by Milan Fust
But I must relate how this unexpected pleasure came about.
It was quite simple, really. One day, when my problems appeared particularly intractable, I got this idea of paying the old man a visit. Why not talk to him a little? I thought. I'll try to win him over, get him to warm up to me—maybe I'll be able to squeeze something out of him. One little slip, that's all I needed. There wasn't a thing he could say which ... At any rate, I was convinced it would work.
Except that in that cold, godawful room of his you couldn't really talk. And as the subject of Jacob's ladder couldn't fire me up sufficiently, I happened to mention to him, in a thoughtless moment, that he should come up to my place one afternoon when my wife wasn't home and then we could go over some of these mystical concepts. And to entice him further, I told him I'd give him two neckties.
And now he was here, though he quickly added it wasn't really the neckties he was interested in. But last time he didn't express himself properly, not by any means. Actually, there was nothing wrong with Jacob's ladder, for he always believed in these "literal visions," as he put it. What he couldn't believe in was that somebody should descend on Mount Horeb or wherever it was, to tell the Jews what they could and could not eat. "These things I tend to make light of," he declared rather solemnly. "I doubt them, in other words. But shouldn't one consider even this blasphemy? To doubt anything set down in the sacred book?" And he was seething with emotion air zzz rming to his subject right there on the landing, in front of the slightly opened door.
I had a little time to think.
"Look here, let me bring you those ties," I said, for openers. Then, suddenly:
"I can't do it now, how could I, my wife is not well."
"Oh dear," he cried, "she's not going to have a baby, is she?"
"No, she is not," I assured him, "she is out of sorts, that's all. . . She is definitely not having a baby."
"Shouldn't I still run and fetch a doctor?"
"For the love of God, don't run," I pleaded. But it wasn't so easy to get rid of him. He just stood there on the doorstep, letting me know how very surprised he would have been if she had indeed been ready to give birth. Very much surprised, really. Especially since there was nothing to suggest the "thing" might be imminent. But if a baby was indeed on its way—for argument's sake let's just say it was—what would be the nicest name for it? If it should be a boy, he might be named Abimelech, and if it was a girl, Nelly would be nice. It would go very well with my name, he'd already given this some thought . . . Well?
Thank goodness he left soon afterwards. I can't begin to tell you what a pleasant effect this sudden interlude had on me. That and the coolness of the staircase.
What is the matter with me? you ask yourself. I am alive, aren't I? And you suddenly remember that there are other things in the world. Besides, minutes after the blood rushes to your head, you can be so refreshed. It's a heavenly feeling, you seem rejuvenated.
Not so my wife, however.
"Are you in here?" I asked her, because the bathroom door was still locked. "Yes, I am," she said, but only after a while. For a moment I was ready to believe something happened to her. But no, she was fine.
Pulled herself together in a jiffy. Did nothing to the room but her face, her eyes, her dress she tidied up. Perfectly. You would never have guessed what'd happened by looking at her.
And of course, she ignored me completely. She pulled out a handkerchief from her wardrobe, sprayed cologne on it, spun around a few more times, and was already at the door.
"Where do you think you are going?" I shouted after her.
"Out; I have things to do." And she disappeared.
Like a wicked little apparition . . .
And it was only then I discovered that she left a brief note on the windowsill, atop a preserve jar which escaped the general destruction. All she wrote, in a careless scrawl, was: "Tonight I will sleep here in the parlor. I'll send for my things tomorrow."
Fine with me, I thought.
But there was still the clean-up, a distasteful chore if there ever was one. As when little dogs stick their heads into their own mess. It wasn't easy, but I had to do it, and not only on account of the boarding house people. The morning coffee spilled on the carpet, you see, and was topped by a layer of face powder; black soil and shards of pottery crunched underfoot . . . And such things I find pretty disgusting.
I also had to rehang the chandelier as best I could, look for new bulbs, etc., after which I, too, could take off. And I did without delay. I wasn't in a particularly happy mood, but not depressed, either. Not any more, that is. Resigned was more like it.
But what does one do when one feels so relieved, so free?
I hailed a cab but then changed my mind and rang up Mrs. Cobbet. Despite her warning I gave it a try.
"Is the lady of the house in?" I asked her maid. When she said yes, I gave her my name, or rather just told her that the captain would like to see her, could she receive me this afternoon?
My attempt failed, however. The maid returned with the message that Mrs. Cobbet was not receiving today. And that was it. She didn't say why not; neither did she suggest another time. The girl simply hung up.
Well, this I didn't expect, I could hardly believe it. She wouldn't see me? There must be some mistake. Why would she say a thing like that?
I had neglected her, it's true, but she herself didn't want to continue the relationship, she said as much when I last saw her. Could she have gotten that offended?
Let's see what's behind this, I said to myself, and hailed down another cab. . . .
Ah, that's just like me . . . but what can I do? Other people avoid hurts, I go after them. Could it be because I don't like unresolved, ambiguous situations? Refuse to hear what I am told?
Fact is I always had a hard time taking insults. Why would anybody want to hurt me, I always wonder. Suffice it to say, I went up to her apartment and sent in my calling card. And got what I asked for. She sent back my card, and had her maid inform me that she was very sorry, she wasn't feeling well. And again that was it.
My stomach began to turn . . . need I say more? I dragged myself down the stairs, my head filled with all sorts of weird thoughts. What was I to do now? Smash up her flat, too? All the flats in the world?
That feeling of nausea again . . . But such things do happen, one can get so very sick of oneself. A three-day-long hangover is nothing compared to how I felt just then.
But what is it with me, damn it. I even thought of Miss Borton. These females do put me in my place, don't they? One after another. But it is me, then, isn't it? It has to be.
And at such moments you do feel like turning on the whole world, you're mad at everybody and his brother, and yourself you'd like to give a good knock on the head. Or jump out of your skin, at the very least.
What's the best thing to do when this happens? Go to sleep. I thought of that, don't think I didn't. That I should just rent a room for the night in some hotel, take a few sleeping pills and go to bed.
Instead, for the second time in my life, I went to see a psychoanalyst. Actually, I had my eye on this chap for some time, he was a nice fellow at least. And I wasn't sorry for going to him, either, because for once I heard something other than Gregory Sanders's empty dictums. So I submitted the following preposterous questions to him:
"Why is it that I keep stumbling in the world, as if drunk, and can't seem to straighten my miserable little life. Whatever I do turns out badly. I don't really approve of anything I say or do. Do other people have this problem?"
The psychoanalyst laughed.
"I know I do," he said cheerfully. "But how could it be otherwise? The way this world of ours is set up, you can't really straighten out anything.
"Obzwar" he added, reflecting for a moment. "Obzwar ..." (He was German, the poor chap, and was cracking nuts with his teeth, for as he'd informed me earlier, he was trying to give up smoking. Yes, give up that too . . . there was no other way. In the name of order you e
nd up giving up everything, even that which you had a hard time getting used to.)
"Why don't you just get away?" he suddenly asked. "If somebody can do that, God bless "em." (He was being quite solicitous, actually.) Did I have any idea how lucky I was? he went on. I was in a unique position. Being a shipmaster, a captain, I could turn my back on the whole bloody mess. Or must I keep doing the same old thing all my life? Whine after the same woman? If it doesn't work, so be it. No use beating a dead horse.
"To hell with them, I say." And he got so angry, he even lit up a cigarette. (But to me what mattered was he got angry on my account. That felt rather nice.)
"How many times do you want to experience the same disappointment?" he pressed on. "To realize this thing is not working? When will it finally sink in?"
He had me convinced there for a moment. Because the truth is that for as long as I can remember this has been uppermost in my mind—that I can never make myself believe anything. Like now for instance, this business with Mrs. Cobbet . . . my wondering whether she really meant to insult me. Ridiculous, isn't it? Or take my wife. How many more ways should she demonstrate to me that she doesn't love me. Hasn't she shown me enough already? And here I was trying to make up my mind if she loved me or not. As if again and again I had to fill up on the bitter doubts I'd been carrying within me since childhood; as if I could never truly understand what life was about.
At this point I had to confess to this man that I'd been planning to do exactly what he suggested; I'd been thinking about it for weeks. To leave and not even say good-bye. To conceal my name, pretend I had never existed, and prevent anyone from finding out if I was still alive. That's why I came here, actually; I wanted somebody to bear witness to my life before I left for good. I had no one, and that's just the way I would want it from now on.
"What do you think?" I asked. "Will I be able to pull it off?
"It all depends on how determined you are," he answered calmly. "If I were you, I'd do it, even if it would cost me my life.
"To die, that takes real courage," the good doctor declared. "But before you do, you might regain your strength and run away. Get a reprieve, and live a while longer, somewhere ... A wandering stranger. Wouldn't that be your real life? The real thing? To get one reprieve after another?"
At home I turned on the light with sudden decisiveness, fully prepared to find it empty. I thought she wouldn't wait until tomorrow and had already packed her things . . . But no.
Everything was the way I left it: the same miserable rubble, some of it, at any rate, though in it, blooming like fresh flowers: colorful Christmas packages. Ah yes, she'd begun to do her Christmas shopping, had said more than once: "Christmas is soon upon us."
No change, in other words. Except the stillness, which was more profound than before, and outside as well: the stillness of dusk. For a few moments I turned off the light, and stood in the middle of the darkened room, gazing toward the window. Outside, low-flying doves settled on the roofs of neighboring houses; icy white, they fluttered for a bit before coming to rest around the weather-vanes and chimneys. Their white flight made me think of ancient dreams I could hardly recall. It felt as though I had seen those roofs before, in a different time, long before I was born . . .
I began to feel sorry for my wife, truly, for putting up with me as long as she had. With a beast like me; for that's what I am. What was it the psychoanalyst, that black-eyed, black-blooded fellow, said to me just before? (For he did make a few remarks I didn't yet concentrate on):
"Do you really think such women are for you ... or me, for that matter? Just look at me. Wouldn't it be tempting the gods if I were to live together with someone?" He was right. I told myself the same thing, and more than once.
A piece of the broken mirror still lay on the floor; I picked it up and looked in it. I again had the same thought: he was right, they were all right. If only I wouldn't have to see this again . . . this hateful face. I threw down the glass.
"I drove her to her death," I said, stopping by the door. I listened for noises, for now I had the feeling she was no longer alive. This made feel so cold, I had to cover myself with one of her rags, my head most of all, for as everyone knows, you cover your head first when you are cold. But with a piece of female garment? I certainly hadn't done that before.
But even if something did happen to her, whose fault was it? I tried, you see, to size up the situation objectively. If I weren't here, wouldn't it be all the same to me if she was dead or alive?
Yes, yes, but I didn't want this ... I didn't want her to die.
On top of it, the lights were burning so bright in the room you could doze off in their glare. And behind that glare loomed an emptiness, a baleful, threatening presence, which is familiar to anyone who has known anxiety, who has seen that ominous nodding in the background, like pitch-black flowers swaying in the wind . . ,
I turned on all the lights, then turned them off again.
The poor wretch must come home, I told myself, and kept pacing in the dark. Though the darkness did seem to suit my mood, I still felt quite horrible.
One minute I said, "If she shows up now, everything'll be all right"; but the next moment it was: "I give her five more minutes and if she's not here, I'll strangle myself with this apron here."
She wasn't there. But if she were to show up . . . dear God, how strange that would have been. For all I know, I might have even thrown myself at her feet.
I kept thinking of the Chinese—I have no idea why. Another one of my compulsions, I shouldn't wonder. They work their fingers to the bone in America, in the Phillipines, or wherever, and like leeches, suck the earth and its people dry. . . . And after they've gotten all their acquisitions together (separate little suitcases for their shirts, another one for their hats and shoes, and the right amount of gold coins under their shirts), they set sail for their beloved homeland. And on the ship they start playing cards.
On mine it sometimes got so, we didn't bother to slow down when they began throwing themselves overboard, one after another. Yet, how gracefully they jumped! Even their plunge was full of disdain. When their chirping and high-pitched screeching stopped, you could tell what was going to happen next: someone who had just discovered that nothing remained of what he slaved for all those years walked around the deck one more time, flipped through those longish playing cards of theirs, and then wham!— into the ocean. And we sailed on at full speed, we didn't even turn on the searchlights. For everyone knew that these people meant business—they snapped and clawed, like enraged animals, defending themselves tooth and nail against their lives, after gambling it all away. Why don't we then? Why doesn't our kind? I gambled away not one but fifty lives.
I opened the window. I saw mud, felt tepid rain. Somebody tried to start up a car but couldn't. Misery everywhere. I quickly closed the window.
But there was no letup: I looked at her note again, and again. It said she'd come home. What else I did afterwards I couldn't really say, there's probably nothing to say. The fact is from five in the afternoon till two-thirty in the morning I kept pacing the rooms. They brought up my supper, I didn't even look at it.
I thought of calling the police. This was London, after all, a city she hardly knew, where every street has five names, where the policemen themselves warn people not to enter this or that neighborhood, not even in broad daylight, let alone at this time. It was a miserable, rainy night out.
Like mice, raindrops scrabbled on the window panes.
But . . . but why don't I come out with it? I couldn't get the thought out of my head that she fell into the hands of some Chinese thugs ... or else why would I be reminded of them just now? At this agonizing juncture?
And again I listened, and seemed to hear voices, cries for help, through the wall... A room appeared before my eyes, a kerosene lamp on the table, about to be extinguished . . . Her nonchalance, her recklessness was boundless, beyond belief—I knew that all along. "I could get hold of any amount of money I wish," she
told me in parting. Who knows what she is liable to do, to prove to me, and to herself, that this was true. I'd already decided to wake up the old man downstairs; I could not bear this any longer.
And then at two-thirty in the morning she walked in.
Now I don't know if other people are familiar with this feeling. You wait and wait for somebody. You picture in your mind a thousand times how it's all going to be. And when she appears, you don't want her. Not in the least, you'd rather die. Because you ask yourself: Is this the person I was waiting for, aching for, so very badly? The one I almost killed myself for?
It wasn't only that she looked totally insignificant, a little nothing, or that there was not a trace of today's misery on her— she was drunk, too. A woman, drunk! In a way my imaginings were not that far off. She went on a little spree, she informed me, and burst out laughing, and into song, too:
Et sans vigeur,
Et sans pudeur.
Oh yes, that's what she did, had herself a gay old time, what of it? And drank, too, sans phrase.
I said nothing.
Yes sir, she went on, tonight she had a ball. Met up with this wonderful group in the City, Parisians all of them, on an excursion, turns out they were related to friends of hers, or maybe only acquaintances, who remembers? Anyway, they treated her, bought her champagne . . . (Bought my wife champagne.)
"And portugaffe, too, if you want to know everything. I had it, for the first time in my life, and you know what: it's delicious. Though it did make me just a little tipsy . . ."
And as she still hadn't received an answer, she took out her dainty cigarette case, lit up, and then fished out a piece of candy from her pocket. And she couldn't resist singing to me again.
"Don, oh Don," she began softly, "where has all your sweetness gone?" She also informed me that tonight she found out that cigarette smoke and chocolate mixed very well. "I learned this from a young man," she said, flinging her eyes on me, expectantly, brazenly. But her little maneuvers didn't get her very far; after a while she didn't know what to do. And I noticed that too, of course. So she just stood there in the middle of the room, under the light, on one foot, in her flimsy little coat, like a rotten little street urchin.
