The Summer Without Men

by Hustvedt, Siri

  On Saturday at five in the afternoon, the Rolling Meadows Book Club met in the library over small sandwiches and even smaller glasses of wine to discuss the novelist Jane Austen, author of Persuasion, ironic observer, precise dissector of human feeling, stylist from heaven, and an author who did away with perverted monks but retained her own version of virtue rewarded. Both loved and detested, she has kept her critics hopping. “Any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen,” said America’s literary darling Mark Twain. “Even if it contains no other book.” Carlyle called her books “dismal trash.” But today, too, she is accused of “narrowness” and “claustrophobia” and dismissed as a writer for women. Life in the provinces, unworthy of remark? Women’s travails, of no import? It’s okay when it’s Flaubert, of course. Pity the idiots.

  You may recall that I had been asked to introduce the proceedings. With some editing here and there and taming of my prose from the incendiary to the palatable, as well as additional rigmarole about the Great Jane teetering between two literary eras and inventing a new road for the novel, the above paragraph gives you an idea of what I said, so we won’t bother to rehearse it here.

  * * *

  The DISCUSSANTS: The three remaining Swans, my mother, armed with well-marked copy of book in question; Abigail, looking more doubled over than ever and exceedingly frail, dressed in elaborately embroidered blouse depicting dragons; and the mild, good-natured Peg, with her bright side showing, as well as three ladies new to me: Betty Petersen, with a sharp chin and sharper gaze, had made extra money for the family as the author of humorous texts for a greeting card company; Rosemary Snesrud, former -grade English teacher, and Dorothy Glad, widow of Pastor Glad, who had once presided at the small Moravian Church on Apple Street.

  The SETTING: two sofas upholstered in an alarming green-and-violet print of aggressive foliage facing each other, two stuffed chairs, far less excited in appearance, also parked across from each other, all of which circled long oval coffee table with one unstable leg, which caused it to lurch every now and again when especially perturbed. Three windows on far wall with view of courtyard and gazebo. Bookshelves with volumes, most of which were lying wearily on their sides or leaning with a desultory air against a divider, but too few of these to qualify for the noun library. General hush in building interrupted only by squeaking walkers in nearby hallway and the occasional cough.

  The CONTROVERSY: Should the young Anne Elliot have been persuaded by her vain, silly, profligate father, her vain and cold sister, Elizabeth, and her well-meaning, kind, but very possibly misguided older friend, Lady Russell, to break with Captain Wentworth, with whom she was madly in love because he had only prospects, no fortune? As you may have noticed, in general members of book clubs regard the characters inside books exactly the way they regard the characters outside books. The facts that the former are made of the alphabet and the latter of muscle, tissue, and bone are of little relevance. You may think I would disapprove of this, I, who had endured the ongoing trials of literary theory, who had taken the linguistic turn, witnessed the death of the author and somehow survived fin de l’homme, who had lived the life hermeneutical, peered into aporias, puzzled over différance, and worried about sein as opposed to Sein, not to speak of that convoluted Frenchman’s little a versus his big one, and a host of additional intellectual knots and wrinkles I have had to untie and smooth out in the course of my life, but you would be wrong. A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other. Back to the controversy at hand:

  Peg looks on the bright side. Because Anne gets Wentworth in the end, all is well.

  Abigail strongly disagrees: “Wasted years! Who has time to waste years?” Adamant statement followed by table limping to one side. Glass slides. Grabbed by Rosemary Snesrud. Does not fall.

  Uncomfortable silence pertaining to waste, my own silence among the other silences, a wondering silence about wasted years, about the not done, the not written.

  Dorothy Glad injects extraliterary not-at-all-glad possibility: “He might have drowned at sea! Then she would never have found love.”

  I suggest sticking to the text itself, as it was written without that particular shipwreck.

  My mother holds up imaginary scale and weighs familial duty against passion. Imagine the pain of alienating one’s family. That has to be considered, too. There was no easy solution for Anne. For the motherless Anne, breaking with Lady Russell was tantamount to breaking with her mother.

  Rosemary S. defends my mother. According to the Snesrud philosophy, life’s decisions are “sticky.”

  Betty Petersen brings in unsavory Elliot cousin destined to inherit family baronetcy: “She might have hitched herself to that snake in the grass, if her friend, what’s-her-name, hadn’t given her the dope on him. Lady Russell was completely snowed.”

  Abigail, irritation mounting, insists that stepping on one’s desires is deforming. She makes strong pronouncement accompanied by feeble bang on the table’s surface: “It mutilates the soul!” Table nods in agreement, but Peg clicks her tongue. Talk of mutilation threatens brightness of all kinds.

  My mother gazes soberly at her friend Abigail, understanding that it is not Anne’s soul that has been mutilated. The crooked Abigail is trembling. I notice how skeletal her arms are under her dragon blouse. I suffer irrational worry that the strength of her emotion will shake her fragile bones to the breaking point, and I deflect the conversation to men and women and the question of constancy, one close to my heart. What do the discussants think of Anne’s argument about women and men in her conversation with Captain Harville?

  “Yes, we certainly do not forget you so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions.”

  With the exception of myself, there wasn’t a woman in the room under seventy-five. The two schoolteachers, three housewives, and part-time greeting card wit may all have been born in the Land of Opportunity, but that opportunity had been heavily dependent on the character of their private parts. I remembered my mother’s words: “I always thought I’d go on and get at least a master’s degree, but there was so little time and not enough money.” A sudden image of my mother at the kitchen table with her French grammar book came back to me, her lips moving as she silently repeated the verb conjugations to herself.

  Harville brings out the BIG GUNS to refute Anne, albeit in a highly civil manner.

  “… I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Song and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.”

  “Perhaps I shall.—Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”

  Of course, the pen that inscribed those words was in Austen’s hand, and a neat hand it was, too. The woman’s handwriting had all the clarity and precision of her prose. And the pen, as it were, Dear Reader, is now in my hand, and I am claiming the advantage, taking it for myself, for you will notice that the written word hides the body of the one who writes. For all you know, I might be a MAN in disguise. Unlikely, you say, with all this feminist prattle flying out here and there and everywhere, but can you be sure? Daisy had a feminist professor at Sarah Lawrence, most decidedly a man, married, too, with children and a Yorkie, and on the rampage for women, a noble defender of the second sex. Mia might really be Morton for all you know. I, your own personal narrator, might be wearing a pseudonymous mask.

  But back to our story: Not surprisingly, th
e women of Rolling Meadows are in Anne’s corner. Even our Peg of Permanent Sunshine allows that there were times at home with her five “wonderful children” when she longed for some diversion, when her feelings preyed upon her, and then, in a moment of startling revelation, the resident optimist confesses that there had been days when she had been “pretty darned tired and blue,” and that in her experience far more men have the gift for forgetting women than women have for forgetting men. Weren’t they the ones who turned around and got married just months after their wives “passed away”? (I suppressed comment that Boris hadn’t even waited for me to die.)

  Betty offers humorous quote: “I am woman. I am invincible. I am pooped!”

  Laughter.

  Rosemary notes the exception to the rule of women waiting, pining, hoping: Regina.

  Titters.

  My mother rises to fellow Swan’s defense: “She had fun, though!”

  Abigail nods, regards my mother lovingly, and says in a loud, if hoarse voice, “Who’s to say we shouldn’t all have had more fun!”

  Who is to say? Not I surely. Not my mother, not Dorothy, not Betty, not Rosemary, not even Peg, although the latter proffers the buoyant comment that they are having fun, well, aren’t they, right now, at this “very minute”? And the carpe diem sentiment does, in fact, brighten the entire room, if not literally, then figuratively.

  After that, there was some pleased nodding, some silent sipping, and some tangents onto the movie being shown in the screening room at seven, It Happened One Night, followed by some mooning over Clark Gable and chatter about how films used to be so much better and, good grief, what had happened? I volunteered that Hollywood films were now made exclusively for fourteen-year-old boys, an audience of limited sophistication, which had drained the movies of even the hope of sprightly dialogue. Farts, vomit, and semen had taken its place.

  I seated myself beside Abigail then and held her hand for a little while. She asked me to come see her. The request was not casual. She had some urgent business to discuss, and it had to happen in the next couple of days. I promised, and Abigail began the protracted rigors of pulling her walker toward her, getting herself into a standing position, and then moving, one small, careful step after another, toward her apartment.

  Within minutes, the book club was over. And it had ended before I could say that there is no human subject outside the purview of literature. No immersion in the history of philosophy is needed for me to insist that there are NO RULES in art, and there is no ground under the feet of the Nitwits and Buffoons who think that there are rules and laws and forbidden territories, and no reason for a hierarchy that declares “broad” superior to “narrow” or “masculine” more desirable than “feminine.” Except by prejudice there is no sentiment in the arts banned from expression and no story that cannot be told. The enchantment is in the feeling and in the telling, and that is all.

  * * *

  Daisy sent this:

  Hi, Mom. Dinner with Dad was okay. He seems a little better. He was shaved at least. I think he’s really, really embarrassed. He said he hoped that you would be able to see his “interlude” for what it was. He also mentioned “temporary insanity.” I said that’s what you had, and he said, maybe he had it, too. Mom, I think he’s sincere. It’s been awful for me to have you two against each other, you know. Love and kisses, Daisy

  And yet, I could not leap at Daisy’s father. As I meditated on our story, I understood that there were multiple perspectives from which it could be viewed. Adultery is both ordinary and forgivable, as is the rage of the betrayed spouse. We are not unworldly, are we? I had endured my own French farce, starring my fickle, inconstant husband. Was it not time “to forgive and forget,” to use that inveterate cliche?” Forgiveness is one thing, forgetfulness another. I could not induce amnesia. What would it mean to live with Boris and the memory of the Pause or Interlude? Would it now be different between us? Would anything change? Can people change? Did I want it to be the same as it had been? Could it be the same? I would never forget the hospital. BRAIN SHARDS. For better or for worse, I had become so entwined with Boris that his departure had ruptured me, sent me screaming into the asylum. And wasn’t the fear I had felt old, the fear of rejection, of disapproval, of being unlovable, a fear that may be older even than my explicit memory? For months, I had drowned in anger and grief, but over the summer my mind had unconsciously, incrementally begun to change. Dr. S. had seen it. (How I missed her, by the way.) Reading Daisy’s letter, I felt those subliminal, not yet articulated thoughts rise upward, form sentences, and lodge themselves securely somewhere between my temples: Some part of me had been getting used to the idea that Boris was gone forever. No one could have been more shocked than I by this revelation.

  * * *

  And now the curtain must rise on the following Monday, when seven uncomfortable girls and a poet, laboring to hide her own anxiety, sat around a table at the Arts Guild. A torpor seemed to have taken hold of all seven young bodies, as if an invisible but potent gas had been unleashed in the room and was swiftly putting them all to sleep. Peyton had folded her arms on the table and laid her head down. Joan and Nikki, seated side by side as always, sat in heavy silence, eye-lined lids cast downward. Jessie, elbows propped on the table surface, rested her chin in her hands, a vacuous expression on her face. Emma, Ashley, and Alice all appeared limp with exhaustion.

  I looked at each of them for a moment and, on a sudden impulse, burst out singing. I sang them Brahms’s lullaby in German: “Guten Abend, gute Nacht, mit Rosen bedacht…” I don’t have a sweet voice but my ear is good, and I let the vibrato go so it sounded suitably absurd. The look of surprise and confusion on their faces made me laugh. They did not laugh with me, but at least they had been rattled out of their fatigue. It was time for my speech, and I made it. The gist of it was that a single story with seven characters can also be seven stories, depending on the identity of the narrator. Every character will regard the same events in her own way and will have somewhat different motives for her actions. Our task was to make sense of a true story. I had given it a title: “The Coven.” This was met with a round of wordless murmurs. We would meet every day this week to make up for the lost classes. Today each girl would read her text and we would talk about it, but in the following four days, we would trade places and write the story from the point of view of someone else. Jessie would become Emma, for example, and Joan, Alice, and Jessie, Ashley, and I, Nikki, and so on. Eyes widened, worried looks exchanged across the table. By the end of the week, we would have a story authored by the entire class. The trick was, we would have to agree, more or less, on the content.

  To be honest, I had no idea whether this would work. It was not without its risks. Note: The now famous psychology experiment at Stanford in 1971. A group of young men, all college students, took on the roles of either prisoners or guards. Within hours the guards began tormenting their prisoners and the experiment was stopped. The theater of cruelty made real? Performance becomes the person? How malleable were the seven?

  I began with a short summary of my experience: my suspicions during class, my bafflement about the Kleenex, and my dim awareness that some plot was cooking. I also mentioned my involvement in a similar story as a girl. I did not say which role I had played. You, friend out there, will mostly be spared the tedium of early adolescent prose; it is worse than the poetry. (Not one child chose to describe the hex scandal in verse.) Suffice it to say that the clumsy and often ungrammatical narrations were not harmonious. After every reading, the refrains “I never said that!” “It was your idea, not mine!” “That’s not how it was at all!” rang out loudly. Some of the tiffs were of no importance, when and where and who. “You put the dead cricket in the formula, not me!” “Ask my mom. She saw you coming out of the bathroom with blood running down your arm, remember?” Nevertheless, there were recurring justifications for the plot: They had all liked Alice at first, but then, as time went on, she had distinguished herself in ways they
didn’t like. She had been Mr. Abbot’s “pet” in history class and was always raising her hand with the answer. She bought her clothes in Minneapolis in a department store, not at the Bonden mall. She read all the time, which was “boring.” Ashley’s synopsis included the fact that Alice had been given a starring role in the school play, and after this “lucky break,” she had metamorphosed into “a big snob.” What had begun as a “little fun” among the conspiratorial witches to “get back at Alice” had somehow, mysteriously, run wild, of its own accord. There were no agents in this version of the story, just currents of feeling, very much like spells, that had pulled the girls hither and yon. Bea and I used to have a phrase when we were growing up that described such actions well: “accidentally on purpose.” When I mentioned this, there were sheepish smiles all around, except of course from Alice, who was hard at work scrutinizing the table’s surface.

  She read last. Despite the ugliness of the tale she had to tell, the girl had cast herself as its heroine in the mode of Jane Eyre or David Copperfield, those wronged orphans I had loved so much when I was her age, and she had worked hard on the story. Heavily adjectival and hyperbolic though it was, and not free of diction errors (“torturous” for “tortured”), it articulated both her intense need to be inside the group and the agony of being an outcast. Listening to her, I guessed that although her dramatis persona would not endear her to all the members of the Coven, finding it had been a boon for her. The victim came out well in her version of events, if only because Alice had dressed up her alter ego in gothic conventions that had been conveniently aided by the memorable storm that had cracked the heavens as I lay in bed that night in June. Apparently, while “hanging out” at Jessie’s house, the girls had jointly decided not to look at or answer Alice when she spoke, to behave as if she were both invisible and inaudible. After half an hour of this treatment, our heroine had escaped into the “pelting rain, weeping violently, her hair whipping in the wind” while “lightning flashed crooked in the sky.” When she arrived home, this tragic creature was “soaked to the skin and frozen to her bones with crazily chattering teeth.” Although Alice may not have enjoyed the Coven’s version of Meidung, she had certainly taken pleasure in writing about it. Alice the literary character served a redemptive function for just plain Alice, who was going into the seventh grade. Her narrative ended with the words “Never before have I felt such deep, unbearable despair.”