🌫️ Beneath the Clock of Montparnasse

Intro:

There are places in Paris where time seems reluctant to move — where the air itself hums with memory.
For some, it’s the Seine at sunrise. For others, the whisper of cafés just before closing.
For Élise and Julien, it was the clock of Montparnasse.

Each evening, when the trains hissed and sighed, and the city dissolved into reflections of rain and light, the clock stood above them — patient, eternal, quietly counting the seconds they’d lost and found.

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The Story:

The first time Élise saw him, she was seventeen.
The station smelled of iron, rain, and coffee. A thousand voices moved around her, yet one stood still — a young man with a sketchbook in his hands, watching the departure board as though it were a horizon.
He drew the travelers, the trains, the clock. And, unknowingly, her.

She never spoke to him that day. She only noticed that when the train to Bordeaux pulled in, he looked up and smiled — not at her, but toward something unseen.
And then he was gone.

Years folded and unfolded like paper.
Élise became a translator, trading in words she would never write herself. The memory of that boy beneath the clock faded like an old photograph — until, one gray afternoon, she found herself once again at Montparnasse, years older, carrying a folder full of manuscripts and a heart she had almost forgotten how to use.

The station hadn’t changed much. The same tiles. The same echo of footsteps. The same patient clock.

And there, leaning against a column, sketchbook in hand, was Julien.

At first, she thought it was a dream, a mirage of memory. But when he turned, his eyes caught hers with the unmistakable shock of recognition.

“Excuse me,” he said, voice warm and uncertain. “Have we met before?”

She smiled faintly. “I think so. Beneath this very clock.”

He laughed, soft and disbelieving. “Then we must have been waiting for the same train all these years.”

They sat at the café inside the station, sharing a small table by the window. The rain began again — delicate, rhythmic, like a metronome for their words.
He told her he was still drawing, though he sold advertising sketches now instead of dreams. She told him about her translations, her work with forgotten poets. They both avoided speaking of what had happened in between — the lovers, the cities, the small betrayals of time.

When the station loudspeaker announced the departure of the 18 : 45, they both paused.
“That was my train back then,” he said.
“And now?”
He looked at her. “Now I’m not in such a hurry.”

They began to meet every Friday at six — always beneath the clock. Sometimes they brought books, sometimes silence. Each meeting felt borrowed, as if time allowed them a brief reprieve from its usual cruelty.

One evening, he placed his sketchbook before her. On the page was a drawing of the station from above — every traveler in motion except for two, standing still beneath the clock.

“You kept this?” she asked.
“I kept everything,” he said. “Even when I tried to forget.”

She touched the edge of the page carefully, as though it might dissolve. “Why draw me?”
“Because you looked like you were about to leave, but didn’t.”

Her breath caught. “Maybe I was waiting.”

“For what?”
“For something that never came.”

He smiled then — a small, sad curve of his lips. “Or maybe it just came late.”

The following week, she didn’t arrive. Nor the week after.

Julien continued to come, sketchbook in hand. The station remained alive around him — arrivals, departures, hellos, goodbyes — but the clock, patient and indifferent, marked only absence.
He drew her from memory: the curve of her shoulder, the tilt of her head, the way she had once stared at the world as if translating it in real time.

One evening, as the winter trains screamed through the dark, he found an envelope beneath the bench where they used to sit. His name was written in the delicate hand of someone who measured words before setting them free.

> “Julien,
I didn’t mean to vanish. Sometimes life departs before we do.
My mother is ill in Lyon. I couldn’t say goodbye — not again beneath that clock.
If the universe allows, I will return at six on the first Friday of spring.
— Élise”



He folded the letter carefully, as one would hold a fragile truth.
From then on, each Friday, he returned. The station changed with the seasons: winter’s frost, spring’s faint warmth, summer’s glare, autumn’s smoke. Yet the clock never faltered.

Spring arrived with hesitant sunlight.
The first Friday came — and she wasn’t there.
He waited until the trains thinned, until the last café closed, until the city fell silent.
She didn’t come.

Years passed. He still came, not out of hope, but habit. Beneath the clock, he drew strangers. Faces blurred with time; only hers stayed clear.

Then, one evening, as the bells marked six, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Am I late?”

He turned. It was her. Older, yes — but still unmistakably her. Her eyes carried both apology and relief.
He stood, not trusting his voice. She smiled faintly, lifting the same sketchbook he had once given her. “I thought you might want this back.”

He opened it — every page was filled. His drawings, her translations written in the margins. Between art and language, they had somehow continued speaking.

“I never stopped coming,” he whispered.
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I could find you.”

The clock above them struck again — six times, slow and deliberate. The sound reverberated through the station like a heartbeat.
She reached for his hand. “Do you think time forgives us?”
He looked at her — the lines of her face, the years they had lost and found again. “No,” he said softly. “But maybe it forgets.”

They stayed until the platform emptied.
For the first time, neither of them felt the need to speak. The silence was complete, but not lonely.
When the lights dimmed and the rain began again, they stood beneath the clock, letting the rhythm of drops and seconds blend.

Outside, the city waited — unchanged, indifferent, alive.


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Conclusion:

Time rarely grants second chances. Yet sometimes, beneath an indifferent clock or in the hush of a crowded station, it softens.
It pauses.
It remembers.

Élise and Julien learned that love doesn’t defy time — it endures it. It lives quietly in the spaces between departures, in the seconds that stretch just long enough for two hearts to find each other again.

And as long as the clock of Montparnasse continues to tick, someone will always be waiting beneath it — not for a train, but for a promise the years forgot to break.




Read more👉https://www.bulbapp.io/p/44a3500b-a9cd-4fe4-a4cc-8b9405df0567/-desires-in-silence