And silently they led her back to the restaurant.
The invisible Paris had left their table because the magic circle had been broken.
With the serious and comic visage of a drunken Cerberus, a scaled-down Cerberus with a misbegotten moustache, Propr sat guarding the food and wine. Propr was fairly drunk now, and half stood when they returned. And when all were seated again it soon became clear that the Arcadian charm they had unknowingly woven about them, because of talking about it, had vanished, blown away by the gentle breezes.
The charm hovered over another circle three streets away where friends were half way through a delightful dinner, outside a celebrated restaurant. Poets, novelists, film-makers, and critics, they briefly touched on the merits and demerits of a recent translation of Virgil’s Eclogues. They tore it apart, then passed on to the subject of a sensational new film, without being touched by the Arcadian magic drifting about them in the breeze.
The invisible Paris, who hates disasters, scenes, misery, cheerlessness, funerals, break-ups, divorces, arguments, bad taste and bawdy jokes, had also flown away from the film crew’s table. Upon their return none of them attempted to take up the broken discussion. They all sat around gloomily staring at the plates of partially devoured food, with an absence of enchantment in the air.
The magic had gone. Nothing more now could be drawn out of the Arcadian dream. The ideal would not reveal itself where there is no magic, where there is no sense of communion and good cheer.
And so the breeze changed. The flautist quietly crept away. The acrobats somersaulted into the dark. Harlequin vanished into his element. Some gypsy girls lingered, and pursued, here and there, in plaintive tones, the coins of sympathy. Jim called for the bill. Lao stared at a silvery light that was hovering in the breeze. He was not aware of what he was looking at. Mistletoe was relieved that she didn’t have to speak or to elucidate her private Arcadia. Riley was pleased too, because in spite of having heard the word so many times, she didn’t have the faintest idea what it referred to, or what it meant. All she could think about was swimming in the blue seas of summer.
The bill was paid, and in silence the crew made their way back to the hotel. They went to their various lonelinesses and dreams. They went to their shabby little rooms that were still redolent of the cheap sprays that disguised previous encounters.