The Reinvention of Love

my skin.
    I do remember George in love again, years later. I remember sitting with her and the Polish composer, Frédéric Chopin, in the Jardin du Luxembourg. It is spring. We are sitting on chairs in the sun near the orchard where Adèle and I used to walk so long ago. Frédéric and George are lovers. I have come to meet them, to walk out with them, but as Chopin is sickly and tireseasily we have settled on these chairs in the spring sun so he can rest.
    For a while we talk, and then we don’t, just listen to the wind in the trees overhead. Chopin coughs occasionally, a sharp retort, like a rifle. The wind drags the branches of the trees across the blue patch of sky. The noise is like the sea on the shingle, a noise I remember from my childhood.
    My memories, as I write this down, are often out of sequence, out of time. It does not matter to me that events have slipped their chronology. There is a natural order to things, and I am following that now. Recollection is exactly that, a re-collection. And so I have added this later memory of George and Frédéric because it belongs to the group of memories that encompass my friendship with her.
    By the time we sat together in the Jardin du Luxembourg George and I had known each other a long time. Our companionship was an easy one. Old friends are as easy with each other as new lovers.
    The wind in the trees was the whisper of water on stone. It was the breath of blood in the veins. It was a place where two novelists, George and I, felt perfectly comfortable. A place we had worked hard to get to – in our individual work, and in our friendship. A place entirely without words.

VICTOR HAS A LOVER. She is an actress. Her name is Juliette Drouet and Victor met her when she was playing the part of Princess Negroni in his play,
Lucrèce Borgia
.
    I did not get this information from Adèle, whom I still have not seen since I went into hiding, but from George Sand, who says it is the talk of Paris. She tells me that Juliette has become Victor’s mistress, and that they are very much in love. No mention of my Adèle and how she must be feeling about this. But I can guess that she will not be happy, and I can hope that this new situation might inspire her to finally leave her husband and be with me.
    It is too late to see Juliette Drouet in
Lucrèce Borgia
, but Victor, who is alarmingly prolific these days, has written a new play,
Marie Tudor
, in which his mistress appears with Mademoiselle George, the famous actress, who was once the mistress of Napoleon.
    I buy a ticket for opening night.
    It is hard not to think of that other night, it seems like ages ago now, when Adèle and I went to see
Hernani
at the same theatre. How excited I was, setting out on that evening’s adventure. How my hands shook as I shaved and dressed in anticipation of seeing my beloved.
    Now I shave and dress slowly, sluggishly, in my little room at the top of the Hôtel de Rouen. The Hotel of Ruin. There is nothing to hurry my heart along the streets to the Comédie-Française. Nothing to spark my blood as I squeeze along the row and take my seat in the middle of the first balcony. Adèle is not beside me, and although I scan the seats in front of me, and down in the dress circle, I do not see her. Why would she come to see her husband’s mistress on the stage? But I look for her anyway. It is a force of habit at this point, to look for her, to hope she is nearby.

    Juliette Drouet

    Marie Tudor
is a play about the British monarchy. Thereare only three characters: Queen Mary of England; Lady Jane Grey, who was Queen for just nine days; and the executioner who beheads her. Juliette Drouet plays Lady Jane, and it is clear from the first few moments she is on stage that she is not a good actress. She mumbles her lines and keeps her head bowed, as though she’s looking for something she has accidentally dropped on the floor of the stage. It doesn’t help her cause that Mademoiselle George, despite being a woman of middle years, is still vibrant and beautiful and is such a magnificent actress. I almost feel sorry for the hapless Juliette. But then I remember Adèle and I take delight in the bad performance, and in the hisses the audience delivers to the young woman.
    Victor is in the lobby after the play is over. He is blocking my route to the door and so I slink behind a pillar and wait for him to leave. But he seems intent on talking to the audience as they exit the theatre, scanning the crowd for