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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Passion, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Passion
Storytelling
Gambling
War
Hero-Worship and Religion
Summary
Analysis
From an undetermined point in the future, Henri realizes that imperial conquest always creates “defeated and humiliated people,” rendering it necessary for the conquerors to “guard and defend and fear.” He recalls telling the little girl in his village that he wouldn’t kill people, only the enemy. Everyone is an enemy when you are a conqueror. Instead of invading England, Napoleon’s army went to fight “the Third Coalition” under terrible conditions. After two years, Napoleon and the Czar made peace. The soldiers believed Napoleon’s promises that they would have food and go back to France. After Henri lost an eye at the battle of Austerlitz, he should have deserted. He never expected to end up “here.”
Henri reveals that he is narrating his story from a mysterious “here,” drawing the reader’s attention to the conditions under which Henri produces his story and thus to his unavoidable, perhaps unreliable subjectivity. Meanwhile, his realization that war invariably creates “defeated and humiliated people” as well as conquerors who must “defend and fear” indicates that war always simply produces more war. The War of the Third Coalition (1805–1806) was a conflict between Napoleon’s forces and an alliance between the United Kingdom, Austria, Russia, and others. The Battle of Austerlitz, which took place during this war on December 2, 1805, led to Napoleon’s victory and the war’s eventual end. Despite Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz, Henri now believes he should have deserted after that—suggesting that at some point, he has lost his hero-worshipping passion for Napoleon.
Themes
Back in the present, years have passed since New Year’s 1805. Napoleon announces that as the Czar has broken their alliance, the French army will march on Moscow. He assumed it would be a fast campaign—but the Russian army refuses to engage in battle, instead burning the land between the French and Moscow. Soon winter comes, freezing the soldiers. The land-burning starves not only the French army but also the Russian peasants, who (according to Henri) worship their Czar “as they worship[] God.” Henri recognizes in them his own yearnings. The peasants help the Russian army burn their own homes for the Czar; then they went out to starve or freeze. Henri feels that the French killed all the peasants without shooting them. (Briefly, in the present, Henri mentions that he must stop writing because “they” want him to take exercise).
Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 after Russia broke Napoleonic France’s order that its allies import no goods from the United Kingdom as part of a trade embargo. During the invasion, Russian soldiers and peasants burned Russian crops and buildings rather than allow the invading French army to use them. Approximately one million people died during the invasion, not only in battle but due to starvation and hypothermia. When Henri notices that the peasants passionately hero-worship the czar to their own detriment, he realizes that he hero-worships Napoleon in the same way—a realization that may mark the beginning of his disillusionment with Napoleon. Meanwhile, narrator-Henri’s mention that “they” want him to take exercise suggests that he is writing this account from some kind of institution or hospital.
Themes
It is worse for Henri to contemplate his living comrades that the ones who die. To survive, some of his comrades cannibalize their own arms. Henri thinks it’s better to cut out your own heart. The soldiers removed their hearts to survive the winter and the war. Henri comments to the reader: “You can’t make sense of your passion for life in the face of death, you can only give up your passion.” A person cannot feel compassion for everyone they kill in war, or they would go insane. After removing their hearts, the soldiers become sentimental about “home” and pretend that they will be able to find their hearts once they return to France.
Though Henri had a passion for military leader Napoleon, he suggests in this passage that war and death are inimical to passion. Because people have a “passion for life,” they have to “give up” these personal passions to survive murderous and dangerous wartime conditions. When Henri says that the soldiers pretend they will be able to regain their hearts when they go home, he implies that the loss of passion war causes can be permanent.
Themes
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The French army’s main hope is to take Moscow, where they will find food and shelter—but the Russians burn Moscow. When the French army camps outside the burning city, Henri prepares Napoleon a very thin chicken and realizes that he has begun to hate Napoleon and wants to desert the army. Hating Napoleon after loving him feels terrible: “If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession”—obsessive hatred for oneself as well as the former love-object.
Russian forces set fire to Moscow on September 14, 1812, to keep Napoleon’s army from taking advantage of its shelter and resources. The fire kept burning for days afterward. Henri realizes he now hates Napoleon while preparing him a chicken. As chicken represents Napoleon’s arbitrary passions, the coincidence of Henri’s hatred with chicken suggests that Henri has come to hate Napoleon due to Napoleon’s other arbitrary passion—his passion for self-glorifying conquests in war. The fine distinction that Henri draws between passionate love and obsessive hate, meanwhile, suggests that the former can easily become the latter.
Themes
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Patrick arrives in the camp a few days after Henri. He is constantly drunk, though he is supposed to be acting as look-out. Henri asks Patrick to desert with him, but Patrick laughs and says he’ll surely die if he sets out into the wilderness. Then Henri finds Domino—half of whose face has been shot off, though he’s surviving—and asks whether Domino will desert with him. Domino, who can’t speak, writes “Why?” in the snow. Henri explains that although Napoleon said they were going to fight a war to end all wars, he lied. The wars are never-ending, and Henri wants out.
Henri’s criticism of Napoleon suggest that Napoleon’s take on war is deluded: while Napoleon may have said that they were fighting wars to win peace, war only ever produces more wars.
Themes
Domino writes “Future” in the snow and then crosses it out. Henri wonders whether Domino is talking about his own future or Henri’s. Either way, Henri has been at war for eight years and is still just cooking Napoleon’s chickens, so he feels that Domino’s sentiment is correct: “Future. Crossed out. That’s what war does.” For once he wants to live for himself rather than continuing to worship Napoleon. Then Domino writes in the snow, “You go,” and gives Henri an icicle containing a gold chain that Domino used to wear around his neck. Privately, Henri thinks he knew that Domino would never come with him and leave the horses because horses “are the present.”
Henri has been cooking Napoleon’s chickens for eight years—a symbol for how Henri’s passionate hero-worship of Napoleon has subordinated Henri’s individuality to Napoleon’s own judgments and passions, including not only his passion for chicken but also his passion for war. Henri’s claim that war “crosse[s] out” the future indicates that war always leads to more war, which makes the future exactly like the present and therefore destroys what is essential to it—namely, change. Henri’s belief that horses “are the present” in Domino’s view suggests that an orientation toward a risky future is an inherently human one, not shared by other animals—and that Domino prefers the present-orientation of other animals.
Themes
In the kitchen tent, Henri finds Patrick waiting for him with a camp sex worker (later revealed to be Villanelle). Both Patrick and the sex worker are eating chicken legs, which the sex worker explains she got by having sex with Russians. When Henri protests that the Russians have left, she laughs and says they’re hiding in the snow. Then she comments that every snowflake is different and orders Henri to think about it—which makes Henri fall in love with her. When he announces he’s deserting that night, she asks to come, and Patrick volunteers to come too. Henri is momentarily jealous, wondering whether Patrick loves the woman. But then he marvels that he’s worried about such a thing while in such dire straits. The three of them steal food from Napoleon, leave some for Domino, and flee.
After Henri becomes disillusioned with Napoleon, readers see someone other than Napoleon eating chicken for the first time in the novel—eating chicken not passionately but simply to stay alive. This functional chicken-eating shows the arbitrariness of Napoleon’s passion for chicken and the tragedy of Henri’s years-long subordination to Napoleon’s passions. The sex worker’s discourse on snowflakes calls back to Henri’s musing, in reaction to the drowning of the 2,000 soldiers in the first section, that people deal with the dizzying uniqueness of every snowflake (and every individual person) by forgetting about it, accepting instead the warlike logic that people are essentially similar to one another and therefore replaceable. The sex worker’s attention to individual uniqueness—her anti-war logic—makes Henri fall in love with her now that he has fully rejected Napoleon.
Themes
After a week’s hard travel, Henri, Patrick, and Villanelle find an abandoned Russian army site. They take shelter and use some abandoned gunpower to make a fire. Henri and Patrick take off their boots, but Villanelle does not. When they look at her strangely, she explains that her father was a boatman, and boatmen never remove their boots. Then she tells them her story: she is a gambler by nature and formerly by profession at a casino, where she learned to determine “what it is that people value” by “what they will risk.” People are moved by the possibility of losing.
Villanelle’s claim that one can learn “what it is that people value” by “what the will risk” suggests, counterintuitively, that people are most likely to gamble the things that they most value. This claim suggests that people not tend to live under conditions of risk and uncertainty—but are attracted to such conditions. Meanwhile, note that Villanelle narrates a story within Henri’s narration. This nested narration disorients readers, making them wonder who the “real” narrator is and whether that narrator is reliable.
Themes
Villanelle explains that she comes from a city where massive gambles are common. Whereas smart gamblers always hold something in reserve, “the Devil’s gambler” holds back something “precious” to him that he can only gamble “once in a lifetime.” Villanelle knew a Devil’s gambler, a rich man who seemed dispassionate about his gambling—and thus dull to Villanelle—until one day, a strange man walked into the casino and talked at length with the rich man. The men announced to the room that they were going to gamble, best out of three, and the winner could kill the loser however he wanted. The rich man seemed excited to gamble his life, the one irreplaceable thing he had. Villanelle tells her audience, “What you risk reveals what you value.”
Villanelle’s anecdote about the rich man who gambles his life emphasizes that people want to gamble what is “precious” to them—she is elaborating on her claim that “what you risk reveals what you value.” The rich man valued his life because it was the only truly “precious” thing he had—so he risked it. This anecdote suggests that people love the thrill of risk more than they love even their own lives.
Themes
After three games—roulette, cards, and dominoes—the rich man lost one to two. The rich man, shaking, left with the strange man, who planned to “dismember[ him] starting with the hands.” No one at the casino saw either man again, but after a few months, someone sent a pair of mounted human hands to the casino, which the manager hung on the wall.
Villanelle’s anecdote has a gruesome fairytale quality, containing as it does a mysterious stranger, a terrible wager, and an ultimate punishment for reckless behavior. This fairytale quality may cast doubt on the truth of Villanelle’s anecdote—or it may simply suggest that reality is stranger and more like a fairytale than some audiences are willing to grant.
Themes
Eight years ago, Villanelle learned what her own “valuable, fabulous” possession was: her heart, which she lost gambling on the woman with gray-green eyes, whom she knew for five months and with whom she spent nine nights in total while the woman’s husband was away. On the ninth night, they both realized that they would have to go back to secret meetings in public places. Villanelle thought: “There is no sense in loving someone you can never wake up to except by chance.” She did not want to go on gambling her heart for the possibility of a tenth night, and she knew the woman loved her husband. So she left the next day, and any time she was tempted to return to the woman, she went to the Casino to observe gamblers humiliating themselves instead.
Villanelle prefaces her own story with the anecdote of the rich man who gambled away his life. The parallel between her story and his suggests that just as his “valuable, fabulous” possession was his life, hers was her heart—that she valued keeping her heart more than anything else and so, naturally, gambled it on a risky romance. Villanelle watches humiliated gamblers to keep from returning to the woman because she believes that passion has turned her into such a gambler.
Themes
In Villanelle’s story, she decides to marry the large man who likes it when she dresses as a boy. She has come to fear walking around the city, where she both longs and fears to see the woman with the gray-green eyes, so she marries the large man and sets off with him across Europe. One day, in a city with good weather, she met a Jewish man named Salvadore. Mysteriously, Salvadore showed her his literal, physical heart in a box and asked for hers in exchange—but she told him she no longer had her heart on her, and they went their separate ways.
Villanelle’s decision to marry the large man—whom she swore not to marry and who sexually assaulted her—shows how desperate and out-of-control her disappointed passion has made her. Meanwhile, the strange interlude with Salvadore suggests that in the world of Villanelle’s story, people can remove their literal, physical hearts without dying—and that Villanelle may have lost hers to the woman with gray-green eyes in a literal as well as a romantic sense.
Themes
After two years of marriage to the large man, Villanelle steals his watch and money and runs away. After another three years working in various countries, Villanelle returns to Venice hoping to retrieve her heart. The large man finds her in Venice, still enraged at her even though he has a new female sexual partner. To settle matters, a friend of the large man suggests that the man and Villanelle play cards. If Villanelle wins, she can walk free; if the large man wins, he can do anything he likes to Villanelle short of molestation or murder. Villanelle loses—though she later learns the deck was rigged—and her husband sells her to the friend, revealed to be French General Murat, as a sex worker for the generals of the French army.
Joachim Murat (1767–1815) was a French military commander who served under Napoleon during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), though in 1813 Murat made a secret treaty with Napoleon’s enemies. Villanelle’s return to Venice to get her heart back suggests readers should interpret the loss of her heart literally as well as figuratively, underscoring the fantastical and hard-to-believe nature of her story. Meanwhile, her decision to gamble her freedom with her estranged husband underscores the attraction people have to risk what they most value.
Themes
Villanelle’s story ends, but Henri feels his “own just beginning.” He can’t win Villanelle’s love because he has met her “too late.” He longs to hear her talk more about Venice, to see love in her eyes. When he touches her face, she smiles and assures him that she’ll take him to the “city of disguises.” He thinks he’s already in disguise in his soldier’s uniform, and he wants to go home.
Henri feels his “own [story] just beginning” when he realizes that he has fallen in love with a woman who already loves someone else. This sentiment suggests that there’s something fundamentally narrative about passion: it involves a protagonist (the passionate person) trying to obtain the hard-to-get object of their passion. When Henri touches Villanelle’s face, it echoes the earlier scene in which the woman with gray-green eyes touched young Villanelle’s face—but it doesn’t seem to have the same effect on Villanelle when Henri does it. Meanwhile, Henri’s sense that he is in disguise in a soldier’s uniform both emphasizes his total disillusionment with Napoleon and parallels him with young Villanelle, who also disguised herself as a soldier while in the first throes of infatuation.
Themes
In the morning, Henri, Villanelle, and Patrick discover that they’ve been snowed in and have to dig their way out of their shelter. They plan to travel along the Polish border, into Austria, and across the Danube toward Venice. After two weeks of hard travel, they come across a Russian village where—at the urging of Villanelle, who speaks Russian—they pretend to be Polish, lying that they stole their uniforms from French soldiers they killed. The villagers’ own village escaped burning only due to its remoteness and the fact that an important official is in love with one of the villagers. So, they’re happy to hear the travelers’ story and give them food and shelter.
Villanelle, Henri, and Patrick lie to the villagers to protect themselves, telling a convincing story to the villagers and so shaping the villagers’ perception of reality in important ways.
Themes
Villanelle and Henri claim that they are a married couple, so the villagers give them a shared room. Henri touches her back only when he thinks she’s asleep. Then, one night, she turns over and asks him to have sex with her. When he admits he doesn’t know how, she says she’ll have sex with him, then. (When Henri thinks of that night later, “here in this place where [he] will always be,” he loses his grasp on time and his ability to narrate what happened, remembering only Villanelle’s falling red-gold hair.)
Narrator-Henri’s claim that he will “always be” in the place where he is writing his story implies that he is incarcerated or so sick he cannot move. Meanwhile, Henri’s inability to narrate his first sexual encounter with Villanelle suggests that some experiences are so passionate they overwhelm the human ability to tell stories, escaping language entirely.
Themes
Henri, Villanelle, and Patrick journey on. Everywhere they encounter peasants who hate the French and Napoleon, who insulted their own leaders and took away their freedom. When in Poland, the travelers all pretend to be Italian, and when Villanelle mentions she is from Venice, the Polish people all want to hear whether the “city of Satan” is as bad as people claim. As the travelers move on, they hear that even the French are getting sick of Napoleon. Whereas the common people are “gambling with all [they] had” for his glory, Napoleon is still guarding his “valuable, fabulous thing.” Henri is surprised to learn, as he goes, that France’s enemies are not “monsters and devils” but “ordinary people”—and that the ordinary people of other countries think the French monsters too.
The “ordinary people” of every country have negative stereotypes about the “ordinary people” of every other place, believing foreigners to be “monsters and devils.” For example, Polish people assume that Venice is the “city of Satan,” full of sin and evil. These negative stereotypes show how storytelling—cultural stereotyping being a potentially harmful form of storytelling—can shape reality by determining how people are willing to treat each other, e.g. by making people willing to kill each other in war. Meanwhile, the claim that ordinary people “gambl[e] with all [they] had” in war suggests that most people’s “valuable, fabulous thing” is simply their life—but that that is not the case for Napoleon.
Themes
Near the Danube, Patrick starts acting strange. He begins talking of Ireland, saying he might like to go home and become a priest again. He liked going to church to “think about someone who wasn’t your family or your enemy.” When Henri accuses Patrick of hypocrisy, Patrick retorts that Henri is a “puritan at heart” who doesn’t understand humanity. This hurts Henri’s feelings, yet he feels that it is true. Later that night, Patrick begins sweating heavily and having convulsions. He dies near daybreak. The ground is too hard for Henri and Villanelle to dig a grave, so they bury him beneath forest detritus, feeling suddenly much less sure that they’ll reach the end of their journey.
Patrick wants to become a priest again not because he’s religiously devoted but because church helps him “think about someone” other than “family” or an “enemy.” This peculiar statement suggests that church, as a communal activity, helps people connect with others to whom they are not particularly close, like acquaintances or neighbors. When Henri points out Patrick’s religious hypocrisy, Patrick accuses Henri of being a “puritan”—suggesting that only a fanatic would demand that people be honest and passionate about all their activities all the time.
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Henri recalls the story that Patrick told them about how he discovered his far-seeing eye. One day, he was preaching in church with the door open when he saw two absent parishioners committing adultery three fields away. Unsure whether he had really seen them or was having visions, Patrick went to visit the parishioners in question and deduced from their obvious guilt that he had seen truly. Later, he began spying on a religiously faithful woman with large breasts “to check that she wasn’t in sin.” Henri wonders whether Patrick is looking down on them from heaven. Henri wants to believe it, though he doesn’t believe in heaven.
Patrick’s claim that he was spying on a large-breasted parishioner “to check that she wasn’t in sin” is obviously a joke—he was making excuses to ogle her. Yet again, Henri wants to believe in heaven and religion but can’t do it—suggesting that Henri believes passionately or not at all, lending some credence to Patrick’s accusation that Henri is a “puritan.”
Themes
Henri thinks of all his friends who died in the war. Given the obvious horror of battle deaths, he wonders how Napoleon recruited so many men and why so few deserted. Napoleon claimed that war was in Frenchmen’s “blood,” but Henri hopes that isn’t true—if it is, wars will never end. Henri, for his part, went to war because he loved Napoleon passionately and because it made him feel no longer “lukewarm.” Villanelle, meanwhile, thinks that men are just violent creatures.
Henri has already argued that war tends to be never-ending because it creates losers who want to revolt against their conquerors and conquerors who feel the need to violently defend their spoils. Here, he worries that Napoleon may be right that war is in Frenchmen’s “blood” (i.e., that some people are naturally predisposed to violence). Villanelle does believe that men are simply violent creatures, but that is not how Henri sees himself: he went to war not because he wanted violence but because he wanted to be a passionate rather than a “lukewarm” person—and the act of hero-worshipping Napoleon allowed him to be passionate.
Themes
Having reached Italy, Henri and Villanelle plan to sail to Venice, where they will stay with Villanelle’s family. After a safe interval has passed, Henri will return to France—but in that interval, Villanelle wants Henri’s help stealing her heart back. Henri agrees, but he also wants her to tell him why she never takes off her boots. Laughingly, Villanelle will only tell him that her father was a boatman, and that boatmen do not remove their boots.
While readers may suspect that Villanelle wants help stealing her literal, physical heart, Henri may take her words figuratively and assume she is proposing a love affair—another instance in which storytelling goes wrong because the audience misunderstands rather than because the narrator is unreliable.
Themes
In May 1813, Henri and Villanelle sail into Venice. Villanelle’s mother and stepfather greet them jubilantly, as if Villanelle were the Prodigal Son. Her stepfather assures Henri that they don’t mind him being French, as not all Frenchmen are Napoleon, though Villanelle’s husband, the large man, was not such a good Frenchman either. Henri is surprised to learn that the large man is French. When Villanelle asks her parents what happened to him, they explain that he does still visit Venice but that Villanelle can hide from him. After they eat, Villanelle’s mother shows Henri a mirror so situated to reveal the identity of anyone boating up to the front door. After thanking her, Henri goes to bed and sleeps two full days.
The Prodigal Son is a parable in Luke 15:11–32. The prodigal son asks for his inheritance early, squanders it, and returns to his father a beggar—only for his father to welcome him home with generous love and joy. By asserting that not all Frenchmen are destructive like Napoleon or Villanelle’s husband, Villanelle’s stepfather makes clear that people can choose to disbelieve even very powerful, potentially harmful stories such as negative cultural stereotypes.
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When Henri wakes up, he shaves off his scraggly beard, throws the dirty water and shavings into the canal, and hopes that his “past had sunk forever.” After leaving Villanelle’s family home, he gets lost for days in confusing, irrational Venice. Eventually, he spots Villanelle in a boat. She commands him to board and says she’ll show him the city so he won’t get lost again. They sail past exiles created by French conquest and unaccompanied children. Villanelle takes Henri to see the woman with slimed-green hair, who prophesies that Villanelle is in danger but won’t leave Venice again. To Henri the woman says: “Beware of old enemies in new disguises.”
When Henri hopes that his “past has sunk forever,” it suggests that he wants to forget his former passionate hero-worship of Napoleon. Yet the woman with slimed-green hair warns him to “beware of old enemies in new disguises,” which suggests that Henri’s past in the French army may come back to haunt him despite his total disillusionment with Napoleon.
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After Henri and Villanelle leave, he asks her who the woman with slimed-green hair was. Villanelle says she’s an exile who used to live in one of the formerly fancy houses they’re sailing past. Napoleon appropriated all her wealth and—it is rumored—gave her jewels to Joséphine.
The backstory of the woman with slimed-green hair emphasizes a point that Henri has made before: war creates defeated peoples who have reason to rise up violently against their conquerors.
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Villanelle sails the boat to a grand six-floor house. She tells Henri that her heart is hidden inside and that she needs him to steal it back. Henri tries to tell her that her stolen heart is a metaphor, so she puts his hand on her chest. He can’t feel a heartbeat. He puts his ear to her chest and can’t hear a heartbeat either. When he protests that she’d be dead if she didn’t have a heart, she says that the French soldiers didn’t have hearts, and neither did her husband, the large man. When Henri retorts that that’s a figure of speech, Villanelle says they “do things differently” in Venice.
Here readers’ suspicions are confirmed: the woman with the gray-green eyes won Villanelle’s literal, physical heart, not simply her figurative heart. The literalization of the figure of speech “to lose one’s heart” emphasizes Villanelle’s loss of self-control and identity to her passion for the woman. Meanwhile, when Villanelle brushes off Henri’s incredulity at her literally lacking a heart, it makes clear that The Passion is a magical-realist historical novel rather than a strictly historical one.
Themes
Villanelle asks Henri what happened to the gold chain frozen inside an icicle that Domino gave him in Moscow. Henri, ashamed, admits he doesn’t know. Villanelle pulls the icicle, still intact, from her bag. She tells him she’ll give him the “miracle” after he steals her heart back for her. He professes his love, but she responds that he is her “brother.”
Domino’s un-melted icicle makes clear that fantastic occurrences are not specific to Venice in the novel, despite Villanelle’s claim that people “do things differently” there—rather, a magical-realist sensibility pervades the novel, drawing attention to its status as a work of historical fiction, not of history. When Villanelle tells Henri firmly that he is her “brother,” it suggests that she is sure she will never return his romantic passion.
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Later, at dinner, Villanelle, her mother, and her stepfather ask Henri about his family. He explains that he comes from a remote, non-political, religious farming village. His mother, who died two years ago after an accident with a horse, perished happily reaching for a vision of the Virgin Mary. Villanelle’s mother and stepfather suggest that Henri stay in Venice and work rather than returning to such a village, but Henri doesn’t want to stay as Villanelle’s “brother” when he’s in love with her. Yet when Villanelle exits the room, her mother tells Henri that Villanelle needs a new husband as soon as the large man is “out of the way”—and accidents often occur in Venice.
The revelation that Henri’s mother died reaching for a vision of the Virgin Mary shows that Henri’s mother was able to persist in her religious passion faithfully to the end of her life—showing that fidelity in passion is possible, even as the novel casts doubt on religion as a worthy object of people’s passion. When Villanelle’s mother suggests that Villanelle’s husband will soon be “out of the way,” she may be trying to manipulate impassioned Henri to kill the man—but the novel is not entirely clear on this point.
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That night, Villanelle and Henri sail in a funeral gondola to the grand six-floor house. When Villanelle gives him the key to the house that she kept, Henri asks how he’ll find her heart in such a large building. Villanelle tells him to listen for it “and look in unlikely places.” She also promises to play lookout and make seagull noises if she spies danger.
Yet again, Villanelle’s loss of her physical heart emphasizes that her devastating passion stole important pieces of her character—her freedom, her self-control—while the magical heist narrative that she and Henri are playing out essentially dares readers to lose faith in their reliability as narrators.
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Henri enters the house. He decides to start searching on the top floor and proceed downward. In the first five rooms, he finds precious items, books, and strange maps. In the sixth, he finds an incomplete tapestry representing Villanelle with a card deck. In the seventh, he finds an unreadable journal. In the eighth, a woman’s room, he is instinctively stealing a phial of delicious perfume when he realizes that he hears a heartbeat. He finds a “throbbing” indigo jar hidden in a clothes closet. He steals the “valuable, fabulous” thing and returns to Villanelle.
The novel uses the phrase “valuable, fabulous” thing to describe whatever people most value that they may nevertheless choose to gamble away: in this case, the phrase indicates that the “throbbing” jar contains Villanelle’s beating heart. This phrase “valuable, fabulous” thing underscores Villanelle’s agency in her affair with the woman with gray-green eyes: though Villanelle experienced her passion as a loss of self-control and identity, she did choose to gamble her heart by pursuing an affair with the woman.
Themes
As soon as Henri boards the gondola, Villanelle rows far away. By the time she stops, she’s sweating heavily. Henri gives her the indigo jar, and she asks him to turn around. When he does, he hears a strange noise “like gas escaping” and Villanelle gulping painfully. After a while, she indicates that he can turn around and puts his hand on her chest—where he now feels her heart beating. She takes the housekey from Henri, drops it into the jar, tosses both into the canal, and smiles brilliantly.
If Villanelle’s loss of her heart represented the loss of control, identity, and even self she experienced during her devastating passion for the woman with gray-green eyes, then readers may expect Villanelle to exhibit greater control and sense of self after having regained her heart.
Themes
Villanelle asks Henri what he saw in the house. When he tells her about the incomplete tapestry depicting her, she pales. Henri asks what’s bothering her, and she claims that if the woman with gray-green eyes had placed her heart inside the completed tapestry, it would have made Villanelle “a prisoner for ever.” When Henri expresses confusion, Villanelle tells him not to worry about it—but that night, he has nightmares about the warning of the woman with slimed-green hair, “Beware of old enemies in new disguises.”
Once again, the novel draws attention to the possible unreliability of its own narrators and characters by having Villanelle claim that placing her heart in a tapestry could have made her “a prisoner for ever”—without explaining why or what exactly she means. Yet the claim that actions performed on Villanelle’s stolen heart could fundamentally affect her whole being emphasizes that Villanelle’s heart is a symbol for her sense of self and identity overall. Meanwhile, Henri’s nightmares about the warning of the woman with slimed-green hair foreshadow that he may not have escaped his past in the Napoleonic Wars as he had hoped.
Themes
The next morning, Villanelle’s mother brings Henri breakfast in bed, says she dreamed about death the previous night, and urges Henri to ask Villanelle to marry him. Later that afternoon, he does, but she says no, saying that she would have to give him her heart—and she can’t do that. When Henri tells her mother what happened, the mother says that Villanelle likes wild men and wants “Pentecost every day.”
In Christianity, Pentecost refers to the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of fire on Jesus’ disciples, causing them to burst forth in ecstatic speech. When Villanelle’s mother says that Villanelle wants “Pentecost every day,” she means that Villanelle wants every day to be miraculous—and so foolishly refuses to settle for a comfortable life with a man who does not inspire passion in her. The religious language that Villanelle’s mother uses to express this idea emphasizes that, in the novel’s implied view, religious feeling is a subspecies of passion.
Themes
Henri considers leaving for France, recalling how Villanelle told him and Patrick, “There’s no sense in loving someone you can only wake up to by chance.” He wonders what he means when he says he’s in love with Villanelle, and he concludes that something about her makes him see his history and identity in a clearer light. He realizes that in the army, he was too conscious of the destruction he was causing to be a good soldier. He remained “because [he] had nowhere else to go,” and he isn’t interested in repeating that mistake. Yet even though Henri suspects Villanelle wouldn’t be monogamous, would gamble their money away, and would neglect any children they had, imagining a future with her fills him with joy. He concludes: “Whatever she touches, she reveals.”
Henri identifies with Villanelle’s statement that “there’s no sense in loving someone you can only wake up to by chance.” Villanelle was speaking about her feelings for the woman with gray-green eyes, which implies that Henri feels the same devastation in his passion for Villanelle that Villanelle felt for her married beloved. Yet whereas Villanelle experienced her passion as a loss of self, Henri believes that Villanelle “reveals” him to himself, giving him self-knowledge. Henri also compares his passion for Villanelle with his passion for Napoleon, suggesting that he doesn’t want to stay with Villanelle “because [he] had nowhere else to go,” which is parallels his reason for staying with Napoleon’s army. Yet Henri’s passion for Villanelle is clearly different than his passion for Napoleon in that it brings him true joy.
Themes
One morning, Villanelle tries to show Henri how to row a gondola. He’s terrible at it—repeatedly tipping the gondola, which Villanelle hates, as she can’t swim. When Henri expresses surprise, Villanelle points out that she’s a boater, so she doesn’t need to swim. Eventually, she gives up on Henri’s boating and takes him to the Casino. Its nominal seductive sinfulness strikes Henri as rather boring, so he goes to sit by a window and watch the canal. The thought occurs to him that he has escaped his past.
Henri is unmoved by the story that the Casino tells about itself—namely, that it’s a den of sexy debauchery. His indifference reveals that while storytelling and mythmaking are powerful, they aren’t all-powerful. Henri’s belief that he has escaped his past may strike readers as ominous given the novel’s repeated claims that life is fundamentally a gamble: Henri may not realize what elements of the past may reappear in his future.
Themes
Henri thinks of the bonfire he attended before leaving for the army. He sees his reflection in the window and thinks that after eight years with Napoleon, “this was the face [he] had become.” Suddenly, he also sees reflected Villanelle cornered by a large man. She pushes the man, and he hits her across the face. She flees for the exit. Henri opens the window, leaps into the canal, swims to their boat, and unties it. Villanelle swims to the boat too, and Henri urges her to just row. As she rows, he clings to the boat and hauls himself aboard. Villanelle explains that the man was her husband, who she thought was out of the city.
Earlier in the novel, Henri recalled looking into his distorted reflection in a copper pot as a child and wondering who he would be. Now he thinks he has become who he’s going to be: “this was the face [he] had become”—as if he has no potential for further development. Yet immediately afterward, Henri is shocked into action to help Villanelle escape her abusive husband, suggesting that more changes, gambles, and risks do await Henri.
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Villanelle rows the boat on a circuitous route through the city. Eventually, they come to a narrow tunnel. Villanelle promises Henri they’ll reach home quickly, but then a boat appears behind them and Henri sees the cook, even larger than when Henri knew him and with ringed hands. When the cook greets Henri by name, Villanelle looks confused. The cook smarmily explains that due to Henri’s “little tricks,” the army banished him from Boulogne to Paris to work in the Stores—which allowed him to enrich himself.
This passage reveals that Villanelle’s abusive husband (the large man) and the cook who swore revenge on Henri are, by coincidence, the same person. And this coincidence reveals that Henri, despite his hope for a new start, has not been able to escape his past in the Napoleonic army.
Themes
When the cook asks whether Henri is glad to see him, Henri says he wants nothing to do with the cook. The cook retorts that Henri clearly wants something to do with his wife. Then he asks why Henri is here instead of with the army and Napoleon. When Henri refuses to answer, the cook threatens to tell “a few of his friends” that he’s seen Henri—and Villanelle, whom his friends “paid a lot of money to get to know.” Villanelle spits in his face.
The cook’s unexpected appearance reveals the fundamental chanciness of life: because he happens to know both Henri and Villanelle, he can ruin both their lives—by recognizing and reporting Henri as a deserter to “a few of his friends in the French army” and by selling Villanelle back to the French officers who originally bought her as a sex slave for “a lot of money.”
Themes
Years later, when Henri will have had a lot of time to ponder what happened, the events will still be confused in his mind. The cook gropes Villanelle’s breast and tries to force a kiss on her. She shoves him and he falls into her boat, on top of Henri. Villanelle throws Henri a Venetian knife, and Henri stabs the cook three times. Once Villanelle and Henri have rolled the corpse off Henri, Henri cuts its chest open to see whether Villanelle was right that her husband had no heart. Henri finds a heart and offers it to her, but Villanelle refuses it and starts weeping.
Henri flags for readers that his story about the cook’s murder may be unreliable, as the traumatic violence involved confused the events in his mind. The significance of the cook’s heart is ambiguous. On the one hand, that the cook is still in possession of his heart may mean that he never lost it—that he never experienced a passion like the passion Villanelle felt for the woman with the gray-green eyes. On the other hand, the fact that he has a heart at all may indicate that he was capable of passion like any other human being—but his passion for Villanelle turned to obsessive hatred after she ran away from him. In either case, Villanelle seems horrified by Henri’s mutilation of her abusive husband’s corpse.
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Henri embraces Villanelle. After a moment, she tells him to sit still while she takes care of things. Henri sits, staring at the blood in the bottom of the boat. Three of the boats’ four oars were lost during the fight. When Henri lifts his head, Villanelle has removed her boots and is walking on the canal, tugging the boat in which Henri is sitting behind her.
The first time Villanelle walks on water, she has just asked herself whether two women can have a sustained, passionate romantic relationship. Now, she is tugging a boat that contains the corpse of the man she married to escape that relationship as well as her husband’s murderer. The echo of the earlier scene in which Villanelle walks on water suggests that perhaps few human passions—whether between two women, a woman and a man, or otherwise—are sustainable.
Themes
