Portraits of a Marriage (50 page)

I’ll try to tell you how I slowly grew to understand him.

“Sin is the art form of the petit bourgeois,” he once said in passing.

As usual, whenever he said something like this, he stroked his bald head the way a conjurer does when he produces doves from his top hat. Later he tried to explain his peculiar opinion. What he said was that sin, to the petit bourgeois—a pleb, in other words—was what vision and creation were to an artist. But an artist is after more than a plebeian. He wants to articulate some hidden message, then to say it, or paint it, or compose it in music: something that enriches life.

These things are beyond us, my dear.

He told me how bizarre ideas are realized in the mind of a sinner, how a sinner weighs up possibilities—a murderer, a general, a statesman, no matter which—and then, like an artist at the moment of inspiration, how he realizes his idea, quick as lightning, with breathtaking skill and ingenuity. How he commits the crime that is his dreadful masterpiece. There is a Russian writer—don’t frown, darling, it ruins your magnificent marble brow, and his name doesn’t matter in any case; I myself have forgotten it. I see how grumpy, how ill-tempered you become when I start talking about writers. You really don’t like the type. But anyway, said my bald friend, there was a Russian writer who wrote a book about murder. And, so my friend went on, it is not impossible that this Russian might actually have wanted to commit a murder. But he didn’t commit one, because he wasn’t a pleb but a writer. He wrote about it instead.

He didn’t want to write anymore. I never once saw him writing. I never even saw his handwriting. He did have a fountain pen, I did see that. It lay there on his writing desk next to the small portable typewriter. But he never opened the typewriter case, not once.

For a long time I didn’t know what his problem was. I thought he had dried up, that he no longer had the energy either for sex or for writing. Instead, he was playing out some comic part, pretending to be hurt, putting on a dumb show because he no longer felt able to exercise his miraculous, unique gift, the gift only a “master,” a vain, deluded, aging
writer, possessed. The world would have to do without him. That’s what I thought. I thought he’d realized he’d come to the end of his talent. No longer capable of making love to a woman, he’d set out to play the celibate, someone who has had more than enough of success in bed and was simply bored. The game was no longer worth the candle. Resentment had turned him into a hermit. But eventually I understood why he had stopped—what this long preparation was all about.

The man didn’t want to write anymore because he was afraid that every word he committed to paper would fall into the hands of traitors and barbarians. He felt the new world would be one where everything an artist produced, whether in words, paint, or music, would be falsified, betrayed, sold down the river. Don’t look so surprised. I can see you don’t believe me. You think I am imagining it, making it all up! You couldn’t possibly understand this, my darling, because you are a heart-and-soul, fully committed artist, an artist through and through. You can’t imagine throwing away your drumsticks the way that man locked his manuscripts up in his drawer and let his pen gather dust. Am I right? I can’t imagine it, either, because you are the sort of man who will go on practicing his art as long as he lives. Drum till you die. But this poor unfortunate was a different kind of artist, darling.

This poor unfortunate was afraid of becoming a collaborator, a kind of traitor, by writing anything at all, because he was convinced that in the days to come, everything writers ever wrote would be falsified. He feared his words would be misinterpreted. He was like a priest who is terrified that excerpts from his sermons should help sell mouthwash or provide a text for a political rant on some street corner. So he stopped writing.

What’s that? You want to know what a writer is? A bum? Someone of less consequence than a mechanic or a lawyer? Yes, if that’s the way you think, a writer is indeed a bum. And we don’t need writers anymore … just as we don’t need anyone without money or power? A waste of space, as my ex-husband put it?

Calm down, no need to shout. Yes, you’re right, he was a bum. But what was he like close up? Not a lord or a minister of state. Nor a party secretary. Take money, for example; he was peculiar in that way. Believe it or not, he did have money. He was the kind of bum who secretly thought of everything, even money. Don’t go thinking he was a crazy
hermit, the kind that wears animal skins, lives on locusts he catches in the desert, and slurps water from tree bark the way bears do. He did have money, but he didn’t deposit it in an account. No, he preferred to keep it in the left-hand pocket of his coat. When paying, he would draw out a wad and hand it over. It was a negligent sort of gesture since decent people keep their money in a bank account—the way you do ours, am I right, darling? When I saw him hand over money negligently, like that, I knew he was not a man you could cheat or steal from, because he would know precisely how much money he had, right down to the last dime.

But he had more than the worthless currency of our homeland. He had dollars, thirty ten-dollar notes. And French gold napoleons too. I remember he kept his gold in an old tin cigarette case that once contained Egyptian cigarettes. He had thirty-four gold napoleons. He counted them in front of me once, very anxiously. His spectacles were glittering at the end of his nose as he examined them and put the gold pieces to his nose to smell them. He put his teeth to each one and tried it in his hand. He gave each a thorough look and held it to the light. He was like a picture of one of those old money dealers, going about his business with ruthless, even malicious, efficiency.

But I never saw him earn a penny. When he was brought a bill he would study it with deep concern without saying anything, with great solemnity. Then he paid and added a handsome tip to the person bringing the bill. I do believe that, deep down, the truth was that he was miserly. One time, round about dawn, when he had drunk his wine, he started talking about how one had to respect money and gold because they had some magical property. He didn’t explain what he meant by that. Knowing how much he respected money, it was surprising how extraordinarily grand his tips were. He threw tips around, not like the rich—I have known a number of rich men, my husband included, but never found one who handed out tips the way this bum of a writer did.

I believe the truth is that he was poor. But he was so proud he didn’t think it worthwhile denying his poverty. Please don’t imagine I could tell you what he was really like. I just observed him with a pained fascination. But never, not for one moment, did I myself imagine I knew what the man was like inside.

You asked me what a writer is. Good question. What is he, after all?
A big nobody! He has neither rank nor power. A fashionable black bandleader earns more than he does, a police officer has more power, the commander of a fire brigade has a higher rank. He knew all that. He warned me that society has no official way of recognizing a writer—that’s the kind of nobody a writer is. Sometimes they put up statues of writers or throw them in jail. But really a writer means nothing in society. He is just a scribbler. You could address a writer as “Mr. Editor” or “Dear Genius.” But he wasn’t an editor, because he wasn’t editing anything, and he couldn’t be a genius, because geniuses had long hair and an imposing appearance, or so they say. He was bald, and by the time I met him he wasn’t doing anything. Nobody addressed him as “Dear Writer,” because it seemed to make no sense. Somebody was either a proper person or a writer. One couldn’t be both. It’s pretty complicated.

Sometimes I wondered—though I could never quite tell—whether he really believed what he said. Because whatever he happened to be saying, I felt the opposite was also true. And when he looked into my eyes, it was as if it were not me he was speaking to. For example, once—this was a long time ago and I haven’t thought of it since, but it suddenly seems clear now—I was sitting in his room between two air raids with my back to the writing desk. I didn’t think he was paying me any attention, because he was reading a dictionary at the time. I took my compact out of my handbag and started powdering my nose. Suddenly I heard him say, “Best be careful!”

I was startled and stared at him, openmouthed. He rose from the table and stood in front of me, his arms folded.

“What should I be careful of?”

He looked at me with his head to one side and gave a soft whistle.

“Best be careful, because you’re beautiful!” he said in an accusing tone. But he spoke with concern, apparently seriously.

I laughed. “What should I be careful of? Russkies?”

He shrugged.

“Them? They just want to give you a hug. Then they’ll be off. But there will come others … people who’ll want to strip the very flesh off your face. Because you’re beautiful.”

He peered at me shortsightedly. He pushed his glasses up to the top of his nose. It was as if he had just noticed I wasn’t plain, that I had a pretty face; as if he had never really looked at me the way people should
look at a woman. So, finally, he was looking at me. But it was appraisingly, the way a hunter looks at a well-bred dog.

“Strip the flesh off me?” I laughed again, but my throat was dry. “Who? Sex maniacs?”

He spoke sternly, like a priest preaching.

“Tomorrow, everyone who is beautiful will come under suspicion. As will those with talent and those with character.” His voice was hoarse. “Don’t you understand? To be called beautiful will be an insult; talent will be called a provocation, and character an outrage. Because it’s their turn now, and they will appear everywhere, from everywhere, emerging in their hundreds of millions and more. Everywhere. The ugly ones, the talentless, those without any character. And they’ll throw vitriol in the face of beauty. They will tar and slander talent. They will stab through the heart anyone with character. They’re here already … And there’ll be more of them. Be careful!”

He sat back down at his desk and covered his face with both hands. He didn’t say anything for a time. Then, perfectly charmingly, without any transition from one mood to another, he asked if he should put some coffee on.

That’s what he was like.

But that’s not all. He was aging, but sometimes it seemed as if, behind his hand, he was laughing vengefully at the process of aging. There are men, you know, who think old age is the time for revenge. Women at that age go mad, take hormones, put on more makeup, or take young lovers … But men when they age often go about smiling. And it is precisely this smiling kind of older man that is most dangerous as far as women are concerned: they are like a conquering army. At this stage of the great, boring duel between men and women—of which it is impossible to get bored—it is men who are the stronger, because they are no longer driven to fury by desire. They are no longer ruled by the body: they are in charge. And women can scent this the way a feral creature can scent a hunter. We can only rule over you men as long as we can hurt you. While we can carefully feed men with a few tidbits, a little give-and-take of power, then immediately deny them the merest taste of it and watch them shouting and screaming, writing letters, and uttering dire threats, we can relax, because we know the power is still ours. But when men are old it is they who have the power. Not for long, it’s
true. Being old is not the same as being ancient. Because the next stage is approaching, the time of dotage, when men become children and they need women again.

Go on, laugh. I’m only chattering on, being amusing, because the sky is almost light. See, you are so beautiful when you smile proudly, like that.

This man was sly and vengeful in his aging. Occasionally he’d remember he was getting old, and the thought would cheer him up, his eyes sparkling behind his glasses, and he’d look at me with delight and satisfaction. He was practically rubbing his hands together, happy because there I was in his room and he was aging and I could no longer hurt him. I would cheerfully have hit him then, torn the glasses from his nose, thrown them on the floor, and stamped on them. Why? Just so I should hear him cry out. So he would shake me by the arm or hit me, or … Well, yes. But there was nothing I could do, because he was aging. And I was afraid of him.

He was the only man I was ever afraid of. I had always believed I understood men. I thought they were eight parts vanity and two of something else. Don’t grunt like that; I’m not talking about you—you are an exception. But I thought I knew them, knew how to talk their language. Because nine out of ten men thought that if I looked at them from under my brow as if looking up to them, I must be admiring their beauty or intelligence! I could lisp and simper with them, play pussycat, admiring their terrifying intellect, which I, a poor little nobody of a girl, an ignorant, innocent shrinking violet, couldn’t properly grasp, of course, and certainly not understand. It was enough for me to worship at their wise, masculine feet, listening spellbound to their brilliant observations, especially since they were kind enough to permit me, silly woman that I am, to tell them how brilliant, how superior, they were at work, how one of them managed to put one over on those Turkish salesmen when he palmed them off with low-quality leather rather than top grade, or how another courted the powerful so faithfully that they eventually rewarded him with a Nobel Prize or a knighthood. That was the kind of thing they used to brag about. As I said, you are an exception. You don’t speak, you just keep drumming. And when you don’t speak, I know for certain that there is nothing you are trying to keep silent about. It’s marvelous.

But the others are not like you, darling. The others are vain, vain in bed, in restaurants, while they are just walking along or putting on their morning coats to flatter the latest celebrity, or loudly summoning the waiter in a coffee house … everything about them declares vanity, as if vanity were the one true incurable human disease. Eight parts vanity, I said? Maybe nine. I was reading in the Sunday supplement of one of the papers that our planet is mostly water and that only a little of it is dry land. That’s how it is with men; they’re nothing but vanity supported by a few fixed ideas.