Liberty features in this because I always imagined her being a nurse in World War I. Parts of this fic were inspired by Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies.
Disclaimer: I don't own Moulin Rouge. The title of this fic is borrowed from a classic novel, but I forgot who wrote it. Shocking, I know.
Brave New WorldChristian James lay on a hospital bed; his head bound up with a ragged bandage, and was sure that he would die there. On either side of him lay an Australian with a crooked grin, now forever widened by a piece of stray shrapnel, and a boy from Leicester with a shattered knee-cap. Someone had wiped his face, but Christian knew he would never be clean again. Mud had soaked beneath his clothes, his skin, and rotted in his bones.
A nurse in an aging grey dress knelt down beside the Australian, wisps of pale blonde hair escaping from beneath her cap. She had a thin, drawn face worn away by time and worry, and she must have been nearing forty at least, but beneath it Christian saw the flicker of someone who might have once been pretty. Pretty like-
No. No, this woman was nothing like her.
Watery light dribbled through the hospital window and shed light onto the nurse's face. She was vaguely familiar, though Christian could not think where he might have seen her before. His head throbbed as it shifted on the pillow, and he let out a low groan. In an instant, the nurse was beside him, her expression shifting into one of concern.
"No, I'm fine," Christian managed. He had certainly seen her before. "Excuse me, but have we…" he trailed off.
The nurse frowned. "Pardon, monsieur," she murmured. "Je ne parle pas anglais."
Christian groaned again, this time with frustration. French. Parisian, even, now that he recognised her accent. "I'm sorry," he answered in French that was cracked with disuse. "But have we met before?"
The nurse shrugged. "I doubt it, monsieur. I've never been to England." She pushed some wheat-coloured hair behind her ear, seeming disinterested in anything but the bandage on Christian's forehead. "So unless you've been to Paris, you couldn't have met me. But then…" She grinned, showing some missing teeth beneath her chapped lips. "I've known so many men."
"As a nurse I suppose you would."
The nurse shook her head, pushing some stray curls behind her ears. "Oh, I've only been a nurse since the war began. I was a dancer before that, at the Moulin Rouge. I guess you've heard of it, if you've been to Paris."
Christian glanced at her, startled. "The Moulin Rouge? But that closed after…" His thoughts grew clouded. "Satine died."
"You knew Satine?" the nurse said with disbelief. "But how… oh!" she exclaimed suddenly. "You're Christian, of course! I'm Marianne Boulanger, but I was called Liberty then. I don't expect you to remember me." She pursed her lips. "You know, Satine wasn't the only one of us who died."
"Really?" Christian asked, feigning interest. He tried to recall Satine's face, but the flash of ivory and ruby he remembered did not seem real in such a uniform grey. It was if she belonged to another age. "Who else?"
"Travesty, Tattoo, China Doll, Schoolgirl," Marianne rattled off, counting them on her fingers. She paused suddenly. "Harlequin. Oh, God… she jumped off the roof the day the Moulin closed. Antoinette found her body in the garden." The blonde bowed her head, twisting her hands in her lap. "Tattoo was hanged, but I don't know what for. I'm not sure how the others died."
The names stirred no memories in Christian's mind, only a series of half-remembered facts that never amounted to a face. How could their deaths have an impact when they had meant nothing to him in life? He had never watched the girls, spoken to them, heard them laugh. They remained what they had always been, a swirl of colour with names he constantly forgot.
"Hey," Marianne broke in, disturbing his thoughts. "It might interest you to know that Juno met the Duke a few years ago. She's his mistress. I heard she had a child, and that she's living in a big house in England."
Christian shifted. "What? The Duke? But… Satine's dead, I thought…"
Marianne smiled. "Once again you think Satine's the only woman in the world. But don't worry. Juno's got a bigger bust than Satine did and a far stronger stomach." She laughed, showing a streak of cruelty. Then her face fell. "You know, others had consumption too, not just Satine. Travesty, Polka Dot, Garden Girl, all of them. And no one helped, because everyone only noticed the two of you!" She spat out the final words like an accusation.
"I'm sorry," Christian stammered. "I never noticed… I mean, I was… I was blind," he said finally.
"I know," Marianne said gently. "When you're in love you think you're invincible. That the world exists for you two alone, and nothing else matters because no one ever loved the way you did." She gave a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. "It all seems so silly now, doesn't it?" The former dancehall girl moved away to tend the wound of the man from Leicester.
She was right. She had to be right. On the day of Satine's funeral Christian had been shocked, angry even, to see people laughing on the street. Satine was dead, didn't they realise the world had ended?
But the world didn't end. Not on that day. Christian returned to England, to London, to a chair in his father's office. He wrote business letters, sat in on meetings and made tidy calculations in his ledger, charting the progress of money made. The world ended in August, 1914, when young men began signing up to defend ideals only to then find out they had never existed.
Maybe that was why love stories could only be told in the past tense. A childish, nostalgic time of light and fairytales. Because how could a story exist in such a broken world?
So, Satine. Perhaps it was better that she was dead. In dying on a stage scattered with rose petals she had become immortal, rather than another anonymous wife in a London apartment, mourning a husband blown to bits on a Flanders field. Ten mothers could lose their sons in a single burst of machine gun fire. They would be sent a badge to pin to their lapels. A general would get a slap on the back. All would toast and call it progress.
So why would one death make any difference? Tell our story, Christian. But there was so much more to tell. A dead courtesan and her lover meant nothing when men walked into the mist, guns held high, never to return. There was no room for fairy stories.
Outside the machine guns applauded, the shells exploded their chorus and grenades whizzed in triumph as little boys lay scattered in trenches filled to the brim with mud, smiling their final praise.
The great and wonderful human race.