by Albert Cohen
With a sigh of relief that she had not missed the deadline, she crept between the sheets at twenty-nine minutes past eleven and turned out the light at once. Lying in the dark, she smiled. There had been no ring at the door since she had come upstairs. So the beast hadn't come. Egg all over the collective Deume face.
'Serves them right,' she murmured, and curled herself up into a ball.
She was composing herself for sleep when there were two light taps on her door. It must be him. What did he want now? She decided not to answer. He would think she was asleep and give up. And a few moments later she did indeed hear him go back to his room and shut his door. Saved! Curled up once more, she shut her eyes again. Damn, he was coming back. Two knocks, louder this time. O God, why couldn't he leave her in peace? Might as well answer and get it over with.
'Who's there?' she said with a groan, pretending to wake with a start.
'It's me, darling. Can I come in?'
'All right.'
'You don't mind me disturbing you?' he asked as he entered.
'No,' she said, and she put on a ghostly, long-suffering smile.
'Don't worry, I shan't stay long. I'd just like to know what you make of it, I mean the fact that he didn't show up.-'
'Dunno. He must have been prevented.'
'Yes, but it's odd, don't you think, that he didn't even phone to let us know, or send his apologies or anything. Say: what do you think I ought to do tomorrow? Should I go and see him?'
'Yes, go and see him.'
'But that might put his back up, it might sort of look like a criticism, as if I was asking him to explain himself.'
'Well don't, then.'
'Yes, but on the other hand I can't just leave things as they are. I mean, what sort of idiot would I look if I bump into him and he doesn't say anything? I mean, I've got my pride. What do you think?'
'Best go and see him.'
'Are you cross because I came?' he asked after a pause.
'No. But I'm feeling rather sleepy.'
'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come. Sorry. I'll go now. Good-night, darling.'
'Good-night,' she smiled. 'Pleasant dreams,' she said. It was his reward for going away.
He got as far as the door then turned and came back.
'Look, can I stay for two more minutes?'
'Yes, of course.'
He sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand. Ever the model wife, she arranged her lips in a fixed smile while he peered at her through his glasses with spaniel eyes and waited for her to comfort him. When the words he hoped to hear did not come, he tried to drag them out of her.
'You know, it's been a bit of a let-down for me.'
'Yes, I see that,' she said, and then reverted to her fixed smile.
'What would you advise me to do?'
'I don't know. Wait for him to apologize.'
'Yes, but what if he doesn't apologize?'
'No idea,' she said, and glanced towards the clock on the mantelpiece.
In the silence, he stared at her and waited. She thought only of the minutes which dropped one by one into the silence. If he stayed much longer the deadline would go by and she'd be in for a sleepless night. He had promised he would, only stay for two minutes, but he'd been sitting there for well over two minutes just goggling at her. Why wasn't he sticking to his promise? She knew exactly what he was after: reassurance. But if she started being comforting they'd be there for ages. He would raise objections to her reassuring words to make her console him some more, and the whole business would drag on until two in the morning. His clammy hand on hers felt most unpleasant. Her subtle efforts to free herself failing to produce any effect, she said that she had pins and needles, took her hand away, and looked at the clock.
'I'll stay another minute and then I'll go.'
'Yes,' she smiled.
Suddenly he stood up.
'You're not very nice to me.'
She sat up in bed. How unfair! She had answered him nicely, she had gone on smiling at him, and here he was finding fault!
'In what way?' she asked, looking him in the eye. 'In what way aren't I nice?'
'All you want is to see the back of me, and yet you know how much I need you.'
These last words made her see red. Who was this man to be needing her all the time?
'It's ten to twelve,' she said pointedly.
'So what if I was to get ill and you had to keep watch by my bedside, how would you manage then?'
'She had a sudden vision of herself sitting up all night by his bed, and she was filled with fury against this man who never gave a thought to anyone except himself. She put on her stoniest expression, unyielding and hard. She had turned into a crazed ice-maiden, incapable of thinking of anything beyond her threatened sleep, so terrorized was she by the prospect of a night of insomnia. He repeated his question.
'I don't know! I don't know!' she shouted. 'I have no idea what I would do. But what I do know is that it's eight minutes to midnight! Why choose the middle of the night to start a question-and-answer session? And why bring up all this rubbish about falling ill? (She felt an urge to say that there were nurses to look after the sick, but thought better of it.) Now I'll never get to sleep, thanks to your selfishness!'
She glowered with hate at this man who saw fit to need her at midnight. Oh, this awful passion of his for depending on her for every little thing!
'Darling, don't be mean, be nice to me. I'm so unhappy.'
Again she turned her implacable face to him, the face he knew so well, and he was suddenly afraid. It was the face of a heartless woman and it belonged to his wife, she whom he had chosen above all others, his companion through life. He sat down on a chair next to the bed and, gathering his thoughts together, forced himself to dwell on his misery: perhaps he could make himself cry. In a little while tears duly came, and he turned towards his wife to ensure that she got a good look at them, to make the most of the wetness of his cheeks. She averted her eyes, for women do not care much for men who weep, especially if they are the cause of the problem.
'Darling, be nice to me,' he repeated to keep her attention, for it was important to maximize the return on his tears while they still flowed, before they evaporated.
'What do you mean when you say I'm not nice?'
'You're not being very nice just now.'
'It's not true, I am nice!' she exclaimed. 'I am very nice! You're the one who's not nice! It's midnight!'
Maddened by the thought that all was now lost, that she wouldn't sleep that night and that tomorrow she'd feel as limp as a rag, with a crushing migraine, she leaped out of bed wearing only her pyjama jacket, walked up and down the room in a fury, looking unusually tall on her long, bare legs. Crushed in advance, and anticipating the recriminations which were sure to come, he slumped over the edge of her bed. This made her angrier still. What gave this man the right to sit down on the bed, her bed, the bed she'd slept in when she was a girl? In a rage, she picked up a pencil and snapped it in two. Then turning to her oppressor, incandescent with indignation and determined to defend the victim she felt herself to be, she prepared to do battle by buttoning up her short jacket and began to protest. She was a good protester.
'It's shameful, it's outrageous,' she began, to get her hand in and build up a head of steam while waiting for inspiration and a suitable theme. 'So, you don't think I'm very nice! Is it because for the last half-hour I've been sitting here meek and mild, like Patience on a monument? Is it because I didn't say anything when you broke your promise, though I knew I probably shouldn't sleep? Yes, broke your promise! You said you'd only stay for two minutes. You lied to me, you lured me into a trap! You've been here half an hour and I've not complained once that you've failed to keep your solemn word! (He looked up at her helplessly. Failed to keep his solemn word! The way she had of putting things! He hadn't given any solemn word, and she knew it. But what was the use of trying to defend himself? Whatever he said, he'd be shot down in flames.) No,' she went on,
'I never complained, the very opposite, I smiled ever so sweetly, and that's what you call not being nice: I smiled! That's right, I went on smiling for half an hour hoping that you'd realize what horrible torment you were putting me through, hoping and hoping that sooner or later you'd show a little mercy, a drop of pity, a glimmer of love!'
'But you know I love you,' he murmured, with head bowed.
'But why should you feel pity for your slave?' she continued, ignoring everything that was not grist to her mill.
'Keep your voice down,' he begged. 'They'll hear!'
'Let them hear! Let them know how you treat me! Yes, why should you pity a slave?' she went on again, quivering with warlike fervour, for here she had hit upon a high-yield theme. 'A slave has to put up with anything! If it so pleases her master to wake her at one o'clock in the morning, she must bend the knee! If it is her tyrant's whim to keep her up talking all night, she must bow her head! And woe betide her if she does not hide her tiredness and her need for sleep! Woe betide her if she does not knuckle under or dares to close her eyes! She'd be accused of being selfish, of not being nice! Woe betide her if she has the guts to want to be treated like a human being and not like a dog who can be woken up at any hour of the night! And why am I guilty of the crime of wanting to sleep? So as to be ready to serve you tomorrow, at first light! Because a slave must always be ready, always available! Such a view of marriage is downright disgraceful! A wife is her husband's chattel! She doesn't even have the right to be called by her own name! She must bear the mark of her husband's ownership like a brand burned across her forehead! Like an animal! If there's anybody here who is selfish it's you, because you claim the right to need me at any time during the night! You're the one who's mean, because you've got the nerve to insist that I should undertake here and now to sit up all night by your bedside if you ever fall ill, whatever you're ill with, even if it's something trivial! So be it, I will be your servant, your skivvy! But even a skivvy has the right to sleep!'
Blithely pursuing her theme, she next dealt with various aspects of her martyr's life. After recalling his crimes against femininity, which she had already brought up in previous scenes, she then moved on, with the requisite wealth of dates and places, to enumerate, for the benefit of the poor bewildered male, other misdemeanours which he now learned he had committed during the course of their marriage. Indefatigable, nothing like a limp rag but firing on all pistons, she strode up and down in her red polka-dot jacket which left her thighs bare, paced feverishly, her words warmed by a sacred flame and strengthened too by the exultation of victory, while her spouse, stunned and left reeling by the power of her avenging eloquence, could only stand by and watch open-mouthed as his unsuspected sins were clearly marshalled and paraded before him.
They constituted a heavy indictment. Like the best orators, she was sincere, for she believed every word she said. Stirred by a noble indignation, she was utterly convinced of the rightness of her cause. It was her greatest strength, and, admirably sustained by a mixture of aggression and sarcasm, it enabled her to crush her much less skilful opponent. But she was also clever. As skilfully as the ablest of prosecuting counsels, she set out her case in blacks and whites which strengthened it immeasurably, eliminating anything which might count against her and imparting the required twists, warps and amplifications to the words and actions of her guilty husband. And all her unfairness was spoken in good faith, for she was honest.
He listened in a daze to her tireless outpouring and he knew that she accused him unjustly, with only a semblance of right, as always. But he also knew that he would never convince her she was wrong, that he had neither the talent nor the stamina for it, that he was far too wretched to be able to defend himself properly. All he could do was to repeat — because it was the truth — that she was being mean and unfair, to which she would respond endlessly and always victoriously.
No, he simply wasn't up to it. Her fire-power was the greater. He laid down his arms and left her without saying a word, which rather impressed the young woman and sent her husband's stock up several points.
It was true. The poor man was just not up to it. Throughout the whole of that terrible month of May, each time he'd tried to stand up to his wife, each time he had put a cast-iron case to prove that she was in the wrong, she had not budged one inch. She always got the better of him in any argument, because she interrupted and talked him down so that he was left, a speechless bystander, to watch helpless and hopeless as the various charges in the indictment were wheeled out before him; or else because she steamrollered him with unsubstantiated but extremely telling thrusts, such as describing his plain, honest arguments as a tissue of clever fibs and quibbles; or because she sidetracked him and mixed him up; or else because she deliberately ignored everything he said and simply went on piling up grievances which, because they were incomprehensible, were also irrefutable.
The best he could manage, if he ever succeeded in making her listen to his side of things and got her on the wrong foot, was to see her wriggle out of reach by seeking refuge in the tears and sufferings of the helpless, ill-used wife, or by refusing to answer and looking stony-faced if he begged her to admit her faults, or by resorting to the 'I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about' tactic, a ploy she was capable of repeating indefinitely if he restated his thesis and began once more to explain, as conscientiously and as clearly as he could, exactly in what ways she was to blame. (This was a bee in the poor man's bonnet: he believed in the clarifying power of explanations. It would have been far better for him if he'd never become a husband, for that was his only sin.) Whenever he attempted this, she would let him prattle on without trying to interrupt, but then, when he had finished and was looking at her with hope in his eyes, convinced that this time he'd explained things clearly and made her see them from his point of view, she would simply stand her ground and again scream that she didn't know what he was talking about, couldn't for the life of her see what he was driving at!
And woe betide him if he let himself be goaded by such patent but triumphant pretences, woe betide him if he were to bear down on her with fists clenched, woe betide him! For then she called him a brute, a wife-beating coward, screamed with terror, with genuine terror too, which was quite diabolical of her, and shouted for help and roused the neighbours. One night, shortly before the Deumes had got back, just because he had told her to stop shouting and had raised his arm, though he had absolutely no intention of hitting her, she had ripped off her pyjama top and run out into the garden, stark naked with rage. The following night, because he had gone so far as to raise his voice a little and tell her she was mean to him, she had paid him back by shrieking that he was a monster, a tyrant, a torturer, by tearing off a piece of the wallpaper, then by going downstairs and locking herself in the kitchen, where she had stayed put until four in the morning while he trembled with fear at the thought that she might put her head in the gas-oven.
And that was not all, for she had other weapons in her armoury which the poor devil knew only too well: reprisals for the morning after. These included headaches, sit-down strikes in her room, swollen eyes offered as evidence of tears shed in solitude, a whole battery of ailments, stubborn sulks, an embattled loss of appetite, fatigue, forget-fulness, dejected airs — the complete, fearsome panoply of the helpless but quite invincible female.
CHAPTER 22
A suicide would be best. Fire the pistol but not just anywhere, not into the wardrobe with the mirror nor at the ceiling. Aim for somewhere where it wouldn't do too much damage, like the bed, aim for the bed. The bullet would end up in the mattress without causing too much harm. The noise would bring her running and he'd explain that his hand had been shaking and the shot had been deflected. Then she would see what sort of dance she led him and how miserable she was making him.
'No, it won't work.'
No, it wouldn't work. In spite of their wax ear-plugs, Mummy and Dada might hear the shot. And even if they didn't, how would he explain the hole in the bedc
overs, the sheets and the mattress? Especially since Mummy had eyes in the back of her head. How about a heart attack, the kind where you couldn't breathe, brought on by suffering? No, he wouldn't know how to fake it, it was too difficult. Anyway, a choking fit wouldn't make enough noise, nowhere near enough to make her come. Don't talk to her for several days, even try not eating? That wouldn't work either. Mummy would catch on straight away that something was up and would start asking questions and then there'd be an almighty fuss. No, the only real solution was to do his level best to stop loving her. Yes, be resigned to living without love, tell himself that she was a stranger with whom he had to go on living, but not to expect anything more from her, and immediately alter his will and leave everything to Mummy and Dada.
He had just sat down to write his last will and testament when there was a light knocking at his door. He glanced up at the mirror, took off his glasses, and opened the door. A noble penitent in a white silk dressing-gown stepped forward, a priestess robed in sweetness, who said she was sorry she had behaved badly, had lost her self-control, her head.