The Benefactor

by Susan Sontag

  “He runs,” said the bather. “This is his first command.”

  Glad to be able to obey him at last, I jumped off the stage and ran down the aisle as fast as I could. As I ran, I imagined how pleased he must be at how rapidly I obeyed him. When, leaving the auditorium, I tripped and fell, I didn’t mind the burning sensation in my face. I only thought that he would be further impressed that I had even incurred pain in his service.

  After a while, though, I stopped running. I would have liked to return to the auditorium for further instructions, but I supposed the man in the bathing suit would prefer if I could manage alone. I did not altogether trust my good luck, either. If I went back I might not get out again so easily.

  The streets where I walked were the familiar peaceful streets of my childhood. I saw a bright light in the distance. As I approached the light, I saw that it was a burning house. The building had certain features of the house of Frau Anders I had set fire to. Servants were scurrying back and forth carrying out furniture and portraits. Then I saw that it was my house. I knew I had promised all my possessions to my master, the bather. What would he do to me if all my goods were destroyed?

  In spite of the warning shouts of the neighbors, I ran into the building and mounted the steps more flying than running. But when I gained my room, I stood still for some moments. There was so much to take: my clothes, my bed, my maps, my desk, my books, my ivory chessmen, my collection of butterflies. How could I choose even among the smaller objects I could carry? I paused a moment longer, then took from the shelves a book of ancient history; from the drawer I snatched my journal; and from the table I took a tray of tiny cups and saucers which were exceedingly hard to balance. Though tormented by the thought of all that I could not save, I knew I had to leave before the flames reached me. The air was dark with smoke and I could scarcely see.

  In the street, I met my father. Knowing he was dead, I wondered what I might say to console him. But as he stepped toward me, I realized he meant to console me—about the fire. He told me I’d made a good choice and that with the things I had salvaged, I could begin a new life.

  “But think of all that I left, all that I couldn’t carry,” I replied sadly.

  At that moment he brushed against the tray of little dishes. One of them fell to the ground, and broke. I was enraged at his clumsiness. “How could you do that!”

  “It broke,” he said.

  My anger subsided. “Perhaps you didn’t mean to do it,” I said.

  He told me the cups and saucers were a wedding present, then asked me what I had decided to call my wife. We were walking away from the blackened house, chatting amiably. I explained that I was considering many names, but that I would like to choose one that was not unusual and would not excite ridicule.

  “Why don’t you call her Marie?”

  “That’s still too uncommon,” I said.

  I awoke from this dream with a distinct sense of relief. A fresh dream, instead of the exhaustive repetitions of the old ones, was particularly welcome to me at this moment. And then, I felt this dream marked a definite progress in my career as a dreamer. The dream had, it is true, more the character of a nightmare than previous dreams. The tenor I had felt at the loss of my leg and when facing the punishment in the auditorium was acute. Yet, I estimated my emotions in the dream to be more straightforward and closer to the way I should like them to be. For it had become very important to me that my character in my daytime life and my character in the dreams should accord as closely as possible. I was prepared to make as many concessions on either side as were necessary to bring them together.

  You may ask how this might be done. The problem of changing my life to fit my dreams was not insuperable—easier than changing my dreams to fit my life. But in neither case would an effort of will alone be sufficient. I believe this latest dream gave me a clue to the proper method. The dreams, all of them, were a mirror before which my daytime life presented itself, and which gave back to me an unfamiliar but not unintelligible image. With perseverance and attentive inactivity, the two would come together—even though it might be necessary to spend my life before a mirror. This is the destiny of mirrors, and of that which is mirrored.

  As I thought about it that morning in my hotel room, I saw also that the new “dream of the mirror” furnished me with substantial help in my current project of marrying. No wonder I had been discouraged! I had neither understood my project, nor the reasons which justified it. Foolishly, I had believed that one could simply venture into the world to find a wife, without advance demands and expectations. I now realized that the only way I would find a wife—and you must remember the urgency of my search, with Frau Anders pressing close behind me—was to conceive very clearly what would suit me, as one chooses a name for a child. I would no longer cast about aimlessly, in effect waiting for my future wife to appear before me, but would seek her out myself in the most likely place. What marriage would repel the unwanted advances of Frau Anders more surely than a union which was entirely fitting and respectable? It had been absurd of me to imagine that I could repudiate the eccentric marriage which Frau Anders offered me with an equally eccentric marriage to someone outside my own class, whether a prostitute, a shopgirl, or the niece of my concierge.

  I decided to return home to look for a wife, for it is, after, all, where we are born and reared that we learn whatever sense of the fitting and of the improper we possess throughout our lives. Certainly, there are many activities which I pursued in the capital, such as my excursions with Jean-Jacques or my liaison with Frau Anders, which I would not have thought of doing in my native city. I would not have done them not because I feared discovery and censure by my family, but out of respect. In one’s native city, there are many things which it simply does not occur to one to do.

  I spent a few more fearful days and nights in the hotel, consulting the inclinations and strategies suggested by the dream. As usual, the dream began to repeat itself but with a number of variations. The following night, the mirror fell on me; it was in that way that I was injured. The night after that, I returned to the auditorium to confer my possessions on the bather and was trapped inside. The third night, my father forbade me to marry. The morning after this last version I decided not to delay any longer, lest I be shaken in my new resolutions on how to marry. What better place should I look for a congenial wife than in my native city, among the women of my own class? I wired my family that I was about to pay them a visit and checked out of the hotel.

  My older brother was off on a business trip when I arrived home. I was glad of his absence because I thought that such matters would be better handled by the women. For while my brother was a typical man of business and a respected husband and father, the women in my family were more conventional still. The way in which my brother fell short of being able to make an entirely conventional choice for me had nothing to do with the fact that he maintained a mistress in another part of town; at least in this country, it is the exceptional middle-aged husband who does not have an extra-marital arrangement. But I had had some conversations with my brother—while our father was dying—and I suspected that he had certain ideas about my character and my independent way of life which would compromise his judgment, were it he to whom I entrusted the delicate task of helping me to find a wife. While I knew that he would recommend to me only certified ladies of our family’s social circle, he might at the same time favor those few who were in some respects a trifle interesting. In short, he might try to satisfy me—which was just what I did not want.

  I had seen much less of my brother’s wife, Amelie; she had been too busy with her children. She knew little of me, I was sure, and never thought of me. There was also my older sister, now a widow, who had recently returned to the town after many years’ residence abroad. And there were several aunts, married and unmarried, whom I had barely seen (except at my father’s funeral) since I left home as a young man twelve years before. It was to these ladies that I put my problem, with confid
ence in the simplicity and certitude of their judgment.

  I explained my mission to my sister-in-law and sister, and entrusted them to reintroduce to me to the society of the town. In no time I was invited to teas, dances, and Thursdays at home, and out of several eligible prospects I selected a young girl of plain appearance and modest character who seemed genuinely pleased at my attentions. She was the daughter of an army officer, convent-educated, fond of children, and of irreproachable reputation. My relatives thought her an excellent choice.

  After several visits to her family’s house in which I listened respectfully to her father’s boasts of how our country would revenge herself against her ancient enemy in the coming war and played duets with the daughter, and after a final conference with my relatives, I spoke to the old colonel, received his permission to propose to the girl, proposed, and was accepted. The wedding took place when my brother came back from his trip, looking tanned and younger than when I had last seen him. Shortly after, my bride and I returned to the capital to begin our new lives.

  THIRTEEN

  “So you have married, little Hippolyte,” Jean-Jacques said to me.

  I didn’t think it right for my wife to meet or talk with Jean-Jacques, but he had heard the news from me, along with an account of my reasons for marrying and my mode of choice. He agreed with me that this was the one way in which my family could have been useful to me but found the act itself a questionable one.

  “I disapprove of your acting in this stale way, acting out of a conviction.”

  “What conviction?” I asked.

  “Why, this conviction you have just expressed to me of the propriety of marriage.”

  “That’s no conviction,” I said. “It’s a need which I discovered with the aid of my dreams. You know, Jean-Jacques, how I relish solitude. Solitude, if anything, is my only conviction. But there is no contradiction between my solitude and my marriage. Never have I done anything merely for the sake of order. Nor—as you do—for the sake of disorder, either.”

  “Haven’t you married for the sake of order?”

  “No,” I replied. “If my life expresses a faith in order, it is my nature, that’s all. The proof of this is that to others this order will appear as disorder, even flight.”

  “And your convictions?”

  “I don’t want to have any convictions,” I said. “If I am or believe something, I want to discover it through my acts. I don’t want to act in the way I do because it accords with what I am or believe.”

  “It was I who told you that once, remember?”

  “You were right,” I said. “Don’t I always believe you when you are right? I want to follow my acts. I don’t want my acts to follow me.”

  “But you put a special interpretation on my idea. For you, it seems, the fewer acts the better.”

  “Yes,” I said, “only those which are necessary, those which define, those which destroy.”

  “And your marriage, Hippolyte? Is that an act which defines and destroys?”

  I was prepared for this question, and could answer quickly, “Yes.”

  After the turbulence of my pursuit and near-seduction by Frau Anders, being with my wife was a paradise of quiet and ease. But do not imagine that my marriage was only a haven, a refuge for the guilty benefactor. I had much pleasure in my marriage, and learned to love and admire my wife. What I liked best about her was her capacity for respect. She respected flowers and children; she respected uniforms, even the uniforms of the enemy soldiers who now occupied the capital; she respected the effort of the youth who carried the coal up six flights of stairs each week to our apartment. She communicated to me some of this respect and gravity, which seemed beautiful next to the boredom and self-seeking that characterized many of my old friends, like Jean-Jacques and Lucrezia. I was tired of what is called sophistication.

  I appreciated my wife’s quietness, which left me all the time I wanted for myself and my thoughts. Her devotion to me was of such a generous sort that I never felt in any way hampered. She disliked parties and cafés but I was entirely free to come and go as I liked—to walk by the river, to find Jean-Jacques in his café and converse with him, to go to the national film archives occasionally with Lucrezia. Also, enduring the austerities of wartime, the shortages of coal and food and clothing, was easier in the company of so undemanding a person.

  We occupied the same apartment where I had lived the last two years, since I first knew Monique. Although in a working-class neighborhood, the rooms, were pleasantly furnished and in good repair. I was concerned that the mode of living which I had invited my wife to share would compare too unfavorably with the comforts she had enjoyed at home. She reassured me in a charming way, telling me that this was a luxury compared with the convent where she had slept in a room with twenty other girls. Even as a child, she said, she had never had a room to herself but had always to share it with one of her sisters. I then suggested—it was a few weeks after our wedding—that she take a bedroom for herself, which she did with the greatest contentment.

  Because my wife was not, as far as I could see, a sensual person and would consent to fulfill her conjugal duties only out of a sense of propriety, I saw no reason to bother her with them. She was very young, and I respected her youth. I wanted to do with her what I knew she genuinely liked. As a girl, she had learned how to make excellent preserves and marmalades, and was justifiably proud of her skill; I procured extra quantities of sugar on the black market for her. The promenade was another of her favorite pastimes. I remember walks in the public gardens, in which I felt the most delicate sensations of marital serenity—my wife, beaming, her arm in mine, wore a yellow straw hat which she had brought from home and which looked delightfully rustic and old-fashioned in the capital. She also liked me to read to her, which I did each night before she went to sleep. During the spell before my marriage in which I had kept my ailing father company, I had learned that there is an art to reading aloud, and that there is one kind of book which each person prefers above all others. To my wife I read children’s stories and fables, but she liked even better the ones which I made up myself.

  One that she was especially fond of, I called “The Invisible Husband.” It goes as follows:

  “Once upon a time, in a city near a forest, lived a beautiful princess. And far away, in the mountains called the Himalayas, lived a plain but hard-working young prince.

  “It was always snowing where the prince lived, and to protect himself from the cold he wore a handsome suit of white leather and white leather boots. In this costume, too, he was almost invisible, and could move about the mountain without being menaced by any of the dangerous animals who lived there.

  “One day the prince thought that he would like to have a companion on the mountain, a wife. He descended to the valley, crossed the forest, and arrived at the city. There he promptly asked to be directed to the royal palace. For, being a prince, he could only marry a princess.

  “Now the princess of this city, although young and lovely, had very weak eyes. When the prince, dressed all in white, was presented at the court she could barely see him. But because, with the keenness of hearing which is often given to those with poor sight, she heard the deeper tones of his voice and found these attractive, she wanted to accept his proposal of marriage.

  “ ‘What does he look like, Father?’ she asked.

  “ ‘There is no doubt that he is a prince,’ the king replied. ‘I have seen the records of his birth.’

  “ ‘I will many him,’ she said. ‘He will be a restful and melodious companion.’

  “So the prince took the princess with him back to the mountain and guarded her in his house of snow. With his own hands he fed her milk and the raw meat of coconuts and rice and sugar and other delicacies.

  “Though the princess’ eyesight did not improve, since everything around her was white it did not matter that she could barely see her husband.

  “But one day, while the princess was alone sewing a tablecloth,
there appeared before her a black mountain bear. Ignorant that this was the most dangerous animal on the mountain, the princess was not frightened. But she was startled, because she was not accustomed to seeing anything so clearly.

  “ ‘Who are you?’ she inquired courteously.

  “ ‘I am your husband,’ said the bear. ‘This suit of fur I found in a dark wet cave on the other side of the mountain.’

  “ ‘But your voice is so hoarse,’ she said. ‘Have you caught a cold?’

  “ ‘Undoubtedly,’ said the bear.

  “The bear spent the afternoon with the young princess. When he rose to go, she was sorry to see him leave. He explained to her that he had to return the black suit to the cave; its owner might, by this time, be looking for it.

  “ ‘But can’t you wear the suit again?’ she pleaded.

  “ ‘Perhaps I may find it again when I pass the cave. And then I will come home in the middle of the day to visit you.’

  “ ‘Oh, yes,’ she cried.

  “ ‘But you must promise,’ said the crafty bear, ‘not to mention this black suit to anyone, not even to me. For I loathe dishonesty, or wearing anything which is not mine. I do not wish to be reminded of the sacrifice of my honor which I will be making for you if I don this suit again.’

  “The princess had respected her husband’s moral scruples, and she agreed. And so the bear sometimes came to visit her, but she never mentioned his visits in the evening when her husband returned. What she enjoyed about the bear was being able to see him, but she did not like the hoarseness which afflicted his voice each time when, as she supposed, he ventured for her sake into the wet cave.

  “One day, she found his voice so unpleasant that she urged him to take some cough syrup.