#353 L. DeBard and Aliette: A Love Story- Lauren Groff
You could call this amazing story: Love in the Time of
Spanish Influenza. Like the great love tragedies of Gabriel Garcia Marques,
this one leaves you heavy with grief, and envious of the love lost.
Lodovico Debard is a famous man. “He’s a swimmer, but he is
other things, too: a forty-three-year-old with a mighty set of pectorals, one
chipped front tooth, and a rakish smile; a rumored Bolshevik; a poet, filler of
notebooks, absinthe drinker, cavorter of the literary types.”
He begins giving swim lessens to Aliette Huber. She was a
beautiful and accomplished young woman before being stricken by polio. Now in a
wheelchair, this protected heiress hopes to gain strength, and other things,
from her new savior.
“She knows L. from his book of poetry, which she reads when
she was recuperating from her illness. She feels he knows him so intimately
that now, freezing on the dock, she is startled and near tears: she has just
realized that, to him, she is a stranger.”
Their love affair is careful but passionate. As their fate
runs its course, so does the global epidemic of Spanish Flu, swallowing the
world in death and fear. They hardly notice:
“Who in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness?
Who listens to the reports of recent decimated populations in Spain, India,
Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues, and poems fill the world?”
Notable Passage: “Their kiss is long and hungry. If they
knew how often they would remember it, for how many years it would be their
dearest memory, this kiss would last for hours.”
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