The Bleeding Heart

by Marilyn French

  Perhaps she agreed a bit too fervently. One never knows what one’s sin has been, but for women it is much more likely to be ardor than coldness. So she sat in the Hilton lobby bar alone for an hour, sipping Campari. He never arrived.

  When she bumped into him accidentally the next day, she asked him about it lightly, very lightly. “Did we miss connections yesterday?” Smiling. (Always smiling.)

  “Oh! Listen, I’m sorry. I bumped into an old friend and we got to talking and I completely forgot. But we’ll have to do it sometime, soon.” Squeezed her hand fervently and rushed off.

  Forgot, my ass. I saw the way he was looking at me.

  It was all perfectly understandable: a married man not wanting to get too close to a woman he finds attractive and has reason to believe is attracted to him—an unmarried woman, to boot. It made perfect sense, was fine. But they could have had a drink and talked and done nothing more. Or, if he felt he might slide, he knows himself after all, then he shouldn’t ask in the first place. Why did they do this over and over again? He asks, and gets his ego stroked when I say yes. He has his moment of triumph, he doesn’t need to screw, he’s scored without the anxiety of performing further. And I get left sitting for an hour in the lobby, waiting. “Oh, sorry!”

  When women did things like that, men called them prickteases.

  Oh, he’d never thought it through, probably, never thought about it at all. More comfortable that way. Turn on, turn off, like Victor. Everything separate. Bow and scrape to the boss, bully the wife, play hearty rival with the buddies.

  Still, she remembered, puffing on the last bit of cigar, that her attraction to Bruce Watler had not been snipped. She’d gone out and bought his book and would prepare to get in bed at night to read it by saying: I think I’ll get in bed with Bruce Watler. She was a little disappointed in the book: it lacked courage. She feared for him: he might have gotten reviews that hurt. So she went to Widener and looked up and read all the reviews she could find, stretching her mind as hard as she could as she read them, trying to sense what he would feel, reading them. The reviews were not malicious, only bland. They did not notice the lack of courage. But bland reviews were the kind that bothered her most, and she wondered if he felt the same way. She wished she could talk to him, to know what he was thinking, feeling. But he probably wouldn’t tell her anyway, even if she saw him again, even if they talked.

  What an idiot she was. What man would do something like that for a woman? A star-struck kid, maybe, adoring an actress, might see her films over and over, might read everything about her. But he would be imposing his fantasy upon her, not trying to feel what it felt like to be her.

  Dolores saw Bruce again, several years later. His book had brought him success, a major chair at a major university she would have had to write five books to get within calling distance of. He’d grown pompous. His hair was almost gone and he’d gained more weight. But she’d had some small success too in the intervening time, and he acted glad to see her. He took her hand in both of his. “We must have a drink sometime,” he said.

  She tamped out her cigar and rose wearily. Her body ached. All that athletic sex. I wonder if men get aches in their thigh muscles. Or anywhere. I wonder if we pay every bill. She turned off the lamp and walked to the bedroom, ruminant, tired.

  Yes, he probably will call. Assumes that whenever he chooses to call, I’ll be here, I’ll answer, I’ll be thrilled to see him. It will not occur to him that I might have meetings and dinners of my own.

  Trouble is, I don’t.

  She got in bed, her teeth clenched. She was not going to let him do this to her. She would go out early tomorrow and stay out all day, all night too. The Bodleian closed at five. Okay, she’d go have a drink and then dine out. Or if she did come back, she wouldn’t answer the phone. Perhaps—even better!—she would go to London tomorrow, she could do that. Stay a few days. See some shows.

  If she did that she might never see him again.

  Fine.

  That was it! Back to London she would go.

  5

  BUT NEXT MORNING HOW was it? She woke late, after eight. She was tired. The sun, too, looked tired. That long trip to London, so tiresome. That lumpy hotel bed, those greasy eggs. Packing her bag again. Actually, she recalled, she’d never unpacked it. And she’d done what she had to do for the time being at the BM. She couldn’t really afford tickets to more than two plays. And she was out of cash: she’d have to walk to the bank, carrying her briefcase and her overnight bag, then walk to the bus, or to the station … oh, it was just too much.

  She was so tired she considered not going to the Bodleian at all. She had not missed a single day of work at the library since she had arrived. It wouldn’t mean anything if she took today off: she would just not answer the telephone.

  She wandered around the flat in her robe, feeling a little dazed. And all the while her mind was making excuses for taking a day off, another part of her mind was functioning at high speed on a rather different track.

  It was really drab, this place. Of course the furniture was real, not American plastic, but you had to admit, no matter how much of an Anglophile you were, it was ugly. Wood, yes, but cloddy lines, chipped, scarred surfaces: what was called mission style at home, where it garnered high prices simply because it was made of wood and not foam. Cheap nylon rugs. Sofa fat and ugly and covered with a rash-producing fabric. Stumpy little lamps and damn few of them. Curtains à la Grant’s.

  It would be nice to buy a few things, liven the place up. After all, she was going to be here a whole year. Of course, she really couldn’t afford it and she was fairly sure Mary couldn’t. And whatever she bought, she’d have to leave behind. And it would take precious time better spent at the Bod.

  Still.

  She absolutely had to buy some dishes. So while she was in town, she could just look at fabrics, bedspreads, rugs, curtains, furniture. No harm in looking.

  (Make it beautiful, warm, welcoming. For Victor. Who will feel the difference even if he doesn’t see it.)

  Shaking her head, grimacing at herself, calling herself hopeless, she dressed.

  He will call. There is no question about that

  Where am I going?

  Don’t know.

  She decided to let her feelings dictate her actions. She would move without thinking, do what her deepest impulses determined. She would end up at the shops or at the library. Or maybe somewhere else. Only not at the Randolph. No.

  She picked up her briefcase and left. As she descended the stairs, however, she heard her phone ring. She stopped. Her Oxford friends worked all day and knew she did too. They wouldn’t expect her to be home at ten in the morning. She fought a little skirmish with herself, but continued to descend, hearing the rings, expecting each to be the last, and sinking a little at that thought. The phone stopped ringing. In the lower hall, she wheeled her bike out the door, and got on it, and headed downtown.

  She loved the ride down to the Bodleian, past little old houses with wonderful gardens, still blooming in September, past St. John’s and Balliol. But she had gotten only as far as the Randolph when she realized: he couldn’t call her, he hadn’t asked for her phone number and she wasn’t listed in the Oxford directory. If he had had any intention of calling, he would have asked.

  My God.

  So he didn’t mean it, not a thing he said, not a thing he did.

  She had slowed down as she considered this, directly in front of the Randolph. Averting her head, she speeded up again and turned down Broad Street, The Broad, as they said here, towards the library.

  Who could understand it?

  Just forget it. Wipe it out, she ordered herself.

  She set her bicycle in the rack and locked it

  Try to concentrate on something else. Look around you, isn’t it wonderful?

  But it didn’t look wonderful today. Some days Oxford just looked like an elitist mausoleum. She mounted the old wooden steps to Duke Humfrey’s Library with her head
down, feeling tired, very tired. And her legs ached.

  But once she entered the ancient library, her spirits lifted. She loved this room, loved working in it. It had been reconstructed with scrupulous fidelity to its fifteenth-century origins: it had old wooden floors that creaked when people walked down the center aisle, old wooden carrels filled with ancient flaking leather-bound volumes, huge things with dry heavy pages. There was a wonderful ceiling held up by carved wooden arches, and painted with ancient seals. The windows were arched, and decorated with roundels of pale stained glass. She always sat by the windows that looked down into Exeter Garden, not the best garden in Oxford, of course, but lovely enough for her, sun on the chrysanthemums and asters, on all the burning flowers of the fall.

  She wished Victor could see it, this room.

  Not going to think about him. He’s not thinking about you.

  But she did: as she waited for her books to be delivered; when she walked downstairs to look something up in the old handwritten book catalogue; each time she looked up from her book to glance at the garden or at some passing creaker.

  She could not disbelieve the part of him that had loved her. But she could not either disbelieve the part of him that had blanked her out, had turned her into a piece of furniture, or a servant from whom leavetaking is business, can be brusque. And she did not know which of these sides was dominant in him, although she guessed it was the businessman. The other side would no doubt surface again, perhaps tonight, perhaps not for a few days, when he felt the need, when it was convenient.

  Convenient: Anthony’s favorite word. It’s more convenient if we go to my mother’s: she has more room. It’s more convenient if we stay home during my vacation. It’s more convenient if I drive.

  And the question was: did she want to be involved with a man who could turn her off when it was convenient for him, and who gave no thought to how she felt? Did she want to be even in the slightest degree involved with such a man?

  The answer was clear: No.

  6

  SO THAT WAS THAT. And even if she did see him again, there was no point in going into all of this with him, because he simply wouldn’t understand. Men tended not to understand because, of course, it was more convenient not to. She’d have to work at it, explain, maybe even argue, to make him see. She might have to get angry. And she didn’t want to get angry, to try to convert him. She was tired of that, sick of it.

  So if he did somehow find her again, she’d say she was busy.

  She returned to her books, forcing herself to concentrate. She reviewed the notes she had taken today:

  No woman ever thinks abstractly. Man’s intelligence is abstract; woman’s concrete. Men love principles; women, persons. No woman ever really understands herself. (1899)

  Woman was appointed by God to be inferior to man in authority and power. This arrived because Eve assumed a place which did not belong to her. And since Eve, the lot of woman was made hard and bitter by the oppression of man. Women’s inferiority to man in respect of authority and rule is a memorial of past transgression. It is a proof that humanity is under a curse for sin, and it is a good reminder to man that he is not perfect. (1875)

  Never forget that a man is a selfish being. Keep that little fact in view continually; and if you want to please him, pander to it. Don’t cry, don’t make a fuss, and certainly don’t be quick-tempered. Be sweet above all, but your sweetness must be real. A man never wants to be controlled.

  You must learn to hide your feelings. You must never allow a man to sacrifice his comfort for you.

  Let this ever be in your mind: “I am a creature formed to give pleasure.”

  And never lose your temper: it ruins the face. (1895)

  The sphere of woman’s influence is domestic; she wins her master by sweet submission. (1844)

  Woman is man’s tempter and misleader. Her true place is at once the lowest and highest in creation. All women have an instinctive desire to be wives, even if they deny it. In being sweet servants to their husbands, they fulfill what is highest in them. (1878)

  In Woman, weakness itself is the true charter of power; it is an absolute attraction. All independence is unfeminine. The more dependent, the more cherished. (1835)

  She shut the last book, sighing. It was a strain to work on this subject. She kept being dragged into emotions she did not choose to feel. Still, she felt the subject was important, and no one else would write this book if she didn’t: Lot’s Wife: A Study of the Identification of Women with Suffering. This stage involved reading eighteenth- and nineteenth-century manuals and sermons which were concerned with women’s role, either meditating upon it or prescribing female behavior. Many of the writers complacently justified women’s suffering, even gloried in it. Some of them said that women’s suffering was shameful, that it was unfair that men were so beastly to women, but alas! it had been decreed by God. Some said that women deserved it. Kindly clergymen had written these things. The writers were not strong in logic, but probably their readers had not noticed.

  If only I had more distance, if only I were less involved.

  Cal’s voice, droning on and on. He didn’t have to bother to make himself sound interesting, people followed him breathlessly. The Great Cal Taylor.

  “It is, of course, in the highest sense interesting,” he gave interesting a special emphasis, a special expressiveness, it was his highest word of praise, “but it is, after all, part of a dead time. Your job—as a historian, which as a scholar you must be—is first of all to see the interest, and then to trace its connections. You should have no more emotion about it than a zoologist cataloguing toe shapes. Your work, my dear Dolores, is marred by your … well … passion. And your bias. Women, after all, were simply not important to the Renaissance, and your concentration on them, it seems to me, distorts the entire period.”

  “Women were important to Shakespeare. Science wasn’t important to the Renaissance, but people write about that.”

  “But my dear Dolores, you write about morality! It is, you know, one thing to document the moral standards of the Renaissance—although one thinks that this has quite amply been done already—and quite another to treat that morality as if it were a living one, as if you had a present response to it, as indeed, you seem to. As if it affected you. That is historically naive.”

  He leaned back in his chair (How does he get a desk chair like that? All I have is a wooden one, with a hard seat) and smiled, his great pale forehead shining at her.

  “I don’t understand why you can write about any trivial subject—someone just published a book about animal imagery in Shakespeare—and it is respected. But if you write about women, you’re being …”

  “Ideological. Quite simply, my dear, because you are.”

  “But it is not ideological to write about men?”

  He whooped a laugh. “I see you are becoming quite a fanatic!”

  “I’m serious, Cal. I want an answer.”

  He leaned forward. He tossed her essay across his desk towards her, and his famous kindly face became a sneer. “I can only suggest that you send this to one of them feminist journals,” he said.

  She stood up stiffly, feeling utterly humiliated. How dare he speak to a colleague like that? How dare he speak to anyone like that? Everything was behind him, the weight of thousands of years of tradition. No one else would question his right to treat her this way. But where had he earned that right? Who conferred it upon him?

  She looked at him coldly. “You know, Cal, you and your ilk will die too, someday,” and strode out of the office with as much dignity as she could muster.

  Cal snubbed her ever after when they passed each other on the campus. She’d lost the assistance of her most eminent colleague. She’d lost—nothing. Nothing he could do, even were he willing, could ever help her. His mind was set in a different place from hers, and it was a place that declared her point of view illegitimate.

  She sighed and stood up. She picked up her books, standin
g for a few minutes in the soft pale light of the afternoon, wishing there were still sun, wishing she could feel something warm containing her, embracing her. Sunlight. But there was none.

  She walked down the aisle and turned in her books, then turned around to look back at the room. The past ought to be burned, Ziggy said. Not just some of the books, but all of them.

  Yes, if you could bury it that easily. But then you’d lose this too, this room, soft and gold even without sunlight. What a room! Can you imagine building such a room for yourself? Built to house his library, Humfrey, the king’s brother. It must once have held great scrolls, manuscripts. He could sit and read and watch the sun burnish the wood, smell the parchment, hold it in his hands, trace the illuminations with his fingers. He could watch the light shift from window to window as the day slowly died, see the blazoning of the stained glass. Silent room, smelling of true things: wood and wax and leather and parchment and ink and quills. And bodies and bad teeth, rotting in the mouth.

  Still, there was something so human about its size, its proportions. Before man, Man, decided to transcend. Could transcend only in heaven. Oh, that’s not true, Dolores. What in hell else were they doing, starving themselves, denying themselves sex when they were going mad for lack of it?

  Don’t sentimentalize. There was far more human misery then than there is now, the daily sort, cold wet hungry toothless smelly people walking around, losing legs, dying, dying all around you. Most of us have never known anyone hungry, really hungry. Most of us have never seen anyone die.