The Correspondence Artist (17 page)

 

 

Djeli wrote back that that was an elegant formulation, and he agreed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've told almost no one about my relationship with the paramour. In fact, the only two people who really know what's passed between us are my lover and myself. Of course, I guess you could say that about any pair of lovers. Sandro and Florence know a fair amount, and I've said enough to Walter that he's probably figured it out, or thinks he has. You know, he met her briefly at that PEN reading at Cooper Union. Every once in a while I'll find myself in an abstract conversation with someone about love, and I'll make oblique reference to “the paramour.” But I never say who it is. I don't do this to create an air of mystery around myself. Of course, I do have a sense of humor about the ridiculousness of this code name.

I used to think that
paramour
must mean something approximating, and yet distinct from, love. I figured the etymology was probably
para
(next to, or beyond, as in
paraphrase
, or
paramilitary
) and
amor
. But it turns out it's from the French
par
(by)
amour
. It goes straight through the heart of love. Oh well.

Anyway, as I was saying, when I make reference to “the paramour,” I'm kind of making fun of myself. It makes it sound like I have a secret and exciting love life. I guess I do, from a certain perspective, but as you can see, in most respects it's as stupid, awkward, and frustrating as anyone else's. I never use any terminology that would appear to ascribe specific terms to our relationship.

Tzipi, on the other hand, has sporadically used this kind of language in reference to me. It kind of irks me, because she never asked me if this was all right. As I told you, even when she was with Hannah she tended to be discreet about her private life. But periodically, she'll haul off and blab to somebody about me. I didn't worry when she told me she'd talked to Asher. He, like Sandro, has excellent judgment – much better, in fact than Tzipi. But one day she told me that Hannah had been hectoring her about me, and that she had asked Tzipi outright if I were her new “official girlfriend,” and Tzipi, in an attempt to show defiance, had responded, “Yes, if you want to put it that way, she is.”

When I heard about this exchange, I had profoundly mixed feelings. Obviously, I was flattered that Tzipi would even momentarily promote me to this lofty status. On the other hand, I saw four potential problems: 1. the designation was Hannah's, and Tzipi appeared to be embracing it mostly just to undermine Hannah's control; 2. given Tzipi's unpredictable and famously circuitous logic, this configuration could flip over at any given moment; 3. I worried, not unreasonably I think, that Hannah might come after me with a lethal weapon; and 4. I wasn't sure I
wanted
to be Tzipi Honigman's official girlfriend.

Once she'd said it to Hannah, however, she seemed to be on a roll. Even though I protested against the “girlfriend” line in an affectionately slighting e-mail (I said I'd prefer to be called her “concubine”), she almost immediately reported that she'd referred to me by name, in a conversation with another journalist she knew only vaguely, as her “lover.” I didn't want her to think I was resisting being outed as her sexual partner for politically objectionable reasons, but given certain aspects of our relationship, I also thought she was overstepping a bit her rights of indiscretion.

Still, I confess, it gave me some small pleasure, for the moment, to feel loved. Of course, this little period of
da!
was quickly followed by yet another dose of
fort!

I finished
The Mandarins
. Although Simone dedicated it to Algren, his character, “Lewis Brogan,” occupies a surprisingly small number of pages in the book. He doesn't even appear until page 324. The sixth chapter is narrated in the first person by “Anne,” the middle-aged French psychologist who falls for him when she goes on a trip to Chicago. At first, she seems a little calculating.

A couple of chapters later she reunites with her lover and they go on a trip to Mexico. He seems to resent the fact that she won't give up definitively her life in Paris with her left-wing intellectual husband. Still, there's a lot of chemistry between them. They keep breathlessly saying things like, “I'll love you till the day I die.” At one point he says he's trying not to love her so much and she tells him to stop trying. It's melodramatic, and a little embarrassing.

Then in Chapter 10, she goes back to visit him again and he's chilly and distant. She's supposed to spend the whole summer with him, but he immediately announces something along the lines of, “I love you but I'm not in love with you.” Interestingly, it's right around here that she says she's reading
The New Yorker
and suddenly thinks, “I don't give a damn about Faulkner – the real tragedy is that Lewis and I should be fucking and we're not.” I paraphrase, but the business about Faulkner is really there.

Despite his new chilliness, “Lewis” thinks they should just go ahead and make the best of a bad situation, but “Anne” seems to flail between utter calm (“ ‘ Well, that's it,' I thought coldly.”) and frightening despair (“I wanted to howl until I died.”) When they part, they both seem to know it's over, but they agree that each will always have a place in the other's heart.

As you can imagine, the passionate parts feel badly overwritten. The interesting moments are the ones where both of them are being so chilly. The book ends with “Anne” contemplating suicide, but not because of losing “Lewis,” and it isn't even because of war and the bleak fact that everybody dies anyway. It's
because those things don't particularly move her anymore. But she doesn't kill herself. She thinks there's some vague possibility she'll be happy again some day. Very existentialist.

 

 

 

Here's a bit of a message from very early in our correspondence:

 

 

 

 

 

 

She did remember.

 

 

 

Once the paramour wrote me an e-mail that ended very affectionately, saying that it seemed I would be my lover's “friend forever or something like that.” I answered, “Of course I am your friend forever.” I hope I will be. Naturally, I am starting to wonder about the possible repercussions of writing this manuscript. I haven't received any word in over a week. The last
message I sent was friendly, but I did mention something about Simone de Beauvoir's letters being “silly and brilliant and girlish and superior and pathetic and sadistic and loving and cold.” This may have come across as somewhat accusatory. I think at this point it's hardly necessary to point out that I was also talking about myself.

 

 

 

Tzipi has the admirable habit of maintaining friendly relations with many of her former lovers. I've also tended to do this throughout my life. In fact, just this week I received an e-mail from someone I saw in my twenties. Ten years later, after Carlo and I split up, I called this person, and we had a brief and torrid repeat encounter. It was very helpful. It got me over the hump. Now, after another ten years, he was just checking in. It wasn't clear whether he would be interested in going to bed again. I do this kind of thing sometimes with my exes.

The other day I was flipping through the new
New Yorker
and I saw a picture of Mikhail Baryshnikov in an advertisement for a Movado watch. I looked at his face and thought, “He also breathed hotly and hungrily into Tzipi's mouth.” They had a well-known and long-running, sporadic love affair years ago. In fact, there's a character very clearly based on him in her fourth novel,
With Conviction and with a Rigorous Sadness
. Now they're just friends. They kiss on the lips when they see each other, but in that friendly way you can do with someone after so many years.

 

 

 

Once I wrote Tzipi about a comment that a friend had made at a dinner party at my house. Sandro had entertained the guests by playing piano and making some uncanny jokes, and then he had passed out on the couch. My friend looked at me with his
eyebrows raised and asked, “How did you create this miraculous person?” I said, “Well, I had an egg and I got some sperm.” I was very proud, of course. I told you, Tzipi is also very close to her older son, Asher. She had told me that when she was trying to get pregnant with her ex-husband, they'd been living right near the beach and she had this sense that the pounding of the waves was part of the whole amniotic process of Asher's conception. After I wrote her about my friend Leonard's comment about Sandro, I mentioned one other lovely thing that Sandro had done, which particularly charmed Tzipi. She sent a quick message reiterating my friend's praise, and I responded: