In The End of the Affair, a crumpled letter, from Sarah to a lover, is found in the rubbish bin. The discarded words read, “I have no need to write to you or talk to you, you know everything before I can speak, but when one loves, one feels the need to use the same old ways one has always used. I know I am only beginning to love, but already I want to abandon everything, everybody, but you: only fear and habit prevent me.”
I’ve read this book before, and every time it must be done slowly, each sentence wholly devoured, savoured like a bulging oyster swimming down my throat.
The story destroys me. The longing. The pain. The two years the lovers spend apart because of insecure and feared and confusing and misguided and miscommunicated love. So many adjectives are necessary to describe this love, and all love.
Graham Greene likens love to “noche oscura” or dark night. It certainly feels that way sometimes. But isn’t it worth it? To have experienced it? And for what we’ll learn about ourselves once our charred hearts heal? How we’ll grow?
In the film adaptation by Neil Jordan, Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore play the lovers. But when I read the book, I imagine Fiennes is paired with Kristin Scott Thomas, reprising the connection they had as The English Patient’s Count and Katharine. I’m surprised to see Moore in some scenes, expecting Scott Thomas to walk in the frame.
As gorgeous as the book is, I think I prefer where Jordan takes the story in his film – the expanded passion, seduction, time, and agony.
The visuals of the lovers’ hunger are far more erotic than the pictures in my head while reading. And there is this scene / line that won’t be found in the pages, but is so so deliciously intimate on the screen…
Maurice to Sarah, as he tenderly rolls up and fastens her stocking following an afternoon of lovemaking: “I’m jealous of this stocking because it does what I can’t. It kisses your whole leg.”
As I watch or read, I feel the story in my body — the ambiguities, the untrue narratives we tell ourselves, who we really are to our lovers, the insecurities that keep us apart, the things we don’t have the courage to say. It’s like I’m growing a second heart in the pit of my stomach. Like many, I relate so deeply.
No matter how much these love stories hurt, I keep returning. The End of the Affair, The English Patient, The Bridges of Madison County, Atonement. Cold Mountain. Cafe de Flore. These are the ones I watch or read again and again, tears skating down my face each time.
Does that make me a masochist? Or am I drawn to stories that show me I’m not alone when it comes to the anxieties and yearnings of the heart? I know I don’t want a tumultuous or tragic love, but poetry… there’s got to be poetry.
Vintage book: circa 1966
Vintage bikini: circa 1973-ish
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