A Widow for One Year

by John Irving

  The questions from the young people in the audience, after my reading, are all about the social problems in the United States. Because they see my books as critical of American society, they invite me to express my perceived anti-Americanism. (The interviewers extend the same invitation.) And now—given their pending reunification—the Germans also want to know what I think of them . What do Americans, in general, think of Germans? Are we happy about German reunification?

  I would rather talk about storytelling, I tell them. They wouldn’t. All I can say is that my lack of interest in what interests them is genuine. They don’t like my answer.

  In the new novel, the prostitute should be an older woman—someone not too intimidating to the woman writer. Her bad boyfriend wants a younger, better-looking prostitute than the one the woman writer eventually chooses. The reader should anticipate the boyfriend’s awfulness, but the woman writer doesn’t see it coming. She’s concentrating on her observations of the prostitute—not just on the prostitute’s customer, or least of all on the mechanically familiar act, but on all the surrounding details of the prostitute’s room.

  There should be something concerning what the woman writer likes and dislikes about men; possibly she asks the prostitute how she is able to overcome her physical abhorrence of certain types of men. Are there men the prostitute says no to? There must be! Prostitutes can’t be totally indifferent to . . . well, the details of men.

  It should happen in Amsterdam. A.) Because prostitutes are so available there. B.) Because I’m going there. C.) Because my Dutch publisher is a nice guy; I can persuade him to see and talk to a prostitute with me.

  No, stupid—you should see the prostitute alone.

  What I like: Allan’s aggressiveness, most of the time. (I like the limits of his aggressiveness, too.) And his criticism, at least of my writing. I can be myself with him. He tolerates me, he forgives me. (Maybe too much.) I feel safe with him; I would do more, read more, go out more with him. He wouldn’t force himself on me. (He hasn’t forced himself on me.) He would be a good father.

  What I don’t like: he interrupts me, but he interrupts everybody. It’s not that his eating habits, I mean his table manners, embarrass me; it’s more that I find the way he eats repellent. There is the fear that I would find him sexually repellent, too. And there’s the matter of the hair on the backs of his hands. . . . Oh, get over it!

  [In a postcard to Allan, which was of an 1885 Daimler in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.]

  DO YOU NEED A NEW CAR? I’D LIKE TO TAKE A LONG DRIVE WITH YOU.

  LOVE,

  RUTH

  On the flight from Stuttgart to Hamburg, then in a car from Hamburg to Kiel. There are a lot of cows. We are in the state of Schleswig-Holstein—where the cows of that name come from. My driver is a sales rep for my publisher. I always learn something from sales reps. This one explains that my German readers expect me to be more “ political” than I am. The sales rep tells me that my novels are political in the sense that all social commentary is political. The sales rep says: “Your books are political but you aren’t!”

  I’m not sure if this is offered as criticism or simply stated as a fact, but I believe it. And the subject comes up in the questions from the audience, after the reading in the Kunsthalle in Kiel—a good crowd.

  Instead, I try to talk about storytelling. “I’m like someone who makes furniture,” I tell them, “so let’s talk about a few things that have to do with chairs or tables.” I can see by their faces that they want this to be more complicated, more symbolic than it is. “I am thinking of a new novel,” I explain. “It’s about that point in a woman’s life when she decides she wants to be married— not because there’s a man in her life whom she truly wants to marry, but because she’s sick and tired of bad boyfriends.” The laughter is sporadic and discouraging. I try it in German. There’s more laughter, but I suspect the laughter is because of my German.

  “It could be my first book with a first-person narrator,” I tell them. Now I see that they have lost all interest, in English and in German. “Then it would be called My Last Bad Boyfriend .” (The title is terrible in German; it is greeted with more dismay than laughter: Mein letzter schlimmer Freund . It sounds like a novel about an adolescent disease.)

  I pause for a drink of water and see the audience slipping away, especially from the seats in the rear of the hall. And those who have stayed are painfully waiting for me to finish. I don’t have the heart to tell them that the woman I’m going to write about is a writer . That would really kill their interest. So much for the craft of storytelling or the concrete concerns of the storyteller! Even I am bored with trying to entertain people on the subject of what it is I really do.

  From my hotel room in Kiel, I can see the ferries in the bay. They are en route to and from Sweden and Denmark. Maybe one day I could go there with Allan. Maybe one day I could travel with a husband and a child, and with a nanny for the child.

  The woman writer I’m thinking about: does she truly believe that marriage will be the death of her freedom to observe the world? If she were already married, she could have gone with her husband to see and talk to a prostitute! For a woman writer, having a husband could give her more freedom of observation. Maybe the woman I’m writing about doesn’t know that.

  I wonder if Allan would object to observing a prostitute with her customer with me. Of course he wouldn’t!

  But the person I should really ask to do this with me is my father.

  [In a postcard to her father, which was of the prostitutes in their windows on the Herbertstrasse, the red-light district in the St. Pauli quarter of Hamburg.]

  THINKING OF YOU, DADDY. I’M SORRY ABOUT WHAT I SAID. IT WAS MEAN. I LOVE YOU!

  RUTHIE

  The flight from Hamburg to Köln; the drive from Köln to Bonn; the grandeur of the university.

  For the first time, someone in the audience asked about my eye. (In my interviews, all the journalists have asked.) This was a young woman; she looked like a student, and her English was almost perfect.

  “Who hit you?” she asked.

  “My father,” I told her. The audience was suddenly hushed. “With his elbow. We were playing squash.”

  “Your father is young enough to play squash with you?” the young woman asked.

  “No, he is not young enough,” I told her, “but he’s in pretty good shape for a man his age.”

  “I suppose you beat him, then,” the student said.

  “Yes, I beat him,” I answered.

  But after the reading, the same young woman handed me a note. I don’t believe you. Someone hit you, the note said.

  This I also like about the Germans: they come to their own conclusions.

  Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label—to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be.

  And I can just hear Allan on the subject of my writing two novels in a row about women writers; yet I’ve heard him say that editorial advice should not include recommendations or caveats about what to write or not write about. Doubtless I shall have to remind him of that.

  But more important to this new novel: what does the bad boyfriend do, as a result of observing a prostitute with her customer, that is so degrading to the woman novelist? What happens to make her feel so ashamed that it’s enough to make her change her life?

  After watching the prostitute with her customer, the boyfriend could be so aroused that the way he makes love to the woman writer makes her feel that he is thinking about someone else. But that’s just another version of bad sex. It must be something more awful, more humiliating than that.

  In a way, I like this phase of a novel better than the actual writing of it. In the beginning, there are so many possibilities. With each detail you choose, with every word you commit yourself to, your options close dow
n.

  The matter of searching for my mother, or not; the hope that, one day, she will come looking for me. What are the remaining major events in my life? I mean the events that might make my mother come to me. My father’s death; my wedding, if I have one; the birth of my child, if I have one. (If I ever get up the nerve to have children, I would want only one.) Maybe I should announce my forthcoming marriage to Eddie O’Hare. That might get my mother’s attention. I wonder if Eddie would go along with it—after all, he wants to see her, too!

  [In a postcard to Eddie O’Hare, which was of the great Cologne cathedral, the splendid Dom—the largest Gothic cathedral in Germany.]

  BEING WITH YOU, TALKING WITH YOU . . . IT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENING IN MY LIFE, SO FAR. I HOPE I SEE YOU AGAIN SOON.

  SINCERELY,

  RUTH COLE

  [In a postcard to Allan, which was of a magnificent castle on the Rhein.]

  BE AN EDITOR. CHOOSE BETWEEN THESE TWO TITLES: HER LAST BAD BOYFRIEND OR MY LAST BAD BOYFRIEND . IN EITHER CASE, I LIKE THE IDEA.

  LOVE,

  RUTH

  P.S. BUY ME THIS HOUSE AND I’LL MARRY YOU. I THINK I MIGHT MARRY YOU, ANYWAY!

  “I’m a novelist,” I will doubtless say at some point. “I’m just a storyteller.”

  Looking over the list of my fellow panelists—other authors, all promoting their books at the book fair—there is an atrocious American male of the Unbearable Intellectual species. And there is another American writer, female, less well known but no less atrocious; she is of the Pornography Violates My Civil Rights school. (If she hasn’t already reviewed Not for Children, she will—and not kindly.)

  There is also a young German novelist whose work has been banned in Canada. There was some charge of obscenity—in all probability, not unmerited. It’s hard to forget the specific obscenity charge. A character in the young German’s novel is having sex with chickens; he is caught in a posh hotel with a chicken. A terrible squawking leads the hotel staff to make the discovery—that, and the hotel maid had complained of feathers.

  But the German novelist is interesting in comparison to the other panelists.

  “I’m a comic novelist,” I will doubtless say at some point; I always do. Half the audience (and more than half of my fellow panelists) will take this to mean that I am not a serious novelist. But comedy is ingrained. A writer doesn’t choose to be comic. You can choose a plot, or not to have one. You can choose your characters. But comedy is not a choice; it just comes out that way.

  Another panelist is an Englishwoman who’s written a book about socalled recovered memory—in her case, hers . She woke up one morning and “remembered” that her father had raped her, and her brothers had raped her—and all her uncles. Her grandfather, too! Every morning she wakes up and “remembers” someone else who raped her. She must be exhausted!

  Regardless of how heated the debate on the panel is, the young German novelist will have a faraway expression on his face—as if something serenely romantic has just crossed his mind. Probably a chicken.

  “I’m just a storyteller,” I will say again (and again). “I’m not good at generalizations.”

  Only the chicken-lover will understand me. He will give me a kindly look, maybe mildly desirous. His eyes will tell me: You might look a lot better with some reddish-brown feathers.

  In Frankfurt, in my small room at the Hessischer Hof, drinking a beer that isn’t very cold. At midnight it becomes October 3—Germany is reunited. On the TV, I watch the celebrations in Bonn and Berlin. A moment of history, alone in a hotel room. What can one say about German reunification? It’s already happened .

  Coughed all night. Called the publisher this morning, then the publicist. It’s such a shame to cancel my appearance on the panel, but I must save my voice for my readings. The publisher sent me more flowers. The publicist brought me a package of cough drops—“with organically grown Swiss alpine herbs.” Now I can cough through my interviews with my breath smelling of lemon balm and wild thyme. I’ve never been happier to have a cough.

  On the elevator, there was the tragicomic Englishwoman; from the look of her, she’d doubtless awakened with the recovered memory of yet another rape.

  At lunch in the Hessischer Hof, there was (at another table) the German novelist who does it with chickens; he was being interviewed by a woman who interviewed me earlier this morning. My interviewer at lunch was a man with a bigger cough than mine. And when I was alone, just sipping coffee at my table, the young German novelist looked at me whenever I coughed—as if I had a feather caught in my throat.

  I truly love my cough. I can take a long bath and think about my new novel.

  In the elevator, like a small man inflated to grotesque size—with helium—there is the atrocious American male, the Unbearable Intellectual. He seems offended when I step into the elevator with him.

  “You missed the panel. They said you were sick,” he tells me.

  “Yes.”

  “Everyone gets sick here—it’s a terrible place.”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope I don’t catch something from you,” he says.

  “I hope not.”

  “I’m probably already sick—I’ve been here long enough,” he adds. Like his writing, it’s unclear what he means. Does he mean he’s been in Frankfurt long enough to catch something, or does he mean he’s been in the elevator long enough to have been exposed to what I’ve got?

  “Are you still not married?” he asks me. It’s not a pass; it’s a signature non sequitur of the kind the Unbearable Intellectual is renowned for.

  “Still not married, but maybe about to be,” I answer.

  “Ah—good for you!” he tells me. I’m surprised by his genuine fondness for my answer. “Here’s my floor,” he says. “Sorry you weren’t on the panel.”

  “Yes.” Ah, the little-heralded chance encounter between world-famous authors—is there anything that compares with it?

  The woman writer should meet the strawberry-blond boyfriend at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The bad boyfriend is a fellow fiction writer—very minimalist. He’s published only two books of short stories—fragile tales, so spare that most of the story is left out. His sales are small, but he has been compensated by the kind of unqualified critical adoration that often accompanies obscurity.

  The woman novelist should be a writer of “big” novels. They are a parody of the proverbial wisdom that opposites attract. In this case, they can’t stand each other’s writing; their attraction is strictly sexual.

  He should be younger than she is.

  They begin an affair in Frankfurt and he comes with her to Holland, where she is going after the book fair to promote a Dutch translation. He doesn’t have a Dutch publisher—and he has been far less in the limelight in Frankfurt than she has been. Although she hasn’t noticed this, he has. He hasn’t been in Amsterdam since he was a student—a summer abroad. He remembers the prostitutes; he wants to take her to see the prostitutes. Maybe a live-sex show, too.

  “I don’t think I want to see a live-sex show,” the woman novelist says.

  It could be his idea to pay a prostitute to let them watch. “We could have our own live-sex show,” the short-story writer says. He seems almost indifferent to the idea. He implies that she might be more interested in it than he is. “As a writer, ” he says. “For research .”

  And when they’re in Amsterdam, and he’s escorting her through the red-light district, he keeps up a casual, lighthearted banter. “I wouldn’t want to see her do it—she looks inclined to bondage.” (That kind of thing.) The minimalist makes her think that watching a prostitute will be merely a naughty bit of hilarity. He gives her the impression that the most difficult part of it will be trying to contain their laughter— because, of course, they can’t reveal their concealed presence to the customer.

  But I wonder how the prostitute would hide them so that they could see without being seen?

  That will be my research. I can ask my Dutch publisher
to walk with me through the red-light district—after all, it’s a thing tourists do. He probably is asked by all his women authors; we all want to be escorted through the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant. (The last time I was in Amsterdam, a journalist walked with me through the redlight district; it was his idea.)

  So I will get a look at the women. I remember that they don’t like it when women look at them. But I’m sure I’ll find one or two who don’t absolutely terrify me—someone I can go back to, alone. It will have to be someone who speaks English, or at least a little German.

  One prostitute might be enough, as long as she is comfortable about talking to me. I can imagine the act without seeing it, surely. Besides: it is what happens to the woman in hiding, the woman writer, that most concerns me. Let’s presume the bad boyfriend is aroused, even that he masturbates while they’re hiding together. And she can’t protest, or even make the slightest move to get away from him—without the prostitute’s customer knowing that he’s being watched. (Then how can he masturbate? That’s a problem.)

  Maybe the irony is that the prostitute has at least been paid for how she’s used, but the woman writer is used, too; she has spent her money to be used. Well. Writers must have thick skins. No irony there.

  Allan called. I coughed for him. Now that there is no immediate possibility for us to have sex—given the ocean between us—naturally I felt like having sex with him. Women are perverse!

  I didn’t tell him about the new book, not a word. It would have spoiled the postcards.