The Reinvention of Love

that it was a sunny afternoon and that the boat capsized suddenly and you would not have known what was happening. There would have been no pain. You would not have had time to cry out. She said that your drowning would have been swift and merciful.
    Is this really true?
    Was it simply a quick confusion chased by a long silence?
    Was the water cold? Did you struggle?
    Were you afraid, my darling?
    Were you afraid?

CHARLES

    THIS STORY ENDS in winter, but I write it down in spring, and in this moment, while I write this page, the sky seals over with cloud. There is birdsong outside my window, and a breeze from the north. The weather is changing. An hour ago it was sunny. The day held the promise of heat.
    There is traffic on the street below. I can hear the cough of horses’ hoofs and the clatter of carts. Voices rise up to my window. Words spoken on the street reach my ears as musical notes, their meaning unravelling in the air between the ground and my bedroom.
    Love doesn’t fail. We do.
    I never loved anyone as much as I loved Adèle Hugo. And not just because I wasn’t willing, or because the opportunity didn’t present itself again – but because I was never again the same man I was when I was with Adèle. We met when I was thirty. I was young, full of idealism and dreams, full of energy and desire. As I have grown older, all these things have grown older too, more tepid. I have become less of myself, not more, and so by necessity any love after Adèle would be a lesser love. When I was with Adèle, I was the best version of myself that I would ever be – although I had no way of knowing this then.
    And no one was ever Adèle again for me. No one treasured every part of me, treated my body as a gift. No one surprisedme at the gate. No one met me with a force of passion equal to my own.
    I write this story down so I can enter it again. It is as simple as that. Writing does not recreate the moment so much as it stops it. And if the moment is stopped, one is able, finally, to get a clear look at it. One can walk around it, and examine it from all sides. When a moment is in real time it is always in flight. There is nothing to do but trail after it, or run to catch up.
    Who we are is determined not just by the choices we make, how we sew events together into narrative. What gives us the true measure of ourselves is how undone we can become by a single moment.
    And what that moment is.
    I sit in the small city church, dressed as Charlotte, waiting for Adèle to arrive. I sit three pews from the back. She will enter through the doors at the rear of the church and I want to be close to her arrival. I am always first at the church – eagerness coupled with an innate punctuality. Sitting at the back allows me to observe the front of the church – the altar and the choir loft, the stained-glass window above the altar. Sometimes it seems to me that the church is like a ship, and that the altar is the prow of this ship – with the parishioners’ faith the power that moves the vessel forward.
    The wood inside the church is dark, and the light coming in through the yellows and blues of the stained glass burns amber, makes the space look honeyed and warm. This belies the fact that because it is built of stone the church is always cold and damp; stone holds moisture, stone remembers cold. There is always a certain level of discomfort when one sits in a church. The pews are hard and narrow. The smell of the damp stone issharp, a little rancid. It is natural to look for comfort when one is experiencing its opposite, and so the honeyed light seems almost miraculous. I raise my eyes to the light spilling from the altar and it is easy to believe that it is God. I am grateful for that light. I want to bask in its rays. I want to worship its source.
    An empty church is just as effective as a populated one. The building was designed for both the single pilgrim, and the devout horde. When the hall is packed, and the choir is in full flight, the surge of voices cannot help but lift the spirit. In those moments it does seem possible for man to transcend his mortal faults, to exist on a more exalted plane.
    When the church is empty and I am the sole human presence, there is time to contemplate the history of the building, to think about all the worshippers who came before me. When I am alone in the church it is as if my living self is the beating heart in a cavernous stone body.
    I do not know which state I prefer.
    In this