Portraits of a Marriage Read Online Free PDF Page B

was strict and mindful of his rank, because he did not recognize any other kind of rank. No social rank, in his opinion, was higher than his own. The only other people he admired were artists. They have chosen the most difficult path, he said. They were God’s children. Only real artists, no one else, were superior to him.
    And because he was a gentleman, he tried, when the child was born, to alleviate that frightening sense of detachment in his soul that was so painful to me. He made genuinely moving efforts to get closer to me and the child. It was like a tiger deciding to go on a vegetarian diet or to join the Salvation Army. How hard life is, how hard it is to be human …
    That’s how we lived for two years. Not entirely well, not happily. But quietly. Those two years must have cost him dear. It needs a superhuman effort to go against one’s nature. He sweated blood for happiness. Starting from a position of absolute paralysis he tried to become relaxed, carefree, easygoing. The poor thing! … He might perhaps have suffered less if I’d released him psychologically, so all my needs, all my demands for love, could be satisfied by the child. But something was changing in me too, something I didn’t understand then. My love for my child was, exclusively,
through
my husband. Maybe that is why God decided to punish me.
    What are you staring at me for? … You don’t believe me? … Or maybe you’re frightened? … Ah, my dear, I know this story of mine isn’t exactly charming.
    I was mad about the child, lived only for him, and it was only in these two years I felt my life had meaning and purpose … but it was because of
him
I loved the child: it was for his sake I loved him, do you understand now? I wanted the child to bind him to me, to bind his entire being. Dreadful as it is to say, but I now know that the child, for whom I remain in perpetual mourning, was merely a tool, a means to force my husband to love me. If I were driven into a confessional and made to stay there till dawn, I could not have found the words to say this to him. But even without words, in his heart of hearts, secretly he knew it, just as I knew it, even without the words, because I did not yet have words for things in life … The right words always come too late and we pay a terrible price for them. It was Lázár who had the words then. One day my husband was to provide me with the words, without particularly meaning to, half by accident, the way we discover a secret compartment. But that comes later. In the meantime we carried on, knowing next to nothing of each other. Everything was in shipshape order, on the outside at least. At breakfast time the nurse would bring in the baby, who was dressed in light blue and pink. My husband would talk to me and to the child, then get in the car and drive to the factory. We’d often invite guests for dinner. They’d drink to our happiness, praise our lovely home: me, the young mother, the beautiful baby, and our perfect lives. What were they thinking when they left? The foolish ones were jealous, but those who were wise and sensitive must have breathed a sigh of relief when they left our house, and thought, “Alone at last!” We served excellent food and the rarest foreign wines; we enjoyed quiet, thoughtful conversation. It was just that something was missing, and the guests who could sense this were inevitably happy to leave. My mother-in-law tended to arrive in a state of mild panic and leave as soon as she decently could. We felt all this but did not know it. Maybe my husband did know it; he probably did … But there was nothing he could do at the time except clench his teeth and go on being helplessly happy.
    I wouldn’t let go of him, would not let his soul escape for a second. I clung to him with the child. I silently blackmailed him with my emotionalneeds. Can these powers bind human beings? … Yes, they can; they are the only power. My every moment was dedicated to the