The Reinvention of Love

do.
    My
Lundis
are short, well-researched biographies of great artists and philosophers – some living, many already dead. Each one takes a week to construct and write. They are wildly popular. Every so often, when I have written enough of them to be collected into a volume, they are sold as a book. My
Lundis
easily outsell my poetry and my “vague” novel,
Volupté
.
    I find George outside the Eglise Saint-Thomas d’Aquin. She walks with me under my umbrella towards the row of waiting cabs. We are to ride to the burial of Marie Dorval in the Montparnasse cemetery.
    “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know you were close to her.”
    George hooks her arm through mine. Her face is streaked with rain and tears.
    “Marie was so lovely,” she says. “It never occurred to me that she would die. Her beauty should have exempted her.”
    George’s comment makes me smile. “If that were true,” I say, “then I would be long dead. If one could be spared death for beauty, then surely one would also be condemned to death for ugliness.”
    George squeezes my arm. “Ride with me to the cemetery,” she says. “It has been so long since we’ve been in each other’s company, and I have missed you.”
    But when we reach the road there is room for only one person in the first cab in line. It is raining so hard now that I fear George will be soaked to the skin while we wait foranother cab to round the corner.
    “I’ll meet you there,” I say, helping her up into the carriage.
    I don’t remember much of Marie Dorval except her close association with George. I saw her in several plays, but I cannot remember now what those plays were about. I do recall that in one of them she made a spectacular swoon backwards down a staircase, and the audience gasped in fear for her safety.
    Love, I think. That’s what love is – a backwards swoon down a darkened staircase. Well, no more of that for me, and no more of anything for poor Marie Dorval.
    I still have the green umbrella with the yellow handle. A few comment on it. Many stare at it when I raise it. But I don’t care. Let them mock me. It still keeps the rain off my body.
    The next cab clatters up and I jerk open the door and climb inside. Someone is already in the cab, sitting on the small bench by the opposite window. A man in black, a top hat on his lap. I close my door. The driver flicks his whip at the horse and we lurch away from the church. It takes me a moment to recognize the profile of the man beside me, perhaps the same moment that it takes him to recognize me, for we both stiffen in apprehension at the sudden realization.
    It is Victor Hugo who shares my cab. I’m not sure why Juliette Drouet is not with Victor. He must have been uncharacteristically chivalrous and dispatched her to the cemetery in an earlier cab.
    I do not see Adèle any more. I do not know how she is, what she feels, what she does with her days. I do not see Adèle, and I blame Victor now for everything. It has not helped that he has become even more famous, that his literary ascension has been swift and sure. He has ended up with everything – fame, a family, a mistress. I do not understand why he should hate me as passionately as I hate him. I have lost our particular battle. But Victor obviously blames me for something. Perhaps his life is not as perfect as I imagine. He stares out of his window in thecab. I stare out of mine. The rain smears the glass and the streets wash by, each one leaf-strewn and wet, dark as evening.
    If I were a younger man I would perhaps have made a pretence of conversation. We could have had a literary banter, or talked about the overwhelming sadness of Marie Dorval’s death. If I were a braver man I might have brought up Adèle and asked after her welfare, told Victor something (what?) to let him know that my love for her remains virtually unchanged.
    But as one grows older, one’s character is reinforced by one’s weaknesses, not by one’s strengths, and if Victor plans to remain silent during our carriage ride, I am too much of a coward to break that silence.
    The cab rocks along the narrow street, and it strikes me that I am still in awe of Victor Hugo, perhaps more than ever now because of his greatly increased fame. What I want to ask him, more than anything else, is whether he has read my novel, and what he thinks of it.
    Pitifully, what I want to ask him is if he liked it.
    Oh, how I hate this need in myself. Almost as much as I hate the man who could