The Reinvention of Love (4 page)

Adèle has hooked her arm in mine and I clasp it tightly against me, for fear of losing her to the mob.

“It’s like this every night,” she says to me, her lips close to my ear. “Victor has never had such publicity.”

It is no different in the theatre hall. We have seats in the first balcony. I can look around and easily spot Victor’s new bohemian friends, with their long hair and dishevelled clothing. They are in strict contrast to the Classicists, the men, stiff and
starched, their top hats in their laps, the women, gowned and bejewelled. There is shouting and hooting. Many of the bohemians are standing in the aisles, trying to intimidate the patrons as they take their seats.

“Why is there a smell of garlic and sausage?” I ask Adèle.

“Some of our supporters have been here since the afternoon,” she says, “in order to secure the seats. They’ve had to bring their supper with them.” She shifts closer to me, so that the sides of our bodies are touching. “Charles,” she says, “despite the pandemonium, I love how this feels.”

I know what she means. I had dressed slowly, dined hastily, come in a carriage to pick up Madame Hugo at her house. We rode to the theatre together, walked through the lobby like man and wife, have taken our seats as though it is the most familiar thing in the world, to be out together of an evening. It is, in fact, the first evening we have done so, and time shakes out its splendid robes before us.

“Thank God for Victor’s verbosity,” I say. The play is five acts. What with the heckling, we could be here all night.

When the gas lights are dimmed, just before the curtain goes up, Adèle leans over and kisses me on the cheek. Such a simple gesture, and yet the most profound pleasure in the world.

What draws two people together? Is it recognition, shared sympathies? Is it merely an unguarded moment, when they are able to see each other without defences, without reserve? Can one fall into oneself through the attentions of a lover?

Love makes more questions than it answers. But I know this – in those moments with Adèle, I could not imagine feeling more than I did, being other than I was. I could not imagine a world outside our love. What I failed to recognize, perhaps, was that the world we inhabited made no space for us. This night at the theatre, watching Victor’s play, would be the only evening we would ever spend entirely together.

I already know, from many conversations with Victor, and from attending an early rehearsal of the play, what
Hernani
is about.

The story takes place in sixteenth-century Spain. It has political overtones, but the drama is essentially a love triangle among the old, senile Don Ruy Gomez, the young nobleman, Hernani, and the woman they both desire, Doña Sol. Gomez is to marry Doña Sol and Hernani is determined to stop the union, even though it has been contractually agreed upon and can’t be prevented. This particular cage is rattled constantly throughout the five acts of the play, and it grows tiresome to hear Hernani proclaim his love (yet again) to Doña Sol, and to hear her say (yet again) that she would rather die than marry Don Ruy Gomez. Everything hits the same note, and the melodramatic props – torches, disguises, vaults – don’t help matters.

Victor has no subtlety.

But as it turns out, it is a good thing that all the utterances are at such a fevered pitch, otherwise they would be drowned out by the hissing from the Classicists. Practically every speech is interrupted by boos and jeers, and then by the applause and cheering of Victor’s bohemian friends. The actors often have to stop, mid-monologue, to let the noise from the audience subside before beginning their lines again.

I try to pay attention to what’s happening on the stage. I try to listen to the words, watch the frantic, sometimes farcical actions of the characters. I know that Victor will question me about everything later, and I had better be able to give him some firm opinions. But the truth is that I don’t care about the lovers. When Hernani tells Doña Sol (again) of his devotion to her, I want him to shut up. Their relationship is too passive. She is nothing more than a glorified servant, never challenging him, always available to him. She shows much more spirit with Don
Ruy Gomez. I think theirs would be a better marriage.

Maybe because I am in love, other lovers appear fraudulent. Only Adèle and I know the exquisite happiness of true love. Only Adèle and I are fully worthy of its blessing.

That, or Victor can’t write a good drama.

“The heckling makes the play seem more interesting than it is,” whispers Adèle, in a quiet moment. I squeeze her hand. We are always in such agreement, as though what I am thinking in my head is, in fact, a conversation with her.

At the end of the first act, Hernani declares his desire to kill his rival for the love of Doña Sol.

“My vengeance will guide my dagger to your heart,” he says. “Without a sound, it will find its mark.”

“Do you think Victor suspects?” I whisper to Adèle.

“Guesses,” she says.

“What’s the difference?”

“When you suspect, there is evidence. With a guess there is only instinct.”

Hernani’s speech sends a shiver of apprehension through me nonetheless.

At the intermission we dare not leave our seats in the balcony for fear of having to do battle as we make our way along the aisle. There are people yelling on the stairways and down in the lobby. Their voices lift up to reach us. The circular lobby is its own stage, decorated with pillars, all the stairways leading away from it, like spokes fanning out from the hub of a wheel.

I turn in my seat slightly so that I can look at Adèle. She has turned in her seat to look at me. Sometimes we do this for hours at a time. We cannot seem to get enough of each other. Every little thing is fascinating.

“I love your ears,” I say. I can just see the lobes hiding in her hair. They look like pearls.

“I love your eyes,” she says.

“I love
your
eyes.”

We go on like this,
sotto voce
, until the unruly audience have clambered back into their seats and the lights have mercifully dimmed enough that I can run my hand up the inside of Adèle’s thigh, the material of her dress whispering in protest.

She takes my hand, in the dark, and raises it to her mouth, licking each of my fingers slowly and deliberately.

I feel faint, and with my other hand I grip the armrest of my seat to keep from toppling over.

The curtain goes up. The ridiculous action begins again.

The audience appears more spirited after the intermission. I realize they have probably been drinking to fuel their fighting ardour. I suddenly worry about our position near the balcony railing. What if a riot breaks out? We could be thrown over the railing, or trampled to death in our seats. These days, whenever Parisians gather together in a public space, it seems that there is the danger of a riot. I look around nervously.

Hernani gives another tiresome speech about his undying love. A Classicist in the dress circle hurls a cabbage at the stage. Hernani gambols adroitly out of the way. The cabbage lies centre stage and there is a moment when all the actors regard it, as though it possesses miraculous properties, as though it is an oracle they have sudden need to consult.

“Behold the holy cabbage,” I say to Adèle, and she giggles.

Hernani continues with his speech, and Doña Sol, with her back to the audience, kicks the cabbage. It rolls slowly, solemnly across the stage and disappears into the wings.

The audience applauds, and even I find myself grinning. Perhaps this is what I will tell Victor, that the actions of the crowd add drama to the play, that the throngs keep the action passionate and spirited. It is not a distraction to have the hecklers, rather it is an enhancement.

Don Ruy Gomez wants to marry Doña Sol to regain his lost youth. He is sympathetic because of this, but towards the end of the play he becomes more and more demonic. It has to
be thus, I suppose; he has to be blamed for the fate of the lovers. First, Doña Sol, chained to her destiny as the old man’s wife, takes poison, and then Hernani kills himself in response.

“Why doesn’t she just run off?” I say, annoyed at Victor’s churlishness in killing the lovers. And then something else occurs to me. “Do you think I am meant to be Gomez?”

“If you are anyone, my sweet,” Adèle says reassuringly, “you are Doña Sol.”

There is a rush on cabs at the front of the theatre after the play, so we decide to walk partway home. I tuck the fact of the lack of cabs away in my mind to be used, if need be, to explain to Victor why we took so long to travel back to Notre-Damedes-Champs.

Adèle slides her arm through mine. “At last,” she says. “We are free of Victor at last.”

But we will never be free of Victor, I think. Even this, our wonderful night together, has all been in service to Monsieur Ego Hugo. I will take Adèle home and then spend hours sitting up with Victor analyzing every moment of the evening’s performance. I don’t know that I can bear this.

“Do you really love me?” I ask, meaning, would you do anything for me, would you leave your family and begin life again with me?

Adèle stops me in the street, takes my face in her hands. “I couldn’t love you more,” she says. “You set me free. And I especially love you, dear Charles, because you never make undue demands on me.”

We walk along the Seine. The river is oily in the moonlight, flexing between its banks like a wild thing. Aside from a few men fishing by lantern, we are the only people walking the cobblestoned streets. It is very dark. I am a little nervous about thieves, and am glad that I am carrying a small mother-of-pearl dagger concealed on my person. Mother, who is more afraid of thieves than I am, insisted upon it.

Adèle pokes me in the ribs. “You’re not listening to me,” she says.

“Forgive me. I was thinking of how to describe the river.” A river I have seen so many times that my familiarity with it seems to lift it beyond description.

“Don’t become like Victor,” warns Adèle. “He never listens to anything I say either.”

I bristle at the comparison. “I am nothing like Victor,” I say.

Adèle giggles. “That sounded exactly like Victor,” she says.

I am in a bad humour by the time we get into a cab at the Pont Neuf.

But Adèle reaches across me, pulls down the window blinds so that we’re hidden from the driver and the people on the streets. She squeezes my knee. I grab for her breasts. We fall clumsily into each other, our first kiss missing completely.

My churlishness vanishes. The rock of the cab is the sway of our bodies is the rhythm of my heart rocking in its carriage of bone. The invisible streets pass by. Adèle is undoing the buttons on my trousers. I have forgotten my words for the river. I am only here. And love opens me.

THERE IS AN ORCHARD
in the Jardin du Luxembourg where we like to walk. Sometimes we have the children with us, but I prefer it when we are alone, when we are not worried about whether an errant touch or a stolen kiss will be reported, innocently enough, to Victor.

There are hundreds of apple trees in the orchard, and we like to play a game with the names of the different varieties, grouping them into categories. Often we choose a category before we get to the orchard.

“Animals,” says Adèle today.

It is a beautiful late spring afternoon. We are blessedly without the children today. We walk between the trees languidly, our hands brushing against each other, the heat from our two bodies the same temperature as the air that surrounds us. Adèle looks to the left, and I look to the right, reading the names written on the tags at the base of the trees.

“Dog’s Snout,” I say, triumphantly.

“Sheep’s Head,” she says.

It takes a while to find another animal name. I pull her off the path, kiss her deeply. She runs her hands down my back. Someone wanders past and we break apart.

“Mouse,” she says. “Catshead.”

“Mermaid,” I say.

“A mermaid isn’t an animal.”

“It’s half animal.”

“Half fictional animal.”

“Miller’s Thumb,” I say.

“That’s a man.”

“Man is an animal.”

Adèle strokes my arm. “You are hopeless,” she says.

We walk through the orchard. We move through other subjects.

“Love,” says Adèle.

This time I’m the one who wins.

“Perpetuelle,” I say. “Fail Me Never. Open Heart. Everlasting.”

She is left with First and Last, and the rather dubious Neversink.

“Never sink,” she says, dramatically clasping me around the waist. “Float, my sweet darling. Float! Float!”

We pause before the label on a slender tree.

“Why would you want to eat an apple with that name?” I ask.

The tree bears the tag Great Unknown.

“Maybe it’s a description of the taste,” says Adèle.

“Surely they could be more specific than that.” I imagine this apple-namer as a man of melancholy nature, someone who has lost faith in words and yet is still expected to attach them to meaning. But who would propose a name like this? Wouldn’t they just ask someone else to name the apple more appropriately?