by Milan Fust
Did she notice the young miss? I have no idea. Perhaps she did. For though she was nearsighted, her eyes gleamed, suggesting somehow that she itching for a fight.
And for a moment the girl's burning eyes also flashed before me. She waited at the corner, and when she noticed my wife she looked at me.
And what her eyes told me was not: You great big captain; not at all. Poor, poor captain was more like it.
After walking but a few feet, I stopped and turned to her:
"Listen, do we really have to go to this place? How about spending a night on the town?"
It was a strange suggestion, I admit. But that woman still had such an effect on me, I couldn't resist.
"Not a bad idea," she quickly answered. "Let's go dancing," she added saucily.
What can I say about all this now? This was the voice, the voice I knew so well. There was no mistaking it, no need for explanations, certainly—she knew me and I knew her. In a word, it was like coming home after a long tiring journey. It was also odd meeting her like this, like meeting a stranger, quite different from seeing her at home. She was prettier. (Actually, I discovered this once before, in Paris, when I spotted her on the bustling Avenue de Tourville—I remember the exact moment.)
"Come along then," I said to her and took a good look at her, looked over my own wife.
And she looked spiffy, I must say: a smart pigskin handbag, neat little overshoes (it was still slushy out, even snowed a bit), a little fur here and there, and the crowning touch: a plum-colored scarf across her chest, which was truly beautiful, I almost felt like taking a dip in it, it was so blue, and so soft, she clearly enjoyed brushing her chin against it. And to top it off, she pranced down that sidewalk as if to say, "Look everyone: I am small but I am here."
And I thought: Why not go on a spree, one last time? At this point it won't make any difference.
And as she stepped into a telephone booth, to call up Madame Lagrange, I looked her over one more time: What a brash little thing she was. Utterly poised. And I thought of all the stuff this woman kept collecting in her closets . . . Who'd ever believe it?
"Hello," she said . . . "Just tell him I have a cold and I can't go. You won't believe it: I am off on an adventure." And she gave a titillating laugh. (I opened the door of the booth—I just had to find out what the laughter was all about.) "Well, can you guess who it is? A big hulking chap, broad-shouldered, tall . . . like one of those German opera singers.
"No, no, he has no beard," she added naughtily, "no beard at all, what are you talking about? Am I not an honorable woman. . . ? Well, still can't guess?"
The rest I couldn't hear; I thought of something else, so I closed the door.
"Come on, behave yourself," she said as she stepped out of the phone booth. "Where did he go . . . good grief, what are you doing?"
All I did was prance around the booth and play peekaboo, so she couldn't catch me. Then I let out a few loud whistles, like I did long ago, when summoning my birds, and slipped out of sight at the corner. She began walking alone, quite annoyed.
"Madam, will you allow me to walk with you?" I now said as I stepped up to her, lifting my hat. She looked angrily into my eyes.
"I don't mean to trouble you, Ma'm; my intentions are honorable, I assure you. I'd be a brief escort; brief and passing. Why wouldn't you agree? Nowadays people get acquainted in dance halls even."
"Well then, go to a dance hall. Good day, sir." She turned away, and then even took the trouble of crossing over to the other side of the street. As for me, my heart gave a leap—I really began to like this game.
"Madam," I accosted her again. "You are such an attractive creature, really, your smile alone tells me you are French . . . And your walk. Permit me to say that all of my life I've been an admirer of French women."
"Go to Paris, then. There you can admire them all you like." And she turned away again.
"But Madam, don't be so heartless. I'd do my utmost to make this short walk pleasant for you. All I ask is that you graciously permit me to accompany you. All the more as I shall soon drop out of sight. I intend to go very far, Madam, to the other end of the world, never to return ... I am a sea captain, you see."
"Ah, you are a sea captain," she exclaimed. "Really? a genuine sea captain . . ." Whereupon I stepped up to her again, doffed my hat, and said:
"Captain Gerard Bist, at your service."
"In that case," she said casually, "you may walk with me for a bit. The question is, are you indeed a sea captain? For you don't look like one."
"I don't? Well. . ." And I proceeded to tell her that I had indeed lingered here a long time, too long—that's what must show on my appearance. "Being stuck on land doesn't do us any good, believe me—it's the nemesis of many a seafaring man. If you only knew, Madam, what I went through in this town . . ."
"Oh? What did you go through, tell me," she said. But like a little bird. "Tell me all about it, I am really interested."
"Could you talk about such things?"
"Could I?" But by now her eyes shone so brightly, so brazenly, I said to her: "Madam, you must give me a kiss this instant, or I'll shoot myself."
"What??"
"I took the liberty of begging for a kiss, Ma'm."
"Of all the nerve . . . Get out of here before I call the police."
She may not be fooling, either, I thought. Just how reckless she could be in her games, I already knew.
"Do forgive me, Madam, please," I tried to make amends. "You misunderstood me; I am no skirt-chaser, I assure you. It's just that I am a little impetuous and I got carried away. Moreover, we seafaring men are a clumsy lot, do try to understand ... I am really out of my element in these parts. And my heart, Madame, is so restless . . . And wounded, too."
"Wounded? Your heart is wounded? Ah, you poor man," declared my lawful wedded wife. "But aren't you married, sir?" And she suddenly looked me in the eye.
"Oh, why must you ask me that?"
"Because I can see on your face that you are—you must have a poor wife at home. Go back to her, if your heart is restless. Yes, that's my advice to you. And now, good-bye, captain."
"No, dear Madame, you will not get rid of me that easily, I'll. . . I'll stop at nothing ... Do not send me away. You'd be missing such an opportunity... for at this moment my heart is filled with emotion, I could love you, Madam, with such great, desperate love. For as long as I've lived you have been my ideal, the woman of my dreams, truly. And now as I look at you, I realize . . ."
But I don't have to go on. As can be gathered, I told her things I never before uttered in my life—things that were nevertheless more important than anything I ever said. Still, until now, I had not been able to say them. And even now, only in this form, so it won't be embarrassing . . . From behind a mask, halfway in jest. A stranger could blurt it out, but not me.
"You're forgetting one thing, sir," she said, turning to me again.
"What's that?"
"I am a married woman, and I happen to love my husband."
"I see. You love your husband."
"Yes, why shouldn't I . . ."
"Love your husband?"
"Yes, yes; is it so surprising?"
"And you love him very much?" And then: "Life can be so strange . . . What sort of man can that husband of yours be? I can well imagine."
"I will tell you. He is kind and decent; and most of all, he is honest."
"Really?"
"Absolutely. I am sure you would like him, too. And how gentle he is! I couldn't begin to tell you."
"He's that gentle?"
"Attentiveness itself."
"That, too. My God, is he a man without fault?"
"No, I wouldn't say that. He is a little overanxious, that's his fault. And you can't live that way. One must live boldly, daringly," admonished my wife. "And yet, what is odd is that he is also very gullible."
"What do you mean gullible? Gullible in what way?"
"He tends to believe what he himself inven
ts."
"He invents things, then, does he? A case of morbid imagination?"
"An overactive imagination," she corrected me.
"As I said before, some people can be awfully strange . . . Why, you are faithful to him?" I asked her unexpectedly. And it was as though the whole neighborhood looked up and listened, that's how quiet it got all of a sudden.
"What a laughable question," she said, without laughing, though. "The naiveté it implies is really charming. You are just like my husband. I mean that: you do resemble him. What do you men expect to hear when you ask such a question? A straight yes or no? Of course I am faithful. Every woman is faithful; or didn't you know that? In case you didn't, my dear captain, be advised right now."
"But that's wonderful," I said, and began gushing for a change. "A state of heavenly bliss ... at least as far as you two are concerned. With both of you being so perfect. . . why, it's nothing short of a miracle—love and devotion walking hand in hand like twin sisters on some Elysian fields . . ."
I guess there is no need to point out that my sudden enthusiasm sprang from pain, though the bitterness underneath was fed by other sources as well. My mind wandered, and I was no longer walking next to her but somewhere else. It was like a sudden dream and this is what I saw:
I was near Kuilenburg, on my way home, walking towards my uncle's house. It was all quite vivid: the rainy street, the small, yellow house, I pulling my hat over my eye, and to the left of me a group of peasants. And I heard my father shouting after me: "Hey sonny boy, life's short; you wanna be your own man or always some dame's fool?"
The peasants, those complacent yokels, had a good laugh over this. That jeering laugh still rang in my ear, it still made me miserable. But now I also heard my wife say:
"Come along, you old monkey. Didn't you promise to take me someplace? Besides, my hands are getting cold." And with that she put an end to this strange confession. And stuck her hand into my pocket.
She now squealed with laughter, and when she got very scared she grabbed my ear, my nose. The people around us smiled.
I took her skating, you see. Not only did I tear along the ice like a madman, I even lifted her now and then, carried her in my arm.
After a certain age such feats are rather trying, of course. She didn't weigh much, but to run with her like that on the slick ice . . . The truth is I was puffing like an old steam engine, and there were moments I felt I was going to burst from the strain.
"What if I just dropped you now?" I said. I didn't, of course, and managed to perform all my tricks, and as flawlessly as in the old days. I just turned a little somber afterwards. I felt death itself lurking behind my back—not even behind but inside, in my veins.
"You never ever made me feel special," she pouted when we walked into the restaurant's warming room. "You never did."
"Make you feel special?"
"Oh and you need that, you need it so much," she said, and her words were like a last sigh, a prayer for her youth.
"Cheer up, you're still young." But she'd have none of that, she wanted to be sad.
"What's more," I added, "I am not that old, either. We can go on strutting a while longer, for a few more years."
Then I looked out at the gathering dusk. ... Is it true? Do I really have a little time left?
It happened to be a lovely sunset; the horizon was a deep red, and below, near the ice, a bluish shimmer, cold and frothy. It all felt so peaceful, so beautifully quiet.
"A painful flowering," I thought with a wry smile.
We said very little. She drank hot punch (I ordered it to compensate her for having lured her away from De Mercier's party), and standing over her I quietly smoked a cigar. Oh yes, at one point I said to her:
"I could have died for you, I loved you so much."
"And that's past?"
"Yes, it is."
"Too bad."
"It is. Or maybe not. One shouldn't live life that passionately anyway . . . But why not start a new life," I proposed, still smiling. "Would you want to?"
"Yes, I would," she answered and began to cry.
But things again turned out differently, naturally. Not that I began to love her less . . . There's just no way you can figure out— or map out—life. I'd have to begin by mentioning that I began to shiver already in that restaurant. It wasn't heated properly, like the rest of London. (Why that should be I'll never know—they certainly have enough coal.) That night my throat began to bother me, I was running a fever.
In short, I got sick: pneumonia, pleurisy, the works. And this indolent creature, this lazybones of a woman did not so much as change her clothes after that. I well remember the sunsets, the descending darkness all around, the reddish glow of the table lamp and, most of all, the way she kept dozing off next to me. She struggled, her head tilted to the side, but she did fall asleep in the end. I would gaze at her for a long time. And I remember, too, the dreary mornings, when I kept staring at the big white patch on the window: the curtain—and how nice it was afterwards to have her come over. Actually, I had the feeling she had lockjaw or something, because she had a hard time getting her words out. I didn't talk much either, I didn't have to.
Isn't it nice to be in their hands? Or was it just her hands that were so special? The illness itself was awful and at the same time sheer bliss—being consumed by fever is in any case an exalted experience. (A man's life is like a house on fire—it flares up, it blazes fearsomely, and then it suddenly comes crashing down.) Oh, but what an experience . . . With every nerve ending you feel death approaching; you go on flying, tumbling for a while, as though on a roller-coaster, then you're ready to slip through, and that moment changes your perception of things. For example, I can hardly recall the doctor. But I do clearly remember her hands, always her hands. For that's what I kept looking at, and at her eyes. At times they darkened, deepened, while her hands expressed such terrors. When I saw that, I sat up in bed.
"Why do you have to feel so sorry for me?" I asked her more than once; "I am happy right now." Which was true. It was remarkable that this was her, that she could be this way. Was it another self? Or could somebody change so drastically?
I now had the feeling she loved me and wanted me to live.
"I'll be good, you'll see," she told me one night, and it was like a desperate plea. I still remember her beseeching voice. But I couldn't answer her, I wasn't up to it just then. Besides, I wanted my eyes to speak for me.
Then there were long walks, though we rarely talked even then. For when you think about it, what is happiness? A slow convalescence, probably. A shaft of light cutting through heavy fog. A bit of clarity after chaos. With all her might she tried to save my life, after which she wilted a little—at least this was my impression. For one day when I went out for a walk alone, I found her in a rather strange state. She kept stretching and smiled at me sleepily. I didn't know what to make of her behavior. There was sweetness in her eyes, and secret, unplumbed bliss.
"What's the matter?"
"You want me to tell you? I just had some booze." (That's right, that's the word she used.) "Honest-to-goodness booze," she giggled, "and now I am good and drunk."
"And what did you drink?
"Rum."
"No!"
"Yes."
"But so early in the morning?"
"Yes, so early," he said, slurring her words. "Just don't scold me," she pleaded, "don't scold me, please." And then, leaning closer: "You know how much I had? Six glasses."
"In that case I am angry. You know who does that? Common coachmen."
"It was so good, though," she said with a quizzical smile. "But what's happened to me . . .? You see ... I am so very sleepy." And her head dropped on her chest.
I put her to bed and covered her up; she was asleep in no time. Needless to say, it was all very strange. Outside the rooftops shimmered, churchbells rang—it was high noon.
Apart from this little incident, however, stillness surrounded me, profound, comforting still
ness. Let me write about this, too. It's after fierce storms usually that the quiet, like a kind of deafness, settles in your ear.
But come to think of it, I did have music around, and plenty of it. The gramophone was on a lot. I had a nice, shiny gramophone and that's what was playing in the other room.
Now and then my wife sang. She sings rather pleasantly, I thought, and continued working.
This wouldn't be half so bad, I mused sometimes; if I could work at home from now on. You raise your head and know exactly what she's doing—mending underwear, or reading, or just staring at the the stringy-bearded rain through the window pain. ... It wasn't regular singing, more like audible musing, random vocalizing, fluttering, and then sudden silence.
Now she was humming behind my back. I again found some work; a maritime insurance company asked me to check out some average adjustments (claims related to sea damage, that is, the pay for which was pretty decent). I picked up the new files every day at company headquarters, but didn't spend much time there. I turned right back and continued working at home on the dining room table.
Once, when she walked into the room, I simply took her hand and said, "I love you . . ."
What more can I say about this? How is one to define happiness when no one really knows what it is. A state of obliviousness, most likely, an absent-minded state. I can be very absent-minded, actually. Once I finished off a pound of quince jelly all by myself, simply because it was there on the table in front of me. When I left the house, I would stop on street corners and keep brandishing and swishing my stick in the air.
Like a young dandy.
Incidentally, that's when I came to the conclusion that emotions do spring from the heart, they truly do. And to my landlord I had this to say:
"Tell me, is it possible that it's all one big delusion?" And as if he knew exactly what I had meant, he replied promptly:
"Yes, it is." And he looked as dignified as a statue at dawn. Then, somewhat more amiably:
"The only reason we are endowed with intelligence is to be able to see this—to notice that nothing makes any sense. Not what you do nor what you think. Still, the world stands," he averred triumphantly. "And that is a sign of God's special grace, isn't it? Not only does it stand, mind you, it absolutely flourishes. In all its stupidity. England especially." I didn't quite know what he was getting at. He must have have meant English politics, I suppose.
