Can I be wrong? I wondered. Is my pursuer in fact not my third ex-wife but my second?
The next hours were spent testing this theory to my satisfaction, putting the car behind me through a series of proofs that slowly dissolved the image of my third ex-wife in my mind and replaced it with an image of my second ex-wife. How, I wondered, could I ever have thought the pursuer was my third ex-wife? For now everything suggested ex-wife number two.
Only slowly did another possibility creep over me. Perhaps it wasn’t so simple as my having been mistaken. Perhaps, indeed, I had been correct then and yet was still correct now. Perhaps I was being pursued by two of my ex-wives at once.
A man might be capable of standing up to one ex-wife, but two ex-wives is something no ex-husband wants to consider, and if the ex-husband is exhausted, slightly deranged from driving, unshaven, unwashed, it is too much for him. Indeed it was too much for me. I had to pull over and switch off the car and press my forehead against the leather-wrapped steering wheel and breathe deeply.
And was there not, I wondered, a possibility — nay, even a likelihood — that my first ex-wife was involved as well? Indeed, the fact that the beginning of the pursuit coincided with my visit to her house suggested as much. An individual ex-wife could be outflanked, backed into a corner, subdued, dismissed. But against a triad of ex-wives, a solitary ex-husband has no hope.
I tried to calm myself. I tried to focus. After a moment I lifted my forehead from the steering wheel and turned and looked out the rear window. Was there a car behind me? Were two of my ex-wives gloating in tandem a few hundred yards behind me? No, there was no car there. Then why did I still feel their presence? And what did I smell?
But no, surely, I thought, I was imagining things, the smell was only my own unwashed body, the sweat had dried and then grown damp and sour, and then dried again and so on. I was calm, there was no reason not to be calm, no reason at all.
I regarded myself in the rearview mirror, the red-rimmed eyes, the matted hair, the ratty beard. Where in all of this, I asked myself, was the man who had beaten three marriages in turn and gone on to live solitary and content only a stone’s throw from the sea? How had I become the ghost of that man, hardly alive, living an existence that consisted of nothing but shuttling back and forth in a car, subject to the whims of ex-wives? You, I told myself, have allowed them to make you neither alive nor dead, a half-living thing.
It would not go on, I vowed to myself. I would stop at the first hotel. I would purchase a room and shower and sleep and shave. I would open my overnight bag and remove the clean garments that, days ago, weeks ago perhaps, I had tucked into it, and put them on. And then, refreshed, and with dignity, I would face defeat at the hands of my ex-wives.
And had circumstances been only slightly different, it might well have happened in that way. I did stop at the first hotel and, with my overnight bag slung over my shoulder, went in. The concierge was, admittedly, a little reluctant to sign me in, thinking me a vagrant perhaps, but a generous remuneration finally persuaded him. I was assigned a room. All that remained, as it was a hotel that took pride in old traditions, nestled in a country imbued with a similar pride, was to sign the guest register.
And here, my dear, nonexistent friend, is where I betrayed myself. I had been so careful with myself, I had made no mistakes, and might very well have entered the hotel room and emerged a new man. Perhaps even, after awaiting the confrontation with my ex-wives, a confrontation that could never come, I might even have abandoned my car and climbed aboard a train. I might even have convinced myself that the reason for my action was that they could not follow me without revealing themselves, the cost of a car being very little compared to my own peace of mind.
But no, as I was handed the pen, a part of me wondered, as if innocently, Wouldn’t it be better to sign the register in another name? Yes, I thought, why not, better to be cautious, I had always believed as much — having faced three wives in turn, I had learned to be cautious. And wouldn’t it, suggested this same part of me, be better to disguise one’s handwriting? Having accepted the first premise, I could not but accept the second, and so, as I was given the pen, I shifted it to my left hand.
Awkwardly, I wrote a false name, a false town of origin, a false destination. When the register asked me to define the purpose of my trip, I wrote, For my own pleasure, which was certainly a lie. Then, after recapping the pen, I handed it back and made the mistake of appraising the results to see how well I had hidden myself.
Would it surprise you, my dear, nonexistent friend, were I to tell you that what I saw inscribed there filled me with fear? For I recognized the hand, a decidedly male hand, decidedly familiar: the same hand that had written the letter putatively from my first ex-wife.
What would you have done? Would you have had the sangfroid to shower and sleep and then, refreshed, bring yourself to look deep into yourself and sort out who you were and what exactly you had done? Or would you, like me, filled with confusion, unable to face what you had seen, have simply turned and climbed back into the car and once again driven away?
And this perhaps is where the story truly begins, for despite how quickly I fled the hotel, despite all the miles I have traveled since, I am filled with the unsettling feeling that had I at any moment stopped and stepped out of my car and walked back to the car pursuing me, if there had ever been in fact a car pursuing me, I would find slumped over its wheel the rotting carcass of my second ex-wife, the corpse of my third ex-wife, perhaps slightly fresher, lying curled on the seat beside her. And then, were I to leave their car behind and walk back to my own, were I to open my trunk, I would find them there again, my first wife having joined them now, all three corpses carefully tucked in around one another like the pieces of a puzzle.
But no, for now, I simply, as perhaps I did earlier, perhaps almost without knowing what I had done, climb back into the car and continue to drive. How long can I keep this up, my ex-wives neither alive nor dead, both alive and dead, and myself perhaps in the same state? How long can I keep driving?
With a little luck, a part of me, as if innocently, wants to suggest, perhaps forever.
Mudder Tongue
There came a certain point, in his speech, in his confrontation with others, in his smattering with the world, that Hecker realized something was wrong. Language was starting to slip in his mouth, words substituting themselves for each other, and while his own thoughts remained as lucid as ever, sometimes they could be made manifest on his tongue only if they were wrung out or twisted or set with false eyes. False eyes? Something like that. His sense of language had always been slightly fluid; it had always been easy for him, when distracted, to substitute one word for another based on sound or rhythm or association or analogy, which was why people thought him absentminded. But this was different. Then, when distracted, he hadn’t known when he misspoke, had been cued only by the expression on the faces of those around him to backtrack and correct. Now, he heard himself say the wrong word, knew it to be wrong even while he was saying it, but was powerless to correct it. There was something seriously wrong with him, something broken. He could grasp that, but could not understand where it was taking him.