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 anymore. 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 his window in the cab. 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 satisfy it.
The carriage rolls to a stop, and Victor gets out without even a glance at me.
I LOSE ONE ADÈLE, and I gain another.
After my mother’s death in 1850, I inherit the house on rue du Montparnasse. I hire a secretary to help with the research for my Lundis, and I hire a cook to keep house for me. The position of secretary has been rotated through a series of polite young men with literary aspirations. The position of cook belongs firmly to a new Adèle.
My work life is ordered; my home life is chaos. And yet they both take place under the same roof.
Once a week, I dine out with my editor to discuss the subject of that week’s Lundi. The next day, my secretary comes to my house in the morning to talk over my new idea. We work in my bedroom. I sit at my desk, which in reality is two tables placed side by side. My secretary sits in a chair by the fireplace. Sometimes he is required to take dictation, but usually, in the early stages of an idea, he is sent out to borrow books from the library and verify references, or he is simply there to listen to my thoughts. My ideas formulate more quickly if I am able to talk them out aloud. When the article is written, I have my secretary read it out to me so that I can adjust the phrasing as necessary. I find that my ear is a better judge of my words than my eye.
While we work, my cats prowl about the room. Only my favourite, Mignonne, is allowed to walk across my desk and disturb my papers. Sometimes she sits there watching me write, her tail swishing from side to side rather angrily.
My secretary leaves in the evenings, before my supper, and often I will walk out with him. We stroll through the Jardin du Luxembourg if the weather is good, tossing around ideas, detailing the tasks for the following day.
On the days when my routine unrolls without disturbance, I rise at five in the morning, shave without a mirror (so I do not have to look at myself), and don a dressing gown. I have become bald in my later years, and so I wear a black skullcap whenever I leave the house, and a black bandana inside the house. I wrap it around my head like a turban, and I must say that in that and my silk dressing gown, I look exactly like my mother. The resemblance is so striking that others have remarked on it as well.
I work from six to eight, and then I dress. If Adèle is awake, she will bring me a cup of chocolate and some bread. My secretary comes just after nine. At noon, I have some tea and brioche, most of which I feed to the cats. In the evenings, after my secretary has gone home, I have a supper of bread and cheese, soup, meat and vegetables. I mix my wine with water. Once in a while, I have a slice of almond cake that I buy from a baker on the rue de Fleurus.
Like my father, I write in the margins of my books. But where he used that space to carry on a conversation with the authors, I make notes that offer a shorthand interpretation of the text so that when I am looking for references, I can see, at a glance, whether there is something I will be able to use on that page.
As I have said, my work habits are orderly and comfortable. But that is not all that goes on in my house.
My cook, Adèle, is a drunk. It took me a while to discover this, and when I did, instead of being outraged at her behaviour and casting her out, I felt sorry for her and despaired that she would ever be able to find another situation, so I have kept her on. Sometimes she is so drunk that she forgets to make my supper, and when I go down to the kitchen to inquire politely as to its progress, I find her passed out at the table, snoring noisily, her head laid down on the bare wood.
She steals my wine. Once I caught her handing bottles of it through the kitchen window to one of her lovers, an omnibus conductor.
I must admit that I admire her unrepentance. On her good days, she fills my house with flowers from the market. She is nice to the cats. Sometimes she sings to them while she cooks. Whenever she returns from the market, they run downstairs to see what little tidbit she has brought for them.
If it were only Adèle in my house, I could probably weather her thieving and her drunkenness. But often there are prostitutes living with me as well. Sometimes there is just one, and sometimes as many as three. Don’t misunderstand—they are in my house not because I want them to service me, but rather because they have fallen on hard times and I feel pity for them. I want to offer them a harbour so they can shelter for a while before venturing back into their calamitous lives. It is Adèle who tells me of these unfortunates, brings them to my house on Montparnasse.
Adèle is one thing; the prostitutes are another. They usually drink. They often fight with one another. Instead of appreciating my kindness, they treat me as though I am an idiot for taking them in and rebuke me at every turn. One of them, a woman who was nicknamed the Penguin and had only one hand, was so rude to my guests that people stopped coming to my house. Even my secretary became nervous about entering. For the month she was there, I kept the Penguin confined to the downstairs. Even so, she would shout up through the floorboards, startling my visitors with her crudeness and insults. In the end, I couldn’t stand her behaviour and I sent her back to the streets, for which she seemed almost grateful.
I suppose I could take advantage of the prostitutes while they are in my house, but I’m always a little afraid of them, and I fear they would laugh at my body when it was revealed to them. I’ve always been a little afraid of prostitutes. I have sometimes hired one to undress for me, but I have never dared do more than fondle her. So I try to treat the women in my house as ladies, although they are always very suspicious of this and respond to my ministrations with open hostility. I have had saucepans hurled at me and vile abuse. My mother’s antiques have been broken. Anything valuable and small enough to carry has been stolen. Still, I persist. On Friday nights, I take them all to the theatre, in the vain hope that it will instil some artistic sensibility in them.
At the moment, we are mercifully between prostitutes. It is late. My secretary has left for the day, and I wait, hopefully, for my supper to be delivered on a tray.
I wait and wait, and then I trudge down to the kitchen to see what drunken disaster has befallen Adèle.
She is leaning up against the pantry door. Her skirts are twisted and her cap is crooked on her head. There is nothing cooking on the stove, no smell of supper rising from any of the pots.
“Food?” I say hopefully.
Adèle fixes me with her gaze, then forgets to say anything.
The house feels airy and spacious without the prostitutes. Adèle’s neglect is so familiar as to be almost reassuring.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I will fix myself some bread and cheese. I’m not that hungry tonight anyway.” I cut some bread, put several cheeses on a plate.
“Wine?” I ask.
Adèle produces an open bottle from behind her back.
“Sorry,” she says. This scenario has happened so often that apologies are entirely unnecessary, and I feel badly for her when she decides she has to offer one up.
I pour a glass of wine. I take down another glass and pour Adèle one.
“Come and sit with me,” I say, “while I have my supper.”
The kitchen is on the ground floor of the house. It’s always dark in here, even with the evening light fumbling through the street-level windows. I light a couple of candles, place them in the centre of the table. Then I get a plate for Adèle.
“Thank you.” She helps herself liberally to bread and cheese. We drink our wine.
“I saw another unfortunate,” she says, “down by the river. Off her head with drink. Raving mad.” It pleases Adèle to find women who are worse off than she is. She delights in it.
“Really?” My heart sinks.
“She has an infection.” Adèle thinks for a moment. “No, affliction. She has an affliction.”
“What sort of affliction?”
“The mental sort.”
I chew my bread. “I can’t be having an imbecile here,” I say. “It would be too much work.” I look at her. “For you,” I say. “Remember the woman who imagined she saw rats everywhere? You never had a moment’s peace.”
“This girl is mental only because of the drink.” Adèle holds out her glass and I dutifully fill it up. “And she’s very young, barely older than a child. It would only be for a week or so.”
This is what Adèle says about every prostitute who ends up staying here. More than likely, this new girl will remain well over a month.
I sigh. “All right. Tell her to come round and see me.”
“She’ll be here tomorrow morning, monsieur,” says Adèle brightly.
“What’s her name?”
“Claudine.”
It’s a pretty name. A name full of music and promise. But I have enough experience in these matters to know that Claudine will undoubtedly be thin and sickly, over-rouged, her teeth rotting in her head.
My friends don’t understand why I take these women in, why I keep Adèle in my employ. I can’t explain it to them properly.
Years ago I dreamed of living with Adèle Hugo. I dreamed that she would leave her husband and come away with me, that we would spend the rest of our days together. I remember the prayer I would offer up in the small church where we used to meet. Please God, let me live with Adèle.
I didn’t realize I had to be so specific. I didn’t realize my prayer should have been Please, God, let me live with Adèle Hugo.
Adèle has come to me. My prayer has been answered. How could I possibly throw her out? And the prostitutes need help. They need a place to stay. Adèle feels powerful at being able to help them. I feel powerful at being able to help her.
I was afraid that I would die alone and lonely, and now I can be assured that will not happen. My house is full of energy and chaos. We are in full sail on this stormy sea.
“Shall we have some almond cake tonight?” I ask Adèle, refilling her glass.
“It’s in the pantry,” she says, and we stare each other down to see who will get up from the table to fetch it.
The happiness that comes to you is never the happiness you imagine. I never would have dreamed that I would know a one-handed prostitute called the Penguin, or that the scent from the flowers Adèle has placed throughout the house would drift up the staircase with enough force to stop my hand above the page while I work.
“There you go,” I say, setting the plate of cake down before Adèle.
She switches the plates around. “No, monsieur,” she says shyly. “That’s not right. You should have the bigger piece.”
Victor is in exile. He is living with Adèle and his children on the Channel Islands, off the coast of Normandy. Apparently his mistress, Juliette Drouet, is also there. He has secured a house for her near to his family home.
Needless to say, Victor is a noisy supporter of the republic. After his election to the Académie française in 1840, he became increasingly involved in politics. He campaigned for the republicans. He spoke out against the death penalty. When Napoleon’s nephew Napoleon III seized control of the government and instantly destroyed all the reforms Victor had worked so hard to establish, he was very upset.
Victor does not like to be opposed. I know this better than anybody. And the more famous he has become, the less he likes dissension, the less it agrees with him.
After Victor declared Napoleon III to be a traitor to France, the Hugos had to leave for Brussels. They then went to the Channel Islands, where they remain. Occasionally, Victor dispatches a political pamphlet on the ruination of France. Even though the pamphlets are banned here, they manage to be smuggled in. The political pamphlets, like all of Victor’s work, are very popular. The last one was called Napoléon le Petit.
Of course, it was a shrewd move on Victor’s part to go into exile, because now that he is absent from Paris, he just becomes more beloved, more valuable in the minds of the people. It is as though he cannot take a wrong step. Everything he does advances his career.
Victor’s exile, sadly, means Adèle’s exile. It is fitting, I suppose, as the end of our love affair has felt like an exile anyway. Any small hope I might have had about Adèle’s return to me has been dashed to pieces on the rocky shores of Guernsey.
I stay in. I go out. My habits, now the habits of years, are reassuring because they belong to me, but they offer less and less comfort. I have a restlessness that I can’t find a way to settle. Even my cook comments on it.
“You’ve got mice in your underclothes,” she says one day when she comes to deliver my morning chocolate. “Look at you, all scratchy and full of the nerves.”
I have been pacing back and forth in front of the window. Adèle places the cup of chocolate on my desk without spilling any. She seems remarkably sober this morning.
“I can’t bear to think of the Hugos on the Channel Islands,” I burst out.
I picture my Adèle walking the windswept coastal paths, being blown off into the foaming sea. I see her floating on the surf, her hair tangled with seaweed, fish nibbling at her fingers and toes.
“What are the Channel Islands?” asks Adèle. Like most Parisians, she has little interest in the rest of the world.
We pore over the atlas. When my secretary arrives, I send him to the library for additional information. After her initial interest in seeing where the Channel Islands are located on a map, Adèle tires of the research and returns to her kitchen. But I won’t let her be. I hurry down at noon with my stack of books, thunking them on the kitchen table and making her jump at the stove. I’m out of breath from the stairs, and it’s the first time that I realize I get winded from going downstairs as well as up.
“I could definitely be dead within the week,” I say.
But Adèle doesn’t hear me, or chooses not to.
“They’re full of rocks,” I say.
“What are?”
“The Channel Islands.”
Adèle turns and regards me critically. She holds a wooden spoon in each hand. I don’t dare ask her why.
“They’re islands,” she says. “They have coasts. Coasts are full of rocks.” She speaks slowly, as though she’s talking to her imbecile cousin.
The Channel Islands are a mix of French and English. I feel a brief twinge of envy. Victor is already famous in France. Now he will become famous to the English as well.
“There is no
stopping him,” I say.
Adèle puts down her spoons. “It is because you do not know,” she says.
“Know what?”
“How it is for Madame Hugo. You do not know anything, so you imagine everything.”
She is right. In some ways it would be easier if Adèle were dead. It would be finite. I would not be tormented by the endless possibilities of her existence.
I slam the atlas shut and drop myself down into a chair. If I am honest, it is not Adèle’s safety that really concerns me. It is not imagining her being blown off a rocky headland into an unforgiving sea that causes me sleepless nights. It is imagining her happiness—her happiness without me.
Guernsey, 1850s
Adèle
I WALK OUT onto the terrace. My children are still at breakfast there. They like to eat outdoors when the weather is fair. They like the bright morning light and the shuffle of sea against the rocks below.
“Maman!” calls Dédé, and when I go to her, she pulls me down beside her on the chaise. “What will we do today, Maman?”
If we were still in Paris, my children would be married by now. They would have lives of their own. But the exile has forced us to remain together as a family, and even though Charles, the eldest, is over thirty and Adèle is a grown woman of twenty-seven, the isolation has turned them into children again, and they look to me to lead them through each day.
I close my eyes against the sun, then open them and see the rag tied around the railing at the top of the house, the signal that Victor is up and working.
“Maman!” Dédé squeezes my hand.
“We could pick wildflowers on the clifftop,” I say. “Charlot, you might photograph us up there, and you could bring your books, Toto. We could have a picnic.”
The Reinvention of Love Page 13
