But when I returned a few hours later, the apartment was still empty. Perhaps Céline was at a private party, I thought, and Annick had been given the evening off. I waited in her boudoir, breathing in her camellia scent, and after a time I opened the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony. The evening air was fresh, the moon shone full on the street, and the gaslight at the corner made a comforting glow. I sat there smoking and eating chocolate bonbons, imagining how it would be when Céline was my wife and we could spend quiet evenings by ourselves on summer nights like this, watching the carriages rolling past on their way to the opera.
One of those carriages drove up to the front of the hotel, and I recognized the equipage that had been my gift to Céline. I sat forward as the horses stopped, shaking their heads restlessly. My ange was dressed in a hooded cashmere cloak that I recognized as one I had gifted her, though it seemed too warm for a June night, and there was her tiny foot peeping out from under the skirt of her dress, as, with a light movement, she skipped down from the carriage. I rose, all smiles, ready to call out a greeting, when another figure emerged behind her. It was cloaked as well, but wearing a man’s spurred heel that rang on the pavement and the hat of a cavalry officer. He and Céline disappeared, passing under the porte cochère of the hotel.
Suddenly my chest felt pressed with a great weight. I remained rooted in place, though at the last moment, before they entered the apartment, I thought to reach through the open window and draw the curtain across it, with just the barest of openings, that I might view and hear their assignation. Annick came in first—I had not even heard her return, so enamored was I of the evening—and she lit a lamp, then withdrew. A moment later the couple entered, laughing softly at some joke. There she was, in all her glory—in a rose-colored silken dress and jewels I had given her—and he in his officer’s uniform. I recognized him as a young roué—someone I knew to be beneath her. Céline saw the card I had left, and she pointed at it and laughed, deriding my personal defects, she who had over and over told me she found me handsome and charming, but now I heard that I was as ugly as a stray dog, and just as graceless. All the love I had thought I felt for Céline fled in those few moments, and my new sentiment was confirmed as their mindless chatter continued: frivolous, stupid, mercenary.
I could not bear to hear more, and I stepped through the window and without preamble freed Céline from any obligation to me and gave her notice to vacate the apartment as soon as possible. I threw down a few francs for any immediate need and made to leave, disregarding her screams and protestations, as she was suddenly intent on revealing to me that she did truly love me after all and was sorry, etcetera, etcetera. At the door, I turned and told the chevalier that I expected him the next morning at the Bois de Boulogne, and then I closed the door on Céline’s continued hysterics.
In the morning, though it was the first duel I had ever fought, I made quick work of the fellow, wounding him in the arm. His shot went far wide of the mark, a good example of the state of the French military.
One might forgive a single night’s mistake, but it is quite another to hear your lover belittle you to another in the crudest of language. I was finished forever with Céline, and I vowed I would never again give a woman power over me as I had done with Céline.
Chapter 7
Leaving Paris as quickly as I could, I traveled: Rome, Naples, Florence, Saint Petersburg, even Baden-Baden, where I spent hours—no, days—at the gaming tables, as if winning or losing were an antidote. I cared little which city I was in, or with whom I spent my time. I was in those days a very changed man from the one who had first left England at the age of twenty-one. Then, I had been a child, seeing things in black and white, assuming there must be a satisfactory moral solution to any problem, assuming that what one saw on the surface was all there was to see. I marveled at my past self: what had become of that na?ve, softhearted boy who had wanted to believe the best of everyone?
Though the angry wound of Céline’s betrayal never fully healed, as time went on and my bed grew cold I did occasionally find in my travels a woman who at first I thought could be a partner for me, but each time I was disappointed. There was an Italian who was charming and beautiful and alive with verve. I enjoyed her company, her passion, her very Italian sense of humor, and she struck me as the sort of woman Bertha might have become, with a different family history. But the more time I spent with her, the more disturbed I became, for while Giacinta was not mad, she had a violent and unprincipled side that disturbed me. I also dallied for a time in Saint Petersburg with the daughter of a German merchant there, an innocent young girl not yet into her twentieth year, who stirred in me the same sympathies as Alma had, back in Maysbeck. But as time passed, I saw that what I had taken for quietude and calm was really ignorance and mindlessness. I left her with a gentleness I had not bestowed on Giacinta, and I gave her enough money to open a shop of her own. There were others, to be sure, but we never seemed to fit together as I imagined a man and his wife should, although God knows I had little enough experience in what that would mean.
At the same time, events were roiling in Jamaica. Six months after I quit Paris, disappointed that their demands for more freedom had been rejected, tens of thousands of Jamaican slaves rose in revolt. The rebellion was short-lived and the subsequent punishment brutal, but it was the beginning of the end. Two years later, while I was romancing Clara, slavery ended for good. I was late in hearing the news, for such information was not welcomed in Russia, where the serfs were inclined to believe in freedom themselves. But Osmon managed to get word to me, and I remained confident he was doing his best under the circumstances, so I went back to the gambling tables, for, indeed, what could I have done from so far away, and what point was there in returning to Jamaica?
*
Some years later, I drifted through Paris again. I happened to be sitting at table with Monsieur Roget at the Café d’Or when Céline arrived, holding a little girl by the hand. It was far too late for such a young child to be about, but the whole table made over her as if she were a princess, and in fact she was remarkable looking—fairylike in a shimmering pink dress with a large pink bow in her blond curls. She moved her hands as she spoke, as a dancer would, and it was clear that she delighted in being the center of attention. Céline nodded meaningfully at me, but I stared stonily back, for, I thought, if she meant to claim that this creature was mine, it must certainly be clear to all that she was not.