His Wife Leaves Him

Exile, or as much as I could, after being immersed in almost every aspect of his work for eight long years. Many Ph.D. candidates grow to hate the writer they’re writing about, but by then it’s too late so they have to go on, sort of like continuing a bad marriage for the sake of the kids. It was my good luck — I didn’t choose it for this — that his fiction oeuvre, which I concentrated on, wasn’t huge, and all four books are relatively short, and one is really no more than a novella. Attending conferences and giving an occasional paper,’ I said, ‘if I was fortunate enough to be asked to, and writing reviews of books by other Camus specialists for academic and scholarly journals are things I have to do if I want to get a position in a university’s French department, but one where I wouldn’t have to teach the language, or not more than once a year.’ The thing is, I didn’t know if I believed you on the phone that first time — not that you read Exile but that you thought so highly of it. If you had, wouldn’t you have remembered at least one or two of the stories, no matter how far back you read them, for there are only six in the collection and not one alike? You even, in that conversation or another, compared the stories to the best of Hemingway and Salinger and García Márquez.” “It was true. I thought so then and think even more highly of them now. That I forgot them could have been a memory quirk or my nervousness in talking about them to an expert and coming out sounding like an ill-informed and overconfident jerk. I’ve taught the collection, as you know, and with your help, to my graduate students and several of the stories to my undergrads, especially the workers’ story and the one where the schoolmaster lets the Arab go.” “‘The Silent Men’ and ‘The Guest.’ Lets him choose his own fate, among other reasons.” “Balducci, like the store, right?” “The old gendarme who hands him over to Daru?” “If that’s the schoolmaster, yes. I used to love it when you came to my class and gave a half-hour introduction to Camus and the book. The students also loved it, praised you to high heaven for weeks, and I learned something new each time you came.” “I guess I was keeping up on my research. But what I thought on the phone was that you were saying how much you like the book—” “Dubliners. Babel’s Red Cavalry stories. Really, in this century — I mean the last — it was right up there with the very best.” “—so I’d think we’d have much to talk about if we went out.” “Not so, believe me, and after speaking to you that first time on the phone, I didn’t think, and didn’t think you thought, there’d be a conversation problem. Want to hear what I also loved?” “Go ahead.” “It might seem silly. Tell me if you think so. That you spoke French fluently and knew enough German and Italian, and also Russian and Polish from home, to get by in those if you had to. I thought early on — because what was missing; English? — that if we ever traveled to Europe, a fantasy of mine with women I was close with that was never realized till I met you, I’d have my own personal interpreter, making the trip so much easier and more enjoyable. That once we got there, because my French was less than spotty, I could just sit back and relax and let you do, which you said you didn’t mind to, all the room reserving and travel arranging and restaurant ordering and bike renting and so on. And of course the fantasy was not to have an interpreter — that turned out to be a windfall — but to go to Paris and the Dordogne and Aix-en-Provence and Saint-Paul-de-Vence with a woman I loved and who loved me.” “I understand that. You didn’t need to explain.” “It was a great trip, the one in ’81, wasn’t it? It was near the end of it that I knew deep down we were going to marry and never separate. That was a wonderful thing to find out, even if you didn’t say it.” “It was a very nice trip, except when you got so sick in Nice and your first crippling sciatica later on when we were driving to Chartres.” “But I was with you.” “You also said in that call that you’d love it for someone to write a thesis or dissertation or just a long paper on your work. Not for the recognition. That you’d be interested — it’s still way too early for it, you said, three to four books and about seventy published stories, though you have a drawer or two of completed long and short manuscripts ready to be published — what an academic or budding scholar, and you of course didn’t mean me, would make of it. ‘I’m already the age,’ you said, ‘Camus was at the peak of his fame and had probably by then collected his Nobel Prize, though his getting it so young had to be the anomaly.’ ‘That would make you forty-four,’ I said, and you said ‘I hate saying it but I’m forty-two.’ ‘Why do you hate saying it?’ I said, and you said ‘I don’t know, but I’d better get on with it, right? If I’m going to make a name for myself in literature, which I swear is not one of my priorities or goals. I’m not ambitious; I just want to write. Good God,’ you then said, ‘that’s so self-serving to say. And didn’t I already say something like that to you once? I meant nothing by it. Forget I said it.’ And then, I think before I could say something like ‘If you wish,’ you said — and I found this curious, coming out so soon; after all, this was our first real talk—‘I didn’t mean to give you my age this quickly, because you might think I’m too old a guy for you. Oh, damn,’ you said, ‘I shouldn’t have said that either.’ But I said ‘I’m thirty-one. Close to thirty-two. A man forty-two, or even forty-four, and I’m speaking hypothetically here, isn’t too old for me if he doesn’t act a lot older than his age.’ Then you said ‘That leads me to a question.’ ‘Let me guess,’ I said, and you said ‘Okay,’ and I said ‘Only kidding. I have no idea why I said that. What?’ ‘And please understand,’ you said, ‘that I can be somewhat inarticulate on the phone. With someone, I’m saying, I’m not used to talking to and whom I’m hoping for a positive answer to my question — and by now you must be able to guess what I’m about to say — but do you think we can meet one afternoon or sometime for coffee and sit down and talk? Well, of course to sit down and of course it’s for talk,’ which I got a laugh out of and said ‘I’d like that, sure,’ or ‘I don’t see why not, and sitting down even better,’ or something like that. Both certainly sound like me. I mean, I knew there was no harm to it.” “So you sensed by the — I don’t remember our ever going over this, but we probably did — from our brief conversation at the elevator, even briefer in it, and then on the street and now on the phone that I wasn’t Mr. Masher or potentially dangerous in any way, like boring the pants off you for an hour, or what else?” “Nothing like that. I sensed you were serious and intelligent and candid and not glib or devious and had a sense of humor, and listened — this was important in my first or second impression; didn’t constantly butt in — to what I had to say. And I’ve always met interesting people through literature, so what would an hour over coffee cost me? It could even be stimulating and get my mind going, talking about literary and other things I haven’t talked about or not for a while. If it went well, I thought, or gravitated in that direction — and I wasn’t seeing anyone steadily at the time — we could do it again, maybe over lunch or dinner. If we didn’t hit it off — if in our first meeting we showed little to no potential for anything else happening or developing…Just was of little interest to you or me, then kaput and goodbye. Anyway, you said ‘So what’s the next step? — I guess a date and time and where to meet.’ You said you were available every day, since at the time you were working at home. I asked where you lived. You told me and I said ‘That’s perfect. This Wednesday, if the day’s still good for you, I have an appointment for an hour at two just a few blocks from you. So what if we meet at the Ansonia coffee shop a little after three?’ You said ‘How much after would you need?’ and I said ten to fifteen minutes. ‘Let me check my appointment book,’ you said. ‘Oops, I forgot I don’t have one. I keep all my appointments in my head, except medical and dental — those I write down on a piece of paper on the refrigerator door — but it gives you an indication just how busy my schedule is.’ I said ‘Why, you could still have a good memory,’ and you said ‘It’s good, all right; to some people, too good. But I forget a lot too. Particularly something cooking on the stove.’ ‘I do that,’ I said, and you said ‘Then we have something in common other than literature and living on the Upper West Side.’ ‘So,’ I said, ‘Wednesday, quarter after three, we’ll say? If I am detained, it’ll only be a few minutes, so don’t run away.’ Then I asked for your phone number in case something did come up preventing me from meeting you. You said — I forget what you said. Something like ‘Oh, don’t say that, but if it has to be, then I hope we can meet some other day.’ You gave me your number and said if I lose it, know that you’re one of about ten Martin Samuels in the Manhattan phone book but the only one with the middle initial V. ‘If you can believe it,’ you said, ‘I’m not the only one on West 75th Street. I’m between Columbus and the park and the other West 75th Street Martin Samuels, no middle initial, so he’s first in the phone book, is between West End Avenue and Broadway, I think number two-fifty. So you’ll recognize me?’ you said, and I said ‘I don’t see why there’d be a problem. You might even be wearing the same navy blue duffel coat.’ ‘Was that what I was wearing?’ you said. ‘Well, it had to be, since it was fairly cold that night, I think, and winter, and that’s my only coat, other than for a thin rain one. But good; you remembered. And I was only trying to be funny with that “recognize me” line, don’t ask me why. A bit compulsive, wouldn’t you say?’ I said ‘You spoke about that, in almost the same words, if I remember, by the elevator in Pati’s building, or maybe while we were riding down in it, not that I’m accusing you of repeating yourself. I don’t mind. I like humor and I love to laugh. I think I told you that about myself too. At least you were trying, and in your next attempt at it you might hit the target square in the circle,’ which I thought reasonably clever for a spontaneous remark — I swear I’d never used it or thought of it before — but you didn’t laugh or even fake a chuckle or show any sign you got it. It’s hard to believe it went by you, knowing your mind now. Maybe you thought it was trite and you were being polite or didn’t want to risk spoiling anything for yourself with me. The last one would have been more like you,” “I don’t remember you saying it. But it was a good one and I would have said so if I’d heard it — it’s been said of us both that we speak too low, especially on the phone — or laughed or given you some kind of ha-ha. Or it could be I sneezed the exact moment you said it and my ears — you know my sneezes — were still ringing from it a second or two after and I didn’t hear you.” “I don’t remember any sneeze, but it’s possible you drew away from the phone to do it. But near the end of our first phone talk, I said ‘One more thing, and then I really have to go. Do you know the Ansonia Hotel, or maybe it’s just apartments now, and that the entrance to the drugstore, closer to 74th Street, is on Broadway?’ You said ‘You bet,’ or something. ‘The Ansonia’s one of my favorite buildings in the city. Did you know it’s mentioned in Bellow’s