Anger

by May Sarton

  “Ned hates her. He says she ruined their childhood and made the children pay for her husband’s death.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all. But Anna,” and now she looked at her daughter very seriously, “you really have no reason to feel insecure. Even in that world you are a personage, and surely ‘they’, whoever they are, recognize that.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Ned is not a snob, Anna, at least from what I see of him he is not that. So what is the matter? Whatever your faults, your achievement is real.”

  “They don’t have to achieve, you see. They just are. Oh mama, I want to feel loved not hated, protected not exposed to contempt!”

  Teresa made no comment.

  “I feel cursed, driven into a maze which has no way out, a prisoner of my own rage,” Anna, having said it, realized that it was true and the truth frightened her.

  “I have never thought it could be easy to be you,” Teresa said. “Has it occurred to you that people who don’t show anger are safe? When you let the anger out you expose yourself. Expose yourself to contempt, as you just suggested.”

  “But if I lock the anger up it turns into resentment. Ned can’t see that. He can’t see that that is what he does. He can’t see that he is just as angry as I am, and he is punitive. I am not.”

  “Maybe not, but I expect he feels punished when you scream at him. You are so violent, Anna.”

  “But his silence is violent, too—his coldness is punishing, Mama, Can’t you see?” Anna had raised her voice, exasperated by her mother’s appearing to take Ned’s side. And Teresa winced.

  “People are listening, Anna,” she said in a low voice. “Please talk quietly. We are in a public place.”

  “You see, even you put me in the wrong,” Anna whispered. And then because she loved her mother so much, she smiled, “I should be shot at dawn!” And the spell was broken, as they managed to laugh, laugh with each other at Anna’s expense.

  “Oh dear, if only I could laugh with Ned like that … The awful thing, Mama, is that we can never talk about anything quietly. He calls talking about anything to do with our relationship ‘making a scene.’ So the resentments build up again and again.… I do not see any way out of the maze.”

  “You are locked into two such different temperaments.”

  “So were you and father. How did you manage to stay together? How did you stand it, Mama?”

  Teresa became actively silent for a moment. “Actively silent” was how Anna thought of it, for unlike Ned’s silences that shut her out and walled her in, Teresa took Anna with her on the stream of her thoughts, and when she spoke after several minutes, Anna could join her and felt included.

  “I suppose I gave in. For the sake of peace.”

  “I’ll never do that,” Anna said with absolute conviction. And again they laughed.

  “No, I don’t expect you ever will.”

  “I can’t, Mama. My talent, whatever I have to give to life, is all bound up in my temperament—I have to be free to feel whatever I feel deeply enough, or it all goes sour inside me. I can’t sing. Today, for instance, Protopova told me my voice was blurred … blurred, Mama!”

  “Well, it didn’t stay blurred, did it?”

  “No.”

  “You see, you can handle it all when you put your mind onto it.”

  “It was scary for a while.”

  “Why do you suppose love and anger are so closely tied together?”

  “Some terrible insecurity, some nakedness feels attacked. I do love Ned, you know that.”

  “Yes. Can’t you try to take it a little easier, Anna, a short pause for station identification?”

  “We’ll have that. I’ll be away in Pittsburgh at the end of the week. I guess we both look forward to being away from each other.”

  And as they said goodbye on Newbury Street, Anna reached out to take her mother’s hand, “Thanks, Mama. What would I do without you?”

  “I’m glad we could talk,” Teresa answered. “And good luck, darling one!”

  Chapter V

  In the next few days, days of hard work with Protopova, and as far as her marriage went, of limbo, of polite surface and no communication, Anna was struck by the fact that wherever she went and whatever newspaper she read or news on TV she watched, anger met her like a leitmotif. Bombs were thrown on innocent civilians, children took up shotguns and shot their parents dead, husbands beat their wives, a couple murdered a small child by beating him to death. There were even grotesque examples of it as when a man in a car rammed another car which had cut in on him and severely injured its occupant! Had it always been like this? Was anger an ineradicable part of the human race? Had it to do with unfulfilled lives screaming for help? And in other times were there perhaps ritual ways of dealing with it? A formal duel; knights jousting; a priest called in to exorcize the devil? Was the Victorian lady’s way of handling it to take to her bed and become an invalid?

  Anna’s mood after her talk with her mother was one of remorse and dissatisfaction with herself. Her verbal bravado about her own anger had given way to a pervading sense of guilt. Somewhere along the way she had come upon a Quaker pamphlet which contained the words “Love is the hardest lesson.” Why had she and Ned allowed their love to be poisoned? Who was responsible? She thought these thoughts as she walked to and fro to Protopova’s for her lessons which had become intense and exhausting as they always did in the last days before a performance.

  Ned was out at the Tavern Club on Tuesday and had a meeting on the Wednesday before she was to leave. So they hardly met and, when they did, exchanged banalities. It did not help that Ned appeared to be perfectly happy to do so, relieved, she suspected, that the passionate exchanges had gone underground for the time being.

  But she herself did not shut Ned out. In some ways she was more aware of him, more connected to him than ever before. The anger which had seized her like a bolt of lightning was now working its way down into another layer of her being and forcing her to think things out. And it was now not Ned as much as herself whom she felt forced to confront.

  On an impulse she called Ernesta Aldrich, one of the very few of Ned’s friends with whom she felt at ease. After all, it was Ernesta who had dragged Ned to hear her sing and who was thus responsible for her marriage. She could, Anna felt, be trusted. And also she understood something about what it was to be Anna Lindstrom. For when Anna asked if she would come for lunch, Ernesta’s response was, “I wouldn’t think of it. You have enough on your mind without fussing about in the kitchen. You come here. Pursey will fix something light and we can talk in peace. It’s been ages …”

  “Thanks, Ernesta. I’ll come right after my lesson at noon, or a little after.”

  And there she was, sitting on the sofa by the fire, feeling like an exhausted swimmer who had come to land.

  “You are looking beautiful, Anna. You’ve lost weight. It’s becoming.”

  “I’ve been working frightfully hard. And in my usual panic before a concert … the Bach B-Minor Mass in Pittsburgh on Saturday.”

  “How kind of you then to come and see me. I am flattered.”

  “Oh Ernesta,” Anna said, flinging the amenities aside, “I needed to see you!”

  “I’m even more flattered. Dubonnet, my dear?” Ernesta poured out, took a sip, and waited. “Well, what’s on your mind?”

  “Ned’s on my mind!”

  “Such a curious creature,” Ernesta said, smiling. “But he has a saving grace, his passion for music—would you agree?”

  “I sometimes wonder whether music is not a frustrating passion.”

  “Why?”

  “Because … because it makes people long for something they can’t have, something that cannot be translated into life.”

  Ernesta thought this over. “What you are telling me is that Ned’s passion for music was translated into a passion for you? Why not? He seems to have what he wanted, lucky man.”

  “You don’t marry a voice, Ern
esta!”

  “No,” Ernesta said, lowering her eyes, “I don’t suppose you do.” And as Anna was silent, Ernesta looked up and met her eyes. “What did Ned marry? A wonderfully warm woman full of life, spontaneous joy, laughter.”

  “Don’t.” Anna was close to tears because Ernesta could say all that and mean it, but Ned did not see it. “Ned married a fury … that’s what he thinks,” and she added, “and he has almost persuaded me that is true.”

  “You mustn’t let him,” Ernesta said, quite firmly.

  “I do have an awful temper, and letting anger out is what you must never never do according to Ned.”

  “I’ll tell you something, Anna. The day I took him to your concert he was quite lit up at lunch afterwards. He talked very violently about his mother, and for a second I thought I saw that for him deep feeling comes clothed in anger. It was a puzzling insight, but I did sense that. Maybe that’s why he is so afraid of it.”

  “But he’s so controlled, so cold, Ernesta.”

  “He’s seething inside.”

  “Yes,” Anna said immensely relieved to hear it said, “I know.”

  “Why did you marry him, Anna? May I ask that, since we are talking openly? I have often wondered.”

  Anna laughed, “It’s ludicrous. I married him because he seemed so strong, so sure of himself, so comfortable in the world. I felt in some obscure way like an orphan suddenly adopted, suddenly safe after years of struggle and insecurity.”

  “Why is that ludicrous? It seems rather sensible, rather unexpectedly sensible of you!”

  “It’s ludicrous because what he does is to undermine any security I have in myself, to see that I am always put in the wrong, to bait me into wild rages with his coldness, his withdrawals, his sneers … that’s why.”

  “Why do you let him do it?” Ernesta probed. “You are a powerful woman, Anna. And you are someone in the world.”

  “Oh, I know,” Anna brushed all that aside. “But what follows on anger for me is despair. And then I can’t sing. I feel undone.” She had been about to say “castrated” but she was not, after all, a man.

  “Have you considered divorce?”

  “Lately, yes.” But even as she said it Anna had to withdraw it. “No, not really. I can’t imagine it. You see, Ernesta, the war between us goes very deep. I can’t walk out on something so unsolved and so painful. I love Ned.”

  “And does he love you?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think he does. But he is so afraid of feeling. He can’t handle it. It terrifies him. Why?” Before Ernesta could answer Anna added, “You can’t imagine what a relief it is to talk to someone … someone from Ned’s world, someone who understands him, is fond of him, who can help.” Anna’s eyes had filled with tears. “I feel so helpless.”

  “I wish I could help,” Ernesta said thoughtfully. “Somewhere along the way something must have happened to close him off. It may be that his father’s death had something to do with it.”

  “But surely love should be able to open the door.”

  “Dear Anna, you are an optimist.” Ernesta hesitated but then evidently decided to be frank. “What if the door opens and there is nothing there?”

  “I don’t believe that. You have only to see Ned with Fonzi to know that isn’t true.”

  “Who is Fonzi?” Ernesta asked, clearly astonished.

  “The dachshund—not a male friend!” And this last brought laughter and an alleviation of the intensity of the last minutes.

  “Oh, a dog … but can’t you see, dogs are safe. His father was crazy about dogs, you know. It runs in the family.”

  “For the same reason, no doubt,” Anna said bitterly.

  “So, you are a little jealous of Fonzi … I don’t blame you.”

  “Not jealous. But every time Ned talks to him in that tender voice, it hurts. Never has he shown tenderness to me.” Now Anna did not try to keep the tears back. She wept unashamedly. At least Ernesta would not despise her tears, she thought and said so after she had blown her nose.

  “Well,” Ernesta said in her practical voice, “that is no news. All men wince at a woman’s tears. It’s in the genes.” And she added, “My husband simply cleared out and left the house when I cried. They take it as an assault, an unfair weapon, and act accordingly.”

  “Why is it unfair to be upset? Why is it feeling, almost any feeling, if expressed, is an assault? That’s what I can’t understand. Ned won’t even talk about it quietly after we have a fight. He says things like ‘We have had one scene already’!”

  At this Ernesta laughed, “I can hear him saying that! Come along, dear Anna, we had better have something to eat. Pursey’s soufflé will fall.”

  “I’ll just go and wash and be right back.”

  But over the coffee when they were back again by the fire, Anna, relieved by having been able to talk and to feel she could be herself without the ever-present censor, said gently, “You know, Ernesta, I am rather a handful for Ned to cope with. And sometimes I think the war is really between one ethos and another. I’m half Italian as you know and the Boston ethos gives me the creeps. It’s so cramped, so the opposite of life-enhancing.… But on the other hand the volubility, the quick changes of mood, the spontaneity just strike Ned as somehow faked or superficial. He doesn’t know how hard I think about it all, how deep he forces me to go.”

  “Ah!” Ernesta smiled, “Now I have a clue as to why you love him! I see so many marriages with no depth at all, only a surface compatibility—habit has taken over. You grow. Dear Anna, what a great woman you are!”

  “I’m a great fool, that’s for sure. And now, I really must leave you in peace.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t been much help. I have no solutions to offer.”

  “No … I suspect there are none. But you’ve been an enormous help.”

  Standing now, the two women embraced each other. Then Ernesta just touched Anna’s cheek. “You’re going to give a great performance, my dear.” Then she gave Anna a quizzical look, “And maybe that’s what this difficult marriage is all about, as far as you are concerned, anyway.”

  Protopova was pleased with Anna’s progress and Anna herself knew that her voice, her true power had come back. It was tremendously exciting to let go again, to be able to send her voice soaring, to have gotten rid of the censor. Often after the lesson she walked for an hour simply to calm down, ending in the Public Gardens on a bench. There, with a pocketful of peanuts for the squirrels, she sat, alive to every tremor of wind in the leaves and alive in the same way to what was happening in herself.

  It was a little like climbing a mountain. At times the summit was not even in sight; at times it suddenly appeared out of the clouds, miles away. Would she ever reach the free air, the great composing view?

  One thing was becoming clear. That anger was not one solid block or rock but several blocks that had little or no relation to each other. When Ned said, “You were always angry, even as a small child,” he had been right. And that anger, those sudden explosions that broke out, seemingly about nothing, were what troubled her most. They caused guilt and remorse. With Teresa she could laugh and say “I should be shot at dawn”, but under the laughter there was shame.

  Why am I like that? Anna asked herself, watching two squirrels chattering with rage over a peanut. A very slight frustration could light the fuse toward anger … why did it seem uncontrollable at times? To blow up about nothing? Why, at thirty-six, had she not come to terms with that demon?

  She remembered the short fuse over the arrangement of flowers on the weekend. But then Ned had also been angry. They had let a small thing grow into a big thing. So where was the small thing rooted? From where had it drawn its force?

  Anna instinctively blamed herself after a scene like that, but she was becoming aware lately that it was not as much a question of taking blame as of understanding that below an extreme temperamental rift there was a less accessible war going on, and that was the crux of the matter. And
what was that war all about?

  The masculine in each of them at war with the feminine in each of them? She was, she couldn’t help being, as her mother had said, a powerful personality, with a strong compulsive drive to succeed, to dominate in her profession. That, she supposed, was the masculine side of her, or some people would define it as that. Whereas Ned, so obtuse in some ways, at his worst what she thought of as a stupid sensibility, unable to connect with anything outside his rigid ethos or even to examine it rationally, was extremely sensitive when it came for instance to flowers, to paintings, to music—in that whole area of his being, he was using the feminine in him and had apparently made his peace with that. At the other end of the spectrum, his fleeing any attempt to talk about feeling, his running for cover, or turning to attack, when feeling was demanded—that, she presumed might be called masculine. He permitted feeling only in relation to Fonzi! And in a flash of insight she realized that Ned really disliked the woman in her, disliked her need for tender words, despised her tears and took her anger always as some kind of aberration.

  And each was fighting the other off to defend, to keep intact that adamant central self which seemed threatened. So in the end Anna came to see—and it was painful—that there was both murder and suicide in their love. He called out the violence in her and she in him, for his withdrawals and cold punishment were certainly violent in their way. And afterward she at least felt suicidal. And what did he feel? She had no idea. Never once had he let her into his deepest self. What is the matter with him, Anna thought? What wounds that cannot be healed? Where did it all begin?

  All Anna knew for sure was that when she could sing as she had that morning, the conflicting powers could be gathered together and freed, and when she and Ned made love she had sometimes had the same feeling of a breakthrough, of the warring selves gathered together in a tension that broke at the orgasm. She had asked herself many times whether the anger was not part of the sexual act between her and Ned. Breaking out of the prison together. Now what was happening was that there was no longer any moment when the tension could break. There was no “we.” They had become separated antagonists in an icy landscape.