Helen Humphreys Three-Book Bundle (45 page)

In memory of my brother, Martin

Le vrai, le vrai seul
.

—Sainte-Beuve

I
T SEEMS
I
AM
to die again.

He slapped my face. I called him a “glorious inferior.” (Not in that order.) And here we are, in this rainy wood in the middle of the working week, trying to kill each other.

Let me explain.

I want to tell you everything.

The board meeting was long and dreary. I was tired. When the senior editor asked me to shorten my article, I objected. I am only a junior writer at the newspaper, but I am much more intelligent than anyone else there, and sometimes I just can’t pretend otherwise. It was careless of me to insult Monsieur Dubois, because I knew the possible consequences of such an action. And I was not disappointed. He practically sprang across the table to strike my face. His challenge could be heard by people walking outside on the crowded boulevard.

Antoine is my reluctant second. He is out of the cab already, the wooden case with the duelling pistols tucked securely under one arm. “Come on,” he says. “They’re waiting.” And through the open door of the cab, I can see Pierre Dubois and his second, the print runner Bernard, standing under a straggly group of trees at the edge of the wood.

“I haven’t even had my breakfast,” I say, struggling to open my umbrella before I step down onto the soggy ground.

“Get out,” says Antoine unsympathetically, and I feel like challenging
him
to a duel for his insolence.

I snap open my umbrella.

“You can’t be serious,” he says.

“What?”

“That.” He gestures towards the green umbrella with the yellow handle. I had thought it very dashing when I purchased it from a Paris shop last week. But I can see that here, out in nature, it looks a bit ridiculous.

“Lower it,” he says.

“I will not. I don’t mind being killed, but I refuse to get wet.”

We march off moodily into the wood.

Pierre Dubois also appears disheartened by my umbrella. It seems to make him feel sad for me, and perhaps he has second thoughts about shooting such a pitiful creature.

“You can offer me a profound apology,” he says, “and we can forget all about this.”

We are writers. We are meant to brandish pens, not pistols. I regret my insult. Pierre obviously regrets his challenge. I could apologize, and we could share a cab back to the city and resume the business of making a newspaper.

But words are not easy to set aside. They make a shape in the mouth, a shape in the air. When something is said, it exists, and it is not easily persuaded again into silence. The truth is that I
do
think Pierre Dubois is my inferior. The truth is that I annoy him beyond reason and he would like to fire me, but he can’t because the readers are so fond of my reviews.

“I take nothing back,” I say.

“You are a fool,” says Pierre.

“You are a bigger fool.”

Now we can’t wait to shoot each other. Antoine opens the case and loads the pistols. Bernard has disappeared behind a tree to relieve himself.

The gun is heavy and smells of scorch and earth. I clutch it to my breast and pace off into the trees, counting the twenty strides under my breath, pausing only once, when my umbrella snags in the branches overhead.

Pierre has challenged me, so I am to shoot first. I stop. I turn. I raise my hand with the pistol in it and sight down my arm. Pierre is partially obscured by scrub. The rain erases his outline. I squint, then I pull the trigger. The gun kicks and smokes, and for a moment, I can’t see anything. Someone yells and I’m afraid I have hit Pierre, but when the smoke clears, he remains as he was, standing in the rain in the middle of some bushes.

Now it is Pierre’s turn.

The bright green umbrella will help guide the lead ball to its target, but I refuse to sheathe it because I insisted on bringing it. But what if my stubbornness causes my death? It occurs to me, for the first time, that I am perhaps too wilful for my own good, that I am not helped by my character, that it potentially causes me great harm, and that I should probably fight hard against it.

“You will get another shot,” says Antoine, appearing suddenly at my side. “Give me the pistol and I’ll reload for you.”

I pass it to him and turn so I can present the full fleshly target of my body to Pierre Dubois.

It is then I think of Adèle, and how, if I die, she will weep and despair and be impressed by my courage. So I had better summon some courage. I take a deep breath and hold it, close my eyes, and brace myself for the sting and the first bitter taste of darkness.

H
E 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 on the 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 one another 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 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, the melodrama 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 though I have been 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 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 shrewd one. I know the man well enough to sense that he suspects something. We have not been as careful as we thought. The arrogance that snares all lovers has caught us up. He is testing me with his question.

“I’d be honoured,” I say, with as much aplomb as I can muster. But he is not fooled. He turns away, and he is not fooled.

We manage a moment in the upstairs hallway after Adèle has put the children to bed.

I put my hands in her hair. She buries her face in my neck.

“I love your perfume,” she says.

“I love you,” I say.

Downstairs I hear Victor bellow like a cow being slaughtered. He can be so loud, so coarse. I slide my hands down to Adèle’s breasts and give them a squeeze. She backs up against the wall and we press our bodies together.

“Leave him,” I whisper. “Come away with me. I can’t bear that we aren’t together.”

Adèle looks confused. We are, in fact, only a fraction of an inch apart.

“That we aren’t
always
together,” I say.

This is our sticking point. Even from his vile plays, Victor makes money. The Hugos are rich. Adèle has four children. I am a penniless critic, an unsuccessful poet.

But the depth of love that I offer Adèle is considerable, and so we sway together in the upstairs hallway of my best friend’s house until little Adèle calls out in her sleep and the balance shifts away from me and back towards her family.

“Tomorrow,” she says. “We will walk out tomorrow. I will leave the children with my sister.” She kisses me, urgent and sweet, and then goes to calm her youngest daughter.

Victor is still in the kitchen when I go downstairs. Theo and Luc have disappeared.

“Charles,” he says, “come and sit with me.”

I do as he says, declining his offer of another glass of wine.

The house is quiet now. I can hear the chatter of insects through the open window. A breeze carries the scent of roses into the room. I suddenly feel overwhelmed with hopelessness. Adèle will never leave her family. She will tire of me. I will always be lonely and alone.

“I heard you were in a duel this morning,” says Victor.

“Yes.” I wish I had thought to mention this to Adèle.

“Did you challenge?”

“No. It was a trifling matter,” I say. “An ongoing quarrel between me and the senior editor at the
Globe
.”

“Ah.” Victor spreads his hands on the table, already bored by my troubles. “What do you think of
Hernani
?” The people who oppose his romantic play are getting under his skin, despite his noisy bravado.

“I have only seen it in rehearsal,” I say, honestly. “And a play can’t be properly judged from a rehearsal. The actors are always holding back.”

“Will you go this week?” asks Victor. “Will you tell me truly what you think of it?”

“I will.”

Victor clasps me to him as fiercely and as passionately as I had clasped Adèle to me in the upstairs hallway.

“You are such a friend to me, Charles,” he says. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Adèle surprises me at the gate. She is wearing white and looks ghostly among the dark trunks of the plane trees.

Every moment that I am in her company is glorious. I forget my despair in the kitchen. We love each other. It will end happily. How could it be otherwise?

“My darling,” she says, “Victor told me that you were in a duel. Were you nearly killed?” She is all shivery with the danger of it.

“The first shot grazed my temple,” I say, “and the second burned off the buttons on my waistcoat.” The lie is delicious, and we both savour it for a full moment.

In fact, both of Pierre’s shots were wildly off their mark. One of my shots hit a tree. The other couldn’t even be found. Bernard had brought bread and cheese and jam, and when the rain stopped, we all had a picnic under the trees before returning to the office.

“You must not die,” says Adèle. “I couldn’t live without you.”

“I won’t die,” I say, and I mean it.

She kisses me, a different kiss from the one she gave me in the house. This one has a note of desperation to it. This is the kiss for a lover who has almost met his mortal end. It has a mixture of surrender and commitment that I find intoxicating. The insects offer their applause. It strikes me that this is what I have always wanted, from myself and from another. I want to give myself entirely. I want to pledge myself completely. I want a moment such as this one, a moment from which I might never fully recover.

I
T IS MY FIRST
significant memory, a memory I have carried into adulthood, undisturbed and unquestioned. There is, in this memory, much of what I am experiencing now, as I look back on my life.

First, let me tell you about my beginnings, some sixty years ago.

I was born at 9:00 a.m. on December 23, 1804, at Boulogne-sur-Mer. My parents were old when they married—my father fifty-one, my mother over forty. I was their only child. In fact, my father died of the quinsy just before I was born. My cradle rested on a coffin.

My father was an official in the customs and excise department, but he had an interest in literature. I have his small library of books, most of them annotated heavily in the margins, as though he were deep in conversation with the authors. He was particularly fond of Virgil.