Anger

by May Sarton

  When Ned left for the office on the Friday of her departure Anna was packing in the bedroom.

  “Well, I’m off,” he said in the doorway.

  Anna stood with a nightgown in her hands, and waited for him to wish her luck. She waited perhaps five seconds, looking at him in disbelief. When he was still silent, just standing there, she said, “You might at least wish me luck, Ned.”

  “You don’t need it.”

  At that moment Anna felt such pressure in her head that she was afraid of cracking into pieces. She bent over the suitcase and folded her nightgown carefully and laid it there. She heard the door close and Fonzi bark. Then she burst into tears of sheer fury and frustration. “You beast,” she murmured, “you cold, mean beast!” But she knew she could not afford tears, not now, not with a concert forty-eight hours away, not with a rehearsal at five that afternoon. She went on packing and forced the tears back. When she was ready to leave she called her mother.

  “Ned wouldn’t even wish me luck, Mama,” she said in a perfectly controlled voice.

  “You must put Ned out of your mind, Anna,” said her mother firmly. “You will go and give a great performance. This, your talent, is your own responsibility and gift.”

  “It’s so lonely, Mama.”

  “Of course it is, of course. Every performer is absolutely alone when it comes to the crunch. You’ve always been alone, dear, and you always will be.”

  “It didn’t matter when I was really alone. Now I feel torn in two. Beaten.”

  “Stop it, Anna. You can’t afford this.”

  “I have to go,” Anna was suddenly in a panic.

  “Good luck, Anna”

  “Thanks. I needed to hear that.”

  On the plane Anna felt a surge of relief and as they circled Boston and she looked down for a moment on the Public Gardens, she was happy to be cut off from all the pain, on her way to her own real life, to that stage, that orchestra and Bach, whom—she felt it in her chest where her voice lay like some great animal waiting for its release—she would serve well.

  Chapter VI

  Ned, too, took the days he would have alone as a reprieve. It was a positive pleasure to come home that night to Fonzi whose mood was always joyful and welcoming, without having to respond to accusations or tears, and without feeling guilty because he could not respond.

  When they came back from the ritual walk around the Common before Ned poured himself a Scotch and looked at the news, it was bliss to put his feet up, light a pipe and settle in to an evening’s read. He didn’t get his supper until after eight.

  “Perfect peace with loved ones far away,” Ned said aloud, “eh, Fonzi?” and Fonzi wagged his tail. Fonzi was a good listener. He liked to hear Ned’s voice and Ned found himself telling Fonzi things, thinking aloud, a more companionable thing than sitting there inside his own mind, silent.

  “I’m not a cruel beast, Fonzi, am I?” How could she not understand that you can’t force people to talk about their feelings? He couldn’t do it. When he saw that look in Anna’s eyes, that furious yet imploring look so close to tears and heard the edge in her voice, he simply closed down all the hatches, took in the sails, and waited like a sailor in a small boat before a sudden storm. Yes, that is what it was like. Anna was a primal force, a hurricane. He had thought he was marrying a loving, natural woman who would be friendly and warm, a good companion. He knew her career was important. He honored her for that. But he certainly did not foresee an endless war, no holds barred! “What does she want, Fonzi? Absolute capitulation? A slave? Nothing but praise and adoration? God knows she gets plenty of that.”

  Fonzi, sensing a change of tone, sensing anger, got up and came over to lick Ned’s ankle.

  “It’s all right, Fonzi, I’m not fussing at you! You are a good dog, an excellent fellow,” and Ned scratched Fonzi between the ears. Then, gentled by his own action, Ned sighed. He put his hands behind his neck and gazed at the ceiling. “I should have wished her luck, Fonzi. That was mean, but I couldn’t help it. She says I can’t give, but can’t she see that I take all that for granted, Fonzi? Married people shouldn’t have to be praised and petted all the time, should they? Anna is not a dog, after all. You do have to be petted, don’t you, Fonzi? You have to feel connected to a hand, I suppose.”

  But Fonzi had fallen fast asleep and was lying on his back, his long ears flopped awry in a charming abandon. And Ned became silent. Some things he really could not say aloud, even to Fonzi.

  Those things which had to do with sex, Ned always managed to chase away. Like furies at the window, they could be driven off and must be driven off. Even thinking about sex seemed to Ned embarrassing and to be avoided at all cost. It was something to be done in silence and in the dark and never exposed to a word, even a word of love or tenderness. It was deeply buried, the unmentionable secret, like death itself, and indeed sex sometimes seemed like a death to Ned. A black-out of everything he associated with a rational being.

  “Come on, Fonzi, let’s eat,” he said, giving a huge yawn as he pulled himself up, a yawn of hunger and of distaste.

  Anna was always talking about being fully human and accused him of being able to compartmentalize himself. Well, why not? Only God could tell why “Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement”! The line had haunted him since he studied Yeats at Exeter. It was really rather disgusting when you came to think about it, so better not think about it.

  “At best titillating, at worst shameful, Fonzi.”

  Ned ate his supper, a casserole and salad left for him by Felicia, the maid, who came in every day to tidy up and to walk Fonzi before she left at noon. He put on a record, a Mozart concerto for flute and harp, and let himself be transported into that elegant, poignant world where no one was angry and no one felt anything below the belt, at least not Ned, who had always hated Wagner because of the disturbing effect he had “on the lower animal” as Ned’s mother put it. Ned had felt justified in his inherent dislike of Wagner since Wagner was the Nazis’ emblematic composer. And from there he was suddenly aware of Anna, the musician, Anna with the perfect taste, the delicacy, the control she could summon when she was singing. Anna whom he had once adored, whom he had wanted so desperately to know, to be with, to marry, Anna who at this moment—Ned looked at his watch—was perhaps on her way back to her hotel after the rehearsal, Anna who had been singing Bach.

  She could still send a shiver down his spine when she sang, when she was in absolute control, invulnerable, way outside and beyond the messy, disturbing personal world. And Ned realized that he still loved her power but that he found everything about her as a woman distasteful. Why did women cry so much? Why were they always talking about feeling? Why did Anna have to attack him all the time about his “ethos” as though it were some primitive armor he wore that she felt compelled to tear off to get at him.

  What she could not seem to understand was that she would never get at him that way, or perhaps in any way. He could not deal with irrational impulse—her physical attacks outraged him. If I did what she wanted, if I gave myself away as she does, I would cease to exist. Muddling about with the soul makes me sick. Something has to be kept safe. From what?

  From being destroyed.

  Chapter VII

  In fact the rehearsal had gone very well, almost too well, for there was always the danger that the peak had been reached too soon, before the performance itself. Solti had embraced her as she was leaving the concert hall and said, “Do that tomorrow night, cara Anna, and all will be well!”

  Anna called room service for a chicken sandwich, hot milk, and a double Scotch, then walked up and down for a few minutes, went to the window to look down on the lights of the city, and a few cars flashing by in the rain. She felt exhilarated and restless, for a second thought of calling Ned—but to say what? No, instead she sat down at the desk—room service was apt to be terribly slow—and wrote the letter she had been thinking about all week.

  Dear Ned,

 
This is almost the only letter I have ever written you but I need to try to communicate with you after so much misunderstanding and anger lately. Please try to read this as from a gentle unblurred voice—it is very bad that we cannot talk. I know it is partly my fault. My quick temper freezes you into silence, a silence that seems to be becoming a permanent armor which you cannot or will not take off.

  You lay the burden of guilt upon me when you insist that I am simply an angry person and have been so since childhood. There is some truth in this but it is not the whole truth, Ned. I think you too are an angry person—I sometimes wonder whether everyone is not born angry, furious at having been torn out of warmth and safety and suddenly alone in what must seem a harsh cold world at the very start. But you were taught or learned quickly to bury your anger, to refuse to allow it out, and you have come to believe that if you do not show it, if you never let it out, that it is really not there. Your brother seems to have handled his anger by learning to attack first, to be always the attacker to preserve himself from attack—is that it with Paul? My anger leaps out like a real demon and is terribly damaging to others—and to me. I am afterward filled with guilt and remorse and feel I am always in the wrong. But I have to admit that these sudden pounces out of the blue do break the tension for me and there is some part of me that recognizes that letting anger out rather than burying it is healthy. You will resist this idea with all your being. I suppose I am writing this letter to beg you to consider your own anger, not to deny that it exists. We each have a demon or daimon, as it is sometimes called, only we handle it in opposite ways and maybe that is why we seem to be in a state of unremitting war. But, Ned, you show your anger by coldness, by withdrawing from me, by not giving, and if only you could see that this is perhaps as punishing as my violence, we might be able to make a bridge. It was cruel of you not to wish me luck when I left you. It was, if you like, as punishing as a slap in the face. But because it was an example of “not doing,” it did not seem bad or cruel to you. Please try to think about this.

  You never use the word “love”; you can never use an endearment with me as you do a hundred times a day with Fonzi. Why? Why can’t you tell me in words what you are feeling, except a cold rebuke now and then? I flare up and then very quickly come back to you with love—or I used to, until that day when I kissed your hand and you said—you did say it, Ned—“abject!” That day something froze up in me and is still frozen.

  Now I come to the hardest part of this letter. But I must try to talk about it with you now, or our marriage will wither as so many we see around us have withered, for one reason or another. Not, I think, for this reason. There is something in you which cannot accept yourself as a sexual being. When we first made love I was so wholly with you and felt so whole in myself that I hardly noticed that you never say anything. Sex perhaps is your demon as anger is mine … that is, it pounces on you, and under its power you do things that you cannot face in daylight. I have used the word “compartmentalize” before. It shocks and hurts me terribly that you cannot make love to me in freedom and joy. Can’t you see that this turns me into a prostitute? The vehicle for an act for which you do not feel responsible and which your reason cannot accept?

  I want to give you my whole self and take your whole self into me, Ned. But perhaps this is what frightens and turns you off most of all! You are quick to sneer at what seems to you sentimental or weak, but for me—how can I put it into words?—sex must be metaphysical, a true communion, or it is indeed bestiality and nothing else. Maybe we are each rather old-fashioned but once more in opposite ways. Your mother must have instilled into you that some things were “not nice.” You are afraid of your own sensuality, so again I am punished by something negative, something which denies me as a whole human being. I feel frustrated in the deepest sense and humiliated, too. So I get angry.

  I infuriate you because I demand something you cannot give or refuse yourself as well as me. It seems to me therefore to go deeper than mere irritation, than the clash of two temperaments at opposite poles. It is a question of marriage itself, Ned. As far as I can see we are not married. Whatever all this means to you when you read it, you must realize that I love you, and I must believe that you love me.

  Ned, please read this with your heart, not as the prehistoric animal who hides itself away.

  Anna

  It had taken an hour, and then at last the boy came with her sandwich and milk and Scotch. Anna was very hungry, but not, as she had hoped she might be, relieved by writing to Ned. She had, she realized, only set up another tension, that of waiting for his response. But at least it was done. She had straightened it out in her own mind and that unknotted one knot that night, the knot that communication with him was not possible. And very soon after she got into bed, Anna was fast asleep.

  Chapter VIII

  Teresa called while Anna was having her breakfast in bed, and Anna was able to tell her that she had slept well, that the rehearsal had gone almost too well, and that she was feeling quite calm.

  “I’ll go for a walk later on. The rain has stopped, I see.”

  But when Anna put the receiver down she felt the day ahead would be interminable, a day of walking on eggs, holding everything in balance and not allowing panic to move in. She read the paper with close attention, even the business pages which she usually shirked. Then she lay there for an hour prolonging the moment when she would have to dress and go out.

  She reread her letter to Ned, decided to tear it up, and then decided to mail it, and went out in her wrapper to let it fall down the chute by the elevators. Would it do any good? What good for waves to beat against rock? For the next hours Anna knew she must shut Ned out, so she got up and dressed. She suddenly remembered there was to be an interview at noon. A woman reporter was being sent over from the paper she had just been reading.

  She dressed carefully in a black suit with a white ruffly blouse, examined herself in the mirror, wondering whether she should have her hair done again. It looked quite all right, those massed black curls had held well, but it would be something to do later on … only what if the hotel hairdresser wrecked it? No, too nerve-wracking, Anna decided.

  It all seemed trivial suddenly. And she imagined Ned in a meeting, no doubt, with men who had real power in their hands, while she, Anna Lindstrom was about to waste a day simply trying to control her nerves. Absurd. Then she heard Protopova’s voice, “Bach, absurd? That is blasphemy!” And Anna told herself, looking quite severely at the face in the mirror, that whatever might be trivial about her, at least she served something greater than herself as best she could. She lifted her chin and laughed at the solemn face in the mirror. What fools we mortals be!

  Three baskets of flowers were delivered. One had a spray of orchids in a charming rectangular glass. The card was signed with a woman’s name that Anna did not recognize, “Homage to Anna Lindstrom.” The second was a round bowl of pink roses, rather sweet, Anna thought and smiled as she read the card, for it was from a former schoolmate at Juilliard who had married and given up her career. “I’ll be there tonight applauding you.” Dear Nancy! Anna seemed to remember that she had four or five children and adored her husband, a pediatrician. The third was a huge formal basket of glads from the management and Anna hid it in a corner … she had always hated glads, even the name.

  But the flowers had started the whole machinery of anticipation and tension in motion and Anna felt happy, felt, she described it to herself, like an empty glass which was beginning to be filled with that intoxicating liquor of performance ahead. That was what Ned simply could not imagine when he said things like “You don’t need luck!” She desperately needed every reassurance she could get! And flowers always gave her a tremendous lift. In the impersonal hotel room which, like all hotel rooms, destroyed identity rather than recognizing its existence, the flowers told Anna Lindstrom who she was.

  She was glad to open the door at noon to a young woman in peasant skirt, high black boots, and a long mass of fuzzy hair
which looked as though it had never been combed, and who seemed to Anna absurdly young.

  “You have so many flowers,” she said looking around dismayed and holding a single red rose wrapped in cellophane awkwardly, as she laid her big satchel down, “I brought you a rose.”

  “Thank you, my dear. That is sweet of you.”

  “Do you mind if I use a tape recorder?”

  “Not at all. Sit down and set it and I’ll just put the rose in water … we can’t let it fade,” and Anna went into the bathroom. Of course the rose was much too long to fit in the hotel glass, but Anna managed to cut it with nail scissors and brought it back and set it on the small table beside the two armchairs where they would be talking. “There!” she said sitting down. “Now, what can I say? What do you want to know, Miss Springhof?”

  “I just have to be sure this is working,” and the girl played back Anna’s questions, which sounded now rather loud and very self-conscious.

  “I do sound pretentious, don’t I?”

  “No, oh no—you have such a wonderful voice!”

  “Do I?” Anna smiled. “You know on the day of a performance I am always in a state of terror for fear I shall wake up with no voice at all!”

  “Has that ever happened?”

  “No, but it might … it’s like having an eccentric animal inside that may rebel,” and Anna laughed, then added, “Seriously, it’s nerve wracking to be one’s own instrument, so to speak.”

  “But you are looking forward to the concert? It’s sold out, you know.”

  “Is it? Oh dear … that’s scary. But of course it is always thrilling to be part of such a tremendous work and to be singing under Solti with a great orchestra, and with such a star as Madame Elgar at my side.”