'Generally, female-to-male HIV transmission needs some sort of open wound or sore in order to enter the immune system. Yes, it allegedly can swim up the urethra, but you would have to be profoundly unlucky.'
'I can be profoundly unlucky, Doctor.'
'The odds are still very small . . . Still, if you want to be absolutely certain, we can do a blood test now and also screen you for other STDs. And then we can do another in six months' time – to give you the complete "all-clear".'
'I'd like the test.'
'Très bien, monsieur . . .'
Ten minutes later, I was out on the street, a small card in my pocket with a number to ring tomorrow to get the results of the test. I knew that, privately, the doctor regarded me as a man suffering nothing more than a surfeit of guilt. Just as I also knew that when I saw Margit later that afternoon, I would have to make a clean breast of everything. There are certain things about which you can lie. And others . . .
Forty-five minutes later I was walking obsessively around the Jardin des Plantes, trying to work out how I'd tell Margit what had happened, terrified about how she'd react, and cursing myself for, yet again, detonating a relationship thanks to sexual transgression – a relationship I definitely didn't want to lose. Do we ever learn anything from our mistakes? Not when it comes to sex. That's the one arena of bad behavior in which we are recidivists, over and over again.
As I mounted the stairs to Margit's apartment, I told myself, As long as you're prepared for the worst, there's really nothing to fear. But I couldn't embrace such advice. I was guilty – guilty of so much.
I knocked on the door. A minute went by. She opened it. She was wearing a black dressing gown and smoking a cigarette.
'Hi there,' I said, leaning forward to kiss her and wondering if she could hear the blurriness of my speech. She accepted the kiss. I stepped inside. She led me by the hand past the bedroom and into her front room. I sat down in an armchair. Without saying anything she went to the little table where she kept a few bottles of booze and poured me a whisky. She handed it to me. I sipped it and flinched, the alcohol burning my wounded tongue. She sat down opposite me. She smiled. Then she said, 'So who have you been fucking, Harry?'
Thirteen
'I DON'T KNOW what you're talking about,' I said.
'Liar,' she said with a laugh.
I sipped some whisky and winced again.
'What's wrong with your mouth?'
'I bit my tongue.'
'Liar.'
'Haven't you ever bitten your tongue?' I asked.
'What was her name?'
'I'm telling you—'
'You are telling me shit. Which is fine by me. I don't care. Any more than I care if you slept with someone else – which I know you did. So what was her name?' Pause. Then, 'Yanna.'
'Turkish?'
'Half-French, half-Turkish.'
'How did you meet her?'
I explained.
'And how did the fuck happen?'
I explained.
'Did she did bite you before or after penetration?'
I explained.
'And when you were finished?'
'She threw me out.'
'And let me guess – you didn't use a condom . . .'
'I'm sorry.'
'But why?'
'Because now . . .'
'Now what?'
'Now perhaps you won't want . . .'
'To have sex with you?' She laughed again. 'Sometimes, Harry, you become infantile.'
I hung my head . . . and felt infantile.
'Surely that doctor you consulted . . .'
I looked up at her.
'How did you know I consulted . . . ?'
'Here we go again. Harry, you are so charmingly predictable. And you are so American when it comes to your need to feel bad about everything to do with sex. So let me guess: the doctor told you there's nothing to worry about. But you're still worried – still calculating the millionto- one possibility that you might have contracted—'
'Stop,' I said.
'But why, chéri? You feel guilt about fucking someone else. But instead of properly hiding it, you wear it on your sleeve. And when I call you on it, you admit all – and hand the guilt on to me.'
'That wasn't my intention.'
'I don't care what you did. I don't care into which of her orifices you shoved your penis. All I care about is being treated as an adult by an adult. But when you enter my apartment, cowering—'
'It's not just the sex,' I said, cutting her off.
'Even though the doctor gave you the virtual all-clear?'
'I am being blackmailed.'
'By whom exactly?' she asked
I gave her the complete run-down on Omar, then said, 'The guy has a certain animal cunning. He thinks he's got me cornered . . .'
'But he does have you cornered.'
'So what do I do?'
'You don't pay him the money.'
'But he will make good on his threat . . .'
'Let him. You can always deny it. And believe me, Madame Teeth Marks will deny it too.'
'That won't change his mind. At best, I'll get my face smashed in.'
'The thing to play for is time. Tell Omar you will give him the money, but you don't have the cash right now. Tell him you'll get it to him in a few weeks. If he pushes you, be firm. What's he going to do? Go ahead and tell her husband? If he does that he doesn't get the money. That's all he's after – the thousand now and whatever he can bilk from you later. So keep him on the long finger. Meanwhile, I think you should make contact with Madame Teeth Marks and let her know what's going on. She can definitely help you contain things. Suggest to her that she tells her husband that Omar tried to make a pass at her late one night while he was away burying his uncle. Suggest to her that she gives him graphic details of the pass he made . . . how he attempted to touch her everywhere. She really needs to make it sound as grubby as possible. Once she's done that, Omar's credibility will be zero. He can tell him anything about you, and the husband won't believe it. Because he'll think Omar is simply trying to offload blame on you.'
I looked at her, impressed.
'That's a very elegant, nasty solution to the problem.'
'It comes with a price, however.'
'Which is what?'
'I want to know what happened to you in the States – what you did that was so shockingly terrible that you had no choice but to flee over here.'
A long pause – I downed the whisky, even though the alcohol burned into the wound and hurt like hell.
'You owe me this, Harry,' she said.
'Because of my transgression?'
'No – because I've told you so much about my past. Whereas you . . .'
'You'll think it such a banal story.'
'If it destroyed your life, it's hardly banal. Anyway, you want to tell me.'
'Could I have another shot of that whisky?' I asked.
'Dutch courage?'
'What other courage is there?'
She poured me out a hefty shot. I downed half of it, my eyes watering up as it went down.
'On y va, monsieur,' she said. 'Get on with it.'
I finished the whisky. I took a deep breath. I started to talk.
'I suppose I should first tell you about my wife. I met Susan in grad school in Michigan. She was doing drama – and had all these great plans for becoming a professional theater director. I was getting a doctorate in film studies and wanted nothing more than a nice secure tenured job at a nice secure university which wouldn't be too taxing, would allow me to teach something I genuinely liked, and would also give me plenty of time to write "the novel" – check that: "the novels" – that I knew I was destined to write. From the moment I met her, Susan struck me as the ideal "life partner". She was attractive . . . in a very wholesome Midwestern way. She certainly wasn't chic – that would have been anathema to her. But yes, she was genuinely cute.'
'A horrible word, cute. And let me guess: she always wore je
ans and hiking boots and crème-colored sweaters and a ski parka and . . .'
'Do you want to tell this story?'
'I'm right, am I not?'
'Yes, you're right. And yes, we got married before we both got our doctorates. And yes, we both found jobs at the same middle-ranking small college – Crewe, in Ohio. No mean feat that, considering how hard academic jobs are to come by. I was an instant hit with my students. . . .'
'And Susan? Was she too a hit in the realm of "student drama"?'
'Susan – as it turned out – had difficulty fitting in at the college. Everyone saw that she was a very talented director – great creative vision and all that – but she wasn't the easiest of teachers, and several students complained that she was too demanding on them, that she expected standards far higher than those kids at Crewe College could obtain . . .'
'Was she hypercritical of you as well?'
'Yes, she could be rather finicky around the house. And yes, she did push me very hard professionally – as we both came into the college as assistant professors, and both had to get enough articles and the like published in order to get tenured.'
'Let me guess what happened next. You got tenured and she was turned down?'
'That is precisely what happened. The thing that decided it against her wasn't her lack of professional accomplishment – it was her inability to relate to her students.'
'So suddenly she was out of a job, and you had the permanent post you wanted, which meant that you were stuck in this little town – which was the original master plan, except that now that your wife had nothing to do . . .'
'Well, she did get a few more small directing gigs at some small regional theaters – but again, there would always be some blow-up with the cast, some dispute with the scenic designer, or she would rub management up the wrong way . . .'
'An endlessly angry woman?'
'I'm afraid so.'
'So the next obvious plot twist of this story is . . . like your mother, she gets pregnant?'
'Bravo.'
'Well, what else would she do, being now out of work and thirty . . . ?'
'Thirty-two to be exact. And yes, within two months of not getting tenured she was pregnant. Though we both adored Megan straight away, it was Susan who was around the house most of the time – and within a year or so, the strain started to show.'
'Didn't she try to get other work?'
'Of course she did. The problem was, with all her regional theater opportunities dried up, the only directing jobs around Eaton, Ohio, were high-school productions. Totally rinky-dink stuff which further played into her growing despair.'
'And that despair continued to grow for the next . . . how old is Megan now?'
'Fifteen.'
'So for the ensuing thirteen years, she floundered?'
'Well, she did have our daughter, and she was a very attentive mother. But as Megan got older and entered school, not only was there less and less for Susan to do, but she also hinted from time to time that she resented being a mother and wife . . . telling me several times during a squabble that, if she wasn't rooted to Eaton because of her husband and daughter, she'd be having a proper high-flying career in a big city like Chicago where they would naturally appreciate her high professional standards and wouldn't get offended by her acerbity.'
'Such a happy woman. How did you deal with all that?'
'I chose to ignore it . . . especially as it always came out when she'd had a few glasses of wine.'
'So she was drinking heavily?'
'Hey, we were living in a small town with not much to do at night – and she was, for all intents and purposes, depressed. So what else do you do but drink? Like I started to hit the hard stuff a bit as well. Largely because her own negativity was beginning to corrode things between us . . .'
'So you decided that the only way to combat this negativity was to have an affair?'
'It was actually she who had the first affair . . . though I didn't know that until some time later.'
'And who was the lucky man?'
'Around two years ago, the college got a new Dean of the Faculty – a true smoothie named Gardner Robson.'
'They actually name people such things in the States?'
'White Anglo-Saxon Protestants do. This guy was a real Mr Preppie. Ex-Air Force. Ex-management consultancy. Early fifties. Super-fit. Super-straight. Super-corporate – and brought in by the Board of the College to "streamline management", whatever the fuck that meant. There was a reception for Robson when he became Dean – and, having already met him briefly at some administrative thing, I remember telling Susan on the way over to the party that she was bound to loathe him – as he stood for everything Republican and conservative that she hated about Bush's America.
'There were a lot of people swirling around Robson that night, but Susan did manage to spend some time talking with him. Only later did I realize that there was a moment when I saw their eyes meet . . .'
'How romantic.'
'I thought nothing of it at the time. On the way home, Susan's only comment about him was, "He's not bad . . . for a Republican."'
'Around a week or so later, she came home and told me she now had a private drama student – some local highschool junior who was trying to get into the Julliard acting program. She said she'd be doing intensive dramatic training with her every Tuesday and Thursday from four to six.'
'And you didn't suspect anything?'
'No. Maybe that was completely naive of me, but there you go. I was simply happy that Susan had something to do with herself.'
'My, my, you were so trusting.'
'I just wanted my wife to stop being so bitter and selfloathing and, in turn, critical of me. The thing was, once she started to "teach" this private course, her spirits began to improve. Susan even began to sleep with me again. On the surface, things were better between us. Until something curious happened. Out of nowhere, the woman who replaced Susan in the Drama Department left to take a job offer at another college. Susan was offered a one-year contract to replace her.'
'Engineered by the Dean of the Faculty.'
'Once again, I suspected nothing. Susan was naturally thrilled. Once back teaching she seemed to mend her ways. No more of the old aggression or perfectionism toward her students or the other faculty members. Instead, she was a real "team player" . . .'
'A transformation also brought about under the tutelage of the Dean of the Faculty.'
The Woman In The Fifth Page 21
