The Reinvention of Love (19 page)
My secretary leaves in the evenings, before my supper, and often I will walk out with him. We stroll through the Jardin du Luxembourg if the weather is good, tossing around ideas,
detailing the tasks for the following day.
On the days when my routine unrolls without disturbance, I rise at five in the morning, shave without a mirror (so I do not have to look at myself) and don a dressing gown. I have become bald in my later years and so I wear a black skull-cap whenever I leave the house, and a black bandana inside the house. I wrap it around my head like a turban and I must say that, in that and my silk dressing gown, I look exactly like my mother. The resemblance is so striking that others have remarked on it as well.
I work from six to eight, and then I dress. If Adèle is awake, she will bring me a cup of chocolate and some bread. My secretary comes just after nine. At noon I have some tea and brioche, most of which I feed to the cats. In the evenings, after my secretary has gone home, I have a supper of bread and cheese, soup, meat and vegetables. I mix my wine with water. Once in a while I have a slice of almond cake that I buy from a baker on the rue de Fleurus.
Like my father, I write in the margins of my books. But where he used that space to carry on a conversation with the authors, I make notes that offer a shorthand interpretation of the text so that when I am looking for references, I can see, at a glance, whether there is something I will be able to use on that page.
As I have said, my work habits are orderly and comfortable. But that is not all that goes on in my house.
My cook, Adèle, is a drunk. It took me a while to discover this, and when I did, instead of being outraged at her behaviour and casting her out, I felt sorry for her and despaired that she would ever be able to find another situation, so I have kept her on. Sometimes she is so drunk that she forgets to make my supper, and when I go down to the kitchen to enquire politely as to its progress, I find her passed out at the table, snoring noisily, her head laid down on the bare wood.
She steals my wine. Once I caught her handing bottles of it through the kitchen window to one of her lovers, an omnibus conductor.
I must admit that I admire her unrepentance. On her good days she fills my house with flowers from the market. She is nice to the cats. Sometimes she sings to them while she cooks. Whenever she returns from the market they run downstairs to see what little titbit she has brought for them.
If it were only Adèle in my house, I could probably weather her thieving and her drunkenness. But often there are prostitutes living with me as well. Sometimes there is just one, and sometimes as many as three. Don’t misunderstand, they are in my house not because I want them to service me, but rather because they have fallen on hard times and I feel pity for them. I want to offer them a harbour so that they can shelter for a while before venturing back into their calamitous lives. It is Adèle who tells me of these unfortunates, brings them to my house on Montparnasse.
Adèle is one thing. The prostitutes are another. They usually drink. They often fight with one another. Instead of appreciating my kindness, they treat me as though I am an idiot for taking them in, and rebuke me at every turn. One of them, a woman who was nicknamed “The Penguin” and had only one hand, was so rude to my guests that people stopped coming to my house. Even my secretary became nervous about entering. For the month she was there, I kept “The Penguin” confined to the downstairs. Even so, she would shout up through the floorboards, startling my visitors with her crudeness and insults. In the end I couldn’t stand her behaviour and I sent her back to the streets, for which she seemed almost grateful.
I suppose I could take advantage of the prostitutes while they are in my house, but I’m always a little afraid of them and I fear they would laugh at my body when it was revealed to them. I’ve always been a little afraid of prostitutes. I have
sometimes hired one to undress for me, but I have never dared do more than fondle her. So I try to treat the women in my house as ladies, although they are always very suspicious of this, and respond to my ministrations with open hostility. I have had saucepans hurled at me, and vile abuse. My mother’s antiques have been broken. Anything valuable and small enough to carry has been stolen. Still, I persist. On Friday nights I take them all to the theatre, in the vain hope that it will instil some artistic sensibility in them.
At the moment we are mercifully between prostitutes. It is late. My secretary has left for the day and I wait, hopefully, for my supper to be delivered on a tray.
I wait, and wait, and then I trudge down to the kitchen to see what drunken disaster has befallen Adèle.
She is leaning up against the pantry door. Her skirts are twisted and her cap is crooked on her head. There is nothing cooking on the stove, no smell of supper rising from any of the pots.
“Food?” I say, hopefully.
Adèle fixes me with her gaze, then forgets to say anything.
The house feels airy and spacious without the prostitutes. Adèle’s neglect is so familiar as to be almost reassuring.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I will make myself some bread and cheese. I’m not that hungry tonight anyway.” I cut some bread, put several cheeses on a plate.
“Wine?” I ask.
Adèle produces an open bottle from behind her back.
“Sorry,” she says. This scenario has happened so often that apologies are entirely unnecessary, and I feel badly for her when she decides she has to offer one up.
I pour a glass of wine. I take down another glass and pour Adèle one.
“Come and sit with me,” I say, “while I have my supper.”
The kitchen is on the ground floor of the house. It’s always dark in here, even with the evening light fumbling through the
street-level windows. I light a couple of candles, place them in the centre of the table. Then I get a plate for Adèle.
“Thank you.” She helps herself liberally to bread and cheese. We drink our wine.
“I saw another unfortunate,” she says, “down by the river. Off her head with drink. Raving mad.” It pleases Adèle to find women who are worse off than she is. She delights in it.
“Really?” My heart sinks.
“She has an infection.” Adèle thinks for a moment. “No, affliction. She has an affliction.”
“What sort of affliction?”
“The mental sort.”
I chew my bread. “I can’t be having an imbecile here,” I say. “It would be too much work.” I look at her. “For you,” I say. “Remember the woman who imagined she saw rats everywhere? You never had a moment’s peace.”
“This girl is mental only because of the drink.” Adèle holds out her glass and I dutifully fill it up. “And she’s very young, barely older than a child. It would only be for a week or so.”
This is what Adèle says about every prostitute who ends up staying here. More than likely this new girl will remain well over a month.
I sigh. “All right. Tell her to come round and see me.”
“She’ll be here tomorrow morning, monsieur,” says Adèle, brightly.
“What’s her name?”
“Claudine.”
It’s a pretty name. A name full of music and promise. But I have enough experience in these matters to know that Claudine will undoubtedly be thin and sickly, over-rouged, her teeth rotting in her head.
My friends don’t understand why I take these women in, why I keep Adèle in my employ. I can’t explain it to them properly.
Years ago I dreamed of living with Adèle Hugo. I dreamed that she would leave her husband and come away with me, that we would spend the rest of our days together. I remember the prayer I would offer up in the small church where we used to meet.
Please, God, let me live with Adèle
.
I didn’t realize I had to be so specific. I didn’t realize my prayer should have been
Please, God, let me live with Adèle Hugo
.
Adèle has come to me. My prayer has been answered. How could I possibly throw her out? And the prostitutes need help. They need a place to stay. Adèle feels powerful at being able to help them. I feel powerful at being able to help her.
I was afraid that I would die alone and lonely, and now I can be assured that will not happen. My house is full of energy and chaos. We are in full sail on this stormy sea.
“Shall we have some almond cake tonight?” I ask Adèle, refilling her glass.
“It’s in the pantry,” she says, and we stare each other down to see who will get up from the table to fetch it.
The happiness that comes to you is never the happiness you imagine. I never would have dreamed that I would know a one-handed prostitute called “The Penguin”, or that the scent from the flowers Adèle has placed throughout the house would drift up the staircase with enough force to stop my hand above the page while I work.
“There you go,” I say, setting the plate of cake down before Adèle.
She switches the plates around. “No, Monsieur,” she says shyly. “That’s not right. You should have the bigger piece.”
Victor is in exile. He is living with Adèle and his children on the Channel Islands. Apparently his mistress, Juliette Drouet, is also there. He has secured a house for her near his family home.
Needless to say, Victor was a noisy supporter of the Republic. Since his election to the Académie française in 1840 he had become increasingly involved in politics. He campaigned for the Republicans. He spoke out against the death penalty. When Napoleon’s nephew, Napoleon III, seized control of the government and instantly destroyed all the reforms Victor had worked so hard to establish, he was very upset.
Victor does not like to be opposed. I know this better than anybody. And the more famous he has become, the less he likes dissension, the less it agrees with him.
After Victor declared Napoleon III to be a traitor to France, the Hugos had to leave for Brussels. They then went to the Channel Islands, where they remain. Occasionally, Victor dispatches a political pamphlet on the ruination of France. Even though the pamphlets are banned here, they manage to be smuggled in. The political pamphlets, like all of Victor’s work, are very popular. The last one was called
Napoleon le Petit
.
Of course, it was a shrewd move on Victor’s part to go into exile, because now that he is absent from Paris, he just becomes more beloved, more valuable, in the minds of the people. It is as though he cannot take a wrong step. Everything he does advances his career.
Victor’s exile, sadly, means Adèle’s exile. It is fitting, I suppose, as the end of our love affair has felt like an exile anyway. Any small hope I might have had about Adèle’s return to me has been dashed to pieces on the rocky shores of Guernsey.
I stay in. I go out. My habits, now the habits of years, are reassuring because they belong to me, but they offer less and less comfort. I have a restlessness that I can’t find a way to settle. Even my cook comments on it.
“You’ve got mice in your underclothes,” she says, one day when she comes to deliver my morning chocolate. “Look at you, all scratchy and full of the nerves.”
I have been pacing back and forth in front of the window.
Adèle places the cup of chocolate on my desk without spilling any. She seems remarkably sober this morning.
“I can’t bear to think of the Hugos on the Channel Islands,” I burst out.
I picture my Adèle walking the windswept coastal paths, being blown off into the foaming sea. I see her floating on the surf, her hair tangled with seaweed, fish nibbling at her fingers and toes.
“What are the Channel Islands?” asks Adèle. Like most Parisians, she has little interest in the rest of the world.
We pore over the atlas. When my secretary arrives, I send him to the library for additional information. After her initial interest in seeing where the Channel Islands are located on a map, Adèle tires of the research and returns to her kitchen. But I won’t let her be. I hurry down at noon, with my stack of books, thunking them on the kitchen table and making her jump at the stove. I’m out of breath from the stairs and it’s the first time that I realize I get winded from going downstairs as well as up.
