“It’s too far to walk,” he says. “Don’t worry. We’ll come across a taxi soon.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I need to walk off some of that meal. Thank you, by the way.”
“For what?”
“For this, for everything. For the best days of my life and the best meal. God, now you have me using that word.”
Other couples pass them on the sidewalk. A taxi drives past. Harry almost doesn’t see it. He whistles and shouts, and it comes to an abrupt halt. They pile in and give the address of their hotel. The lights of Paris are shining only for them. There is no other reality. They are here, now. Lovers in Paris. They are like gods living in secret among mortals. They are all who matter. The outside world does not exist. The world for them is this France, this Paris, this room, this bed.
T
heir last day. The boulevards are slick with rain. Wearing only panties, she is sitting on the bed reading the newspaper and eating an orange. Stacking the rind neatly in a pile. He is at the desk, typing.
The room is peaceful. A simulacrum of domesticity. On the table a tray with empty coffee cups. The remains of breakfast. Her plane leaves this afternoon. His is not until evening.
She sighs.
“Are you all right?”
“I just don’t want it to end, you know? To go back to reality. I don’t mean staying in the Ritz. I mean being together. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”
“I know.” He walks over to the bed and sits next to her. She takes a wedge of orange and feeds it to him. “It doesn’t have to end,” he says, placing his hand on her thigh.
“Can you make that promise?” Her eyes are wide, searching his. “I want to believe you.”
“Yes, I can.”
She nods. “It’s too much to ask.”
“Can’t we just try this for a bit more? What if you get tired of me? What if you meet someone younger? It’s not like I’m in a position to complain.”
“I don’t want anyone else.”
“You say that now. Once my hair and teeth fall out you may think twice,” he says with a laugh. “I’m a lot older than you. You don’t want to be changing my colostomy bag at dinner parties.”
“Nonsense. You’ll be one of those devastating older men.”
“You’re right. I could become incontinent. That’s pretty devastating.”
“Stop,” she says, hitting him with a pillow. “You’re making me laugh again, and I don’t feel much like laughing.”
“That’s ridiculous. How can you not feel like laughing? Remember, laughter’s the best medicine. Have you ever been to a funeral? Nothing people like better than an old friend of the deceased telling wildly inappropriate stories.”
They are like children on a cruise ship. Somewhere over the horizon is the port where they have to get off. For now they are only pretending.
I have often wondered what was going through Harry’s mind during these days. Was there ever guilt or remorse? It is as though he didn’t have a wife or a child. Had he forgotten their years together, the shared laughter, the shared pain, the people whose lives they had touched, whose lives he and Claire could ruin? What direction was he taking? Did he think that he could maintain this affair without Maddy knowing? Did he even want to?
W
hat I find so puzzling about Harry’s behavior is how natural he was about it. It was as though he was a born adulterer. It is possible that sort of thing comes more easily to some men, especially writers, actors, or spies, those who become so used to inhabiting other personas, other lives, that they lose touch with the one life that really matters.
Some men, I imagine, would have felt pangs of guilt, or at least some anxiety. They would have been scared of being caught. Their deception exposed, their home life broken upon the rack.
But it was easy for Harry. Maybe he didn’t think life possessed real pain or real tests. Things just came to him. I suppose he was struggling with his new book, but, after all, wasn’t that part of the creative process? Weren’t artists supposed to suffer? In some ways it seemed unfair. He who already had so much and wasn’t satisfied with that. For so much of his life, he had only to put out his hand and whatever he wanted was there. True, he had never had much money, but that never seemed to matter. He had something more important, namely the ability to inspire love. Was it such a surprise, then, that he had inspired Claire? After all, who hadn’t loved him? Dogs, fellow students, friends, readers, strangers in bars. He had collected love the way a car accumulates miles. What was a surprise was that, having inspired love, he wanted it back.
Even in college he had been the hero, the beloved, and yet it was Madeleine he had cleaved to. She was the one who needed him most, and he had pledged himself to a sacred trust. Perhaps he sensed something broken in Maddy, something only he could fix, and, knowing that, he permitted himself to give himself to her utterly. I am not saying he didn’t love her. I believe he did. I know he did. But she needed him, or someone like him. And I don’t think he truly needed anyone, at least not in the same way. He was always a self-contained unit, someone so supremely confident in his own abilities that he never once questioned them. He had never needed to. I know he worked hard, but it was the work that a gifted athlete puts into his training regimen. It helps to elevate his game, a game that most of us could never hope to play and never pretend we could.
Had he sensed something in Claire he could fix, something that only he could provide? Or was it something more selfish? Was she someone who was only for him? After years of being someone everyone else thought he was, or should be, was he now allowing himself to take what he wanted, even if it meant destroying everything else?
Of course, it’s never anything so abstract. His betrayal was as natural as a disease, as a cancer that builds up quietly inside the body and then erupts unbidden when there is nothing else to keep it in check. And when it happened, it consumed him.
And Claire? I have never held her to blame, even if some think I should. She was a young woman, beautiful, sensitive, and impressionable. Alive. Tapping life to the roots. In need of love, or attention, or direction. Or all three. I am not sure which.
How could she not be dazzled by Harry? He was handsome, successful, charming. She might as well have been asked not to feel the grass under her feet or taste the salt of the sea. It would have been like telling a moth to resist a candle, or telling a flower not to bloom. No, the one I blame is Harry. He, the schoolboy hero, the ex-Marine, he is the one who lacked courage and dedication. It is easy to tempt, but only the truly strong can resist. He should have been able to but he, paragon that he was, was weak.
I could describe even more how they fucked, how she sucked his cock, how many orgasms she had, how they walked through streets hand in hand like true lovers. How they kindled passion in each other, passion for life, passion for love, passion that burned only for passion’s sake. After all, that is selfishness and greed. Wanting more than is good for one. And they devoured it, exulted in it. Who can blame them? There are few things more powerful, more intoxicating than knowing there is someone who desires you utterly. And if it is illicit, secret, forbidden, that makes it all the more exciting. Who cares at that point about other people? Others don’t matter when it is just the two of you in your own little lifeboat. Desire is all. Shame does not figure into it.
She wanted him, and he wanted her. Beauty enraptures you, sex defines you, the simplest things become objects of envy to others. When one is on fire, one burns. It is impossible not to. It is elementary physics. Even a child could understand that. It is so simple.
But fire has no qualms. It burns everything, regardless of what is in its path.
V
ictor Hugo wrote that the supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, but that conviction is based on an assumption of such love. If we are proven to be wrong, the void left behind is often filled by resentment and rage. Hugo could also have written that the supreme unhappiness of life is discovering we are not loved. It is one thing if we already suspect the absence of love in our life, but what truly crushes us is finding out that the love we cherished was a lie.
I arrive in Rome a week before Christmas. Coming from New York, I am surprised by how mild the weather is. Even though the Romans are bundled up in coats and scarves—no one knows how to wear a scarf like an Italian—they still sit outside in the cafés except on the coldest days. I travel light, knowing that everything I need, I can buy there.
My first night we all go to see the nativity scene outside of St. Peter’s. The huge square is jammed with people, Romans and tourists alike, nuns from Africa, businessmen, families, shopgirls on their way home from work, coming to admire this grandest of crèches. Harry is carrying Johnny on his shoulders. The floodlit façade and street hawkers selling pictures of the Pope lend the whole scene a carnival air. After, we go for dinner at the restaurant on S. Ignazio. Despite the brightly lit streets and the jostling, happy crowds chattering back and forth in Italian, our little group is subdued. Maddy is remote, Harry preoccupied. Neither of them seems to have much appetite. After we finish talking about mutual friends back in New York, the conversation falters. Johnny is already asleep, his head resting on his mother’s lap.
Back in the apartment, I ask Maddy, “What’s the matter?”
Johnny has been put to bed, and Harry, too, has said good night. It is just us. There is a fire going. My jet lag has left me. A bottle of red wine has appeared. Two glasses.
“What do you mean?”
“Is everything all right?”
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I ask because things seemed strained. I don’t know what’s happening, but I’ve never seen Harry or you so distracted.”
“We’re fine. It’s hard adjusting to a new city sometimes. You know how it is. The language. The customs. Plus, Harry can get moody when he’s writing. It’s a lot of work, and he’s been having trouble sleeping. And he’s been traveling too much, which hasn’t helped.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
But that is not it. I know Maddy well enough to know when she is avoiding something.
“Okay.” I smile. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I’ll be here for a week. We have lots of time.”
“Oh shut up, Walter,” she says, playfully. “If I had anything to talk about, I’d tell you. You know that.”
“When I saw Harry in New York the other month, he said he was having a hard time with the book.”
“Yes, it’s true, I suppose.” And then, “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come to Rome.”
“Can’t you leave if you want?”
“We could, but we made a commitment. There are the people who awarded Harry the money, the people who own this apartment, the people who rented our place in New York, Johnny’s school. And then there’s Harry. I know he’d never want to say that being in Rome caused him problems. He’d hate the idea of giving in like that.”
“Naturally.”
Y
ou have to remember I had no idea what was really going on. Neither, of course, did Maddy. If anyone had asked if we thought Harry was capable of having an affair, we would have laughed in their face. You may as well have asked if he was building a thermonuclear reactor in the basement. The notion was inconceivable.
But all too often we find out that the people in whom we had the most faith are capable of deceiving us. The newspapers are filled with stories of bankers, politicians, priests, and athletes who cheat their clients, have affairs, abuse altar boys, or use steroids. The regularity of these exposures may have caused them to lose the power to shock. We live in an age when we are no longer surprised that people let us down. The only surprise is that we are so constantly willing to allow ourselves to be deceived.
Sometimes we are betrayed by friends. One of my grandfathers had been in the CIA. He served in the OSS during World War II and later in Washington. He befriended an Englishman, a fellow spy. The Englishman was a regular at my grandparents’ house in Georgetown. They’d go on fishing trips, swap trade secrets over glasses of bourbon, secure in the knowledge they were both on the same side, fighting a common enemy. Until, of course, it was discovered that the Englishman was a Soviet mole, recruited at Cambridge before the war, and that he had been feeding back Western secrets, some of which doubtless came from my grandfather, for decades. It’s a famous story. The revelation not only ended my grandfather’s career but, more important, destroyed his faith in others. It turned him despondent, paranoid, miserable; the pain of the treachery was too great for him to stand. Because he was a spy himself, deception was a way of life, but it stung all the more when he was the deceived. It was a blessing when he died a few years later. The Englishman lived until a ripe old age in an apartment in Moscow, a decorated full colonel in the KGB. It was in all the newspapers.
Then there are the betrayals we choose to ignore. Toward the end of his life Maddy’s father had a girlfriend, Diana, whom he had been dating for a decade or so. She was beautiful, a widow who worked at Sotheby’s. They never married, but traveled constantly, dining out in the best restaurants. But he was living a double life; there were other women, just how many I never found out. There was a pattern. Every few years he would disappear for days or weeks at a time on a bender, washing up at the Waldorf or the Plaza Athénée until Maddy could track him down and take him to the emergency room. There he would hover between life and death for a week or two before invariably, impossibly pulling through yet again. His once-powerful body ravaged by years of self-abuse, his feet with their unclipped toenails protruding from under the sheets, and still, in his lucid moments, able to use his matchless charm on the nurses. Diana would disappear at these moments. Some might say she had every right to do so, that she didn’t want to enable him, that he deserved to be punished. But I think her refusal to visit him in the hospital was more about self-preservation than self-righteousness. Seeing him in the hospital would have forced her to confront the reality of the situation, and she could never bring herself to do that, knowing full well that, once his strength had returned, he would only go out and do it again.