Portraits of a Marriage

by Sándor Márai

  But one day I opened a letter in which the bank informed Judit that, on such and such a date, they had credited her account with twenty-six thousand pengő. I kept looking at the letter and rubbing my eyes. In those first few moments I felt a rush of blood to the head: I was jealous! I imagined Judit must have brought the money with her from England, where she had had a lover of some sort—not the Greek music master about whom she had told me, but someone else, God knows whom, a milord who had paid her handsomely for her services. This feeling, this idea, hurt so much that I beat my fist against the desk. Then I set off for the bank. There I discovered that Judit had not brought this sum with her from England, but had paid it in, in small installments. She had made her first deposit the day I presented her with the checkbook.

  “Women!” you say, and smile. Yes, that’s what I myself said at first, and gave a smile of relief. It now seemed certain—and the order and date of the deposits showed as much—that Judit had asked me for the money but had secretly stowed it away so I shouldn’t know. I thought she was busy with her shopping sprees, carelessly throwing money about everywhere. Indeed, she did throw it about, but not entirely carelessly. As I later discovered, she drove a very hard bargain when she was shopping, and had the receipts made out for bigger sums than she actually paid. Women of the street do this to their dim, happy-go-lucky admirers. When I understood that it was my money that Judit was hoarding, I smiled in relief.

  I put the bank statement back in the envelope, stuck down the flap, and left it for Judit. I said nothing about my discovery. But then a new kind of jealousy grew in me. I was living with a woman who kept secrets. She kept secrets the way false women do, the kind that dine with their husbands and families, full of airy charm, but even while happily chatting to those who believe in them, accepting sacrifices and gifts from the man who trusts them, are by the end of the afternoon date already plotting how to sneak into a strange man’s house and shamelessly spend several hours insulting every decent human feeling, betraying those who trust them and take care of them. Please understand that I am an old-fashioned man and have nothing but the deepest contempt for women who break up marriages. My contempt is so deep that I can’t find any fashionable excuse. No one has a right to the sort of sly, filthy, cheap affair such women call happiness, not at the price of secretly or openly wounding other people’s feelings. I have been both the sufferer and the instigator of such repulsive affairs, and if there is one thing in my life I utterly regret and feel ashamed of it is the breakup of my own marriage. I have sympathy for every kind of sexual misadventure, for those caught in the terrifying currents of physical desire: I even understand the most extreme, twisted forms of it. Desire speaks to us in a thousand voices. I understand all that. But only unattached people are free to cast themselves into those deep waters. Anything else is deception and treachery, worse than conscious cruelty.

  People who feel something for each other can’t live with secrets in their hearts. That’s what cheating means. The rest is almost coincidental … a purely physical matter, usually on some melancholy impulse, nothing much. But these calculated affairs, in carefully chosen hours, in carefully chosen places, lacking all spontaneity … how sad, how cheap they all are. And behind it all there is this wretched little secret. It stinks out the relationship. It’s as if there were a corpse rotting somewhere in one of the rooms, under a couch.

  That’s how it was the day I discovered the bank statement. Judit had a secret. And she did a good job of keeping it from me.

  She did a good job though I watched her like a hawk. I couldn’t have watched her more closely if I had hired a team of private detectives to observe her. We lived graciously, intimately, according to the rules of male-female cohabitation, and we lied to each other. She lied that she had no secrets from me; I lied by pretending to believe her. I watched her and kept thinking. At one stage I even thought to change my tactics, to surprise her and corner her, force her to confess. Such a confession might clear the air, the way an opportune summer storm clears away days of stifling heat. But I might also have feared a confession. That this woman, with whom I was sharing my fate, was keeping something from me was a genuinely frightening thought. Twenty-six thousand pengő for a woman who had spent her childhood in a ditch with mice scrambling all over her, a servant, was more than a lot of money: it was a fortune. And the money grew and multiplied. If it were only a matter of the ancient, nagging female practice of artfully putting aside some money from the housekeeping to use as pocket money, of filtering off a small sum from joint expenses … well, that might have been something to smile at. All women do this, because all women are worried that their husbands don’t really understand the necessities of life: their instinct is that men can only earn, not save. All women prepare for a rainy day. The women who do this are as honest as the day is long in other respects, but when it comes to money, they cheat their husbands, stealing from them like domestic magpies or petty thieves. They know that the greatest secret in life is to preserve: jam, people, money—anything important enough to keep. And so they cheat and filch. It’s the female version of the heroic exploit: a petty but tenacious wisdom. But it wasn’t pennies and dimes that Judit was stowing away. Quietly, regularly, sweetly, Judit was robbing me, showing me fake bills, hoarding away money.

  We lived graciously and quietly. Judit stole and I watched her. It was the beginning of the end.

  One day I found out it wasn’t just money she was robbing me of but the secret something that is a basic condition of anyone’s life: self-respect. Look, I know this idea of self-respect is really little more than vanity. It’s a male word. Women shrug when they hear it said. Women, in case you didn’t know, do not “respect” themselves. They may respect the man they are with, their social or family rank, or their reputation. All this is transference, formality. But when it comes to themselves, and that strange phenomenon compounded of character and self-knowledge crudely glued together that we refer to as “I,” women regard it with a generous, slightly condescending cynicism.

  I discovered that this woman was consciously, systematically robbing me—that’s to say she did everything to carve out for herself as large a slice of the loaf we shared as she could inconspicuously manage. I mean the loaf I thought was there for the both of us, and what is more, a loaf made of the finest bread she’d ever eaten. But I learned this not in the bank that regularly, and with the best of intentions, continued informing Judit of the very happy state of her account. No, old man, it was in bed I learned it. And that was so painful … well, indeed, this is the thing we men mean when we say we cannot live without self-respect.

  It was in bed I learned it. I had been observing her for a while by then. I thought she was stowing the money away for her family. She had an extensive family, men and women, people at the back of beyond, trawling about in the depths of something very like history, at a depth I could comprehend with my mind but not in my heart, since my heart lacked the courage to explore secrets that lay that deep. I thought it might have been this mysterious, subterranean confederacy of relatives that had put Judit up to robbing me. Maybe they were all in debt. Maybe they were desperate to buy land … But you want to know why she never said anything? I asked myself that question. My immediate answer was that the reason she said nothing was because she was embarrassed by her poverty, because poverty, you know, is a kind of conspiracy, a secret society, an eternal, silently taken vow. It is not only a better life that the poor want: they want self-esteem too, the knowledge that they are the victims of a grave injustice and that the world honors them for that the way it honors heroes. And indeed they are heroes: now that I am getting old I can see that they are the only real heroes. All other forms of heroism are of the moment, or constrained, or come down to vanity. But sixty years of poverty, quietly fulfilling all the obligations family and society imposes on you while remaining human, dignified, perhaps even cheerful and gracious: that is true heroism.

  I thought she was stealing for her family. But no
, Judit wasn’t sentimental. She stole for herself, with no particular purpose, with the solemn diligence and circumspection of a thousand-year-old wisdom that tells you that seven fat years are not long, that masters are not to be relied on, that fortune’s wheel is forever turning, and if clownish good fortune has happily deposited you in the top seat at the table, it’s best to dig in, since you never know when the lean years will come calling. She stole for prudence’s sake, not out of generosity or compassion. If she had wanted to help her family, she had only to say the word to me. She knew that perfectly well. But Judit had an instinctive fear of the family, particularly now that she had set her foot elsewhere, on the master’s territory. Her embattled, acquisitive nature knew nothing of compassion.

  And in the meantime she was watching me, her husband. What was I doing? Am I not getting bored of it all? Am I going to send her away? If I do, she must certainly stow away as much as she can, as quickly as she can. She watched me at table and she watched me in bed. And when I first noticed it, I blushed in embarrassment. The room was dark, and that might have been lucky for Judit. People don’t know their own limits. If I hadn’t kept a grip on myself I might have killed her. Might have. Pointless to talk about it.

  It was a mere glance, all of it, in a tender, intimate moment, when I had closed my eyes and suddenly opened them again. I saw a face in the dim light, a familiar, doomed face that was very carefully, very subtly, smiling at me in mockery. Then I knew that this woman, with whom, now and at other times, before, I believed I was sharing moments of unconditional giving, for whom I had exiled myself from the realm of human and social contracts, this woman was actually watching me, just at such moments, with gentle but unmistakable mockery. It was as if she were observing me, examining me, saying: “What is the young gentleman up to now?” and “Ah, he’s gentry.” And then she served me. I realized that Judit, both in and out of bed, did not love me: she served me. Exactly as she did when she was a maid fresh to the household, cleaning my clothes and polishing my shoes. Exactly the way she later served me my food when I occasionally went to my mother’s for dinner. She served me because that was her role in respect of me, and one can’t change these great, fixed, human relationships by force. And when embarked on her strange battle against my wife and me, she never once believed, not for a moment, that this relationship, this role in life that drew us together yet kept us from each other, could really be dissolved or changed from within. She did not believe that she would ever have any other role in my life than to serve, to be the servant, to play the maid. And because she knew all this, not just in her mind but with her entire body, in her nerves, in her dreams, in her past, in her very genes, she never argued much, but simply did as the laws of her life dictated. I understand this now.

  Did it hurt? you ask.

  Terribly.

  But I did not send her away. Not immediately. I was too vain. I didn’t want to acknowledge the pain she caused me. I let her serve me for a while, in bed and at table; I allowed her to carry on stealing. I never told her, not even later, that I knew about her sad, shady little dealings, nor did I mention that, in unguarded moments, I had caught her mocking, superior, curious eyes looking at me in bed.

  There are certain affairs that must be seen right through to the end, right to the end when there is nothing else left—to the point of annihilation. I saw it through. Then, after a while, when I discovered something else, I quietly told her to leave. She went without complaint. There was no scene, no argument. She took her belongings—there were a considerable number of belongings by then, including the house and a great deal of jewelry—and left. She left as silently, as without comment, as she had arrived at the age of fifteen. She looked back from the threshold with the same silent, interrogatory, indifferent look she gave me that very first time in the hall.

  The most beautiful thing about her was her eyes. Sometimes I still see them in my dreams.

  Yes, that stocky fellow took her. I even fought a duel with him … these are such pathetic things, but sometimes there’s no other way.

  Look here, old man, they want to throw us out.

  Bill, please, waiter. It says … but no, don’t even think of it! This was my treat, if you please. No buts. You were my guest.

  No, I don’t fancy going to Peru with you. Once somebody has grown as solitary as I have, what’s the point of going to Peru or anywhere else? You see, one day I realized that no one can help me. It is love people want … but there’s no one who can help with it, never. Once a man understands this, he becomes strong and solitary.

  So this is what happened while you were in Peru.

  Part III

  What are you looking at, darling? Photographs? You carry on. At least you have something to do while I make the coffee.

  Wait, let me put my housecoat on. What’s the time? Half-past three? I’ll just open the window for a moment. No, don’t get up, stay in bed. Look how bright the moon is. It’s quite full. The town is absolutely quiet at this time, fast asleep. In half an hour, at four, the trucks will start rumbling, bringing vegetables and milk and meat to market. But Rome is properly asleep now in the moonlight. I don’t tend to sleep at this time, because I have been waking at three with a pounding heart for a while now. What are you laughing at? I don’t mean a pounding heart as when we are making love. Stop laughing! The doctor says it is at this time the heart rate changes, you know, as when you change gear from first to second in the car. And another man—not a doctor—once told me that three in the morning is when the earth’s magnetic field changes. Have you any idea what that means? I don’t, either. He had read it in a Swiss book. Yes, it was him, the man whose photograph you are holding. He said it.

  Don’t move, darling. If only you knew how beautiful you are when you lie in bed, your head propped on your arm, your hair falling over your eyes! You have to go to the museum to see men’s bodies as splendid as yours. And your face too, yes … what can I say? It’s the head of an artist. Why are you looking at me so suspiciously? You know I adore you. Because you are gorgeous. Because you’re an artist. Because you are my one and only. You’re a gift from God. Wait, don’t move, let me kiss you! No, just here, in the corner of your eye! And your brow! No, relax. You’re not cold? Shall I close the window? It’s mild out in the street, and those two orange trees under the window are shining in the moonlight. When you’re not here at night I often lean on the window-sill till dawn and watch the moonlit Via Liguria, this sweet and lovely street. See? There’s someone stealing along by the houses, just as in the Middle Ages. Do you know who it is? You mustn’t laugh at me. Just because I’m in love with you, just because I think you are the only one in the world for me forever, my dear, it doesn’t mean I’m silly. It’s old age slinking along the Via Liguria under my window, and not just here, but all over Rome and everywhere else, all over the world.

  Old age is a thief and a murderer. One day he enters the room. He has blacked his face up with soot, like a burglar. With both hands he tears the mop of hair off your head, hits you across the face with his fist and knocks out your teeth, steals the light from your eyes, the sound from your ears, all the nice tastes in your stomach … No, all right, I won’t go on. Why the mocking laughter? I still have a perfect right to love you and, see, I am not being miserly with it, I am gorging myself on all the happiness you give me. One can never have enough of such sweetness and happiness. I’m not ashamed of it, I freely confess I couldn’t live without you now. But don’t worry, I won’t follow you on my broom to the Capitol! The day will come when I no longer have the right to love you, because I am aging. An old belly, wrinkled breasts. Don’t go comforting me. I know the script. By then all you could give me would be alms. Or like alms. Or the kind of extra people pay their employees as overtime. Why do you look at me like that from the corner of your eyes? You’ll see, that’s just how it will be. I’ve learned to go when it’s time to go … Would you like to know who taught me that lesson? Yes, the man whose photograph you are holding.r />
  What are you asking? Wait, the early vegetable van is making such a racket. Was he my husband? No, my sweet, he was not my husband. It’s that other one there, the one in the fur coat, in the corner of the album, who was my husband. He was not my second husband, the one whose name I now bear, but the first. He was the true one, my intended. That’s if such a thing exists. The second simply married me. To put it more precisely, I paid to have him marry me, because by that time I had crossed the border and needed papers and passport. It’s a long time since I parted from the first. Where is the photograph of the second? I don’t know. I haven’t kept it, because later I didn’t even want to see him, not even in my dreams. Whenever I dreamt of him I suffered, as if I had dreamt something improper—women covered head to toe in hair, that kind of thing. What are you staring at? There’s no man anywhere whose life has not been touched by women. Some woman is bound to cross his path. And there are men … men whose lives are like one of those houses that form a through passage from one street to another. One woman simply passes his key on to the next woman. He was like that. It’s the same with women. Every woman has, at some time, had a man knocking at her door. There are modest men who tap gently and ask, “May I … just for a moment?” The sillier kind of woman starts screaming in outrage, declaring, “What nerve!” or “Why just a moment?” And then they slam the door. Ah, but later they regret having been so peevish. They start looking through the crack in the door, watching in case the presumptuous fellow should still be standing there, hat in hand. As soon as they see he has gone they are in a foul mood. And later—sometimes much later—they start shivering at night, because everything around them has gone cold, and they suspect it might have been a mistake sending the man on his way, since it wouldn’t be so bad to have a man in this cold room, in this cold bed, warming it up, close, within touching distance, and no matter if he lies, no matter if he is rude, as long as he’s there. Like you? Thank heaven you’re still here next to me. You were so brazen I couldn’t get rid of you. What are you grinning at? Thank heaven, I say. Don’t you go snorting like that, mocking and grinning, you bastard.