Women

by Mihail Sebastian

  The house is the only thing I kept for myself. The rest, bit by bit, fell under Andrei’s control. He knew how to ask for things and he had a spoiled child’s instinct for grabbing them. I liked his agitated appearance, the way he sounded tense and peremptory, the way he’d throw his hat off as he stood in the doorway, his flurry of questions, his curt replies, the way he paced the room, picking up objects and setting them down somewhere else, amazed at everything, wanting to know everything, impatient, intolerant and tyrannical and full of himself.

  —Andrei, you’re outrageous!

  I was kidding him. He’d suddenly feel powerful and commanding and he’d smile at me arrogantly—a smile I liked immensely, because I became restrained and passive while he became reckless and presumptuous. I knew from the start he was vain, but I was happy to cultivate this, because it was his most sensitive point. It made him impossible sometimes but it also gave him a certain rough grace, like an adolescent who knows no boundaries. Privately, I felt I was the stronger of the two of us, and I often thought that most of his victories over me, at least at the beginning, were really little concessions I’d made so he wouldn’t have to go off in a sulk.

  It’s hard to say when exactly I came to depend on Andrei. There probably wasn’t a precise moment. My love for him grew gradually, out of an accretion of moments and habits, until one day I found I was his prisoner. For a long time I considered myself free and regarded him with detachment and, because I could judge him coldly and was aware of all his amusing failings, I was naive enough to consider myself independent of him and capable of splitting up with him at any moment, at no great cost to myself. I could never have imagined that man, with his rages and fantasies of control, could ever cause suffering to me, the one who regarded him so indulgently and ironically. I had the impression he was playing at being a tyrant with me and I was playing along, answering back like a slave, the way grown-ups act scared when a child with a sheet over its head says hoo-hooo like a monster…

  I had no idea what a dangerous game I was playing.

  FOUR

  Our first bad fight was because of my name, which Andrei doesn’t like at all. He found it hard to address me by it properly, as it is, plain and common and without any personality. But it’s my name, I was given it when I was little: Maria. When we were on our own together he tried all kinds of variations and affectionate diminutives, which I firmly rejected.

  —I’m warning you, Andrei. If you call me by anything other than by my real name, I won’t answer.

  But his suffering began when he had to introduce me to somebody new and, counting on my embarrassment, corrected my name, pronouncing the English or French versions or dropping the first syllable.

  He called me, by turn, Marie, Mary, and Ria. And every time he tried it, I thwarted him calmly, which infuriated him.

  —My name is Maria. Andrei likes to say it differently; an old joke of his.

  Don’t laugh: it was an important matter and in the end I managed to prevail, because I suspected this was the crux of the difference between us, the surest sign that we were from two different worlds.

  Why did he dislike “Maria”? I’m not entirely sure. I asked him a few times and he couldn’t explain it.

  —Look, he said, all the women we know have normal names. Suzy Ioaniu, for example. Her name’s Suzana, but admit it, it would be horrible to call her Suzana. Then there’s Bebe Stoian. And Anny. Everybody, in other words: Lulu, Lily, Ritta, Gaby…Except you…Maria—what a provincial name!

  I laughed. I was genuinely amused by his passion for fancy, funny, cute names you could write with a y or a silent e, or with a double consonant. Names the easygoing aesthete Andrei may have picked up from nightclub shows and which he wished to apply to my own dull, provincial, three-syllable name, which I was used to and liked, because it was so simple and common. How triumphant Andrei was when he arrived at my place and discovered that my new maid was also a Maria. He didn’t even have to laugh; he just extended his hand, palm open, as though to say, behold the evidence, I rest my case. Good God, what a face he made when I told him it didn’t bother me in the slightest and that there was no reason to trouble with my name or that of the maid, it would do fine for both of us and all the other Marias in the world. He ended the conversation sharply:

  —You’re an incorrigible bourgeois. You might as well wear a dress from 1915, to go with your name.

  Much later, only two years ago, in Paris, in circumstances that will make you laugh but which I found really moving, Andrei agreed in the end that my name was no better or worse than any other and even suited me well. We were visiting galleries in the rue Boétie, and at the Bernheim-Jeune happened across an odd exhibition by the Italian actress Maria Lani, who knew many famous artists personally and had them paint her portrait, thereby assembling a collection of extraordinary paintings.

  I think Andrei was surprised that a woman as distinguished as that Italian actress could be called Maria. I also think he was proud we bore the same name, and I remember him looking at me several times in the exhibition with a flicker of the admiration he hadn’t shown me for a very long time, and perhaps hasn’t since.

  We dined somewhere in Montmartre that evening in a modest, cheerful bar and Andrei was his old, playful, vibrant, direct self and talked a lot of charming nonsense.

  —Maria, I’ve been a fool and it’s unforgivable. Your name suits you perfectly. A name lacking obvious charm, a name which can’t stand diminutives, proud like you, simple like you, perhaps a little too serious, because sometimes I wish you were different, livelier, more edgy. Not like me, because I’m completely nuts, but different in any case…

  —Younger, Andrei, younger, I said, helping him to formulate the thought.

  He protested vehemently, pointed out that he was older than me, mentioned his gray hairs, but despite his protests I know I’d spoken the truth and that evening Andrei, whom you laugh at for his puffed-up, conceited talk, had said the most sensitive and perceptive things that could be said about our agitated love affair. I thought then, after I don’t know how many months of resignation, that my relationship with Andrei was not irretrievably compromised, as long as such a moment of understanding was possible, and that—who knows?—with a little patience and a certain determination at times, and a bit of luck in the end, I could eventually discover exactly the pedal that needed to be pressed in that emotional game of ours for the harmony we felt that evening to last. To last! You see, that must have been my greatest mistake, not only in my relationship with Andrei, but with everybody else and with life itself. To last! It terrifies me to think that something can be completely obliterated, that a thing or a person or a feeling or even just something familiar can disappear overnight. What obsesses me about ephemeral things is their eternal possibility, the suggestion that they might endure. What was heartbreaking for me about Andrei’s company was his continual air of temporariness, like a man who’d walked into a house with his hat on, not knowing if he was staying or leaving. I was ridiculously tempted sometimes to put my hand on his shoulder and to ask him in all seriousness:

  —Is that you?

  Don’t imagine that my desire for permanence was oppressive or even demanded anything of me. I was well aware that Andrei had to keep moving, to betray and—how can I explain?—I think his vaguely vagabondish demeanor stirred something in me and that was exactly why I loved him, because he was scurrying about and engaged in the world while I believed in waiting and eternity. A cheap eternity, certainly, mine and his, but which has to be defended so carefully against so many things! Perhaps his noisy, capricious, and unstable behavior and the way he acted like a domineering, intimidating playboy was something I liked and needed because it was a fresh breeze blowing through what he called my “serious” life. And perhaps he too needed my calmness, at least for the respite it gave him if nothing else, as he found it pleasant to enjoy a day or a week of peace next to me sometimes when his dizzying whi
ms and schemes and escapades had worn him out. Perhaps a dull, excessively bourgeois peace, but one he could count on.

  I think that’s what Andrei understood in the end, that evening in Paris. Walking home late, through backstreets and along the quays of the Seine, tipsy on wine and anticipation of the night of love we’d silently promised ourselves, I was happy on his arm.

  FIVE

  What else? I wonder if there’s anything else to tell you. Now that I’ve got talking about so many past events which of course I’d never forgotten for a moment though I’d kept them locked away inside me, as in a drawer you’d rather not rummage through, I admit I’ve got the taste for it. Having dug up so many facts and regrets and errors, I find talking about it pleasantly painful in a way, like removing the bandages from an arm long imprisoned by them. But I’m not going to tell you all the other stories—the fights and betrayals and explanations—because I feel it’s too late to go over all that ground again. I’ve accepted these things for a long time now, the things that have happened and those that are yet to happen, and I try to make their comradely presence into a familiar comfort—probably the only one I have left. Anyway, you know about it all, just as I do and everybody else does, since Andrei has held back nothing in making a public display of every new affair from start to finish.

  Do you remember how he ran away to Paris in 1924 with Didi, that blond starlet who left with him in the middle of her show’s season, leaving a hole in the Carabus revue and stunning all Bucharest? I’m told it’s still talked about today and that their escapade has attained legendary status in the theater world. Meanwhile, I’d go out, make visits, receive visitors—with ridiculous equanimity, with a smile that wasn’t faked, with detachment that was immune to the harshest innuendo. How did I do it? I don’t know. Was I being funny? Contemptuous? Unfeeling? I swear, I have no idea, but I think I felt the whole ugly business had nothing to do with me, didn’t affect me, couldn’t affect me, that a solid wall stood between what was going on and who I was.

  Nobody understood anything, and Andrei understood less than anybody. He avoided meeting me for two weeks after he returned. He acknowledged me by sending vague messages and nervous go-betweens. Then he turned up at my place one morning, out of the blue, disoriented and not knowing how to proceed, whether to explain himself or to blame me, but wanting in any case to justify himself. I didn’t provide him with the opportunity. I received him as though nothing had happened, as if he’d left my home the previous evening, I was friendly, made him laugh and joined in myself, had him stay for dinner, asked him dozens of silly questions. After dinner, I played a few gramophone records that I’d bought for him when he was away, Argentinian tangos, and asked him to show me a dance step that was coming into fashion at the time and which I hadn’t managed to catch. This pleased him greatly because he was gratified to be back on his own territory and I felt how this insignificant thing instantly gave him his self-confidence back. He stopped acting guilty and reassumed that air of being in control that we know so well. In the evening, over tea, probably because he likes cakes (you know, those creamy rolls), he looked up from his cup and said amiably:

  —You’re not my kind of woman, but you’re a nice girl.

  I looked at him, frowning for the first time. Although I wasn’t annoyed, this adjective seemed too light to describe shoulders such as mine, which had proven capable of bearing so much.

  —You too, Andrei. You’re nice too.

  I watched him as he ate in front of me, at the table he’d been absent from for so long. He was greedy, cheerful, and communicative, with a candor that suited him wonderfully and an absence of self-awareness that would have been an excuse for any crime or betrayal. I had always enjoyed watching Andrei eating and I think his greed is the only truly good thing in him, because (maybe I’m talking nonsense, but I’ll tell you anyway) there’s something childlike about a greedy man, something which tempers his roughness and self-importance and reduces the intimidating aspect of his masculinity. It’s possible that simple, stupid women have managed to live their entire lives with great men, kings, generals, and geniuses just because they ate their dinners with them and had the image before them of petulant, hungry children and it was the only thing that made their majesty tolerable.

  Oh, there was nothing regal about Andrei, of course, though he could be a petty tyrant in his own way, and my only moment of superiority over him, the only situation in which I felt him dependent on me, when it seemed he expected me to protect him and decide for him, was at dinner, shaking out his napkin, asking with his eyes what I was about to serve him. I know what I’m telling you now is silly and you won’t understand any of it, but don’t trouble yourself, it’s entirely my fault for telling you, a man, things that only a woman could understand and feel.

  It’s one of the few pleasures for which I’m indebted to Andrei—the pleasure of serving him, waiting on him, watching him preening himself, behind his energetic male facade, indulging his tastes, guiding them. He submitted with the satisfaction of a man who was getting everything he wanted, because he feels entitled to everything and there was something fine in the way he let me take care of him.

  I think it was the only thing that really made him feel connected to me, and I knew that no matter how far he ran away or with whom or to where, he would eventually grow tired and head back to me, knowing there was a place where a docile female body awaited him, and a familiar bed, a decent meal, and a gramophone with new tango records.

  You know, I’m not ashamed to say that throughout all this I counted on his laziness, on his being greedy and getting tired, and perhaps still, sometimes, on his vanity, as I was an elegant woman—wasn’t I?—who looked good on a man’s arm on theater opening nights or at a restaurant. That’s why I never panicked during any of Andrei’s escapades and never ran off to look for him. I was sure he’d be back eventually. I’m not saying it wasn’t hard, especially in the early days. The number of times I waited in vain for him when I’d invited him to dinner and he’d promised to come, the number of evenings I was dressed for a show, waiting for the doorbell to ring, watching the time slip away—ten more minutes, five more, until I finally realized he wasn’t coming and changed out of my clothes, not indignantly, but sad that I’d wasted an evening. And how stupid I felt telling the maid I’d be breakfasting alone, when I’d already instructed her to set the table for two, or when I didn’t go out and she’d seen me getting ready for the theater or a walk only a little earlier. Perhaps you have never experienced such little indignities or known what weariness they cause, but, having lived daily with them, I would have honestly preferred a serious incident involving terrible pain that hits you head-on and either knocks you over or forces you to change.

  I never asked Andrei for explanations and I stopped him whenever he tried to give me any, as I knew that nothing could have eradicated my deep feeling of doubt and the rest—facts, arguments, justifications—is of no interest. Besides, the pleasure of seeing him again was so fresh and vivid each time that everything else disappeared, while he was with me at least. Do you remember when we met on Calea Victoriei one morning this spring, during the general election, and you said you’d just seen Andrei, who was going that evening to Turda, where he was running as a candidate? I gave you a simple response, as though I knew all about Andrei’s presence in Bucharest and his departure for Turda. In fact, I didn’t know anything, and I hadn’t seen Andrei for nearly a month at that point. He’d mentioned his candidacy the last time we’d met and I hadn’t approved of it, as I considered it too serious a prank for him. So, he was in Bucharest! Walking about, talking to people, having a good time…I suddenly missed him and was so dejected that there was no room for regrets or for fighting it, just the timid hope that I’d see him too, and hear him talking and clasp his hand.

  After dinner I went to the station and arrived an hour early, which frightened me because it occurred to me in the meantime that Andrei might have passed by my pl
ace and not found me at home. I waited on the platform, beside the first carriage so that I could see the whole length of the train and be sure not to miss him in the bustling crowd. He arrived late, only a few minutes before the train departed, and when he saw me from afar he stopped dead, out of surprise or fear. Probably because he expected a scene. I gave him a little reassuring wave and he approached with exaggerated cheerfulness, forcing himself to be chatty, which was unnecessary, because all I wanted was to see him. He was sweet and affectionate and—standing in the open doorway of the train, hanging on the railing—kept squeezing my hand and speaking effusively, but at the same time impatient for the departure whistle. I thought then that by some miracle he might suddenly leap down, and with his case in one hand and my arm in the other we would head for the exit, him telling me he was going to spend the night in Bucharest. For a moment the idea of asking him to do this flashed through my mind, but fortunately I bit my lip and smiled and said nothing. The train started moving and Andrei waved extravagantly from the steps until he was far away, beaming with satisfaction and pride, while I tottered before a chasm, knowing only that I must not cry. Perhaps that moment sums up all that happened between us.