Fictional Lives

by Hugh Fleetwood

  ‘Does,’ she asked David, ‘the woman work?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. But I’m not sure yet. I’m not really very far into the book. And I’ve hardly touched on the character of the Frenchwoman. I’ve been concentrating on the wife so far.’

  ‘Does she know she’s going to be killed?’

  ‘She suspects. But—’ David smiled again. ‘In that respect she’s like you. She refuses to believe her own suspicions. She tells herself it’s ridiculous. That “civilized” people don’t kill each other.’

  ‘They don’t,’ Fran said sharply.

  ‘Oh Fran dear, do stop it. Of course they don’t.’

  Fran wondered….

  ‘And what happens in the end?’

  ‘There again I’m not certain yet. Maybe the husband does it, and gets the money, or maybe—he doesn’t. I don’t know.’

  ‘Why,’ Fran asked finally, ‘doesn’t the wife change her will, leave her money to someone else, when she starts to suspect what is happening?’

  ‘Because that would be an admission that she does believe it is happening. And being a convinced rationalist, she cannot bring herself to make this admission. She would rather die than allow the irrational to enter her world. Indeed she would die if she did, because her entire life is built upon the premise that one must deny the irrational, and without this premise she couldn’t go on.’

  Fran nodded. She looked out of the window. She remembered that she was taking Cyrus to Hunter College this afternoon, to see a children’s show. She remembered she had an English publisher and his wife coming for drinks at six. She remembered that she had to finish reading two books; and that Gerhard had promised to drive her to Princeton tomorrow, to see a young woman they had recently met who wrote short stories.

  She remembered that she was a woman who lived in a small body in a small world, and had always, more or less, controlled both.

  She stood up and said ‘David, I know I am being ridiculous, and that my pains probably are imaginary, and that I have no right to ask you this. But will you please do me a favour and not write any more of your book.’

  There was no hint of apology in her voice; no trace of weakness. She wanted something; and she had asked for it.

  For a while then there was silence. David looked at his hands. He looked round the room—round her room—and up at the ceiling. He looked at her, and made her feel that while she had never been more unattractive in her life, she had never cared less. He looked back at his hands. And only after perhaps half a minute did he speak.

  ‘No,’ he said, with a directness that equalled, briefly, her own. ‘No, I’m sorry.’

  Then his directness collapsed. The eyes shone with sincerity. The generally smooth forehead crumpled with concern. The lips were about to utter some self-condemnation. He came over to her and put his arms around her. He kissed her cheek. He said ‘Oh Fran, I wish I could. Honestly. I know how upsetting all this must be for you. But you don’t really mean it. You don’t really want me to give it up. You just think you do. But really, my dear, I can’t. It’s—’ he gave a soft laugh—‘it’s as if you were asking me to have an abortion. And I can’t.’ He paused. ‘Why don’t you and Gerhard take a vacation? Go to Europe. Go to Mexico. Go anywhere. I’m sure your pains would stop then. Gerhard does love you, you know that. And I love you. Everyone loves you. Really. You’re wonderful. So don’t be silly now. Please.’

  He could fawn all he liked. He could go down on his knees in front of her. His eyes could fill with tears. But he was, now, stronger than her, and he knew it; and she knew he was not about to renounce his strength. She stood there, stiff between his arms, and told herself that she despised him. She told herself she should say ‘in that case I must ask you to quit this apartment.’ (Though she knew even now that she wouldn’t.) She told herself that since she had nothing more to say she should leave. She wanted to go home.

  Still though, for a while, she didn’t move; and still she searched for a solution. What if, she thought, she bribed the man. Surely if she offered him enough he would renounce his precious baby. Or perhaps she should threaten to write to his publishers and warn them that if they took the book she would sue them. Or perhaps….

  But it was all useless. She suspected she had no grounds on which to sue. If there were grounds she realized that if she couldn’t bring herself to threaten him with eviction, she certainly couldn’t bring herself to take that step. And she was sure that however much money she did offer him he would still refuse; if only because his hatred was as necessary to him as her sense of reason was to her. And that it was hatred that inspired David, she suddenly became positive….

  She released herself from his embrace, and shook her head. ‘Let’s smoke a cigarette together,’ she said, ‘and then I must go.’

  ‘Yes,’ David murmured; and then ‘You do understand, don’t you, Fran?’

  *

  Yes, she did, Fran told herself ten minutes later, out once more in the street. It was as she had perceived when she had first heard the story, and as she had further perceived a little while ago. David did not like to feel dependent on her. Because he was dependent on her, he hated her and everything she stood for. And out of his hatred he created….

  (She wondered if, when he became successful, he would lose his hatred. Probably not, she thought. It would even grow. For then he would be more than ever dependent. On critics. On publishers. On the book-buying public. On all those people who held the ropes which kept him suspended up there in the spotlight. Of course he would reason that it was him, on his intellectual trapeze, that the crowds were watching. And he would be right. Nevertheless, he would resent the fact that he was performing in someone else’s circus; a circus of whose management he did not necessarily approve, and to whose profits and maintenance he was contributing.)

  Yet though she told herself all this, and was sure that she had understood David’s motives for writing his book, Fran couldn’t help feeling, in that warm spring morning, not so much angry now at her absurdity, as, once again, frightened. Because having failed to get the genie back into its bottle, she sensed that for the first time in her adult life she was starting to lose that control she had always had. It was horrifying; to have the sidewalk beneath her feet shake and sway and crack…. Especially when she knew the composition of the stones; knew who had laid them, who maintained them, what was beneath them. And more especially when, in spite of all her knowledge, she was certain that if she did lose her balance, if she were to slip through one of those cracks, she would be plunged into chaos; into a world where nothing was solid, nothing was real, and nothing at all could be controlled. It was so horrifying that for a moment she was on the point of abandoning herself altogether, and bursting into tears; or of racing back to David and forcing him to give up his book, whatever means she had to employ. But it was only for a moment. Then she pulled herself together, and forced herself to think of something else. To think again, for example, since indignation was still the dominant emotion within her, of David’s character; and more particularly, of what David himself had told her about that character, one evening several months ago.

  He had been born, he said, in Texas. His father was a mild ineffectual man who had been semi-crippled by a fall from a ladder, and who stayed home after his accident and invented things. His mother was a brisk, practical, over-bearing woman who owned a store and kept the large family going. He was the fourth of seven children. Superficially, they had all gotten on well together, but deeper down his brothers and sisters had distrusted him. Not because he considered himself superior to them intellectually—though he guessed he did—but because of something soft, sly, underhand in his manner. He was always friendly, ingratiating, ready to go along, in family discussions, with his mother’s idea or opinions. But the second her back was turned—he struck. He would scratch her. He would claw her. He would tear her to pieces. He was like a cat, his brothers and sisters told him; and he looked like a cat. Smooth and sleek and impeccably
groomed. Yet in spite of this distrust, he never felt lonely. Because he adored his lame irresponsible father; and because though he didn’t like his mother, and the way she ruled the household, and though he did attempt to destroy her in the eyes of the other children, he never allowed her to see what he felt, and what he did. Nor, he was convinced, did she.

  ‘That way,’ he had told Fran, ‘I felt safe. On the one hand I had the company of someone who made me laugh, who made me feel cheerful, and who interested me—and on the other I had the protection of the person who ran the show. Which I guess,’ he had added, ‘has been the story of my life ever since. Only I’ve generalized it over the years, and while my possibly sentimental love of the happy and unreflecting has grown, my hatred of the rulers has also grown. But I still spend most of my time with one or other of the two groups. Either with the gypsies, or with the tyrants.

  ‘I started writing, I guess, when I finally did pluck up the courage to denounce the tyrants. To denounce them for the violence and the cruelty, the selfishness and the greed that lies behind their often reasonable and civilized exteriors. That lies behind their professions of acting for the general good. But do you know something? Either their blindness, their stupidity, or their sense of guilt is such that they’ve never noticed what I’m doing. Or my slyness is such that I’ve managed to disguise my voice, so they don’t really hear what I’m saying.’

  Until now, Fran thought, as she turned east, deciding to walk home across the park. Until now….

  She couldn’t help admitting, however, as her fear returned with renewed force, that she herself, until this morning, had been stupid and blind. She should have realized, six months ago when David had told her that tale, that in spite of his repeated claims to love her, he included her among the rulers he loathed. As indeed she should have realized to what extent it was this loathing that inspired him….

  *

  Stupid and blind she may have been. Nevertheless, just as before Fran had not allowed herself to think of David’s novel, so, over the following weeks, she did not—could not—allow herself to be overcome by her fear. Her fear that Gerhard, having heard of that novel, was now following its plot; chapter by chapter…. She had, she told herself as her pains grew steadily worse, to be calm; and she had to seek the rational explanation.

  She went, accordingly, to several different doctors; and when she had heard from all of them that they didn’t know what was wrong, she contemplated swallowing her pride, and going to consult a psychiatrist.

  Before taking such a step, however, she thought it only right that she discuss the matter with Gerhard. Which she did one evening in the middle of May.

  They were sitting in their living room, and she started by saying that recently—since her pains had started, come to think of it—she had begun to dislike this room. For years, with its comfortable sofas, its beautiful old English furniture, its mainly modern paintings, it had seemed to her one of the pleasantest of rooms. Now though—something had happened to it. It looked, she complained, stiff and awkward. Unnatural. She felt as if she were sitting in a stage-set.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Gerhard, sprawled out on one of the sofas with a glass of wine in his hand, told her. ‘It’s because you’re not feeling well. Everyone feels like that when they’re sick.’

  ‘Talking of sickness,’ Fran said, smiling at her husband—who had been more kind and attentive than ever of late—‘I think I’m going to go to an analyst next week.’

  Gerhard, who had always disliked analysis as much as she had, though for different reasons—whereas she believed that she was strong enough to master herself, he wasn’t remotely interested in mastering himself—frowned. ‘What kind of analyst?’

  ‘A psychoanalyst. A psychiatrist.’

  ‘What in God’s name for? You don’t think you’re imagining your pains, do you?’

  ‘No, of course I’m not imagining them. But what I am imagining may be the cause of those pains. Or what I’m imagining may be a symptom of my sickness.’

  Gerhard smiled at her now; his way of telling her to go on, and explain herself.

  ‘You mustn’t be mad with me. But you see since David told me the story of that book, and since I did start getting these cramps, in the back of my mind I have the idea that you’re poisoning me.’

  She had expected Gerhard either to be amused, or, despite her telling him he mustn’t, to be angry.

  And since he normally behaved as was expected, she was relieved when he was both.

  He began by laughing—narrowing his eyes and saying ‘Oh Fran’—and then, seeing that she was serious, went on to become indignant, and slightly sulky.

  ‘Jesus,’ he pouted. ‘That’s charming.’

  Fran, sitting in a straight-backed chair, shrugged.

  ‘There’s no point in being coy about it. That is what I’ve been thinking. And that’s why I think I should see a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Yes.’ Gerhard hesitated. ‘I guess you should.’

  There was silence for a while; then Fran asked the question she couldn’t help asking.

  ‘You’re not poisoning me, are you?’

  Now she expected him really to flare up; even to storm out of the house and come back tomorrow suffering from amnesia.

  But this time Gerhard did not do what was expected of him. Which made his wife feel first disconcerted, and then truly alarmed.

  He sat up on the sofa; he stared at her with the expression of a hurt child; and he murmured, with a helpless little gesture of the hands, ‘Even if I were I’d obviously deny it, wouldn’t I? So—no, I’m not.’

  Fran stared back at him. It wasn’t so much what he had said that alarmed her, as the way he had said it; as that helpless little gesture. He suddenly looked to her like a person sitting on a stage, playing a part that he wasn’t happy with, yet which he couldn’t not play. Either because he didn’t have the strength of will to defy the author, who had written the part just for him; or because he realized that if he didn’t accept this role, there would be no other for him. And he couldn’t live without acting….

  Just as she, she thought, so small and dumpy, so rich and unattractive, was like an actress who had been cast in the role of the victim.

  Or perhaps, more than being like actors and actresses on a stage, they were like characters in a story. Sitting in a room that had been described as having comfortable sofas, beautiful old English furniture, and mainly modern paintings….

  Outside, and far below, she could hear the sound of traffic; and the sirens of police cars, racing to the scene of a crime.

  In her fear, Fran did at last force herself to smile. But her voice, when she spoke, was sharp.

  ‘In any case,’ she said, as she had said to herself before, ‘you have no reason to wish me dead, have you? After all, we’re happy together, and if we weren’t, you’d leave me.’ She added: ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Gerhard stood up, came over to her, and held out his hands. ‘And now let’s go to bed.’

  Fran smiled again, and let herself be virtually lifted to her feet. As she let herself be led to the bedroom, undressed, and, as yet another attack of her pains hit her, put to bed.

  And it wasn’t until she was in bed, wincing and clutching her husband’s hand, that Gerhard, softly, concluded their conversation.

  Stroking, with his free hand, her forehead, he murmured: ‘But you know one thing, Fran. You’d never let me go even if I wanted to. I mean you probably couldn’t stop me actually going, but you’d destroy me once I had gone. Destroy the business. Destroy everything. I mean—not only make sure I didn’t have a cent, but make sure I didn’t even have a pillow to rest my head on.’ It was his turn then to add: ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  But Fran didn’t reply. And biting her lips, she simply clung to her husband, thought that he was probably right—she wouldn’t allow this most precious of all her possessions to slip from her grasp—and told herself miserably that maybe, if there were any truth in this absurd
tale, she had got things the wrong way round. Till now, when entertaining the ridiculous notion that she was being poisoned, she had believed that David had given Gerhard the idea of killing her. But what if Gerhard had already made his plans, David had somehow discovered, or guessed what he was doing, and had seen in the plot the material for a good book; for the good book that Fran Niebauer had always hoped he would write….

  If David had told her directly what was happening—or even given her proof—Gerhard would have changed his mind, and the story would have fizzled out. Loathing her as he did, David didn’t want Gerhard to change his mind. So telling her by way of the book he had both warned her, and salved his conscience, and also, since he knew that she would never believe him, had assured Gerhard that he could go ahead and do what he wanted, without any interference. Just as long as he, David Chezzel, had the exclusive rights. (And he would of course, Fran saw now, change the characters and the situation enough so that no one would recognize the people or the event on which they were based.)

  It wasn’t, in that case, a matter of life imitating art—a concept Fran had never had much patience with—but, as usual, just a matter of art imitating life. And it was, she told herself, perfect. Or it would have been if it were true.

  Which it wasn’t. It wasn’t. She simply had some so far unexplained pains in her stomach. Really.

  She spent much of that night lying awake telling herself this, and thinking, once again, of Gerhard. Of the Gerhard whom she loved. Of the Gerhard whom she controlled….

  Towards dawn she asked herself if she did want to control her world, and everyone in it, because the world outside was appalling, and she wanted to be safe from it; or if she wanted that control because she feared that the world outside was appalling. She would have liked to think it was the former—and considering the evidence of history she was more than justified in doing so—but she was afraid it was in fact the latter. It was fear that had made her retire into her book-lined, record-filled penthouse. And not even fear of the known—of the horrors that history revealed—but fear of the unknown. Of the imaginary. For the known, however terrible, could be accommodated. Whereas the unknown….