He is a man of great appetites.
‘I … left my bag at the market.’
‘Hah! ’Tis of little importance. I, too, was barely conscious for most of the morning. It was a fine night, last night, wasn’t it?’ He chuckled, lost in reminiscence.
I didn’t answer. I fetched two plates and two knives, and the remnants of that morning’s bread. Then I stared at the jar of foie gras. I had nothing much else to give him.
‘I had the most excellent meeting with Gagnaire. He says the Galerie Berthoud in the sixteenth wishes to exhibit those early landscapes. The work I did in Cazouls? He says he has a buyer for the two larger ones already.’ I heard him uncork a bottle of wine, the clink of two glasses as he placed them on the table.
‘I also told him of our new system for collecting my money. He was most impressed when I told him of last night’s efforts. Now I have both him and you working alongside me, chérie, I’m sure we will live in the grand style.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ I said, and placed the bread basket in front of him.
I don’t know what had happened to me. I couldn’t look at him. I sat down opposite and proffered the foie gras and some butter. I cut an orange into quarters and put two pieces on his plate.
‘Foie gras!’ he unscrewed the lid. ‘How you do spoil me, my love.’ He broke off a piece of bread and smeared it with a slice of the pale pink pâté. I watched him eat it, his eyes on mine, and just for a moment I wished desperately that he had never liked foie gras, that he hated it. But he blew me a kiss and smacked his lips with delighted relish. ‘What a life we lead, you and I, eh?’
‘I did not choose the foie gras, Édouard. Mimi Einsbacher selected it for you.’
‘Mimi, eh?’ His eyes rested on mine for a moment. ‘Well … she’s a good judge of food.’
‘And other things?’
‘Mmm?’
‘What else is Mimi good at?’
My food lay untouched on my plate. I could not eat. I had never liked foie gras, anyway, the bitter knowledge of that forced feeding, those geese gorged until their very organs were swollen. The pain that could be caused by too much of what you loved.
Édouard put his knife on his plate. He looked at me. ‘What is the matter, Sophie?’
I could not answer him.
‘You seem out of sorts.’
‘Out of sorts.’
‘Is this because of what I told you before? I told you, my darling, it was before I met you. I have never lied to you.’
‘And will you lie with her again?’
‘What?’
‘When you are bored with the novelty of your marriage? Will you revert to your old ways?’
‘What is this?’
‘Oh, eat your food, Édouard. Devour your beloved foie gras.’
He stared at me for the longest time. When he spoke, his voice was soft. ‘What have I done to deserve this? Have I ever given you the slightest reason to doubt me? Have I ever shown you anything but utter devotion?’
‘That is not the point.’
‘Well, what is the point?’
‘How did you get them to look at you like that?’ My voice lifted.
‘Who?’
‘Those women. The Mimis and the Laures. The bar girls and the street girls and every wretched girl who seems to pass by our door. How did you get them to pose for you like that? ‘
Édouard was dumbstruck. When he spoke, his mouth set in an unfamiliar line. ‘The same way I got you to pose for me. I asked them.’
‘And afterwards? Did you do to them what you did to me?’
Édouard looked down at his plate before he answered. ‘If I remember correctly, Sophie, it was you who seduced me that first time. Or does that not suit your newly remembered version of events?’
‘This is meant to make me feel better? That I was the only one of your models you didn’t try to make love to?’
His voice exploded into the quiet studio. ‘What is wrong, Sophie? Why do you wish to torture yourself like this? We are happy, you and I. You know I have not so much as looked at another woman since we met!’
I began to applaud, each sharp clap breaking into the silent studio. ‘Well done, Édouard! You have remained faithful all the way to our honeymoon! Oh, how admirable!’
‘For God’s sake!’ He threw down his napkin. ‘Where is my wife? My happy, glowing, loving wife? And who is this woman I get in her place? This suspicious misery? This pinch-faced accuser?’
‘Oh, so that is how you truly see me?’
‘Well, is this whom you have become, now we are actually married?’
We stared at each other. The silence expanded, filled the room. Outside a child burst into noisy tears and a mother’s voice could be heard, scolding and comforting.
Édouard ran a hand over his face. He took a deep breath and stared out of the window, then turned back to me. ‘You know that is not how I see you. You know I – Oh, Sophie, I don’t understand the genesis of this fury. I don’t understand what I’ve done to deserve such …’
‘Well, why don’t you ask them?’ I thrust my hand out towards his canvases. My voice emerged as a sob. ‘For what can a provincial shop girl like me hope to understand about your life, after all?’
‘Oh, you’re impossible,’ he said, and threw down his napkin.
‘It’s being married to you that is the impossibility. And I’m starting to wonder why you ever bothered.’
‘Well, Sophie, you are not alone in that at least.’ My husband fixed me with a look, whipped his coat off our bed, then turned and walked out of the door.
Chapter Five
2012
When he calls, she is on the bridge. She cannot say how long she has sat there. Its wire sides are almost obscured with padlocks on which people have inscribed their initials, and all along it tourists stoop, reading the initials on the little pieces of metal, scrawled in permanent pen or engraved by those with forethought. Some take pictures of each other, pointing to the padlocks they think are particularly beautiful, or have just placed there themselves.
She remembers David telling her about this place before they came here, about how lovers would secure the padlocks and throw the keys into the Seine as a mark of their enduring love, and of how when the padlocks were painstakingly removed by the city authorities they simply reappeared within days, engraved with everlasting love, the initials of lovers who, two years on, might still be together or might by now have moved to different continents rather than breathe the same air. He had told her how the riverbed under the bridge had to be dredged regularly, harvesting the rusting mass of keys.