‘No, don’t be daft.’ After a moment, she asked, ‘Why did you want to meet up?’
‘I’m not sure. I was glad to see you.’ Charlie finished his pint. ‘It might sound strange but I always felt I could be honest with you.’
‘Really?’
‘Or not honest exactly. I was still bullshitting. But I felt like you knew that.’
‘Yeah,’ Ellie nodded. ‘Yeah, pretty much.’
20
Confidence and Love
When Nietzsche collapsed he was handed over to his mother and sister. It was not what he would have wanted, but there was no one else who could care for him. He was a childless, unmarried man of forty-four, who had lived alone almost his entire adult life. Indeed, if it weren’t for the STI he contracted as a young man, there would be doubt as to whether he’d ever had sex. Inevitably, speculative theories abound, but he was neither gay, nor a victim of abuse, nor a woman-hater, despite his best efforts to appear as one (‘Are you going to see a woman? Do not forget your whip!’). His problem wasn’t with women, but with the idea of lasting love.
For Nietzsche, love and confidence were opposing forces. Given the choice, he chose confidence every time.
In his twenties and thirties, Nietzsche often said he’d like to get married, but he was never able to find a ‘convenient’ wife. Even when he did alight on someone suitable, he seemed ambivalent about the whole affair. He proposed to one young woman, Mathilde Trampedach, via a third party (who was also her unofficial fiancé – such blunders are a feature of Nietzsche’s courtships), having known her for less than a week. When she refused, startled, he seemed generally relieved. He wasn’t sure whether getting married was worth the bother. He needed a ‘reading machine’, he wrote to a friend, because his eyesight was fading and his typewriter was on the blink, adding: ‘I need a young person around who is intelligent and educated enough to work with me. I’d even agree to two years of marriage for this purpose – in this case, of course, a few other conditions would come into consideration.’ One dreads to think. Perhaps one of the buttons had fallen off his shirt.
Relationships for Nietzsche were a one-way street. Any marriage he might enter into would work for him or not at all. He would be the employer, she the intern. His friendships were the same. He prized friendship and wrote powerfully in praise of it, yet he had few friends to speak of, and those he did have were more like supporters than true equals. (Peter Gast, in many ways his closest companion during his nomadic period, served as his copyist – a friend, but also a useful secretary.) He appreciated their help and encouragement, yet he had to be able to disengage himself at any time. He was unattached, and as a result, free.
During the early years of his self-imposed exile he was lonely and sometimes very low, to the point of questioning whether he had done the right thing by sacrificing intimacy for the sake of truth. ‘Even now,’ he wrote to Gast, ‘my entire philosophy falters after just an hour’s friendly conversation with total strangers. It seems so silly to insist on being right at the expense of love.’ But – there was always a but. How awful it would be ‘not to be able to disclose what is best in oneself for fear of losing sympathy’. Entering into a relationship would compromise not only his physical freedom, but also his ability to be himself, to pursue his thoughts and speak and act without fear of causing offence. Bearing someone else in mind, watching out for them, wondering what they would like, making allowances, thinking, anticipating and being considerate were all very well, but they would inevitably constrain freedom of spirit.
Despite his misgivings, Nietzsche longed for love. He wanted company in his mission: ‘a free spirit and a free heart!’ ‘I lust after such a soul,’ he told the long-suffering Gast, adding quickly: ‘Marriage is another story – I could agree to a maximum of a two-year marriage.’ He believed he had found such a person in Lou Salomé, a twenty-one-year-old Russian girl he was introduced to by his friend Paul Rée in the spring of 1882, when he was thirty-eight.
Salomé was bold, intense, independent-minded, his intellectual equal. In the photos she appears wasp-waisted and strong-jawed, someone who knows her own mind. For the first time in his life, Nietzsche was smitten. His opening words to her were: ‘From which stars did we fall to meet one other here?’
The courtship was the usual mix of timidity and over-assertiveness. After only a few days Nietzsche issued one of his kamikaze third-person proposals, this time via Rée, who with stunning inevitability was already in love with Salomé himself. Salomé declined tactfully, but whereas on previous occasions rejection had come as a relief to Nietzsche, this time he was undeterred. There was definitely something between them. ‘Talking with Nietzsche is uncommonly beautiful,’ Salomé recorded in her notebook. On a romantic mountain walk – for him, ‘the most exquisite dream of my life!’ – they talked for hours, sharing their deepest philosophical thoughts in a kind of mutual creative epiphany.
He proposed again, earnestly and intently and, unusually for him, in person. Salomé told him she was not interested in marriage, with him or with anyone else, and that she wanted to live the life of an independent woman. She preferred an alternative plan: why didn’t she, Rée and Nietzsche move in together, to set up a house for free spirits where they could read and discuss philosophy? For a while, Nietzsche embraced the idea: it fulfilled his own ideal of love-without-ties. ‘I have such high hopes for us living together,’ he wrote encouragingly to Salomé. It couldn’t last. With a helping hand from Nietzsche’s jealous sister and the equally rivalrous Rée, the whole thing collapsed into a stew of bitterness and misunderstanding. To him she was: ‘This scrawny dirty rank-smelling monkey with her fake breasts – a disaster!’ (The letter remained unsent.) For her: ‘Nietzsche’s nature, like an old castle, contains within it dark dungeons and secret cellars, which are not apparent in fleeting acquaintance, yet perhaps contain his essence.’
Was she ever really into him? Probably not – or, at least, not in that way. Some commentators have accused her of leading on the lovestruck, unworldly philosopher. (Over 100 years later, empathetic middle-aged men still keenly feel the cruelty of Nietzsche’s dismissal by a twenty-one-year-old.) Another school regards her as the victim of his voracious ego – it’s a vital area of Nietzsche scholarship. But her confusion is completely understandable. Nietzsche was much older and, let’s face it, not exactly a catch; even so, she could have loved him. Yet there was something about him that was cold and unloveable – a single-mindedness that repelled affection. He wanted, he told Salomé, to gain an heir in her. She worried that by ‘heir’ he meant ‘secretary’. Not at all: ‘It hadn’t occurred to me that you should “read and write” for me; but I very much wish to be allowed to be your teacher.’ Creepy overtones aside, the statements are revealing about Nietzsche’s state of mind. He wanted a teacher–pupil relationship where she depended on him, not a lover–lover one where they depended on each other. Even in extremis, a part of him resisted love’s true abandonment.
After Salomé, Nietzsche rejected love and the world altogether. During their affair he had confessed to her: ‘I don’t want to be lonely any more and I want to learn how to be human again. Ah, in this area, I have almost everything still to learn!’ (The genuine sweetness of the remark is slightly undermined by the hint that in every other field, his knowledge is superior.) Afterwards he lived only for his project. ‘It was as if,’ reported a friend, ‘he came from a land where no one else lives.’ His disenchantment was accelerated by the failure of his love affair, yet it was also the culmination of a long-term trend. He had based his philosophy on confidence, and confidence is not the friend of love.
Neediness is the hidden side of love, love’s necessary evil. Without it, we might desire other people, but we wouldn’t need them – not in the way love requires. Nietzsche was scared of dependency in any form, yet without dependency love is impossible. Free spirits require constant novelty if they are to maintain confidence. The truly confident person can live without love
, because the truly confident person needs no one but themselves.
Confidence and love both involve being open to other people – but the openness is different in kind and degree. Confidence wants to connect to others and go with the flow, but it always seeks to affirm itself. By contrast, love makes us open to the point of vulnerability. It demands that we change – not merely elaborate or extend ourselves, but rather change in essence, in a way that might feel like diminishing or destroying the self. In love, you can’t take your pride with you, and you can’t reserve yourself intact.
‘So what did you do after you broke up with him?’ asked Nadine. They were squished together in an armchair in the corner of the living room – at the party, but in practice sharing a bottle of wine and talking while the party washed around them.
‘Changed all my passwords,’ said Ellie.
‘God, was Dominic a total shit? He seemed kind of awful, but was he worse than I realised?’
‘I really don’t know, I’ve lost all perspective. I went to a café, changed all my passwords, denied him access to my Google calendar, waited till he went out, bought some bin bags, went back to the flat, got his computer, searched it for any naked pictures of me, deleted the one I found, made sure I had any diaries or anything private I’d ever written, put all the rest of my stuff in the bags—’
‘This is quite scary. How long were you planning this?’
‘I considered logging onto his email and deleting all messages from me, but I held back.’
‘Um, good. I’m not sure you get any sanity points for that.’
Squeezing around the edge of the room, a woman Ellie vaguely recognised just saved her glass of wine from tipping into Nadine’s lap. ‘Oooh, sorry!’
‘No worries.’
‘Then I went to Maggie’s, deleted all record of our relationship on Facebook and where I couldn’t delete it, I detagged it, and when I realised I couldn’t detag it all, I left Facebook—’
‘Then changed your name and got plastic surgery.’
‘That’s actually not a bad idea.’ Ellie drained her plastic glass of wine. She was simultaneously exhausted and hyper-alert: survival mode had well and truly kicked in. Hunger and tiredness had lost their purpose; they cropped up occasionally at odd points in the day or night, but without any insistence, as if natural urges had been temporarily suspended.
‘Look.’ Nadine patted Ellie’s knee in a worryingly parental fashion. ‘Look, I mean this in the nicest possible way. And obviously this is all very fresh and you’re doing well just by washing and eating and stuff. But do you think you maybe need to rethink your approach?’
‘To breaking up?’
‘More to getting together in the first place?’
‘Yeah, I know, I know,’ Ellie nodded earnestly. ‘That’s my next job. Do you fancy a cigarette?’ Ellie was hoping to take some inspiration from Nadine, who managed a multi-layered but apparently low-angst love life. Most recently, Nadine had slept with a woman from the advertising agency where she worked, afterwards remarking only: ‘Well, we’d just finished a big project and I felt like it, you know?’
‘People don’t let you smoke in their houses any more,’ said Nadine regretfully.
‘Obviously my main plan and number-one priority is to stay single.’
‘Yes,’ said Nadine patiently.
‘Stop it.’
‘I’m not doing anything!’ Nadine sipped her wine and wrinkled her nose. ‘When did it stop being okay to drink wine this disgusting?’
‘Since we joined the twats to thirty-five age demographic.’
‘Let’s have this cigarette then.’
Nobody had quite whipped up the momentum to dance. Ellie hauled Nadine up and they made their way through the tightly packed, chatting groups.
‘Can I say,’ said Nadine, ‘I’m not trying to peer pressure you at all, but what you should do next is just have a bit of a fuck about.’
‘How do you mean?’
They headed downstairs, followed by a furtive group of last-tubers.
‘As in, there must be loads of people you felt like having sex with and couldn’t ’cause you were with someone,’ said Nadine, as they pushed out of the front door into the humid evening. ‘Well, now you’re a free woman. Have a rifle through your Rolodex.’
‘Is that a euphemism?’
Nadine laughed. ‘Well, why not?’
They walked down the steps and leaned on the railings opposite a metal-shuttered Londis. Ellie pulled out a packet of tobacco. ‘Maybe ’cause I’m still on a daily crying schedule and my bedroom consists of a bare mattress and a heap of bin bags?’
‘So what? There’s no requirement not to be a mess. Just do what you like without feeling guilty about it. It might be a refreshing change.’
‘Hey.’
Ellie turned around to see Charlie approaching them, carrying tins of beer and wearing shorts and a baggy T-shirt. ‘Oh, hi Charlie. Long time no see. How are you doing?’
‘Yeah, all right thanks.’ Charlie’s hair was longish and unshaped, and he had some non-designer stubble.
‘You know Nadine, right?’
‘Um, sort of. Hi.’
‘Yeah, I sort of know you too,’ said Nadine. ‘We’re just having a cigarette if you’d like one.’
‘Um, I’m okay. But I might stand out here for a minute anyway.’
‘Raring to party?’ Ellie licked her rollie.
‘Mm,’ Charlie smiled. ‘I told Romilly I’d come and didn’t want to bail but to be honest I’m pretty knackered.’
‘Did you come down from Suu . . . ?’
‘Sussex, yeah. Had to work today.’
‘Charlie has a chocolate factory,’ Ellie told Nadine.
‘Amazing! What are the chances?’
‘Yeah. I’m actually trying to break free of my destiny and get out of the chocolate game at the moment.’
‘Did they call you back in to make one last case?’
‘Ha. Sort of.’ Charlie shifted his weight from foot to foot. ‘I have to change job if I ever want to leave home and have some sort of . . . “life”. But—’ He frowned. ‘Sorry, this is really boring, isn’t it?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘Okay. But if I do leave, my parents will probably have to wind down the business, because they can’t really afford to pay someone. I mean, they’re not on my case – they want me to move on too. But it’s a bit confusing. And also my mum’s been ill—’
‘Oh no. What’s wrong?’
‘They’re not completely sure yet, but it’s sort of zapped all her energy. Anyway.’ He shook his head. ‘This isn’t really party chat.’
‘What would you do if you weren’t making chocolates?’
‘That’s my other problem. I don’t know.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Ellie wafted her cigarette. ‘Nobody does.’
‘I certainly don’t,’ Nadine agreed.
‘What are you doing now?’ Charlie asked Ellie. ‘It must be a couple of years since I last saw you.’
‘Well, I’m working reception for a GP so that I can volunteer at this refugee charity.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Don’t be fooled by the fancy titles. It doesn’t mean I have a clue. Like, what if I spend years working for free for this charity and eventually get a job and it’s shit pay and I don’t even like it?’
‘All the Single Ladies’ spilled out of the open window above.
‘They’re playing your song,’ Nadine grinned at Ellie.
‘I take it that’s ironic,’ said Charlie.
‘No. She is actually single. I know – it’s hard to believe.’
‘I’d give it to the end of the evening.’
‘Come on, she might make the end of the week—’
‘Fuck you both,’ said Ellie.
‘You’ve got to be quick off the mark,’ Charlie continued, eyes brightening. ‘It’s like a game of musical statues. There’s probably about ten guys who’ve been pois
ed for the last however-many years, waiting for this twenty-four-hour window. Everyone’s totally still. Then suddenly . . .’ Charlie’s arms flew in all directions. ‘And – freeze!’
Nadine laughed. Ellie rolled her eyes.
‘Do you know how long I’ve been single now?’ said Charlie. ‘Two and a half years.’
‘Stop showing off.’
‘Out of choice?’ said Nadine.
‘God, no – I meet nobody! I’ve reached depths of loneliness you can’t even imagine! I’m practically a monk.’
‘Order of the Fruit and Nut.’
‘Maybe I should become a nun,’ Ellie mused, seriously entertaining the notion. ‘A quiet life. I like getting up early.’
‘Shut up, you idiot!’ said Nadine.
‘Thanks.’ Ellie came to. ‘Good you were here.’
‘Shall we go in then?’ Nadine stubbed out her fag on the top of the railing.
‘Do we have to?’
‘S’pose I better say hello,’ said Charlie. ‘But then we could always hide in a corner and talk to each other.’
‘Sounds good.’
Nadine led the way, her orange silk dress glowing up the stairs. Ellie walked just behind Charlie. As they reached the top of the stairs, she found herself looking at a point on his back, between and just below his shoulder blades. Nadine raised her hand to push the door open and at the same time, Ellie raised her hand, and placed it on the patch of green T-shirt she’d been staring at. Charlie turned around, his eyebrows raised a little in surprise, perhaps expecting her to explain she was removing an insect or tucking in a label. She looked at his face, tired and tanned and unguarded. Quite out of nowhere, she kissed him.
‘Oh,’ said Charlie.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m not starting a relationship with you. That’s the last thing I need.’
Confidence Page 28