daniel said. Angela nodded and followed him back the way they had come.
The gray-white glow of the sun-bleached front steps splashed warmth onto the cobblestone street as Daniel and Angela approached the entrance. The massive bronze doors to the church stood open, and the smell of flowers and melting wax spilled out to meet them. Above the doors, on either side, two winged gargoyles stared down at them.
Angela regarded their grave carved faces. “Why would they decorate the entrance of this beautiful place with that ugliness?” she asked.
Daniel broke his inspection of the figures to consider the ugliness narrowly avoided on the steps only moments before. He thought about belief, about the church, about God. He thought about faith. Then in nearly a whisper, he replied, “I really don’t know. Maybe that has something to do with it.”
He pointed to the words between the gargoyles: “Psalm 91:11.”
This time, Angela led Daniel by his hand into the narthex, over the diamond patterned Comblanchien stone and bright marble floor, between the light oak pews, and into the chancel. Above them, above the image of Christ against a blue mosaic sky, the Grand Dome stretched its arches and saints and bright stained glass upward with such beauty and immensity that Daniel thought it must have tickled the foot of heaven itself.
Light streamed through the exquisite stained glass all over the church and particularly brightly over the spot where Angela stood. Right then, Daniel realized, no matter where they were, she always seemed to settle into the warmest light. Maybe that was what made her glow.
Daniel reached into his jacket pocket and felt the edges of it. And though it wasn’t particularly hot within the church, he began to sweat. He led Angela by the hand along the outer edge of the central nave, past several smaller chapels. Directly behind the main altar, behind the wall separating the main chapel from all smaller ones, Daniel saw several wooden chairs extending behind a few pews.
He ushered her to a seat, sat down beside her, and took a deep breath. He wiped his hand over his face, glanced at the angels bathed in blue light above them, then closed his eyes.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
Daniel took another deep breath, slid from his seat, and fell to one knee.
Around them saints in gold and white mosaic reached down each wall of the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin. White columns stretched up each side to a statue of Our Lady of Peace with Christ on her knee holding an olive branch.
From his jacket pocket, he pulled a small black velvet box, fumbled briefly, and opened it. “When I first saw you, I hoped. When we first spoke, I thought, ‘Could it be?’ But when I first kissed you, I knew.” He looked from her eyes down to the box and back again. “I’d love you always, and in all ways.”
He swallowed hard. “Angela Louise Lambent, will you marry me?”
Emerging from the church, Angela blazed more than glowed. Even the people in the crowd and the entire City of Light below them seemed to have a new shine.
Hands swinging between them like the pendulum of a happy clock, they walked together uphill along the westward side of le Sacré Coeur, past the sprawling white steps of the West Entrance. Rounding the back of the church, Daniel heard the soft notes of violins and watched the realization of their next destination slowly come over Angela’s face.
“Are we?” she asked.
“We are,” he smiled. “La Place Du Tertre, the Artist’s Quarter. Right around the corner.”
By noon, the little village behind the church was so full of people that swimming through the crowd was nearly impossible. Every café table under every red awning in front of every small kitchen or bar was full of patrons sampling the pastries and bread, liqueurs and espresso. Every booth, easel, painting, and artist was on display.
Had they stood still enough and listened they might have heard it, above the clatter of dishes and hagglers, above the music from shops and street performers. They might have heard the world sigh. Instead, they heard the faint hum of laughter and conversation issuing from every corner of the place.
Two violin melodies chased each other over tabletops and conversation, over canvases and color. Fluid and soothing, the entire composition blended to a perfectly picturesque synthesis.
Angela raised her arms from her sides and spun around—once, twice—then slowed her third pirouette to take a few steps. Arms still outstretched, she glided around Daniel as the glimmer and gleam from the third finger of her left hand again caught her eye. Beaming, she looked beyond her outstretched hand to Daniel’s face. “It could not be more perfect.”
She was all Daniel could see. All he wanted to see.
He looked in her eyes then followed her red curls to her shoulder and down the fair skin of her arm to the ring. That heart-shaped stone gave life to his hopes and dreams. It confirmed that goodness and happiness could be found. That love was no myth.
Daniel and Angela wandered down la Rue de Saules. Away from the street performers. Away from the galleries and artists and easels. Away from the shops and baubles, from the boulangeries and pâtisseries. And again, away from the crowds.
Then Daniel heard it: the invading jingle of cheap metal. It stopped him dead in his tracks. He looked around quickly, but there was nothing. No one.
Along the north side of the street, dark ivy climbed the cracks of a dilapidated stone wall with few windows and a faded orange tile roof. It ran at least thirty meters unbroken in both directions from where they stood. On the south side, the row of apartments hung their elaborate black iron railed balconies like a dark shade on a dimmed lamp.
“What is it?” Angela asked.
“Nothing, I guess.” His mind was working against him now, doubt and fear weaving into joy and hope. But deep down, he knew. “Let’s head back,” he said.
That’s when he saw the movement, caught the blur of quick shadows. Ten meters up this little street, the small wiry man in sunglasses emerged from an alleyway between two apartment buildings, rings of little gold Eiffel Towers jingling on his hip. Behind him, the big man in the suit coat and shorts stepped from the shadows smoking a cigarette, the embers at its tip winking like a little red eye.
Daniel and Angela backed away, then turned to run in the opposite direction, but the bald man in the soccer jersey stood square in the middle of the street, in front of the gates to an old cemetery. In one hand, he held a rake which he pointed at the couple.
The little man removed his sunglasses. “Don’t. Ne le faites pas,” he mocked, drawing laughter from the big man behind him. As they approached, he repeated slowly, “Don’t.”
Angela raised both hands and covered her mouth. On her left hand, the ring gleamed like a beacon.
The wiry man smiled and pointed his sunglasses at her. “Now, we take.”
It was as though all the air had been sucked from the street. Like all of Montmartre, perhaps all of La Ville-Lumiere, inhaled deeply and held its breath.
Daniel stood statue-still and calmly remembered how to breathe, how to speak. “No.”
The wiry man brought a thin finger to his lips. “Shush,” he warned.
The big man flicked what little was left of the cigarette off the long stone wall, splattering ashes to the cobblestone. When he stepped forward and reached for Angela, she covered her face with her hands.
They were drowning there for a moment, suffocated between those peddlers. Just as Daniel swung his right fist up at the big man, the whole scene suddenly froze.
An overwhelming warmth, like hot liquid sunshine, poured down over them. It pulled Daniel’s punch and simultaneously pushed the big man away. For a confused split second, Daniel thought they had been hit by lightning. But before he could really think, he saw the source of that scorching light reflected in the windows across the street.
The wiry man dropped his sunglasses and stepped back in panic. He yelled something and pointed at the couple with both hands in a gesture that said, “I told you.”
The big man stood dumbfounded, mouth agape and eyes wide. Just down the street, the bald man had already dropped the rake and fled through the cemetery gates in a full sprint.
Reflected behind him, growing wide from Angela’s shoulders, Daniel saw two immense, effulgent wings—fanning out at least five meters, feathers aflame. They flooded the street in waves of heat and light.
As the scene began to dim and cool, where there had been threat, there remained only one of the big man’s flip flops, overturned in the middle of the street. Daniel could feel the air again, rolling over him. He turned to Angela, to pull her hands away from her face, down from her eyes.
There, above smeared tears and flush cheeks, the last remnants of the glow still flickered in her eyes. She looked around, then muttered, “How?”
Earlier in his life, even a few short hours ago, he never would have believed it possible. Now he had no doubt. At that precise moment, Daniel finally heard it. Heartbeats—his, hers, its. He could hear and feel the world begin to breathe again.
All at once, clear as a bell, he heard it whisper the one and only sacred word that could explain it all.
Leigh Christopher Stroh began writing creatively as undergraduate at the University of Michigan and has only recently decided that even the best of it was worthless if no one ever read it. Now a retired teacher, professor, and negotiator, he hopes the next chapters of his life will find their way to print. Inspired by his wife and two sons, his fiction focuses on the power of faith, love, and God—and the biggest questions of life.
Photo Credit: Basilique du Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre (The Basilica of the Sacred Heart). Photograph by Leigh Stroh