"Madam, who exactly are you? I genuinely have no recollection of you!"
"Oh, Lucian, how can you say that! You said you'd love me forever!"
"My apologies, I seem to have said that to many women… both on and off the stage."
"God! How can you be so cruel, to grant me such a man, such a fate!"
"Madam, if you have nothing else, may I go upstairs?"
"It's alright if you don't accept me, but we have a son… I'm dying, and he still needs someone to care for him."
"Madam…"
"Please call me Ilena, Ilena Richard—do you truly not remember that name? You said I was your only true love!"
"Alright, Ilena, you just said it yourself, that's God's responsibility… so you should either send him to a charity home?"
"Heavens, how can you be so heartless! Lucian… you ungrateful wretch…"
"Hey, Bernard, do I pay 90 francs a month in rent just for you to stand there and watch this woman go crazy at me?"
…
Amidst the woman's screams, Bernard, the tall and burly doorman of An Tan Street No. 12, dragged her out of the lobby and pushed her down the steps.
The woman's clothes were already tattered and old, and they immediately ripped open in several places from the pebbles. Fortunately, she had other garments underneath, so she wasn't completely exposed on the street.
Lionel watched it all unfold before his eyes, dumbfounded.
His neighbor from the 5th floor—and the protagonist of this drama, Lucian de Pincay—smiled faintly at him: "Leon, I'm truly sorry to have made you witness such a spectacle. You know, there are too many women like this. Usually, they corner me by the theater, but this crazy woman somehow got my address…"
Lionel: "…"
He then asked the question on his mind: "You truly don't know this Ilena Richard?"
Lucian shrugged: "Perhaps I do, perhaps I don't… Does it matter? There are too many women in Paris—let's go upstairs."
Lionel looked back at the apartment door. The two dark oak panels were tightly shut, with only a few piercing cries from the woman seeping through the crack.
As Lucian and Lionel ascended the stairs, he talked incessantly about his "woman wisdom":
"Leon, I'm telling you, women are always the same. When you first meet them, they're like daisies—shy, fragrant, lovely. A little watering and they blossom beautifully. But once you pick her, she becomes a poppy—clinging, intense, and eventually gives you a splitting headache."
"Didn't you just see? She said we have a child? Ha! Do you believe such talk? In Paris, nine out of ten women who say 'we have a child' have no idea who the father is, and the other one is taking you for a fool!"
"I joined the theater at seventeen, and there's never been a shortage of skirts around me. You know, people on stage have great charm, and women in the audience fall fast and cool down just as quickly."
"I'm not saying they're all bad. Parisian women, they're just too easily moved by sweet talk, too easily mistake a bed for a vow. The problem is, us men… how can we remember all the lips we've kissed? What kind of memory would that take?"
"I never actively deceive women, Leon. I just let them misunderstand—they choose to believe. I say 'I'll love you forever,' and she truly believes it; I say 'you're the only one,' and she truly thinks she's a queen. But I have hundreds of 'only ones' in Paris, which one am I supposed to remember?"
"I'll tell you from experience—the more fiercely a woman argues, the more tattered her clothes, the more miserably she cries, the more it shows she's worthless. A truly distinguished woman would never wail at your doorstep. She'll make you regret, but she won't let you see her tears."
"So I say, this place, Paris, has women as numerous as raindrops. When it rains, you hide. When the sun comes out, you go out and bask. But if you stand in the rain pretending to be profound, you'll only end up soaked and laughed at."
"Damn it, she said her name was 'Ilena,' I really don't remember—but there's a recent novel where the heroine is also named 'Ilena,' and the hero, guess what he's called? And what does he do?"
Lionel was about to answer when they reached the 5th floor, where they lived.
Lucian didn't wait for Lionel to speak, nor did he intend to reveal the answer to Lionel. Instead, he walked directly to room 503 and gently knocked on the door.
Soon, the door to room 503 opened, and a woman's voice came from inside: "It's a wonder you still remember me…"
Lucian stepped into room 503, and amidst the woman's surprised cry, he lifted her into his arms—from Lionel's perspective, he could only see constantly kicking white calves and red women's shoes on her feet.
"Petty, how could I forget you? You are my only one! You are the love of my life! It's just that the theater has been a bit busy lately…"
"Greenhight will be back in 1 hour…"
"1 hour? Heavens, that's not even enough time for me to savor your dessert…"
With a "bang," the door closed, and the rest of the conversation could no longer be heard.
"This is Paris?" Lionel could only lament that at the end of the 19th century, Paris's openness was absolutely at the forefront of the world; even a hundred years later, few countries could catch up.
However, all this also gave him a huge inspiration—an inspiration that could perfectly handle Georges Charpentier's commission for "Modern Life."
After dinner, Lionel sat down at his desk, spread out his manuscript paper, drew a quill from the inkwell, drained the excess ink, and then wrote the title of his new work in the center of the top line of the manuscript paper:
"Letter from an Unknown Woman"
Ilena Richard, who had just been Entangled Lucian, longed for recognition and pity from Lucian. Her chosen method was to cast aside all her dignity, embracing Lucian's leg in public, hoping to stir a flicker of sympathy in him.
And her opposite, wasn't that the protagonist of Stefan Zweig's novel "Letter from an Unknown Woman"?
Both fell in love with a passionate and forgetful man, both were never remembered by the man, both had a child with this man, and both revealed everything to the man at the last moment of their lives—
However, the protagonist of "Letter from an Unknown Woman" stubbornly preserved her dignity until the very last moment of her life, and delivered a "fatal blow" to the writer "R," her lifelong unrequited love, thoroughly engraving herself in his cold heart, becoming an inescapable nightmare for the rest of his life.
Although Zweig was Austrian, and "Letter from an Unknown Woman" took place in Vienna—Lionel felt that this story might be more suitable to take place in Paris now.
This promiscuous Paris, this fickle Paris, this Paris of unrequited love, even unrecognized love!
This is Paris!