Authors: Albert Cohen
She glowered with hate at this man who saw fit to need her at midnight. Oh, this awful passion of his for depending on her for every little thing!
'Darling, don't be mean, be nice to me. I'm so unhappy.'
Again she turned her implacable face to him, the face he knew so well, and he was suddenly afraid. It was the face of a heartless woman and it belonged to his wife, she whom he had chosen above all others, his companion through life. He sat down on a chair next to the bed and, gathering his thoughts together, forced himself to dwell on his misery: perhaps he could make himself cry. In a little while tears duly came, and he turned towards his wife to ensure that she got a good look at them, to make the most of the wetness of his cheeks. She averted her eyes, for women do not care much for men who weep, especially if they are the cause of the problem.
'Darling, be nice to me,' he repeated to keep her attention, for it was important to maximize the return on his tears while they still flowed, before they evaporated.
'What do you mean when you say I'm not nice?'
'You're not being very nice just now.'
'It's not true, I am nice!' she exclaimed. 'I am very nice! You're the one who's not nice! It's midnight!'
Maddened by the thought that all was now lost, that she wouldn't sleep that night and that tomorrow she'd feel as limp as a rag, with a crushing migraine, she leaped out of bed wearing only her pyjama jacket, walked up and down the room in a fury, looking unusually tall on her long, bare legs. Crushed in advance, and anticipating the recriminations which were sure to come, he slumped over the edge of her bed. This made her angrier still. What gave this man the right to sit down on the bed, her bed, the bed she'd slept in when she was a girl? In a rage, she picked up a pencil and snapped it in two. Then turning to her oppressor, incandescent with indignation and determined to defend the victim she felt herself to be, she prepared to do battle by buttoning up her short jacket and began to protest. She was a good protester.
'It's shameful, it's outrageous,' she began, to get her hand in and build up a head of steam while waiting for inspiration and a suitable theme. 'So, you don't think I'm very nice! Is it because for the last half-hour I've been sitting here meek and mild, like Patience on a monument? Is it because I didn't say anything when you broke your promise, though I knew I probably shouldn't sleep? Yes, broke your promise! You said you'd only stay for two minutes. You lied to me, you lured me into a trap! You've been here half an hour and I've not complained once that you've failed to keep your solemn word! (He looked up at her helplessly. Failed to keep his solemn word! The way she had of putting things! He hadn't given any solemn word, and she knew it. But what was the use of trying to defend himself? Whatever he said, he'd be shot down in flames.) No,' she went on, 'I never complained, the very opposite, I smiled ever so sweedy, and that's what you call not being nice: I smiled! That's right, I went on smiling for half an hour hoping that you'd realize what horrible torment you were putting me through, hoping and hoping that sooner or later you'd show a little mercy, a drop of pity, a glimmer of love!'
'But you know I love you,' he murmured, with head bowed.
'But why should you feel pity for your slave?' she continued, ignoring everything that was not grist to her mill.
'Keep your voice down,' he begged. 'They'll hear!'
'Let them hear! Let them know how you treat me! Yes, why should you pity a slave?' she went on again, quivering with warlike fervour, for here she had hit upon a high-yield theme. 'A slave has to put up with anything! If it so pleases her master to wake her at one o'clock in the morning, she must bend the knee! If it is her tyrant's whim to keep her up talking all night, she must bow her head! And woe betide her if she does not hide her tiredness and her need for sleep! Woe betide her if she does not knuckle under or dares to close her eyes! She'd be accused of being selfish, of not being nice! Woe betide her if she has the guts to want to be treated like a human being and not like a dog who can be woken up at any hour of the night! And why am I guilty of the crime of wanting to sleep? So as to be ready to serve you tomorrow, at first light! Because a slave must always be ready, always available! Such a view of marriage is downright disgraceful! A wife is her husband's chattel! She doesn't even have the right to be called by her own name! She must bear the mark of her husband's ownership like a brand burned across her forehead! Like an animal! If there's anybody here who is selfish it's you, because you claim the right to need me at any time during the night! You're the one who's mean, because you've got the nerve to insist that I should undertake here and now to sit up all night by your bedside if you ever fall ill, whatever you're ill with, even if it's something trivial! So be it, I will be your servant, your skivvy! But even a skivvy has the right to sleep!'
Blithely pursuing her theme, she next dealt with various aspects of her martyr's life. After recalling his crimes against femininity, which she had already brought up in previous scenes, she then moved on, with the requisite wealth of dates and places, to enumerate, for the benefit of the poor bewildered male, other misdemeanours which he now learned he had committed during the course of their marriage. Indefatigable, nothing like a limp rag but firing on all pistons, she strode up and down in her red polka-dot jacket which left her thighs bare, paced feverishly, her words warmed by a sacred flame and strengthened too by the exultation of victory, while her spouse, stunned and left reeling by the power of her avenging eloquence, could only stand by and watch open-mouthed as his unsuspected sins were clearly marshalled and paraded before him.
They constituted a heavy indictment. Like the best orators, she was sincere, for she believed every word she said. Stirred by a noble indignation, she was utterly convinced of the rightness of her cause. It was her greatest strength, and, admirably sustained by a mixture of aggression and sarcasm, it enabled her to crush her much less skilful opponent. But she was also clever. As skilfully as the ablest of prosecuting counsels, she set out her case in blacks and whites which strengthened it immeasurably, eliminating anything which might count against her and imparting the required twists, warps and amplifications to the words and actions of her guilty husband. And all her unfairness was spoken in good faith, for she was honest.
He listened in a daze to her tireless outpouring and he knew that she accused him unjusdy, with only a semblance of right, as always. But he also knew that he would never convince her she was wrong, that he had neither the talent nor the stamina for it, that he was far too wretched to be able to defend himself properly. All he could do was to repeat — because it was the truth — that she was being mean and unfair, to which she would respond endlessly and always victoriously.
No, he simply wasn't up to it. Her fire-power was the greater. He laid down his arms and left her without saying a word, which rather impressed the young woman and sent her husband's stock up several points.
It was true. The poor man was just not up to it. Throughout the whole of that terrible month of May, each time he'd tried to stand up to his wife, each time he had put a cast-iron case to prove that she was in the wrong, she had not budged one inch. She always got the better of him in any argument, because she interrupted and talked him down so that he was left, a speechless bystander, to watch helpless and hopeless as the various charges in the indictment were wheeled out before him; or else because she steamrollered him with unsubstantiated but extremely telling thrusts, such as describing his plain, honest arguments as a tissue of clever fibs and quibbles'; or because she sidetracked him and mixed him up; or else because she deliberately ignored everything he said and simply went on piling up grievances which, because they were incomprehensible, were also irrefutable.
The best he could manage, if he ever succeeded in making her listen to his side of things and got her on the wrong foot, was to see her wriggle out of reach by seeking refuge in the tears and sufferings of the helpless, ill-used wife, or by refusing to answer and looking stony-faced if he begged her to admit her faults, or by resorting to the 'I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about' tactic, a ploy she was capable of repeating indefinitely if he restated his thesis and began once more to explain, as conscientiously and as clearly as he could, exactly in what ways she was to blame. (This was a bee in the poor man's bonnet: he believed in the clarifying power of explanations. It would have been far better for him if he'd never become a husband, for that was his only sin.) Whenever he attempted this, she would let him prattle on without trying to interrupt, but then, when he had finished and was looking at her with hope in his eyes, convinced that this time he'd explained things clearly and made her see them from his point of view, she would simply stand her ground and again scream that she didn't know what he was talking about, couldn't for the life of her see what he was driving at!
And woe betide him if he let himself be goaded by such patent but triumphant pretences, woe betide him if he were to bear down on her with fists clenched, woe betide him! For then she called him a brute, a wife-beating coward, screamed with terror, with genuine terror too, which was quite diabolical of her, and shouted for help and roused the neighbours. One night, shortly before the Deumes had got back, just because he had told her to stop shouting and had raised his arm, though he had absolutely no intention of hitting her, she had ripped off her pyjama top and run out into the garden, stark naked with rage. The following night, because he had gone so far as to raise his voice a little and tell her she was mean to him, she had paid him back by shrieking that he was a monster, a tyrant, a torturer, by tearing off a piece of the wallpaper, then by going downstairs and locking herself in the kitchen, where she had stayed put until four in the morning while he trembled with fear at the thought that she might put her head in the gas-oven.
And that was not all, for she had other weapons in her armoury which the poor devil knew only too well: reprisals for the morning after. These included headaches, sit-down strikes in her room, swollen eyes offered as evidence of tears shed in solitude, a whole battery of ailments, stubborn sulks, an embattled loss of appetite, fatigue, forget-fulness, dejected airs — the complete, fearsome panoply of the helpless but quite invincible female.
CHAPTER 22
A suicide would be best. Fire the pistol but not just anywhere, not into the wardrobe with the mirror nor at the ceiling. Aim for somewhere where it wouldn't do too much damage, like the bed, aim for the bed. The bullet would end up in the mattress without causing too much harm. The noise would bring her running and he'd explain that his hand had been shaking and the shot had been deflected. Then she would see what sort of dance she led him and how miserable she was making him.
'No, it won't work.'
No, it wouldn't work. In spite of their wax ear-plugs, Mummy and Dada might hear the shot. And even if they didn't, how would he explain the hole in the bedcovers, the sheets and the mattress? Especially since Mummy had eyes in the back of her head. How about a heart attack, the kind where you couldn't breathe, brought on by suffering? No, he wouldn't know how to fake it, it was too difficult. Anyway, a choking fit wouldn't make enough noise, nowhere near enough to make her come. Don't talk to her for several days, even try not eating? That wouldn't work either. Mummy would catch on straight away that something was up and would start asking questions and then there'd be an almighty fuss. No, the only real solution was to do his level best to stop loving her. Yes, be resigned to living without love, tell himself that she was a stranger with whom he had to go on living, but not to expect anything more from her, and immediately alter his will and leave everything to Mummy and Dada.
He had just sat down to write his last will and testament when there was a light knocking at his door. He glanced up at the mirror, took off his glasses, and opened the door. A noble penitent in a white silk dressing-gown stepped forward, a priestess robed in sweetness, who said she was sorry she had behaved badly, had lost her self-control, her head.
'No, I'm the one who was in the wrong,' he said. 'I shouldn't have come so late. Say you forgive me, darling.'
Back in her room, as she stood at the foot of her bed, he found her so touching in repentance that he folded her in his arms. Feeling her breasts firm against him, he whispered in her ear. She got into bed and closed her eyes so that she would not see him taking off his pyjamas. He turned back the bedcover, lay down beside her, and gave two sneezes. Here we go, she thought. Woof-woof time. How very, very stupid she'd been to feel sorry for him, how could she have been so brainless as to go and ask his forgiveness? And now she was going to have to pay for it.
In the circumstances, Adrien Deume moved effortlessly from continence to the eagerness of a bull in a hurry. Still, a few weeks previously he had read the
Kama Sutra,
which had taught him the importance of certain preparatory manoeuvres. Accordingly, without further ado, he began nibbling his wife. Ah, the pekinese routine now, she thought, and she could not resist the temptation of yapping doggily inside herself. She was cross with herself for wanting to laugh, though she kept her giggles firmly under control while the newly elevated grade A diligently busied himself with his nibbling. All the same, she felt ashamed but still went on yapping to herself, woof-woof, woof-woof. After further fondlings, studiously rendered as per the Indian manual, what was inevitable came to pass.
Stretched out beside her, perfectly relaxed now, he whispered tenderly and spoke fine and noble thoughts, while she struggled to keep the lid on her wrath. Oh no! It was a bit thick, it really was, coming the idealist and man of feeling now that he had taken his pleasure with her, the cheek of him, thinking that he could pay her off with a mouthful of poetry and high-flown sentiments after dragging her through the mud of his bestiality! He had drunk his fill of her: why couldn't he just sleep it off quietly?