A re-telling of the true 12th century love story of Heloise and Abelard. Abelard is a great philosopher and theologian who has taken, like many academics of the time, a vow of celibacy. When he is hired as a tutor for the brilliant and beautiful Hel...
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Never did we yearn for each other as much as when we were parted. Absence does unimaginable things to the heart, to the body, to the soul...
I thought only of him.
In his absence, I thought I could feel him everywhere - reaching out to me. Still, there was his smell lingering on my sheets. Still, there were his words, in his own handwriting, scribbled in the margins of my books. He was everywhere, and nowhere. And I felt so horribly vacant, so cold, like the sun had truly left me.
I imagined, all day, where he might be. He had returned to live in the centre of Paris, undoubtedly. He had continued to work in Notre Dame, his students likely delighted by the return of their great teacher.
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He could not have left Notre Dame, you see - it would have made the church curious... And with the investigations and assumptions of curious eyes and ears, our secret would have come to be known.
I assume Fulbert had threatened him into never seeing me again. I do not know what Abelard would have chosen, of his own volition, if the shame of my uncle did not press heavily on our situation. Fulbert's wishes to maintain peace in the church swayed our every decision.
Thus, it was not the church that was to be taken from Abelard; it was me.
The wound did not heal, in time, as it ought to have.
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I don't know what I can say. There is no conclusion here. This is not a paper story with a paper ending.
The wound did not heal, and still it hasn't.
It bleeds beyond words. The tear of him taken from my arms is raw still.
So I will not speak about this time, because there is nothing to say. It was a long, barren stretch in which I did little and felt little.
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Then, I felt what was to damn us into every misfortune thereafter: I felt, rising beneath my palms, the smallest swell of life inside my belly.
I cherished it; I clutched it close to me, protectively. I did not speak this secret for many weeks. I did not want it taken from me - this one last mark of Abelard; this one last declaration that he had been here, that he had lived and he had loved.
If there was anything I could possibly love more than my Abelard, it would be the child our love had borne. It would be the blue eyes, those same blue eyes, looking up at me from my arms.
But there is very, very little I could hold onto in this life.
I could not hold the sun; and I could not hold the rays that came from it either.
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