The Reinvention of Love

trees without comment. Our game belonged to those halcyon days before I told Victor of my affair with Adèle. There’s no point in even mentioning the apple names now. We walk past the Great Unknown. Both of us look at it, and both of us look away.
    “Is that it?” I ask Adèle. “Is that why you haven’t come to see me, or sent word of how you are? Is that why you’re so agitated now?”
    Adèle stops on the path. “Victor’s mistress is retaliation for my affair,” she says. “But it’s made him happy.”
    “Happier than we were?”
    “Were?”
    “You haven’t come to see me, Adèle.” I don’t mean to, but I sound petulant as a child. “I have nothing but memories these days.”
    “Isn’t that what we’re left with in the end anyway?”
    “No.” I think of my morning routine in the Hotel de Rôuen, the comfort ritual bestows. “We could have a life together reinforced with small gestures, kindness and tenderness. We could have a life of shared experiences.”
    “Could we?” Adèle puts her hand on my arm. “I’ve given you nothing but scraps, Charles.”
    But they were beautiful scraps. They were scraps made from the finest lace. I think of her wedding veil, folded and tied with ribbon, kept in my desk drawer with her letters.
    There was a time when I would have buried my hands inAdèle’s hair, when I would have begged her to come away with me, but something has happened to me in her absence. I have spent months in solitary confinement, writing my novel. My thoughts have become solitary thoughts, my movements solitary movements. I have been writing about my love for Adèle, and perhaps, in some strange way, the writing has replaced the actual love.
    “You can’t do this any more.” I say it for her.
    “No. I can’t do it any more.”
    The sun goes behind a cloud (how appropriate) and the air blows cold across my skin. Adèle’s hand on my arm feels heavy, and I want to throw it off, throw her off and storm down the path, disappear into the trees. But I understand everything. I am weary with the burden of understanding everything.
    “It’s not fair to you,” says Adèle. “You could marry.”
    “Please,” I say, to stop her from continuing along this line. I am an ugly man. I have a sex the size of a snail. Most people don’t like me, certainly not after they get to know me. I am arrogant and reckless and foolish. Sometimes I change my mind about what I am saying in mid-sentence. I can write moderately well, but that isn’t enough to save me. “I will never love anyone as I love you.”
    “Nor I.” Adèle takes her hand from my arm and I already miss her touch so acutely that my eyes tear up. How will I bear it? I am a weak man and not possessed of great strength of character. I am not equipped to handle the abandonment of love. Because of my secret I will probably never find someone who accepts me as Adèle has accepted me.
    Later, of course, I can see that Adèle had no choice. She will be punished for her affair with me all her remaining days, by Victor’s infidelities and his flaunting of them. She cannot leave her children, or the financial security of her marriage. The selfish thing would have been to hang on to me. It was actually an act of generosity to release me.
    But now all I feel is the dull smack of grief, knocking me to my knees in the gravel.
    Adèle kneels beside me, wraps her arms around me.
    “Don’t cry, my love,” she says. “I’m so sorry that I’ve hurt you. I will never forgive myself for that.”
    My sobs make talking difficult, even if there were something I could bear to say. I lean into her last embrace, and shut my eyes.
    This is what I’ve learned about life – that things go on as they begin. Adèle and I never had enough time to be together, and in retrospect I can see that it was only going to get worse. The situation was stronger than we were. It was only ever going to end the way it did, with both of us on our knees.
    We parted there, in the orchard. I stood up and went one way down the path. She stood up and went another way. The day, ironically, brightened.
    But just as animals are restless when they’re ill or anxious, I couldn’t settle. I couldn’t go back to the Hôtel de Rouen and resume my work. Writing requires a certain kind of peace, the reassurance that one can leave this world to enter the world of the book and return to find things more or less the same. I was in too much distress to be able to trust in