True Love and Home-grown Tomatoes

I recently finished a French language novel, Ombres du temps (Shadows of Time), winner of the Henri Deschamps Prize 2001 by Haitian-born author Geneviève Gaillard-Vanté.

The novel opens as the main character, Sophie de Lancelot, sits in a cafe in Madrid, Spain, reflecting back on a brief, week-long encounter 20 years earlier (all romance, no sex) with a dashing Spaniard, Alek Rivera. Each, unbeknownst the to other, had fallen in love; yet each realized that their lives were incompatible. She is a young, a student. He is immersed in his career as a world-traveling photojournalist. So, after an enchanting week together, they part, pledging to meet again at the same cafe 20 years hence.

That’s the set up. The novel then shifts to a description of Sophie’s childhood in Haiti, which portrays an idyllic life enjoyed by the ruling French aristocracy in their tropical island paradise. Sophie grows up in her grandparents mansion overlooking the sea outside Port-au-Prince. The scenes, incidents, the personages described paint a vivid picture of the lives of the wealthy French Haitians before Haiti’s descent into civil unrest and chaos.

Sophie’s life spirals downward in the wake of that descent. Returning to Haiti after studies in Europe, she marries a wealthy businessman. She has a child who dies in infancy. She and husband divorce. Her parents are murdered in the reign of terror against the French, forcing Sophie to flee Haiti.

Now 40 years old, divorced, orphaned, exiled from her native country, Sophie de Lancelot waits at the cafe in Madrid for Alek Rivera, the man who, for 20 years, has lived in the shadows of her memory. Sophie wants for several hours, then, as she is about to leave, Voila! Alek appears.

The story follows the inevitable, predictable path. Alek is a successful, world-famous photo-journalist. He married briefly but is now free. He has a beautiful home, stuffed with trophies from his travels abroad. We learn that he, like Sophie, has never forgotten their magical encounter; that his love has never died; that he is madly in love with her. He wants to marry her and live happily ever after.

It’s all perfect! A story book ending until he sets off for a few days (he begs Sophie to accompany him) to complete a project and Viola! he disappears. His boat sinks. Alek drowns in the sea.

The ending, though trite, got me to thinking about ‘true love,’ specifically that fate of, the durability of, the destiny of true love in this man’s world. The author works hard to convey the sense of this romantic, magical type of love that floats above the bump and grind of day-to-day life. This mystical attraction between man and woman transcends lower orders of sexual lust, rendering Sophie and Alek alternate versions of Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde--lovers whose love can not endure life as we know it. It is inevitable that Alek must drown in the sea. The couple cannot marry because marriage and true love cannot coexist, making death the only possible outcome. Alek dies that their love may live on where is belongs, i.e. in the ‘shadows of time.’

Reminds me of a song sung by David Henry: “Ain’t nothing in life better than true love and home grown tomatoes.” Both, it seems, are perishable commodities.