I shuddered. My whole body tingled: it was like goose pimples. I started to feel cold.
I looked at the garden and my eyes filled with tears.
What was it I was feeling? I felt that I was responsible for my own fate. That my life depended on me. There was no point in waiting for some angelic visitation either in my personal life or in any relationship. My husband and I had a problem of some sort. I don’t understand my husband. He doesn’t belong to me, doesn’t want to belong entirely to me. I knew there was no other woman in his life … I was pretty, young, and I loved him. Lázár was not the only powerful figure in his life, the only one with powers. I had powers of my own. I should use them.
I felt such absolute power surge through me, I could have killed someone or built a whole new world with it. Maybe it is only men who truly feel such power and are conscious of it at the decisive moments of their lives. We women are generally terrified and paralyzed at such times.
But I had no intention of backing down. That day, on Sunday, the fourteenth of April, a few months after the child’s death, I made the one and only fully conscious choice in my life. You needn’t look at me with those big frightened eyes of yours. Listen carefully. I’ll tell you what happened.
I decided to take possession of my husband.
Why aren’t you laughing? You mean it’s nothing to laugh at? I didn’t feel like laughing, either. The prospect of the task daunted me. I was so frightened, I was quite out of breath at the thought. Carrying out this task was the meaning of my life, I thought. I couldn’t hold back any longer. There was no way of leaving it for time or chance to sort out; I simply couldn’t wait for something to happen, couldn’t just accept the alternative of going on as I was until it did. I knew right then that it wasn’t I who had decided on a course of action: the action had decided me. My husband and I were engaged in a life-or-death struggle, but we couldn’t be separated until something of devastating power came between us. Either this man was going to come back to me, body and soul, without reserve or shame, or I would leave him. He had a secret I knew nothing about and I would get it out of him even if I had to dig it out, tooth and nail; even if it was buried deep beneath the ground like a long-buried bone the dog digs up, or like a body some mad lover wants to disinter. It was either this or I move on. Things could not go on the way they were. It was exactly as I said: I decided to take possession of my husband.
Put it like that and it sounds simple enough. But you’re a woman too, so you know it is one of the hardest tasks you can undertake. Sometimes I think it’s the hardest of all.
You know how it is when a man decides to do something and overcomes every obstacle, anything that might prevent him carrying out his plan and imposing his will … well, yes, this was that kind of situation, that state of mind. Those we love are the world. When Napoleon — about whom I know little more than that he was master of the world for a while and had the duc d’Enghien killed, and that doing that was more than a sin; it was a blunder — have I mentioned that before? What I mean to say is that when Napoleon decided to conquer Europe, his decision was no more momentous than mine was then. It was what I vowed to do that breezy Sunday in April.
An explorer might feel something of the sort when he decides to go to Africa or to the North Pole, caring little about what wild animals or climate he might encounter there, if in so doing he might discover something, find something previously undiscovered or unknown, something no explorer had ever come across before … Yes, the project of a woman setting out to discover a man’s secret is as enormous as that. But she will get that secret even if she has to go through hell for it. That was what I had decided to do.
Or it could be that it was my decision that decided me … you never really know how these things happen. People do whatever circumstances allow them to do. It’s like being a sleepwalker, a water diviner, the local witch doctor, someone the tribe avoids out of a superstitious awe. And not just the tribe, either, but the authorities too, because there is something frightening in their eyes, something not to be trifled with. It’s as if there were a kind of sign on their brow to show that they are about a uniquely dangerous business and will not rest until it has been completed … That was how I felt when, having realized the situation and made a conscious decision, I waited for him to come home that day. That was my state of mind at noon when he returned from his Sunday stroll.
He had been down the valley, walking that dog he was so fond of, the tan-colored Vizsla he took wherever he went. He opened the garden gate and came in. I watched him, arms folded, from the top step of the veranda. It was spring, the light was strong, and the breeze that was tossing the boughs was ruffling my hair. I will never forget that moment, the cold light on the distant landscape, on the garden, and in me too. I felt possessed.
Master and dog came to a wary, involuntary stop, the way people instinctively do when confronted by anything strange, somewhat on the defensive. “Come on, then,” I thought calmly. “Come on, all of you — other women, friends, childhood memories, family, the whole hostile human world — come on. I am going to take this man from you.” So we sat down to eat.
After lunch I had a slight headache. I went to my room, drew the curtains, and lay down, remaining there till the evening.
I am not a writer, like Lázár, so I can’t describe my condition that afternoon, what I was thinking, what thoughts ran through my head … All I could see was the task ahead; all I knew was that I could not afford to be weak, that I had to do what I had decided to do. At the same time I knew that no one could help me, that I had no idea how to go about it or where to begin … You understand? There were moments I thought I was being ridiculous letting myself in for such an impossible task.
“What can I do?” I kept asking myself over and over again. I mean, I couldn’t write to the newspapers asking for advice and encouragement, signing myself “Cheated Wife.” I know those kinds of letters and the answers they receive from editors, encouraging the cheated woman not to give up, saying her husband is probably laden down with work, that she should look after the house, use this or that ointment and powder at night because that will keep her looking fresh, and her husband will fall in love with her all over again. Well, that sort of thing would not help me. I knew ointments and powders would not do the trick. And anyway, I had always done a first-rate job of housekeeping, everything in the house being absolutely where it ought to be. And I was beautiful then too, more beautiful that year than ever, perhaps. You goose, you silly goose, I thought, even to think of this. This was something altogether different.
There were no soothsayers or sages I could consult on the matter, I could not write to famous writers for advice, nor was it something I could openly discuss with women friends or members of the family — not this apparently unimportant issue that was nonetheless of ultimate importance to me, which was: how to take possession of a man … My mild headache had become the usual raging migraine by the evening. But I took two doses and said nothing to my husband, going out to the theater, followed by supper.