The Reinvention of Love

CHARLES

    IT SEEMS I AM TO DIE AGAIN.
    He slapped my face. I called him a “glorious inferior”. (Not in that order.) And here we are, in this rainy wood in the middle of the working week, trying to kill each other.
    Let me explain.
    I want to tell you everything.
    The board meeting was long and dreary. I was tired. When the senior editor asked me to shorten my article, I objected. I am only a junior writer at the newspaper, but I am much more intelligent than anyone else there, and sometimes I just can’t pretend otherwise. It was careless of me to insult Monsieur Dubois because I know the possible consequences of such an action. And I was not disappointed. He practically sprang across the table to strike my face. His challenge could be heard by people walking outside on the crowded boulevard.
    Antoine is my reluctant second. He is out of the cab already, the wooden case with the duelling pistols tucked securely under one arm. “Come on,” he says. “They’re waiting.” And, through the open door of the cab I can see Pierre Dubois and his second, the print runner, Bernard, standing under a straggly stand of trees at the edge of the wood.
    “I haven’t even had my breakfast,” I say, struggling to open my umbrella before I step down onto the soggy ground.
    “Get out,” says Antoine, unsympathetically, and I feel like challenging
him
to a duel for his insolence. I snap open my umbrella.
    “Please be serious,” he says.
    “What?”
    “That.” He gestures towards the green umbrella with the yellow handle. I had thought it very dashing when I purchased it from a Paris shop last week. But I can see that here, out in nature, it looks a bit ridiculous.
    “Lower it,” he says.
    “I will not. I don’t mind being killed, but I refuse to get wet.”
    We march off moodily into the wood.
    Pierre Dubois also appears disheartened by my umbrella. It seems to make him feel sad for me, and perhaps he has second thoughts about shooting such a pitiful creature.
    “You can offer me a profound apology,” he says, “and we can forget all about this.”
    We are writers. We are meant to brandish pens, not pistols. I regret my insult. Pierre obviously regrets his challenge. I could apologize and we could share a cab back to the city and resume the business of making a newspaper.
    But words are not easy to set aside. They make a shape in the mouth, a shape in the air. When something is said, it exists, and it is not easily persuaded again into silence. The truth is that I
do
think Pierre Dubois is my inferior. The truth is that I annoy him beyond reason and he would like to fire me, but he can’t because the readers are so fond of my reviews.
    “I take nothing back,” I say.
    “You are a fool,” says Pierre.
    “You are a bigger fool.”
    Now we can’t wait to shoot each other. Antoine opens the case and loads the pistols. Bernard has disappeared behind a tree to relieve himself.
    The gun is heavy and smells of scorch and earth. I clutch it to my breast and pace off into the trees, counting the twenty strides under my breath, pausing only once when my umbrella snags in the branches overhead.
    Pierre has challenged me, so I am to shoot first. I stop. I turn. I raise my hand with the pistol in it and sight down my arm. Pierre is partially obscured by scrub. The rain erases his outline. I squint, then I pull the trigger. The gun kicks and smokes, and for a moment I can’t see anything. Someone yells and I’m afraid I have hit Pierre, but when the smoke clears he remains as he was, standing in the rain in the middle of some bushes.
    Now it is Pierre’s turn.
    The bright green umbrella will help guide the lead ball to its target, but I refuse to sheath it because I had insisted on bringing it. But what if my stubbornness causes my death? It occurs to me, for the first time, that I am perhaps too wilful for my own good, that I am not helped by my character, that it potentially causes me great harm, and that I should probably fight hard against it.
    “You will get another shot,” says Antoine, appearing suddenly at my side. “Give me the pistol and I’ll reload for you.”
    I pass it to him, and turn so that I can present the full fleshly target of my body to Pierre Dubois.
    It is then that I think of Adèle, and how, if I die, she will weep and despair and be impressed by my courage. So, I had better summon some courage. I take a deep breath and hold it, close my eyes, and brace myself for the sting and the