The Story of My Wife (25 page)

"I trust you have seen ropes made out of hemp . . . Don't
get
me wrong, I am not alluding to rope you hang yourself with."

"Of course not," he said with an obliging smile. "I know exactly what you mean, my dear captain."

"Well, then you know it's not a good idea to keep it out in the sun too long, because it rots. Creation, in short, devours its own products, just about everything it has wrought. Whatever it brings into being
it
also destroys. Whoever granted me life seeks also to wreck it." I was shouting by this time. But then I had always treated him as though he were deaf, that was part of my strategy.

"Or take the world of science ..." I was going to pursue my little analogy, telling him how on the one hand there are all those useful and wonderful inventions heralding progress, and on the other there's dynamite . . . But I didn't pursue it, I had to stop ... I felt a pleasant tingle in my veins . . . No, no, it was much more than that, it was rapture, I nearly swooned into his arms. I took another look at my letters, you see. They said there were two, but I was holding four letters in my hand,
four,
two of them for my wife, addressed, I could tell, by a male hand.

If Gregory Sanders's admonition could be applied here, then I'd have to say he had a point: it
is
possible to love what's mean. In fact, there is no greater pleasure in the world than wicked pleasure.

"Have you got a vacant room?" I asked the old man. And I won't deny it: I almost keeled over, my heart was pounding violently. Or was it simply fear?

"I just noticed I've got an important letter here. I want to read it first. Afterwards we can continue our Swedenborgian discussion."

And he did usher me into an unheated room filled with unused beds and chairs. I locked the door behind me and sat down to catch my breath. I was like a tiger, by God, that doesn't fall on its prey right away, but licks it first and groans with pleasure. I took another good look at the letters, and then another. Two of the four I had sent, they were all right. There was also a strange picture post card which must have got there by mistake. And then there was the real prize: a letter addressed to her. Strange.. . . How rash one can be when one is out to deceive. How careless, how bold . . . On a brand new blotter she leaves the word
mon cher.
And then she has her love letters delivered to our home. Such a woman I should not be able to catch redhanded? I am not crazy, my sweet. You
are
in league with that sanctimonious old scoundrel, and now I have proof.

The letter came from Paris and was written with a calligrapher's hand. On top it said: "No. 19." And then:

Dear Madame (much more than dear, no matter how petite you may be),

Just to round out my letter of last week: I am done with Epictitus and with Spinoza's
Tractate
on the relationship between law and state power, but my exam has been postponed a day. (Paris is glutted with philosophers.) As soon as I have some news for you, I shall write. Until then, or rather, until this neglected heart still beats, I am

Yours faithfully, Maurice Tannenbaum

PS.: I meant to tell you: the slippers serve me splendidly. Not only are they lovely and faithful, the two birds on it sing to me every morning. (Consequently, my mornings are enchanted.)

A philosopher? I kept staring at the paper, dumbfounded. What was all that about exams and philosophies? If it wasn't a love letter, what was it?

I felt a bit let down, I won't deny it. Sure, it had the thing about a neglected heart and such, but still. The odd style, at once meticulous and sarcastic, the carefully formed letters—all of this made me quite anxious in the end. What's more, he numbered his letters. Was the young man a bookkeeper perchance? No, not a bookkeeper, a philosopher. I kept eyeing the letter suspiciously. Could she have started up with such young boys? Could he be the one who asked her to marry him? The one who sent her the violets from Paris? I could hardly believe it. And the business about the slippers—that was a puzzle, too. Was I to take it that when she was busy with embroidering in the Café St. Luc, right under Dedin's nose, she was doing it for someone else? Or was she embroidering slippers for two of her boyfriends at once?

* * *

Upstairs I calmed down, but only for an instant. Then, I put on my specs, threw some clothes on and got down to business once again.

What
about
those sweet little birds, damn it? They chirp away, do they? Why, that almost amounts to a confession of love, all that chirping in the morning.

And the relation between justice and power, what about that? Ah hell, do they really expect me to believe that all a good-for-nothing student wants to tell a beautiful young woman is how he did on some exam? He was writing allegorically, in code, why of course. What I'd have to do now is find out what the words mean. What, for instance, could the mysterious-sounding Spinoza signify for two amorous hearts?

So I gave her some money and told her to go out and do some shopping. She had been itching to go anyway. "Christmas is upon us," she kept telling me. (It wasn't, by the way.) And that London fashions were different. And besides, her friends had arrived from Paris, and they were all so smartly dressed. Fine. Let her buy herself whatever her little heart desires. A scarf, even a blouse, to make the shopping spree last longer.

And sure enough, she was all aflutter, got ready, had her makeup on, in no time.

"Wait a minute," I called after her, "while you are at it, buy yourself a raincoat, too. You've been meaning to, haven't you? My words had an astounding effect on her. She was so shocked, she didn't finish her cigarette.

"How generous you are," she said and hurried out the door.

I wasn't one bit generous. On the contrary. I waited a little, to make sure she wasn't coming back, and then got ready to do something I had always found quite abhorrent, which is going through other people's things.

But I had to. I was still hoping I'd find some fresh clue. A letter perhaps, a word even—any lead would do ... A little house search, then.

It went against my grain, Lord knows, but ... a seaman can never allow himself to be squeamish, and I am not, that's certain, I've done things in my time that were plenty weird, yet it surprises me still that I was willing to go through with it. And not only because it seemed so distasteful, I had another reason.

My wife was a very untidy person. I should have spoken of this sooner but couldn't. She was so very untidy, you see, I couldn't possibly do her habits justice. And now to penetrate all that clutter . . .

For instance, in one of her chest drawers, among her undergarments, I found apples; and as if that wasn't bad enough, some of them had been bitten into, and these spots turned a deep, unsightly red. And I came upon scraps of left-over cakes, also bearing her teeth marks . . . And pieces of ribbon, lace, tulle, yarn, all rolled into a tangled mass, and made even more solid by the odd pieces of sucking candy that adhered to it.

I won't deny it: my nerves got so jangled by all this, I could have easily set the place on fire.

But how utterly ridiculous one can be at a time like this. I had something major to worry about, but what made me furious were these trifles. The balls of matted yarn and silver foil, for let's not forget about the bits of silver foil—they were all over the house, too: in boxes and drawers, just stuffed in or rolled into balls. I couldn't fathom why she should want to save all that worthless silver paper. Was this, too, an expression of some childhood need? Because what I am talking about
is
ordinary silver foil wrapping paper.

And they tuned up in the most unlikely places: in flower vases, in between valises in the foyer. . . . Would somebody please tell me why I had to marry such a woman?

And what about the cabinets? They were packed so tight, they almost tipped over when I tried opening them. Her drawers also got stuck when I tried to force them open, and they wouldn't close either, her bunched up fineries acted as a spring. Mixed together carelessly were all kinds of expensive fabrics: silks and velvets and moire, and dainty suede handbags with scraps of crippled jewelry in them: gold brooches, broken bracelets. And a cavalcade of color everywhere: deep blues, lovely greens . . . And breadcrumbs in her purse, stockings in the sewing basket, and assorted change everywhere, Spanish and French coins, and stamps and streetcar tickets from a variety of countries, and discolored, sorry-looking bits of chocolate . . .

Was it from this . . . this chaotic mess that she rose so grandly when she went out at night? Yes, indeed. And how radiant she was in her white furs, her violet gowns. Her shoulders glistened, her face was aflush as she informed me casually, "I am off; is my skirt all right?" And after turning this way and that, she'd flutter out of the room.

(This happened not long ago. Some Frenchman had invited her, some new arrivals. And twice in a row. I didn't go with her, I wasn't in the mood. I just watched her as she left.)

Our marriage license I found in a cupboard, stuck to a bottle of cordial, so help me . . . But why go on. . . .? It's a curse to be like me. There I was casting about for a word, a sign—'-a simple sentence would have sufficed—yet at the time of the Ridolfi business, I had everything I needed in my hand, and didn't do a blessed thing ... I never did get over that. How could I be so indifferent? Or was it that I simply stopped caring?

Yes, that must be it. For indifference keeps you going, while passion pulls you down. Miss Borton had said this to me once and I realized now how right she was.

Nothing—not one letter or stray note—turned up, which might have provided me with a clue; she must have destroyed everything. I was ready to put things back in their place when I came upon two photographs, in one of her sewing baskets, stuck in an envelope. With some surprise I examined them. One showed a little girl, an attractive-looking child, and on the back of the picture, an inscription, in Spanish:
recuerdo
or, possibly,
collecion d'oro,
something like that.

The child, as I say, was quite appealing; her sad little face was framed by thick curls and her eyes radiated a dreamy sort of confidence.

"This must be her child," I said to myself right away, and stepped up to the window.

"Yes, her child," I repeated out loud. I couldn't even say that she resembled my wife all that much. And still. The hunch, the feeling was unmistakable. Quick and strong.

So strong in fact that I got all flustered. I confess I always had a soft spot for little girls.

But then I put it down and examined the other one again.

This was a picture of my wife in the company of high-spirited revelers, both men and women, with the men wearing high paper hats, looking a bit like bakers, a woman holding a live rooster, and all of them apparently having the time of their lives, laughing with abandon, as people do after a night of boisterous merrymaking.

And there was my wife in the middle, perched on some sort of stuffed swan, and not merely laughing but positively blazing with hilarity, with that special glow in her eyes, a glow I knew quite well. . . .

But then I put away the pictures, put them back in the box. I didn't really want to know that much about them, or about the possible connection between the two. There was an inscription on the back of the second picture, too, just one word:
La nuit
— another hint about its origin.

But we know all about such things. It's after a wild, champagne-filled night that one has such pictures taken in the Bois de Boulogne, as a souvenir.

I tried hard to put all of this out of my mind.

"What on earth are you doing?" my wife exclaimed when she walked in. "Why are you going through my books?"

"I'm looking for our papers, my sweet. Do you know where I found our marriage license?" I reminded her gently. "In a cupboard, stuck to a bottle."

This made her laugh.

"What do you need our papers for anyway?"

"For a job application. They want to see your travel papers, too. But you are so very untidy." And I looked into her eyes.

"I know," she replied contritely.

"You should really try to be a little more careful, and at least not mess up what I already tidied up. And while we're at it, why don't you try
doing
something for a change, anything at all, instead of lazing about with a cigarette in your hand . . .? Are you listening to me?"

"Yes."

"Saying yes won't do: look at me." And I turned her head toward me. (Her eyeballs were darting every which way.) "Look in my eyes. Like that. A woman brooding all the time . . . nothing good can come of that."

"I don't brood; I've nothing to brood about."

"You daydream then."

"Oh no I don't; not any more."

"One dream after another. First you sleep till all hours, till your head is in a fog, then you sink into another dream. You pick up a book and you start dreaming again. It may be a dismal day, the room is filled with cigarette smoke, the lights are dim—what can all this lead to?" I was still looking straight into her eyes.

But . . . inexplicably ... I wanted to forgive her, too. After all that she'd put me through, I wanted to embrace her. To love her. It's true, I was feeling quite wretched, and I wanted desperately to be happy. I was glad she was here, glad that she helped me abandon my miserable profession. Seeing her was like seeing the morning after a drunken night, like getting a taste of real life after shadowy make believe . . .

"And how is the raincoat?"

"Oh, the raincoat . . ." And she brightened up. "It's nice. Just lovely. Thank you ever so much . . ."

On another occasion, however, I did go through her books, the ones I didn't get to the first time. And then I found something.

It was a book on human psychology written by a man named Condillac. On page 72 of this book I found a hand-written note:

"When you get to this page, please be advised that you are the sweetest creature ever to walk on this earth. M.T." And he even added (lest she thought it was addressed to somebody else): "I am talking to you,
ma petite Madame."
I turned to the title page book and there saw the inscription: "Property of Maurice Tannen-baum." So that was that.