Husband |
Wife |
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Among other things, I must
tell you that at last I am here, in the country whither so many sunset have
led. I have a story for you. Which reminds me – I mean putting it like
this reminds me – of the days when I wrote my first udder warm bubbling
verse, and all things, a rose, a puddle, a lighted window, cried out to me:
"I'm a rhyme!" Yes, this is a most useful universe. But just now I
am not a poet. I come to you like that gushing lady in Chekhov who was dying
to be described. |
So I must tell you that I
am back in Paris now. Back where it all began. Was it all a dream? Had we
really left that poor dog here to die on its own? That beautiful setter that
we had bought only a few weeks before… oh I still cry when I think of
it! When I walk past the apartment, it all looks so familiar, yet somehow I
cannot bring myself to venture in. Not now. Not ever again! But I will tell
you how it happened. I will tell you everything right from the very beginning
when we left behind that poor beautiful dog. |
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I married, let me see,
about a few weeks before the gentle Germans roared into Paris. It was love at
first touch rather than at first sight, for I had met her several times
before without experiencing any special emotions; but one night as I was
seeing her home, something quaint she had said made me stoop with a laugh and
kiss her on the hair – and of course we all know of that blinding
blast… But now I cannot discern her. She remains as nebulous as my best
poem. When I want to imagine her, I have to cling mentally to a tiny brown
birthmark on her downy forearm… |
I was much younger than he
– a poet who had lured me in with his verse. On that night when he
walked me home, his words caused a soundless and boundless expansion of what
had been during my life but a small pinpoint of light in the center of my
being. I suppose that really I had been solely attracted by the obscurity of
his poetry; and then I tore a hole through its veil and saw a stranger's
unlovable face. But that was not until much later, for we married quickly
– only a few weeks before the Germans invaded. And soon after that we
bought that adorable young setter. |
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I had been for some time
planning to follow the fortunate flight of so many of my friends. She
described to me an uncle of hers who lived, she said, in New York. He had
taught riding at a Southern college, and had wound up by marrying a wealthy
American woman. They had a little daughter born deaf. She said she had lost
their address, but a few days later it miraculously turned up, and we wrote a
dramatic letter to which we never received any reply. But this did not much
matter. I had already obtained a sound affidavit from Professor Lomchenko of
Chicago; but that was all we had done to get the necessary papers when the
invasion began. |
He talked constantly of
going to America… of his professor friend in Chicago who could help us.
And I told him of my uncle in New York. He had taught riding at a Southern
college, and had wound up marrying a wealthy American woman. Their little
daughter had been born deaf. I was sure they could help us, and so we wrote a
letter to which we received no reply. Of course only now do I know that they
had by then moved to San Francisco. Their poor deaf little girl had died, and
they could no longer bear to stay in New York. Our letter eventually made it
to them, but the invasion began and we left Paris too quickly to receive their
reply. |
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So we started upon our
disastrous honeymoon. Crushed and jolted amid the apocalyptic exodus, waiting
for unscheduled trains that were bound for unknown destinations, we fled. Oh,
she bore it gamely enough – with a kind of dazed cheerfulness. Once
however, quite suddenly, she started to sob in a sympathetic railway
carriage. "The dog," she said, "the dog we left. I cannot
forget the poor dog." The honesty of her grief shocked me, as we had
never had any dog. "I know," she said, "but I tried to imagine
we had actually bought that setter." There had never been any talk of
buying a setter. |
And so the poor dog was
left whining behind a locked door, and together we started on our
catastrophic journey. We traveled by train from one nameless town to the
next, and I watched the scenery blur past us. I cannot forget a certain
stretch of highroad and the sight of a family of refugees – two women
and a young child --whose old father, or grandfather, had died on the way.
With a stick in their hands the women had tried to dig a roadside grave, but
the soil was too hard. They had
given it up, and the little boy was still scratching and scraping and tugging
alone… |
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Spain proved too difficult
and we decided to move on to Nice. At a place called Faugeres -- a ten-minute
stop – I squeezed out of the train to buy some food. When a couple of
minutes later I came back, the train was gone, and the muddled old man
responsible for the atrocious void that faced me brutally told me that, anyway,
I had had no right to get out. In a better world, I could have had my wife
located and told what to do; as it was, my nightmare struggle with the
telephone proved futile, so I took the next local to Montpellier. |
The trains eventually took
us to Spain, where he decided that after all we would be better off in
France. So we boarded yet another train and headed back up the coast towards
Nice. At a small town called Faugeres -- a rare ten-minute stop on the way --
he said he would get us some food. He got off the train, and that was the
last I saw of him for almost a week. Tired and exhausted, I had been left
alone on the train. I was sure that he had deserted me, sure that I would
never find him again. But still I tried… |
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Not finding her in
Montpellier, I had to choose between two alternatives: going on because she
might have boarded the Marseilles train which I had just missed, or going
back because she might have returned to Faugeres. I forget now what tangle of
reasoning led me to Marseilles and Nice. |
At the next station, I got
off the train and took another one back to Faugeres. Not finding him at the
station there, I went on to the Commissariat where the French policemen
proved to be of no help to me. Not knowing what to do next, I decided I would
do best to move on to Nice, and so I boarded yet another train… |
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Beyond such routine action
as forwarding false data to a few unlikely places, the police did nothing to
help. I looked up various acquaintances among the numerous Russians domiciled
or stranded in Nice. A week after my arrival, an indolent plain-clothes man
called upon me and took me down a crooked and smelly street to a
black-stained house with the word "hotel" almost erased by dirt and
time. There, he said, my wife had been found, but of course the girl he
produced was an absolute stranger to me… |
Somewhere around
Marseilles, a young Frenchman joined me in my cabin. Finding me distraught,
he listened patiently to my story and then tried to calm me down. He was the
perfect gentleman and sympathetic to my plight. He offered me a place to stay
in Nice, and having nowhere better to go, I accepted his offer. I stayed at
his place for several nights and felt a strong attachment to him almost
immediately. But then I ran into some Russian friends who told that my
husband had arrived in Nice and was looking for me. |
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When at length I got rid of
that useless plain-clothes man and had wandered back to my neighborhood, I
happened to pass by a compact queue waiting at the entrance of a food store.
And there, at the very end, was my wife, straining on tiptoe to catch a
glimpse of what exactly was being sold. I think the first thing she said to
me was that she hoped it was oranges. |
I wanted to find my husband
again… to tell him everything that had happened and that I could no
longer stay with him. I looked for him everywhere but couldn't even find
where he was staying. Our friends in common all said they had seen him, but
none of them knew where to find him. We finally ran into each other quite by
accident outside a small French grocery store. |
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Her tale seemed a trifle
hazy, but perfectly banal. She said she had returned to Faugeres and gone
straight to the Commissariat where she had to borrow some money to reach
Nice. However she had gotten on the wrong train and had first traveled to an
unknown town. Only two days ago had she finally arrived in Nice. Several days
later, she retracted this story and instead claimed to have stayed for
several nights in Montpellier with a man she had met on the train. The
torture! I spent that night and many others getting it out of her bit by bit,
but not getting it all. Until at last she said to me "I didn't –
You will think me crazy, but I didn't!" Finally I had to accept the
first version of her delay. |
Although his tale seemed a
trifle hazy, I was still willing to accept it. I had been so sure that he had
deserted me, but his words convinced me otherwise. Yet by then it was too
late. I told him my story and how the young Frenchman had stolen my heart. I
implored him for a divorce – it would be better for both of us I said.
But he refused, saying he would rather shoot both himself and me than sail to
New York alone. In a similar situation, my father had acted like a gentleman,
but all he said was that he did not give a hoot for my cocu de pere. It was
then that his face became that of a stranger, and I knew I could no longer
stay with him. I had to wait to find the right moment to leave… |
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Between periods of this
inquest, we were trying to get from reluctant authorities certain papers that
were required for our visas. When at last I emerged from a dark hot office
with a couple of plump visas cupped in my trembling hands, I dashed to
Marseilles and managed to get tickets for the very next boat. I returned and
tramped up the stairs. I saw a rose in a glass on the table – the
sugar-pink of its obvious beauty, the parasitic air bubbles clinging to its
stem. Her two spare dresses were gone, her comb was gone, her checkered coat
was gone, and so was the mauve hair-band with a mauve bow that had been her
hat. There was no note pinned to the pillow, and nothing at all in the room
to enlighten me. |
I spent several weeks not
talking much to him, scared of what he would do. While he spent his days in
the Prefecture filling forms and pleading with secretaries to secure our
visas, I snuck out alone to see my beloved Frenchman. Together we planned our
escape to a chateau in Lozere where we could be free and happy. When at last
one day he emerged from the Prefecture clasping our visas, and then dashed
off to Marseilles to get tickets for the boat, I hastily decided that the
time had come for me to leave. I took with me my two spare dresses, my comb,
my mauve hair-band, and my checkered coat, and once and for all I left that
dismal apartment that had been the site of so much pain and suffering. |
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I tried in vain to find
her, but she had vanished without a trace. That was the end. I would have
been a fool had I begun the nightmare business of searching and waiting for
her all over again. On the fourth morning of a long and dismal sea voyage, I
met on the deck a solemn but pleasant old doctor with whom I had played chess
in Paris. He asked after my wife, and looked taken aback when I said I had
sailed alone. He said he had seen her a couple of days before going on board.
She had told him that I would presently join her with bag and tickets. |
I wonder now how hard he
tried to find me before finally giving up and sailing away on his own. I
would have been a fool to go with him, yet I cannot stop thinking of him now.
My beloved Frenchman turned out to be just as much of a stranger as he. The
chateau in Lozere was little more than empty words, and I spent several weeks
in a shabby little cottage in the country. After having spent so much time
following others around, it took a while before I found the strength to take
my life back into my own hands. |
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This is, I gather, the
point of the whole story. It was at that moment that I suddenly knew for
certain that my wife had never existed at all. Here in New York, I looked for
her uncle's name in the directory. It was not there. I went to the address
she had given me once, but it proved to be an anonymous gap between two
buildings. I now see our mangled romance engulfed in a deep valley of mist
between the crags of two matter-of-fact mountains: life had been real before,
and life will be real from now on. Yet the pity of it! I am hideously
unhappy. She keeps on walking to and fro where the brown nets are spread to
dry on the hot stone slabs. Somewhere, somehow, I have made some fatal
mistake. It may all end in Aleppo if I am not careful. |
I eventually found myself
back in Nice and couldn't help inquiring about my husband. He was gone…
our friends said he had sailed to America alone. And although I couldn't keep
myself from thinking about him and wondering what would have happened if we
had sailed together, I knew that this end would be a beginning for me. Like a
puzzle, the pieces of my life finally started to fall into place. I returned
to Paris, and the nice lady at the post-office gave me a letter from my
uncle. He is living in San Francisco now, together with his lovely wife.
Perhaps I will go join him, and from this point on my life will once again be
real. I will not let our distorted romance torture me anymore, or it may all
end in Aleppo if I am not careful. |