Henri Character Analysis

It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock. What a kitchen that was, with birds in every state of undress[.]

Words like devastation, rape, slaughter, carnage, starvation are lock and key words to keep the pain at bay. Words about war that are easy on the eye.

I’m telling you stories. Trust me.

“Will you kill people, Henri?”

I dropped down beside her. “Not people, Louise, just the enemy.”

“What is enemy?”

“Someone who’s not on your side.”

Now, words and ideas will always slip themselves in between me and the feeling.

“What makes you think you can see anything clearly? What gives you the right to make a notebook and shake it at me in thirty years, if we’re still alive, and say you’ve got the truth?”

“I don’t care about the facts, Domino, I care about how I feel. How I feel will change. I want to remember that.”

I wrote about her or tried to. She eluded me the way the tarts in Boulogne had eluded me. I decided to write about Napoleon instead.

You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible.

Soldiers and women. That’s how the world is. Any other role is temporary.

She thought I was a young man. I was not. Should I go see her as myself and joke about the mistake and leave gracefully? My heart shriveled at this thought. To lose her again so soon. And what was myself? Was this breeches and boots self any less real than my garters? What was it about me that interested her?

You play, you win. You play, you lose. You play.

Could a woman love a woman for more than a night?

I stepped out and in the morning they say a beggar was running round the Rialto talking about a young man who’d walked across the canal like it was solid.

I’m telling you stories. Trust me.

They called the Czar ‘the Little Father’, and they worshipped him as they worshipped God. In their simplicity I saw a mirror for my own longing and understood for the first time my own need for a little father that had led me this far.

You can’t make sense of your passion for life in the face of death, you can only give up your passion. Only then can you begin to survive.

And if you refuse?

If you felt for every man you murdered [. . .] madness would throw her noose around your neck and lead you into the dark woods where the rivers are polluted and the birds are silent.

If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once-loved, it’s for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?

Future. Crossed Out.

That’s what war does.

“They’re all different.”

“What?”

“Snowflakes. Think of that.”

I did think of that and I fell in love with her.

What you risk reveals what you value.

There is no sense in loving someone you can never wake up to except by chance.

Why would a people who love the grape and the sun die in the zero winter for one man?

Why did I? Because I loved him. He was my passion and when we go to war we feel we are not a lukewarm people any more.

Why was she so upset? Because if the tapestry had been finished and the woman had woven in her heart, she would have been a prisoner for ever.

I say I’m in love with her. What does that mean?

It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read.

They had notebooks with them mostly. His life-story, his feelings on the rock. They were going to make their fortunes exhibiting this lamed beast.

And the valuable, fabulous thing?

Now that I have it back? Now that I have been given a reprieve such as only the stories offer?

Will I gamble it again?

Yes.

I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligations but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free.

I am in love with her; not a fantasy or a myth or a creature of my own making.

Her. A person who is not me. I invented Bonaparte as much as he invented himself.

My passion for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love.

The one is about you, the other about someone else.

It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock. What a kitchen that was, with birds in every state of undress[.]

Words like devastation, rape, slaughter, carnage, starvation are lock and key words to keep the pain at bay. Words about war that are easy on the eye.

I’m telling you stories. Trust me.

“Will you kill people, Henri?”

I dropped down beside her. “Not people, Louise, just the enemy.”

“What is enemy?”

“Someone who’s not on your side.”

Now, words and ideas will always slip themselves in between me and the feeling.

“What makes you think you can see anything clearly? What gives you the right to make a notebook and shake it at me in thirty years, if we’re still alive, and say you’ve got the truth?”

“I don’t care about the facts, Domino, I care about how I feel. How I feel will change. I want to remember that.”

I wrote about her or tried to. She eluded me the way the tarts in Boulogne had eluded me. I decided to write about Napoleon instead.

You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible.

Soldiers and women. That’s how the world is. Any other role is temporary.

She thought I was a young man. I was not. Should I go see her as myself and joke about the mistake and leave gracefully? My heart shriveled at this thought. To lose her again so soon. And what was myself? Was this breeches and boots self any less real than my garters? What was it about me that interested her?

You play, you win. You play, you lose. You play.

Could a woman love a woman for more than a night?

I stepped out and in the morning they say a beggar was running round the Rialto talking about a young man who’d walked across the canal like it was solid.

I’m telling you stories. Trust me.

They called the Czar ‘the Little Father’, and they worshipped him as they worshipped God. In their simplicity I saw a mirror for my own longing and understood for the first time my own need for a little father that had led me this far.

You can’t make sense of your passion for life in the face of death, you can only give up your passion. Only then can you begin to survive.

And if you refuse?

If you felt for every man you murdered [. . .] madness would throw her noose around your neck and lead you into the dark woods where the rivers are polluted and the birds are silent.

If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once-loved, it’s for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?

Future. Crossed Out.

That’s what war does.

“They’re all different.”

“What?”

“Snowflakes. Think of that.”

I did think of that and I fell in love with her.

What you risk reveals what you value.

There is no sense in loving someone you can never wake up to except by chance.

Why would a people who love the grape and the sun die in the zero winter for one man?

Why did I? Because I loved him. He was my passion and when we go to war we feel we are not a lukewarm people any more.

Why was she so upset? Because if the tapestry had been finished and the woman had woven in her heart, she would have been a prisoner for ever.

I say I’m in love with her. What does that mean?

It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read.

They had notebooks with them mostly. His life-story, his feelings on the rock. They were going to make their fortunes exhibiting this lamed beast.

And the valuable, fabulous thing?

Now that I have it back? Now that I have been given a reprieve such as only the stories offer?

Will I gamble it again?

Yes.

I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligations but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free.

I am in love with her; not a fantasy or a myth or a creature of my own making.

Her. A person who is not me. I invented Bonaparte as much as he invented himself.

My passion for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love.

The one is about you, the other about someone else.