The Reinvention of Love

first bitter taste of darkness.

HE IS MY NEIGHBOUR. We live two doors apart on Notre-Dame-des-Champs. He is also my dear friend. I am also in love with his wife.
    Of Victor’s poetry I can say that nothing is better. Of his plays, nothing is worse. It is prudent of him, perhaps, to have recently become a novelist. But whatever he does he is wildly successful, driven by an appetite for glory that I envy and admire. I like to think that my glowing reviews of his poetry have helped to make him so famous. Certainly our friendship has blossomed because of my praise. It has also inspired my own writing and I have dedicated the first volume of my poems to Victor. Friendship is a consolation to me. I believe in its properties as some believe in religion.
    But it doesn’t seem to have helped my book sales.
    Have I mentioned already that I am in love with Victor’s wife, Adèle? To say that this complicates the friendship for me is an understatement. But for Victor, who knows nothing of my passion for Adèle, our friendship remains joyful and uncomplicated.
    The Hugos have four children, the last, little Adèle, my goddaughter, was born just a few months ago. Their house is noisy and crowded, alive with laughter and schemes. I delight in its tumult after the calm seas of my own empty domicile.
    Tonight, after my rather invigorating day in the countryside duelling with Monsieur Dubois, I enter to find Victor and Adèle in the kitchen with two men. There is a jug of wine onthe table. The men are drinking and pacing. Adèle sits in a chair with a large sheet of paper spread out on her lap. Several of the children run through the kitchen at intervals, chasing each other with a butterfly net and shrieking like birds at the zoo.
    I am so often at the Hugos’ house that it has long ceased to be necessary for me to knock at the door and wait to be admitted. I just walk in.
    “Charles,” says Victor, when he sees me standing in the kitchen doorway. “We are plotting. Come and help us.” He claps me on the back and passes his own glass of wine to me. “I think you know Theo and Luc.”
    The young men who hang on the genius of Victor Hugo look indistinguishable to me. Theo could be Luc could be Henri could be Pascal. They are interchangeable, these admirers, and the great poet treats them with benevolence, but he uses them like servants.
    I nod at the men, who glance my way briefly and then return their rapt attention to Victor.
    “Here,” says Adèle, patting the chair beside hers. “Come and join me.” She looks up with her beautiful brown eyes and just the suggestion of a smile on her lips. I sit down. Our heads are a whisper apart. She has her hair up tonight. Often she does this so hastily that the twists of dark hair look like a nest of glossy sausages sitting atop of her perfectly shaped head.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Marching into battle,” says Victor, fetching a fresh glass and pouring himself some more wine. “Slaying the enemy.”
    I look at the piece of paper on Adèle’s lap. It’s a seating map for the Comédie-Française.
    “The anti-romantics don’t like
Hernani
,” she explains. “There are hecklers every night.”
    “Ignorants,” shouts Victor. The children screech through the kitchen, waving the butterfly net like a gauzy flag.
    Hernani
is the latest of Victor’s wretched plays. This time, themelodrama is about two lovers who poison each other. The irony is not lost on me.
    “We’re planting supporters. Here.” Adèle moves a finger across the drawing of the theatre balcony. “And here.” She moves her finger down to the dress circle and her arm gently grazes mine. I feel her touch all through my body. The jolt is as sharp as being shot.
    “Everyone you can think of must be persuaded to come,” says Victor. “We must outnumber the enemy.”
    “Is it the same hecklers every night then?” I ask.
    “We think so.” Adèle pulls the seating diagram across her lap so that she can move her leg and press it against mine.
    I can’t breathe. I am starting to perspire. The glass of wine trembles in my hand.
    “Charles?” says Victor. He looks over at me and I jerk my knee away from Adèle’s. The seating diagram jumps with the sudden movement.
    “What?”
    “Would you take my wife?”
    “What?” My voice squeaks. I spill some wine on my shoe.
    “To the theatre,” says Adèle, evenly. “He means, would you take me to the theatre?”
    But the look that Victor gives me is a