The Dream Lover (19 page)

“The man has no taste whatsoever,” Marie said. “I hear his rooms resemble those of an old marquis—silk walls bordered with lace, and knickknacks everywhere.”

“True. But, Marie, you must understand that Balzac is one of those magpie artists, attracted to bright jewels and loud color. He will deprive himself of coffee and bread in favor of ornate silverware and china with which to lay his table. He says that he lacks the discipline for elegance, that he finds it too severe.

“In any case,” I said, “I will not speak badly about him; he was for a long time a good friend. He is sincere and generous and a great deal of fun. I always used to accuse him of being an animal; he would accuse me of not being one. And so we went on, enjoying our differences, until I asked Jules to move out, and then Balzac chose to side with the one he deemed the wronged partner. I very much regret the loss of Balzac's company, and I bear him no ill will.
I tell you, Marie, there are those who deny his genius, but I believe he is destined for a great and influential career.”

“Enough of Balzac. Let us talk about you. You and your men's clothing.”

I lay back on the chaise. “As you wish. Well, to continue the story, when I became a theater critic here in Paris, I dressed in men's clothes because my disguise got me into the cheaper seats.”

“But does it not feel strange to wear such things?”

“Why should it feel strange? Does a fox feel strange wearing his black stockings?”

Marie laughed.

“Anyway, when I moved here and began to dress as a man regularly, I became transformed more on the inside than on the outside. I experienced an elevation in society, simply because I was thought to be of the opposite sex. The favors I was given as a matter of course! I was lent a kind of gravitas, given respect and inclusion that I had heretofore not experienced. This brought with it a new way of seeing and feeling, and the feeling was…”

She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her hair now loose around her shoulders, shining and fragrant. “What was the feeling? Tell me.”

“To be very frank, it was grounded in something that was sexual in nature. I tell you, Marie, I felt it between my legs, that power, that confidence, that sense of entitlement; and I liked it. Once I had it, I did not want to put it away for stiff crinolines and whalebone stays and gigot sleeves, all of which prevent free movement. Men wear clothes; women are captured by them. I have lost altogether my desire for ruffles and bows, for silk flowers anchored in my hair.”

“But these things add such beauty!”

“Perhaps. But I trade that for something that matters far more to me. A feeling that my voice is heard.”

“But…all this conferred by clothing?”

“Seemingly so. Or maybe such clothing serves as a catalyst to unleash things that have always been in me, among them a desire
for independence and for fairness. Whatever the case may be, after the success of
Indiana
, I cast off the secondhand clothes I'd scavenged in haste and began to buy elegant redingotes, waistcoats, cashmere trousers. I bought pantaloons and silk cravats, too, mostly from Buisson.”

“Ah, the wonderful tailor on Rue de Richelieu.”

“The same.”

She nodded slowly, and her eyes moved over my face. “How interesting you are. How bold. And with what delight do I hear your stories!”

“Shall I tell you one more?”

She clapped her hands. “You must! And then we shall order up more champagne, and you must tell me others. You must tell me stories all night!”

“If that is what you want, then that is what you will have.”

“You are the most gentlemanly gentleman, and I adore you.”

She said it too easily for it to hold the meaning I wanted, but I flushed with pleasure nonetheless.

She got up and came over to the chaise, straightened the shoulders of her ruffled white dressing gown, gathered the train of it about her. “Let us lie down together; I shall rest beside you and listen like a contented child to your every word. What pleasure to have someone transport
me
, for a change.”

I lay on my side, and she lay on her back close beside me. The scent of her perfume rose up; I could feel the heat of her flesh. She closed her eyes and sighed. “I am ready; you may begin now.”

I began to speak, falling very nearly into the same kind of trance in talking to her that I fell under when I wrote. This had never before happened. I often said that the reason I wrote things was because I couldn't say them. But with Marie, I was able to speak directly from my imagination.

I told her, “One day when I was thirteen years old and dressed in my riding clothes of trousers and shirt and boots, I went walking
deep into the forest near Nohant. Suddenly, I came face-to-face with a wolf.”

Marie gasped, and her eyes flew open. “A live wolf? With his long red tongue and his stealthy gait? And his sharp teeth?” Her voice broke; soon it would be gone altogether.

I held my finger to her lips. “Listen. Rest your voice. Close your eyes. Obviously, the story ends well enough.”

She closed her eyes and moved nearly imperceptibly closer to me.

“Yes, the woods were full of wolves, and I had been warned against them, but I had also convinced myself that I would never have trouble with anything in the natural world—a naïve position that could not be supported by anyone with half a brain, only I was as stubborn then as I am now. At any rate, I was standing near a pond in deep contemplation when the wolf came suddenly out of the underbrush. He held up abruptly at the sight of me. I saw the hair along his back rise slightly; I saw his breath quicken, as did my own, naturally. He was beautiful, colored silver and brown and black, and very thin.”

“And did he growl most fiercely?” Marie whispered.

“He did not, actually.”

“How did he smell?”

“How did he
smell
?”

“Yes.”

“He smelled…of wild onion and earth and cold. His eyes were a soulful and limpid brown, possessed of a keen intelligence. I stood unmoving, and then a conversation ensued. I shall report it to you here as it happened, as I
felt
it, so help me God. Perhaps I shall act it out in a little play for you—would you like that?”

“Of course!”

I made my voice gruff to be the wolf.

—Ah. A human. Good evening
.

And then I made my voice unnaturally high to be my girl self.

—Mon Dieu, a wolf! Help, help!

—A shameful response to my affable greeting
.

—I fear you will harm me; I fear you will eat me!

—That remains to be seen. Permit me to sniff your ankle
.

He approached, slowly, and I stood stone still. He sniffed, then drew back in surprise
.

—I see you are a female human. Yet you wear the garb of the male
.

—Today I do
.

—What ever for?

—It allows me certain rights that only males enjoy
.

—But the female is the superior sex
.

—Not in the world of humans
.

—A pity. But humans are in any case perplexing and we in the animal world frustrate ourselves trying to make any sense of you at all. You are good for eating, though
.

—So this is my fate, to die by mauling at the edge of the pond
.

—Perhaps not. I have only just finished eating a hapless rabbit. Moreover, I like you, for I sense in you a high regard for the natural world, even including wolves
.

—Including wolves most sincerely! For I much admire your beauty, cunning, and strength
.

—Now she flatters in order to survive
.

—I merely speak the truth
.

—I think I shall let you live. But do let me pass by for a drink of water. I must insist on a wide berth, for as kindly as we may regard each other at the moment, any wild animal knows to regard your species with great mistrust
.

I let him pass, he drank deeply—though with one eye on me—then trotted into the forest and disappeared
.

Silence.

“Marie?” I said.

Her eyes opened, and she smiled at me.

“I have bored you,” I said. I feared it was so.

“You have done anything but.” She went over to the window
and opened it. She leaned out and, in her broken voice, howled. When she turned back, her eyes were full of excitement, and she said, “We are both of us wild like the wolf! How glad I am that we found each other!”

I stood. “Come with me to Nohant!”

“Now?”

“Right now. Your run has ended; you have a little time, and I shall take some. Come with me. You can rest, and you can see the very spot where I encountered the wolf.”

She laughed.

“Will you come?”

“Ah, George.”

No, then. Not yet.

March 1820

RUE NEUVE-DES-MATHURINS

PARIS

A
fter my grandmother withdrew me from the convent, she set about trying to find me a husband. It was a dreary process; I was paraded before boors, then made to endure the equally boring process of evaluation.

“Did you not find him handsome?” one of my grandmother's dowager countess friends breathlessly asked me, of a man I had met the night before.

“To tell the truth, I found him quite ugly.”

The old woman's hand flew to her breast, her fingers spread out like a fan. “No! It is not true! You cannot have felt that way! He is very handsome, and besides that, he is kind and charming. It is not every day one finds such a prize.”

“If only it were you in need of a companion,” I said, and the woman's face drew into itself, and she returned to her tea and her cakes.

Eventually, I overhead my grandmother telling someone, “There is no more we can do now. She is, after all, still so young. I shall take her back to Nohant and give her some time. She needs six months, a year.”

Immediately, I felt better, and I met with my mother the next day to talk to her about accompanying us there. “I need your guidance and support in finding a husband,” I told her.

“I need not go with you to Nohant for that,” she said. “It is my right to approve of anyone you are to marry. And whoever it is will need to pass my test, not your grandmother's. Let me know when you find someone. And then we shall see.”

May 1820

NOHANT

W
hen my grandmother and I returned to Nohant, her condition began to deteriorate. Eventually, she was very weak and oftentimes confused, and I began spending many hours as nursemaid to her.

One night when it was quite late, she asked me to open the shutters to let in the sunshine. “It is nighttime, Grandmama,” I said.

“It is not. Open the shutters.”

“It is nighttime,” I said again, and at this she became nearly hysterical. “Why do you lie to me? I want to see the daylight! Open the shutters at once!”

I stood and said impatiently, “I tell you again it is the middle of the night! I shall prove it to you!” I marched over to the window, flung open the shutters, and stood back triumphantly. For a moment, she lay still, and then she began weeping. She said, “Ah, I am going blind. My God, my God, now I have lost my vision!”

“It is nighttime! Look at the stars!” I said, practically shouting, and then Deschartres came into the room. He had begun sleeping at the house so that he could be on hand if needed. Now he rushed to my grandmother's side, took her hand, and bent to speak to her in low, soothing tones. He listened intently while she responded to him, words I could not make out as they were so mixed with her sobs, and slurred besides. But he understood her.

“Your grandmother is upset that you have told her it is night, when it is day.”

When I opened my mouth to argue, he said firmly, “Not a word. Bring me candles.”

I gathered together a great number of candles, and he lit them all behind her. The dimness in the room transformed itself into a semblance of daylight.

“Better?” he asked my grandmother.

“Yes, of course. Thank you.”

Deschartres looked at me. I nodded, then took my place back at my grandmother's bedside.

T
HAT YEAR AT
N
OHANT
, I spent a great deal of time in my room reading whatever I liked. I chose the poets, the moralists, and the philosophers: La Bruyère, Pope, Milton, Dante, Virgil, and Shakespeare. By opening my mind to these many influences, I found myself moving away from some of the convictions I had held at the convent.

As my mind reawakened to the challenges put before me by this reading, Deschartres and I began to have long, philosophical conversations, as well as games of logic that I enjoyed very much. I began to respect him in ways I had not before. As he did me.

Almost as soon as I'd returned to Nohant, Deschartres acted as though I'd already inherited it. He put me in charge of all matters relating to running the house. He kept doing his work on our land and in our gardens, and I was extremely grateful, for despite his ongoing efforts, I had never learned the first thing about husbandry, nor did I want to.

Aware of a new kind of restlessness, though, I added a new routine. Early every morning, dressed in trousers and a white, loose-fitting man's shirt, I mounted my mare and rode at breakneck speed into the Berry countryside, alone and free. I loved the way the limitless sky opened something in me; I loved the rhythmic sounds of Colette's hoofs hitting the earth, the short huffs of her breathing. We ran through open fields, and the ground birds rose up before us with a great rustle of flapping wings and high cries.