The Dream Lover (33 page)

The first betrayal is the hardest. It is also the one that helps facilitate the second, and the one after that, and the one after that. And so it goes, until it is seemingly effortless to transfer from one set of arms into the other. Yet it is anything but effortless. Rather, it is the most arduous and soul-wrenching thing one can do, to search endlessly for a way to stop searching.

 

December 1833

VENICE, ITALY

W
hen Alfred de Musset and I traveled from Paris to Italy, I was well until we reached Genoa. There, I became aware of feeling feverish. I also had stomach pains but did not want to mention them to Alfred. But that night, there was no hiding the fact that I had dysentery. Alfred had wanted to see the ballet and did nothing to hide his disappointment that we could not go. I told him to go alone, that I would be all right without him. I made that selfless offer hoping he would refuse it, but he took me up on it and returned at such a late hour that I was sure he had done more than watch women dance. I was too sick to care.

In the morning, I was far from recovered, but well enough to travel. We were driven down the coast to Pisa, which I saw through a kind of fog. By evening, when we were in the hotel and Alfred asked whether I would prefer next to go to Rome or to Venice, I no longer cared. “Flip a coin,” I told him, feeling as though I were speaking from the bottom of a barrel.

He did flip a coin: heads for Rome, tails for Venice, and it came up tails. Then he flipped it again, for good measure: Venice. He flipped it seven times in all, and it came up Venice every time. He lay on the bed beside me and kissed my forehead. “It seems it is our destiny to go to Venice! That means we can visit Florence on the way.” He began to list all the sites we would visit in that historic city. I did not hear them all; I fell into a sound sleep, from which I hoped to awaken refreshed and well.

In the morning, I felt better, although weak and a bit unsteady on my feet. When we arrived in Florence, we saw far too many museums and churches for the state of my health, but I did not want to complain.

When we finally arrived at Mestre, that mainland part of Venice
on the Adriatic, it was ten o'clock at night, and I nearly wept with relief to learn that we were one gondola ride away from the Albergo Reale. This was a beautiful hotel that had once been a palazzo, and I had booked us a two-bedroom apartment there. We climbed into the hooded black gondola, which in my state reminded me of nothing so much as a coffin. There were curtains that provided privacy to riders, and were I feeling better, I would have covered my lover with kisses. As it was, Alfred drew the curtains aside and I lay against the colorful eiderdown cushions, watching the world glide by. Even in my condition, I was dazzled by the sight of the city: the rising of the moon over the still waters, the domes and terraces and the intricate fretwork. In the darkness there, the sky held on to blue, and the stars shone down with a different kind of luster.

Our rooms at the hotel were magnificent. We had our own ornate balcony, high Gothic windows looking out over the quay and the lagoon, and a blue-wallpapered drawing room complete with piano. I fell gratefully into bed and prayed for a complete recovery so that we could enjoy this place together.

F
OR SEVERAL DAYS
, I felt well and we enjoyed exploring the sites. The city, though toned down from its previous independent status and Byronic lasciviousness by the straitlaced Austrian government, was still a delight. It was like a Turner painting come to life; and the changing colors of the sky alone were enough to provide ample entertainment. Add to that the delicious character of the Venetians (what joy to hear the gondoliers exchange insults about each other's circumstances of birth and then, once safely separated by a significant distance, vow to murder one another using their oars as weapons!), the sumptuousness of the food, the muted roar of the Adriatic crashing onto the shores of the Lido, the cannon shot that announced a new day, followed by the tolling of the church bells, and one felt that one did not want ever to leave.

At night, I lay in the arms of my lover, soothed into sleep by
recalling the wheeling seagulls I had seen against a cobalt-blue sky, or the towers and domes of the city whose silhouette at night suggested a kind of magical forest, or the little lights that beckoned at the end of the canalettos.

Then I woke with a crippling migraine, which plagued me off and on for days. A physician named Pietro Pagello was called to bleed me, which offered some relief. But the bleeding did nothing to affect the attitude of my lover, who had become distinctly unloving. He sat slouched in a chair and pouted one evening as I lay resting on the bed before dinner, saying it was frustrating and dispiriting traveling with someone who was sick all the time. My response was an aggrieved silence. Had I not given him permission to go out alone and enjoy himself? All I had asked was that he stay away from gambling at the Lido. But did he honor that request? No, and then I had to beg Buloz to send me money to cover his debts.

He stood abruptly. “Let us at least go to La Fenice tonight,” he said. “All you will have to do is sit up straight in a chair and listen to music. Do you think you can manage that?”

“I have no desire to see opera that will pale next to that which I see regularly in Paris,” I said. “What I can
manage
, as you put it, is dinner in the hotel, which I would hope to enjoy with the man who purports to love me—the same man who is traipsing around Venice in the footsteps of his heroes, Byron and Shelley, in search of inspiration, which has so far eluded him, and whose efforts—or lack thereof—are being financed by me! We've been gone for over a month, and you have produced nothing!”

His face turned bitter. “I wondered how long it would take for your anger to show. Well then, as long as you have seen fit to speak your mind, I shall do the same. Let me bare my soul to you, as you are always insisting you want me to do.

“I feel I have made a mistake, George, and that I do not love you after all. What I have experienced with you on this trip would make
anyone understand why I have come to this conclusion. Rooms reeking from gastric assaults and a woman who cannot bear the unearthly beautiful light of this place because her
head
hurts and, when she does feel marginally well, holds back in love because of some prudish nature she heretofore had not revealed. I want spicy, wild sex, not this! The only thing you are passionate about is locking yourself up at night and writing your precious fiction, ignoring all that is before you here, which, if you would pay attention to it, would make your stories infinitely richer! You write on demand, like a parlor trick, and expect me to do the same. But I require inspiration to write, and inspiration comes from living
life
!” He took a breath after this long-winded barrage, then spoke quietly: “No, I do not think I am made for this.”

It was as if I had been shot in the chest. I sat wide-eyed, unmoving.

“I'm going out,” he said, and he left. I did not see him for days. I waited, and I worked. Parlor trick! No, it was survival.

When Alfred finally appeared again one morning, he looked terrible. He was feverish and pale and said that he believed he had contracted a social disease. No doubt he had, but this was more than that. Any anger I held toward him fell away; he was the man I loved and the precious son of the woman to whom I had made a promise to care for him. He and I were stranded here together. In his gay times, he belonged to all; in illness, he had only me.

I sat him on the balcony in the sun and covered him with a blanket. I arranged for food to be sent up, but he could eat nothing. That night, he was delirious, sweating, occasionally leaping out of bed and moving monsterlike about the room, naked and yelling at the top of his lungs. He was a small man, not much taller than I, but when I tried to restrain him, I failed. All I could do was hang back in fright and wait for the episode to pass.

The next day was even worse; his skin burned to the touch, and he was barely responsive. I called upon the hotel staff to help me, to
once more send a doctor to our apartment. Pagello came again and diagnosed typhoid fever. “He is dangerously ill, madame,” he said. “I feel I must stay here with him.”

And so Pagello and I together stayed at Musset's bedside for eight days and nights. I did not leave him even to change my clothes. I kept close to him, alert to his every move.

When Musset slept, Pagello and I often talked in whispers; we had need of passing the time in some way other than regarding the rise and fall of our patient's chest.

Musset was ill for weeks. After the critical first week, Pagello began coming only twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. I began to look forward to these visits very much. I knew he found me attractive: in one of our low-voiced conversations, he had told me he had seen me the first day I was there, sitting out on the balcony with Alfred, smoking. “You were wearing a scarlet turban, and that is what at first attracted my attention. But then I saw your eyes, and I could not move. I asked my companion, ‘Who is that woman?' When I learned you were the great writer, I was further impressed.” I looked away and did not respond, but I confess that his words felt comforting, in the wake of the tongue-lashing I had been given by Alfred. In addition to that, Pagello was a very handsome man, with wavy hair and large, expressive eyes and a gentle voice. He was rumored to be much in demand by the women of the city.

Once when Musset lay sleeping, Pagello pulled me gently onto his lap and kissed me. I did not resist him. It was such pleasant relief from my role as nursemaid, and in any case, Musset and I were through—had he not told me as much? Eventually, the handsome doctor and I began spending time together in the room adjoining Alfred's, each of us attuned to any sound that might come from our patient. I luxuriated in the attentions of a stable, even-tempered, and practical man who was a gifted healer in more ways than one.

One night, as Pagello and I sat talking in low tones, we heard Alfred raging, making accusations about Pagello seducing me. I rushed to his bedside and told him that the doctor and I were just
talking—about him! Alfred was right in what he suspected, of course. But I did not feel I could admit to these altogether justified transgressions when he was still so ill.

By the time Alfred fully recovered, in mid-March, I was convinced that I was in love with Pagello. And so when my old lover attempted to renew our physical relationship, I wanted no part of it. I would not then or ever be involved with more than one man at a time.

Alfred and I made plans for him to go back to Paris. I told him I would accompany him to Mestre, then bid him adieu. I would stay on in Venice another few months, to finish my novel.

Now the shoe was on the other foot. Alfred said he was resigned to my decision, but with his wounded eyes, his sorrowful smiles and his frequent sighs, he seemed devastated. In a letter he sent me first thing upon arriving in Paris, he told me he had gone to my apartment and put to his lips a cigarette that, on the evening of our departure, I had smoked half of, then stubbed out in a flowered saucer. He had smoked the rest of it, and he told me it was because he had wanted to feel what I had felt; he had wanted, in this strange and long-distance way, to have the feel of my lips on his.

He wrote that he had been wrong to say he did not love me, for he did; and he ached in his despair at having lost me. But because he loved me, he said, he would wish me well in my new relationship. He knew I would not be returning to Paris until August, and he hoped he might see me then, even if it was in the company of my new lover. He thanked me for finding him a child and making him a man.

When his letter arrived at the hotel, I read it on the balcony and then bowed my head and wept. For from the moment he departed, I had missed him. It came to me that I was able to love Pagello only as counterpoint to Musset.

But when I looked up, I was soothed by the beauty around me. In late afternoon, the light turned the lagoon into liquid copper. Every day, I could hear the songs of the gondoliers and the cries of
the fishermen and the good-natured arguing by housewives over the price of melons. There were beautiful gowns and exotic masks worn at balls, lavender clouds at sunset. I could take walks in narrow alleys or lie back in a gondola for an evening ride that passed beneath the Bridge of Sighs. From the window behind the desk where I wrote at night, I could see lambent lights reflected in the dark waters, the luminescence seeming to ride the waves; and on foggy nights, veils of mist rose and swirled on journeys of their own. Spring was coming soon, and Pagello had said the moss would turn emerald green, flowers would overflow from the balconies, and the caged nightingales people kept there would sing.

I
N
J
UNE,
I
DELIVERED
my latest novel,
Jacques
, to Buloz. I also penned an essay, “A Letter from Venice,” to be published in the
Revue
. Then, in fourteen days, I wrote a novella called
Leone Leoni
. It featured a character based on Musset who was extremely complicated, to put it kindly, but also divine, and another character based on Pagello, whom I described as a simple savior. Buloz, particularly captivated by the character based on Musset, said it was the “strongest and most vigorous” character I had ever written. The praise sat uneasily in me, for I had drawn more heavily on a real person for that character's portrayal than I ever had before. What would all of my readers in Paris make of this thinly disguised Musset?

I considered not publishing the book after all. But then I decided that, like it or not, this was unalterably my profession. Love, hate, betrayal, adoration, deceit, truth, lies—it was all grist for the mill. It took many years for me to learn that all need not be—indeed should not be—said. But by then, of course, much ink was out of the bottle, and one could not pour published lines back into it.