“You mean I’ll never get whisked away to a harem?”
“Exactly!”
“I suppose there might be an element of truth to that. The fantasy does seem to always be a bit outlandish. But that makes it safe.” “Safe because it cant’ happen?”
“Yes.” She answered after a brief pause.
“So your rationalization is that it’s OK as long as it can’t happen.”
“Yes.” She said again, though this time the pause was longer.
“Like us?” he asked.
When she said nothing he continued.
“You see, this affair embodies both aspects: it is palpably vivid and yet we are figments of each other’s desires. That’s why it is so perfect.” “Nothing is ever perfect, Michel.”
“Of course not, Catherine, but that is not a reason to lose our sense of humor.”
He followed that up with a witty remark and moved back to discussing adult entertainment and the role it played in their sexual fantasies.
Intermezzo
Their affair could have ended here, just as it could have a half a dozen times before, and again half a dozen times after, but did not. It was ended several moths later, abruptly, by one of them of course, as all affairs must. Tales are born when people follow a different path than is usual for them or for others. Tales are told for a rupee or a kopek but lies are spun in the ear of the payer when tales are retold, the first of which is that the tale is true, for at the very least it changes every time it is heard anew. The second lie is that the listener is the main character, for in truth no one is whisked into harems, pirates do not fall in love and there is no perfect lover. But these are little lies, lies told to make the magic seem real, if only for a little while. One of them would eventually end the affair, on his or her terms, and regardless of whom it would be, some things were inevitable. And so there was pain, of course, but a very small price to pay for what they had had together, nothing more than the pain one might feel at turning the last page of a book that has touched one’s soul, which one might think would not be enough to douse any desire to ever read again. There was self-‐questioning on many topics of the future and the past. Had the affair gone on would they eventually have met and had passionate sex? That surely would have been the paroxysm from whose descent would have been sown a different ending. In time all evidence would eventually be effaced and no-‐one would ever know what had transpired, and that was just as should be, just as had silently never been promised… But before proceeding to what some might choose to see as an homage a metaphor is in order, in lieu of explanation. Consider, dear reader, that a violin sonata when played to an audience of one will have three endings because neither the pianist nor the violinist can hear what the listener hears, just as the listener cannot feel the instruments vibrating against her skin, under his fingers. And since in life there is no score, how could two lives be expected to tell the same story?
His end
The first emotion after making the decision was a great sense of relief and this surprised Michel quite a bit. Then he became very uncomfortable at the prospect of writing the final email. But he knew that she would understand. He’d told her early on that things might end this way and wondered if she would remember that. He’d told her so many things over time. It was hard to believe that this had gone on for nearly four years now. “Four years without a major fight,” he thought, “that’s better than a lot of marriages I know.” But the irony only brought him back to wondering why he felt relieved. What Catherine had given him over this time was fantastic, irreplaceable and unalienable. He would always cherish his relationship with her. It was, however, time to put an end to their affair.
Already he had not been in touch with her for three days, going as far as not answering her phone call. These three days were a blur, and only now did he have some time by himself to craft a message to her. The message. Every line took forever to write as his mind wandered off in a million directions between each word he typed, or so it seemed.
“Sweet, sweet Catherine, I know you are wondering what is going on, so let me tell you straight out: three days ago I learned that my father has passed away. This is rather sudden and changes my life in many ways, as you can imagine. For one thing, it is only now that I have a few minutes to myself in order to write these words.”
He had never written such a letter before, nor ever ended a relationship for that matter, and wondered if there was a basic approach that should be followed, a ridiculous idea that nearly made him laugh.
“This is my last message to you, dearest, mistress mine. This life, these many years I have lived in this foreign land, and of these the last four with our beautiful fantasy, are coming to an abrupt close and being put away, not so neatly, in great haste, into boxes that will be shipped to my far away home. Tomorrow I will leave for France.”
She’d never been to France though he’d taken here there often, and he wondered if she would ever dare go. He knew he’d made her hungry for the sounds, the smells, the food of the hedonist’s heaven that was his childhood playground. Suddenly he imagined himself in Paris waiting in line, perhaps in one of those wonderful food shops where one can hardly move in the dimly lit exiguity, jolted out of his reverie by his name called out in this voice of hers he so loved and would never forget: “Michel?” He could hear the tone of disbelief and wonder in her voice and quickly squashed the thought not wanting to begin imagining what his response would be.
“I’ve always known that I would one day have to return to take my place in our family’s affairs though I often wondered how this would come about without considering the most obvious possibility which I now face. When I came to this country it was of course to escape the accoutrements of an old family in an old country and to have the freedom to be if for only a few years a person of my own making. But this was not a rejection of whence I came nor of who I am, for I am indeed the product of my upbringing. I was reminded of this by the grief of my son at the loss of his grandfather whom he has known since he was born as the master of the domain. My son has spent his summers there since he can remember, and just as I have known that the domain would one day be mine as it has now become, so now must my son know that it will one day be his.”
He wondered what he would feel if he were the one receiving this message and felt all the more lousy for it. He wanted to explain, justify, convince but at the same time wanted to just tell things as they were and not be perceived as deploying an arsenal of rhetorical tricks to achieve his goals. If he were getting this message, he would consider the previous paragraph as a paltry attempt at appealing to the deep connection that she had felt in his description of the domain owing no doubt to her own origins deeply rooted in land and farming. Was his son’s grief really relevant to why he was dumping her? Was there any other wo
rd for it than ‘dumping’?
“You represent more to me than just a slice of this American life of mine, please don’t misunderstand. My grief at the loss of my father is deep and makes it hard for me to analyze emotions and describe my own thoughts with clarity, but believe me when I say that writing these words feels like cutting out a part of myself.”
Songs were coming to mind, of course, though he would not include them in his message for fear of getting muddied in clichés. ‘My heart is down my head is turning around’ from an old song was stuck in his ear, and he thought of that tropical beach he took Catherine to so often.
“We went to places that I had only dreamed of, you and I, and this was magic. I have not often enough tried to tell you what you have given me, but many of these gifts I will keep with me preciously forever. What we had together was part of a life that must now end, part of a freedom that I must now willingly surrender. I will not be able to continue our affair. The distance alone would be an obstacle hardly surmountable, as your work hours would be the time I spend with my family in the evening. But more importantly my daily life will be nothing like it is now. I am also giving up my musical career, though the word career is admittedly a grandiose overstatement. I am now expected to become the head of a small industrial fiefdom that my father has run with an iron hand for the last thirty years, and to bring to bear the many years of grooming that my higher education represented. Music also is a fantasy that I must abandon at the door of my new life. My affair with you and my affair with music have come to define my life here almost entirely, and I must forego both.”
He thought back to what his life had been the last four years and how much time he had devoted to Catherine, the hours spent on the phone with her, the hours spent writing to her… but most of all the many, many hours spent thinking about her, about what he would next say to her, about how he would say it. It would sometimes take him hours to write a ten line message, hours that he had, waiting around in the studio for the next take, the next session, waiting for the star to arrive, waiting for the techies to tweak the sound. She’d been his muse for all this time. He’d so often played for her he couldn’t count the times, but had never told her for lack of a funny way to explain that the piano line toward the end of the latest jingle for Joe’s supermarket chain was ‘dedicated to you, my dear Catherine’. Perhaps now was the time. He wanted her to know how tied in with his music she had become.
“Nearly everything I’ve played in the last four years I played for you. I say nearly because there were a couple soundtracks to toy commercials that I kind of dedicated to my son, I’m sure you’ll understand, but every infomercial and even the while-‐ you’re-‐on-‐hold Muzak pieces I did were for you. It might not sound like much, but it was sincere. These are the tangible traces. Unrecorded were the many hours of jam sessions where you were my muse, and there were, dare I say, a couple of amazing solos that flowed from my passion for you, expressed as only notes can express. How easy it was to express passion and desire when I thought of you!”
He’d told many people about his departure but had generally not gone out of his way to do so. He wanted to be methodical and practical about leaving and together with wanting to present a façade of strength for his son to latch on to as needed, this took an inordinate amount of energy, be it only because of the detailed planning required. And so he had resolved to be rather abrupt for efficiency’s sake. Closing his financial accounts required settling all outstanding bills and resigning any long term commitments, meaning that he was getting rid of his cell-‐phone, closing down his e-‐mail accounts and getting rid of his computer equipment and therefore securely wiping out his hard drives. What lay ahead of him was daunting and he wanted none of what he was leaving behind to distract him in his efforts to become (once again) someone else. He felt that he needed a clean break in order to gather the fortitude he would need. He felt that he could not continue the affair and not betray it one way or the other.
“We always agreed that our lives came first and that there was no permanence to the affair. I suppose that I fear I could not sustain it from the confines of the life that awaits me, that sooner or later, my secret would be discovered, and it is a chance that I am not willing to take. While here it was easier for me to carry on without risk, but this will no longer work out, and again, distance in space and time are huge factors. What time and distance separate us now will be doubled.“
He tried to intuit if she would be very upset at him but the sea of grief upon which he precariously floated precluded his natural empathy from claiming such knowledge in ways he customarily could. He felt great sadness but did not know if it was truly a reflection of what she would feel or simply of his own loss.
“I hope you do not think of me as a coward but the fear will make me point out that a coward would not have written this message. I am weak in many ways and I know some of these weaknesses well. I know that if I allow our affair to continue, then it will continue to be a priority in my life, not something I can pretend to myself is of some value but not enough so to distract me from other things, and I know that you would continue to dominate my thoughts for hours and days at a time. This was fine as long as music was my universe, but no longer.”
He tried to remember if she had ever used the word ‘fair’. Fairness was not something that he believed in particularly, as he had concluded from experience that it was only a temporary construct meant to appease the jealousies of the more manipulable. For there to have been guilt would have required that he would have had taken advantage of her to obtain his pleasure with lies or some such transgression, none of which was remotely true in his mind. He believed every word she had ever written to him about how wonderful he had made her feel. But he had to admit (out of fairness?) that they were not in the same position, she and he, neither in the relationship nor in society, space or life.
“I am not Valmont and you are certainly not Merteuil, but I realize that things are easier for me than they could ever be for you and that you have always had to put up a façade in order to be yourself whereas my very presence in this country is a testament to the fact that I am not bound by such constraints. Your drive and your ambition require that you be an outstanding member of your community and your own family expects nothing less. Everyone expects you to be devoted, whether to your work, to your family, to your church… Up until now, no-‐one expected me to be devoted to much of anything except whatever I chose. I do not have your drive or your ambition but life has mostly defined them for me and I am fully aware of the irony that as my life becomes in a sense more like yours I find myself unable to do what you have done and to seek escape and freedom in our relationship. My freedom was real and my affair with you was just as real and in that sense neither o
f them was an escape, though maybe they had the feel of an escapade. I will never see what I lived here as youthful fancies though they are now the vestiges of a youth that has finally escaped me in full.”
He paused to ponder the truth of what he had just written. It was clear to him now that he had come to America with no real expectation of success of the type that music can offer because he knew that he would eventually return to do what would some day be expected of him: handle the succession when his father passed away and maintain the family patrimony in good standing while his brother continued a brilliant civil service career that precluded him from having financial involvements. For generations his family had functioned in such ways quite successfully and Michel had always accepted the fact the he would take his place in the order so well defined in which he, as second born male, was the intendant to the generation. Catherine had given him more than he had ever hoped to find in romance and this gave him a strange sense of peace as he found himself embracing the quickly deepening bond he felt to his roots and history.
“I feel very much whole, thanks to you and the gifts you bestowed upon me. You showed for me a desire that no woman or man had ever shown before and it made me feel resplendent. You turned a spark that lay dormant in me into a flash of light that blinded us with pleasure. You made me young and beautiful and reckless and while I know that this will fade in me as I myself fade from your radiance, the seeds of joy you have sown in the rocky soil of my heart will thrive there as long as I live and their blooms unlike me will never grow old. But I feel now as an adolescent boy would at the realization that the long summer that brought him magic and manhood, reminiscent perhaps of that of ‘42, is now drawing inexorably to a close. The long garland of days and nights somehow fused into one moment that seemed eternal is vanishing, leaving in its place a chill where the warm breeze once blew and the mere ticking of a tired clock where our hearts once so vibrantly beat in unison. Is it truly because all things end that we must cherish our passions? I cherish you and always will, this I know.”
The Pleasure of M Page 14