When they finished their food and were sipping sweet café crème, Simone said, “Oh, Vincent. This was perfect,” and he agreed, though despite all the food and drink, he was aware of an emptiness inside him.

After dinner, they walked through the Tuileries Garden, past a fountain with its water turned off and rectangular flower beds where nothing was in bloom. Vincent kept his arm around Simone, and she pretended to be warm and he pretended he was full and content, though still he felt empty.

When he saw that Simone was shivering, he insisted they spend the money to take the omnibus once again, and later, even after they made love and he lay on the mattress with his hand on the rise of her belly and watched her sleep and gently tugged the wool blanket up to her chin, even then, as he marveled at the fine beauty of this woman who was his, he felt empty. And later, when he couldn’t sleep and got up to pace in the room Simone had painted with green vines and ivy and to stare out the window at the half-built dome of the new Sacré-Coeur church illuminated in the moonlight, he felt it still.

From a stack of books, he picked up Baudelaire’s poems Les Fleurs du Mal and read a stanza about death and decay. Hands shaking, he replaced the book quickly, though the poet’s words echoed and lingered.

In the morning, Simone had a cold and did not feel well enough to go to her job at the drapery store. Vincent made a pot of tea and put enough wood in the stove so she would stay warm while he was at work at the museum. Before he left, he kissed her and felt it again, this time even stronger than before, though still he could not quite identify it, this feeling of emptiness.

It would be months before he figured out what it was, but by then, it would be too late.

7

Laurentian Library

Florence, Italy

The sound of footsteps broke my concentration, a blond with high-heeled boots click-clacking on the hard wooden floor. I watched as she made her way toward Chiara’s desk, tugging off long leather gloves dramatically as if she were in a play. We locked eyes, and she seemed to be looking at me or through me or perhaps not at all before she turned away, leaning down to fill out a request form, her back to the room while she waited for her books, holding her gloves in one hand and thwacking them into her palm, a hypnotic gesture. Her shearling coat was ochre-colored, like so many of the buildings I’d seen in Florence, and I wondered if she’d bought it to blend in with the city, though it looked expensive, the kind of coat that gets noticed.

Riccardo returned with her books, and when she gave him a big smile, he blushed. Then she scooped the books up and held them against her chest like a schoolgirl and headed toward the table. I noticed the other men had stopped working too, watching her as she chose a spot at the far end of the table, away from everyone. She took her time getting settled, slipping out of her coat and arranging it on the back of her chair, more time looking at one book, then the other, the whole time playing with a few blond tendrils that had escaped the slapdash twist of her hair. I pretended to be reading but couldn’t stop staring at her or the long curve of her neck. She glanced over at me, and I looked down at the journal, trying to remember why I was here, thinking again about what I had just read.