The Reinvention of Love

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 tobe 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