“No, of course not,” she said dismissively. “You couldn’t possibly put it like that. Harmed him? Life can damage people in so many ways.”
“Lázár,” I said. “The writer … you know him, Mama? He may be the only one who knows anything about him.”
“Yes,” said my mother-in-law. “He used to adore Lázár. That man certainly does know something about him. But there’s no point in talking about him. He’s not a good man.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “I feel the same way.”
She picked up her knitting again. She smiled gently and added, almost as an afterthought:
“Don’t excite yourself, child. The pain is all too fresh at the moment. But life comes along and miraculously arranges human affairs, including all those things that now seem intolerable. You’ll leave the hospital, go home, and another baby will arrive to take the place of the first one …”
“I don’t believe that,” I said, and felt my heart shrink with despair. “I have such a bad feeling. I think we are at the end of something. Tell me the truth: do you think our marriage is a genuinely bad marriage?”
She gave me a sharp look from under half-closed lids, through her glasses.
“No, I don’t think your marriage is a bad marriage,” she pronounced.
“Interesting you should say that,” I bitterly replied. “Sometimes I think it is as bad as it could possibly be. Does Mama know of better ones?”
“Better?” she asked quizzically, and turned away her head as if she were looking into the distance. “Maybe. I don’t know. Happiness, real happiness, tells no tales. But I certainly know of worse. For example …”
She fell silent. It was as if she were suddenly frightened, regretting opening her mouth. But I wouldn’t let her drop the subject now. I sat up in bed, threw off the covers, and demanded she continue.
“For example?”
“Well, yes,” she said, and sighed. She picked up her knitting again. “I’m sorry we should have to talk about these things. But if it is any comfort to you, I confess my own marriage was worse, because, frankly, I did not love my husband.”
She said this calmly, almost indifferently, the way old people sometimes speak when they are near death, people who know the true meaning of words, are afraid of nothing, and care more for truth than for keeping the peace. I went pale.
“That’s impossible,” I muttered like an idiot. “You had such a good life together.”
“It wasn’t a bad life,” she replied in a dry voice, knitting away furiously. “I got him the factory, you know. He, in his turn, brought me love: one party always gives more love than the other. But it’s easier for those who do the loving. You love your husband, so it’s easier for you, even though you suffer for it. I had to pretend to a feeling that had nothing to do with what I really felt. That’s much harder. I put up with it all my life, and you see, here I am. That’s always the case with life. Romantic, passionate people expect more, of course. I was never passionate. But, believe me, your situation is better. I almost envy you.”
She tipped her head to one side and looked hard at me.
“But don’t you go thinking I had a hard life. My life was no different from anyone else’s. I only tell you this because you asked, and because you are muddled with fever. Well, so now you know. You were asking if your marriage was as bad as it could be. I don’t think it is. It’s a marriage,” she declared, as if pronouncing judgment.
“Would Mama advise us to stay together?” I asked in fear.
“Of course,” she answered. “What are you thinking of? What do you think marriage is? A mood? A bright idea? It’s a sacrament, one of the laws of life. One shouldn’t even think about it,” she admonished me, apparently insulted.
We said nothing for a long time. I gazed at her bony hands, her clever, nimble fingers, and the knitting pattern; I looked at her pale, calm face with its smooth features, ringed by white hair. There was no sign of suffering there. Even if she had suffered, I thought, she has succeeded in achieving the greatest of human triumphs: she had passed the test of life with distinction. She has not been broken by it. What more can anyone do? Everything else — desire, dissatisfaction — is nothing compared to this. That’s what I told myself. But deep inside me I felt I couldn’t simply accept the situation. So I told her:
“I can’t deal with his unhappiness. If he can’t be happy with me, let him go and seek happiness elsewhere, with someone else. With her.”
“Who?” my mother-in-law asked me, closely examining the stitches in her knitting, as if there could be nothing more important.
“With his true wife,” I answered harshly. “You know. The real one. The one intended for him.”
“What do you know about her?” my mother-in-law asked, her voice quiet, still not looking at me.
It was I who was embarrassed again. Whenever I argued with these people, with mother and son, I always felt like a child, someone who had not been granted admittance to the serious adult rooms of life.
“About who?” I asked greedily. “Who is there I should know about?”
“Her,” my mother-in-law cautiously responded. “The real wife you were talking about … the intended one.”
“Why? Is there an intended? Does she exist somewhere?” I asked, very loudly now.
My mother-in-law bent over her knitting. Her voice was quiet.
“There is always an intended one somewhere.”
Then she fell silent. And I never heard her talk of this again. She was like her son: there was something final about her.
But then, a few days after this conversation, I had gotten myself into such a condition of terror, I got better. I hadn’t understood my mother-in-law’s words straightaway. It was hard to feel seriously jealous at first, since she had spoken in general terms, in a kind of symbolic fashion. Well, of course, the intended always must live somewhere. But what about me, me, what was my role? I asked as I recovered. Who is his real wife, his intended wife, if not me? Where does she live? What is she like? Is she younger? Is she blond? How much does she know? I was utterly terrified.
I panicked. I quickly recovered, went home, had dresses made, hurried to the hairdresser, played tennis, went swimming. I found everything in order at home … so much so I thought someone had moved out of the house. Or it was something else: you know … the realization that my life had, in the last few years, been relatively happy — that despite the suffering, the restlessness, and all I had thought intolerable, now that it was gone, all was well, better than it had even been? It was an odd feeling. Everything in the house was in its place, but the rooms felt empty, as if the executor had been through them, as if the most important items of furniture had — carefully, sensitively — all been removed somewhere. It’s not furniture that furnishes a house, of course, but the feeling that fills people’s hearts.
My husband’s life was so detached from mine at this time he might as well have been living abroad. I wouldn’t have been surprised to have received a letter from him one day, delivered from the next room.
Before all this he would talk to me about the factory, about his plans, hesitantly as though conducting an experiment. Then he would wait with bowed head and listen to my answer as though he himself were being examined. There was no discussing plans now: it seemed he had no special plans for anything anymore. He didn’t invite Lázár, either. A whole year passed and we didn’t see him, only read his books and articles.
One day — I remember it perfectly, it was an April morning, the fourteenth, a Sunday — I was sitting out on the terrace, reading a book, the garden, cautiously planted for spring with yellow euphorbia, in front of me, when I felt something happen inside me. Please don’t laugh. I have no wish to play Joan of Arc with you. I heard no heavenly voices. But there was a voice, a voice so strong it was like the most passionate feeling you could ever feel. The voice told me that I really couldn’t go on living like this, that there was no sense in anything, that my situation was demeaning, ruthless, inhuman. I had to change. I had to perform a miracle. There are dizzying moments in life when we see everything clearly, when we are aware of our power and our potential, when we see what it is we have been too timid or cowardly to do. These are life’s decisive moments. They come to us unannounced, like death or conversion. This was one of them.