by Mario Sabino
Would you like me to go on? Fine. But let’s stick to the story, because we’re close to the denouement.
My wife returned to Paris after a month’s absence. Our reunion was marked by a certain coldness. Not that there wasn’t hugging and kissing, but it was as if we were performing a ritual required by a hypothetical protocol. While we were still at the airport, she justified her delay, saying that, because of the extra time she’d had, she’d managed to clear up all outstanding matters with the lawyers handling her uncle’s inheritance and, as a result, a considerable amount of money was already in her bank account. During the week that followed, we gradually got back into our Parisian routine. The joy the city had once inspired in us, however, was no longer there. Everything had lost its magic. My wife had already graduated from her cooking course, and I was about to finish my Master’s, without a distinction. After it was completed, we travelled in Europe a little, wandered through a few South-East Asian countries in search of some exoticism, and returned to Paris. We spent another year in this limbo, putting off a decision that we knew had already been made: to come back to Brazil.
Why did we come back? It’s hard to say. I think that when we have no reason to stay away, we’re obliged to content ourselves with the reasonlessness of staying close to our roots. This is, in my opinion, an impulse common to everyone who has gone through the experience of an inexplicable return. I’m speaking for myself, not my wife. But you know what? Maybe she was also seeking a higher reason for this return to our homeland, above and beyond the other reason that made her push a lot for us to come back. I’ll get to that later.
The fact is, we came back. We spent the first few months in a rented flat while we renovated and decorated the house that my father had given us as a present, in a neighbourhood near his. My wife, as was to be expected, took great care with every detail, with the help of an architect/interior decorator who pocketed a fortune in commissions from the purchase of materials, furniture, and accessories. The result, of course, was very good. It combined the right proportions of personal touch and design.
When the house was ready, I was surprised by a request from my wife: she wanted us to make our marriage legal. There was, in this, a yearning for social recognition, a need to use the front door in the world of the rich and powerful that was my family’s habitat — I mean, my father’s. My wife was fascinated by my father’s network of friends and contacts. I was dragged off to parties and dinners every night, and was always impressed by her self-assuredness on these occasions. It’s true that my wife had never been shy, but her behaviour was a source of constant astonishment to me.
I did and I didn’t like it. I’ll try to explain: I liked it, because having a wife like mine could be considered irrefutable evidence that I wasn’t the weirdo my father made me out to be. If I’d managed to seduce her, it was because I was an interesting man. But, at the same time, I didn’t like it, because exposing myself like this might reveal that, contrary to what seducing such a woman indicated, I really wasn’t such an interesting man, and maybe was even a weirdo.
Our wedding was a grand occasion, with about one thousand guests, a sumptuous dinner, and photographs in the social columns. My father felt it was incumbent on him to spend an incredible sum on this demonstration of power and prestige. My wife looked stunning in her bridal gown. When she walked into the church, to be given away by my father, who was especially handsome that night, a murmur of admiration ran through the audience. Even I was impressed … How did I feel about the wedding? Anaesthetised. I took part in it all, as if none of it had anything to do with me. It’s not that I didn’t love my wife; but, at that moment, I was hollow, with nothing inside me. I didn’t have good or bad feelings, an intellectual repertoire, nothing. I moved like a robot, responding to outside stimuli with the minimum expenditure of energy — not least because I had none.
This sensation continued through our honeymoon, although I did my best to pretend to be happy. We went to a paradisiacal island, and I spent hours staring at the sea. The sea from which I’d been saved by my father, and in which I now imagined I was dissolving. It wasn’t a death wish, because even wishes require some kind of desire. I just thought about being taken away by the water, like a defenceless child. Defenceless — and motherless. I’d never thought so much about my mother as on my honeymoon. I’d never missed my mother as much as I did on my honeymoon. It is curious that, right when a man is most required to prove his manhood, I had become so childlike. I cried in secret, and these tears were so much bitterer because it was more and more difficult to remember the contours of her face, the timbre of her voice.
My wife was too caught up in herself to worry about me. She wasn’t even bothered by the fact that we didn’t have sex on the occasion specifically made for it. To be honest, I think she felt relieved, since our sex life was no longer (or perhaps never had been) a big deal for her. It may sound paradoxical, but our honeymoon was the moment in which our emotional separation became explicit. We began, there, a marriage of convenience — much more for her than for me.
–23–
We spent another four years trying to forget we’d taken vows to be together. It was all very schizophrenic: my wife circulated in high society, growing bubblier and bubblier, while I taught night school to a sorry bunch who slept during my classes, tired from the shitty day they’d had. At least I had a good excuse not to go with her to all the dinners and social gatherings she attended. What most irritated me about them was having to spend time in the company of the same idiots whom my father thought had displayed model behaviour back when I was a teenager. They hadn’t deviated in the slightest from the road to total stupidity. The only difference was that now they smoked cigars, slopped gel into their hair, and slept with more expensive whores, while their equally futile wives turned a blind eye.
I still didn’t have any friends (and, by this stage, never would). As is usually the case with teachers, I could have established friendlier ties with my students. I tried, but they were as devoid of inner life as the wealthy folks with whom my wife loved to rub shoulders. It’s amazing how wealth and poverty, by different routes, can have the same effect of emptying people. The only human being in whose company I derived any pleasure was my father’s driver — the one who’d helped me, and kept me company so often when I was a child.
He was different from most poor people, which was why I liked him so much. He wasn’t complacent, nor did he complain about his lot in life. By that, I don’t mean that he was a conformist. He was a realist. He knew how to assess situations in order to make the most of them, or to bow out when necessary. As well, he had no patience for the other employees’ moaning and groaning. Whenever he heard someone complaining about being broke, he always made a point of asking them, ‘OK, but what have you done to try to earn more money?’ I think he would have made a steely executive if he’d had the chance. I once asked him why he hadn’t finished his studies. His answer was surprising: ‘The cost-benefit ratio is no good. To cover the expenses of night school and a second-rate university, I’d have to work for at least eight years in a job that paid six times what I earn now. But even after completing night school and getting a second-rate university degree, I’d never get a job like that.’ It was incredible that a man of the people could be sharp enough not to be sucked in by the nonsensical notion that one had to study to move up in life in a country such as ours. I admired his approach to life, and benefited from it. When I was a child and had my dizzy spells, the driver was always there to try and make me see things as they really were, without the fog of despair … No, he wouldn’t have made a good analyst. You lot usually only make the fog thicker.
My father liked him a lot — not least because he could leave me in his hands on a day-to-day basis. He liked him so much that he invited him and his wife to come and live with us. She took on the role of head housekeeper and, in this position, managed to put a stop to the high turnover of dome
stics. She taught them to be a reliable, cooperative and, above all, silent team. To paraphrase a butler from the movies, they learned to live as if they didn’t exist. I didn’t really hit it off with our driver’s wife — I sensed in her, from the first instant, a resentment towards the wealthy. At any rate, it was a dislike that had no great bearing on my life, since both she and I avoided saying anything more than was strictly necessary to one another. When she needed to communicate with me, to pass on a message, or something of the sort, she preferred to write notes. I think she was proud of her flowing handwriting and good grammar. Unlike her husband, she’d managed to finish high school. She came from a family of Italian immigrants who’d settled in the countryside — small-time shop owners who’d lost the little they’d managed to make when the economy took a downward turn. In love with her husband, and with no hope of finding a decent job, she’d agreed to run away with him to the big city. It’s what I’d call a classically banal story.
Our driver was also valuable to my father because he helped rid him of personal annoyances — things that had nothing to do with me. He was discreet, and never disclosed details about the special services, so to speak, that he carried out for my father. However, from the little I was told, I deduced what they were. For example, my father had him take large sums of money to crooks who specialised in offshore accounts. Another situation in which he was useful was when it became necessary to dissuade a woman from calling my father after he’d dumped her.
You might think it odd that I appreciate a person who was willing to perform such services. But you must remember that we had already formed a bond long before I found out what his other duties were — the sentences of moral judgements tend to be much lighter when preceded by emotional ties. Generally speaking, this is an error we like to make, as if it confirms our humanity. I’d even go so far as to say that emotional ties formed a posteriori also serve to dilute negative opinions. You, for example, may no longer judge me as severely as you would have before you met me … We don’t have an emotional tie? I’m inclined to think you’re mistaken.
Now, where was I? Ah, yes, my marital problems. My wife didn’t notice I was unhappy, and I didn’t know how to tell her how unhappy I was. It was with some surprise, therefore, that she received the news that I’d decided to start analysis. That night, we had a frank discussion. I told her I couldn’t stomach the parties and dinners with those unbearable people, I loathed my job, and I hoped that analysis would help me find a way out of the condition of artiste manqué. Yes, because I needed to create something. Maybe write a book. I had some interesting ideas, but didn’t feel stimulated enough to organise them — although I’d already tried to do it once, back in Paris, without her knowledge.
She listened to everything in silence. When I finished, she was pensive for a few seconds, then she locked herself in the bathroom. She came out with her face puffy from crying. She gave me a hug, apologised for not paying me enough attention, and said she’d support me in every decision I made. She promised to slow the pace of her social life so she could spend more time with me, and said she’d find herself something useful to do. She asked what I thought about her setting up a catering service, where she could put her Parisian culinary qualifications to good use. I said I didn’t have enough money, and would have to ask my father for help once again. Unless, of course, she used the money she’d inherited from her uncle. I noticed that she squirmed a little at the mention of the money. ‘I think I’ll be able to find an investment partner among those unbearable people you so abhor,’ she said. We then gave ourselves over to desperate, sad sex.
–24–
I went to analysis prepared to talk openly about myself, as I do with you. But the conversation took on a less polished, more brutal quality. And, perhaps for this reason, it was insincere. You could call it a paradoxical form of resistance — psychological resistance in this case, of course. My love for my mother, my sadness over her death, my hatred of my father and my awful relationship with him, the difficulties of my marriage, my lack of friends — I dumped all this information on my analyst almost pornographically, as a man dumps his load on his lover’s face. She, in turn, was unable to hide her glee at having such a neurotic patient. I was an exemplary case, and learned to behave as such. I was the supreme Narcissus, allowing myself to be autopsied with the instruments of psychoanalysis, but only to a point.
It’s not surprising that she became furious with me. She’d hoped for a glorious ending, but I gave her a tragic one. The idiot even talked about my case to the press … I can’t say, however, that it wasn’t good for me in some respects — analysis, I mean. Although propelled by narcissism, I started writing Future and, with this, began to glimpse the possibility of a literary career. My marriage also seemed to be getting back on track. My wife still went to parties and dinners, but not as often. Her efforts were now focused on opening her catering service. She hadn’t found an investment partner, and so was considering using the money from her inheritance. I didn’t like this idea — even though I was the one who’d suggested it — but didn’t raise any objection. I’d never kept tabs on my wife’s finances, nor did I know exactly how much her uncle had left her. I was only worried that she might lose everything on an unsuccessful initiative.
This impasse lasted around two months, until she decided to use the money she’d been left. She was having a meeting in our study with a financial consultant, when I took a peek at the numbers they’d written on a piece of paper. I was surprised. The amount to be spent was much, much more than I’d imagined. ‘Where are you going to get that kind of money?’ I asked. ‘From my inheritance,’ she answered. I was even more perplexed, because the amount written there was at least double what she’d once said she’d got from her uncle. I manifested my surprise, and she said I was a philosopher out of touch with reality. ‘Do you think I just left the money sitting in the bank? I made excellent financial investments, thanks to my esteemed consultant here. Isn’t that right?’ she said, turning to the short, bald man beside her, who I wouldn’t have known from a bar of soap. Busy with his calculator, he just mumbled, ‘Yes.’
On my way to night school, I put it out of my mind. I only had room in my head for Antonym, Hemistich, and Farfarello. The characters in my book had led me to contemplate the abyss of Evil, blinding me to the fact that it, Evil, was taking a form that was to far exceed literature and philosophy. What can I say? My wife was right: I really was a philosopher out of touch with reality. And this was a tremendous philosophical error.
–25–
It was a Saturday afternoon. I was alone at home, writing my book, when the parlourmaid knocked at the study door to announce that my father’s driver wanted to talk to me. ‘Put the call through,’ I said. ‘He’s in the kitchen, sir,’ she replied. The driver wasn’t in the habit of showing up out of the blue, so I assumed that something serious had happened. I was right: he had decided to inform me that he and his wife had been fired by my father. ‘Your father has accused us of stealing twenty-five thousand American dollars from his safe,’ he said, without the slightest emotion.
I was dumbstruck. They were entirely trustworthy. How could he possibly …? ‘Your father said he won’t go to the police but, on the other hand, he won’t give us a penny of severance pay. I’m here to ask for your help. My wife and I need some money for a hotel while we find a place to rent,’ he continued, unfazed. His steel was truly impressive. No whining, no tears.
I told him I was very sorry, and that I thought my father had made a huge mistake in accusing him. He didn’t say a word to defend himself. At this moment, the driver was a monument to dignity. The only thing I could do was fill his pockets with money, so that’s what I did. As well as giving him the American dollars I kept at home — about five thousand — I gave him everything in my wallet, in Brazilian currency. Still not content, I wrote him a cheque for a decent sum, equivalent to about ten months of his and his wife’s combi
ned wages.
When he shook my hand to take his leave, I noticed that there were tears in his eyes. For him, this was equivalent to the wailing of a professional mourner. ‘Thank you, son. Take care,’ he said. Those were the words of a father — the father I’d never had. After he left, I managed to finish the chapter I was writing. The last chapter of Future.
I was upset, so I called my father to ask him to explain himself. ‘They robbed me; I fired them,’ was all he said. I hurled a string of expletives at him. ‘And you’re just an idiot,’ he said, before hanging up on me. When my wife got home, I told her what had happened. All she said was that it wasn’t our problem, and that she and I had other things to worry about.
And indeed we did: in less than a week, I received the news that I was going to be a father. We hadn’t planned anything, so my wife’s nervousness when she told me that she was pregnant seemed quite natural. I didn’t know she’d already had a lab test to confirm the result of a home pregnancy test — also done without my knowledge. She cried a lot, saying that it wasn’t the right time for us to have a kid; she’d slipped up, and I shouldn’t have to pay for her mistake.
Knowing we were having a child really shook me up. I paced the garden, holding the test results, thinking about the irony of becoming a father without ever having stopped becoming a son. What I mean is that I depended on my father more than I should have and, to quote my analyst, I still hadn’t managed to grieve for my mother — this had become evident on my honeymoon. Actually, according to her, my hatred for my father would only ease off after I’d managed to grieve … Let’s not, please, go into the merit of these interpretations. The fact is that, at this instant, they made enough sense for me to accept the idea of having a child. This child could mark my entry into the adult world.