Hermitage Bar

Hermitage bar is where James Bond first meets Vesper, and the attraction he feels there continues to shape his response to her after his capture, torture, and convalescence. The place matters less as a developed setting than as the starting point of a desire that Bond later fears may no longer be returned by his injured body.

First Meeting

Bond recalls meeting Vesper at Hermitage bar and admits that he found her desirable from the beginning. He imagines that, had circumstances been different at the nightclub and had she responded to him, he would have tried to sleep with her that night. The recollection establishes the attraction as an early, personal impulse rather than a feeling created only by their later ordeal.

Desire and Interruption

The possibility Bond imagines is immediately qualified by what followed: Vesper did not respond as he hoped, and the kidnapping intervened. Even later, in the car and outside the villa, the sight of her nakedness aroused him, although he had other urgent matters to consider. His recollection therefore links the first meeting at the bar to desire that persists through danger and disruption, while distinguishing physical attraction from any secure mutual relationship.

The Meeting as a Test

After Le Chiffre's torture, Bond's fear that his body may not respond to Vesper turns the memory of Hermitage bar into a painful point of comparison. He had been assured that his injuries would have no lasting effects, but his continuing pain, bruising, and damaged confidence made those assurances difficult to believe. For more than a week he delayed seeing Vesper because he had made their first reunion a test of whether his desire and physical response had survived.

On the eighth day, Bond asks for Vesper in the early morning, choosing a time when he feels refreshed after sleep. His stated practical reasons include the need to write his report and the possibility that an emissary from London will soon arrive; beneath those explanations, he recognizes that he is afraid to discover the answer. In this way, the bar's brief place in his past acquires significance in the present: it marks the beginning of an attraction whose recovery Bond cannot assume.