knows how to make his lovely plant come into full, promising bloom. Rose, you are now frozen, as if you no longer dared to burst into flower, no longer dared to offer yourself to me, to let your enticing perfume bewitch me as those delicious petals open up one by one. Is the gardener to blame? Our beloved son is gone, and with him, a part of our life. But our love is still powerful, is it not, and it is our greatest strength, it is what we need to cherish in order to be able to survive. Remember how our love preceded our child, how our love gave birth to him. We must treasure it, nurture it and revel in it. I share your sorrow, I respect and mourn our son as a father, as a parent, but can we not mourn him as lovers? For after all, was he not born of two splendid lovers? I long for the sweet scent of your skin, my hands yearn to caress the curves of your beloved body, my lips burn to bestow thousands of kisses on the secret places that only I know of and adore. I want to feel you undulate against me under the softness of my caresses, under the sweet violence of my embrace; I hunger for your love, I want to taste the sweetness of your flesh, your womanly intimacy, I want to go back to the feverish ecstasy we shared as lovers, as a husband and a wife deeply, truly in love, up there in the quiet kingdom of our bedroom.
You are my priority, Rose, and I shall fight with all my might to restore your faith in our love, in our life.
Yours forever,
Armand, your husband
I FELT THE OVERPOWERING need to take a pause and could no longer write for a short while. But now, as my quill once more slides along the paper, I am connected with you again. I did not write you very many letters. We never separated, did we? I have also kept all your little poems. They are not really poems, are they? Little sentences of love that you would leave here and there for me to find. How I miss them. When the longing becomes too great, I give in, and reach for them. I keep them in a small leather pouch with your wedding ring and your reading glasses. “Rose, dear Rose, the light in your eyes is like the dawn, but only for me to behold.” And this one: “Rose, enchanting Rose, no thorns on your stem, only buds of sweetness and love.” No doubt a stranger would find them puerile. I do not care.
When I read them, I can still hear your lovely, deep voice. Armand, I miss your voice, above all. Why can’t the dead come back and talk to us? You could whisper to me as I take my tea in the mornings, and you would murmur more words at night, when I lie awake in the silence. And I would like to hear Maman Odette’s laugh, and my son’s babble. My mother’s voice? No, not in the least. I do not miss it whatsoever. When she died, of ripe old age, in her bed, at place Gozlin, I felt nothing, not even a twinge of sadness. You were standing beside me and Émile, and you kept looking at me, as if you read something on my face. I wanted to tell you that it was not my mother I missed, no, it was still yours, Maman Odette, who had died nearly twenty years before. I think you knew. And I was still mourning my son. For years after his death, I went to his grave every other day, walking all the way to the Cimetière du Sud, by the Montparnasse barrier. Sometimes you came with me. But most often I went alone.
A strange, painful peace invaded me when I sat by his tomb, under the rain, or the sun, my umbrella protecting me on every occasion. I did not wish to talk to anyone, and if someone hovered too near, I would swoop under the umbrella to safety and privacy. A lady of my age came to a nearby grave with the same regularity. She too would sit for hours, her hands in her lap. Was she praying? I wondered. I sometimes prayed. But I preferred to talk to my son directly. I talked to him in my head, exactly as if he had been standing in front of me. In the beginning, the presence of the other lady disturbed me. I soon got used to her. We never spoke to each other. Sometimes we
You are my priority, Rose, and I shall fight with all my might to restore your faith in our love, in our life.
Yours forever,
Armand, your husband
I FELT THE OVERPOWERING need to take a pause and could no longer write for a short while. But now, as my quill once more slides along the paper, I am connected with you again. I did not write you very many letters. We never separated, did we? I have also kept all your little poems. They are not really poems, are they? Little sentences of love that you would leave here and there for me to find. How I miss them. When the longing becomes too great, I give in, and reach for them. I keep them in a small leather pouch with your wedding ring and your reading glasses. “Rose, dear Rose, the light in your eyes is like the dawn, but only for me to behold.” And this one: “Rose, enchanting Rose, no thorns on your stem, only buds of sweetness and love.” No doubt a stranger would find them puerile. I do not care.
When I read them, I can still hear your lovely, deep voice. Armand, I miss your voice, above all. Why can’t the dead come back and talk to us? You could whisper to me as I take my tea in the mornings, and you would murmur more words at night, when I lie awake in the silence. And I would like to hear Maman Odette’s laugh, and my son’s babble. My mother’s voice? No, not in the least. I do not miss it whatsoever. When she died, of ripe old age, in her bed, at place Gozlin, I felt nothing, not even a twinge of sadness. You were standing beside me and Émile, and you kept looking at me, as if you read something on my face. I wanted to tell you that it was not my mother I missed, no, it was still yours, Maman Odette, who had died nearly twenty years before. I think you knew. And I was still mourning my son. For years after his death, I went to his grave every other day, walking all the way to the Cimetière du Sud, by the Montparnasse barrier. Sometimes you came with me. But most often I went alone.
A strange, painful peace invaded me when I sat by his tomb, under the rain, or the sun, my umbrella protecting me on every occasion. I did not wish to talk to anyone, and if someone hovered too near, I would swoop under the umbrella to safety and privacy. A lady of my age came to a nearby grave with the same regularity. She too would sit for hours, her hands in her lap. Was she praying? I wondered. I sometimes prayed. But I preferred to talk to my son directly. I talked to him in my head, exactly as if he had been standing in front of me. In the beginning, the presence of the other lady disturbed me. I soon got used to her. We never spoke to each other. Sometimes we
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