“I have decided to take possession of him. I mean to take him back.”
“That’s impossible,” he said. “He has never left you. That’s precisely why it’s impossible. You can take back those who have been unfaithful. You can take back those who have gone away. But those who have never really, properly arrived, that’s impossible. It can’t be done.”
“Then why did he marry me?” I asked.
“Because he would have been lost if he hadn’t.”
“Lost in what way?”
“Emotionally. He felt something that was much stronger than he was and he felt unworthy of it.”
“Emotionally?” I asked quietly in a level voice while still leaning over the table but so that no one else could hear me. “The emotion that bound him to the woman with the lilac ribbon?”
“What do you know about that?” he asked and sat up straight.
“Only as much as I need to know,” I said truthfully.
“Who mentioned this to you? Peter?”
“No,” I replied. “Don’t you think we know everything about those we love?”
“That’s true,” he solemnly agreed.
“And you?” I asked him, astonished at my steady voice. “Do you know the woman with the lilac ribbon?”
“I …?” he muttered and bowed his bald head. He looked at the plate, clearly discomposed. “Yes, I know her.”
“Do you see her sometimes?”
“Rarely. Practically never.” He gazed into the air above him. “It is a very long time since I last saw her.”
He began drumming nervously on the table with his long, bony fingers. The diplomat’s wife was asking something in French and I responded to something the old count had said; he — who knows why? — had tried to amuse me with a few Chinese mottoes. But I found it hard just then attending to his Chinese mottoes. Champagne arrived, and fruit. Once I had taken a first sip of the pale pink Champagne and the count had managed to extricate himself with some difficulty from the conversation about Chinese mottoes, Lázár turned to me again.
“Why are you wearing that lilac favor this evening?”
“You noticed it?” I asked, and picked a grape from the bunch.
“Immediately — as soon as you entered the room.”
“Do you suppose Peter has noticed it too?”
“Be careful,” he warned me. “That is a very dangerous game you are playing.”
Like fellow conspirators we both glanced over to Peter. There was something haunting in the great hall, in the flickering candlelight, in the hushed tones of our conversation, in the words we used and even more in the mood they conjured. I sat up straight, unmoving, looking fixedly ahead, and smiled as if my neighbors at table had been amusing me with wonderful jokes and fascinating stories. Needless to say, I was interested in what was being said. Never before or since have I heard anything that interested me more than what Lázár was saying that evening.
When we rose from the table Peter came over.
“You were laughing a great deal during supper,” he said. “You look pale. Would you like to come out into the garden?”
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just the light.”
“Come with me to the conservatory,” said Lázár. “We can get some black coffee there.”
“Take me along,” said Peter, nervously smiling. “I could do with a laugh myself.”
“No,” I said. Lázár agreed.
“No. The rules of this game are different from the last. It’s the two of us playing this time, and we’re not letting you join in. Go and talk to your countesses.”
It was at that moment my husband noticed the lilac ribbon. He blinked at it shortsightedly as was his custom and involuntarily leaned toward me as though he were examining something. Then Lázár took my arm and led me away.
I looked back from the entrance to the conservatory. My husband was still standing in the dining-hall doorway while the table was being cleared behind him, myopically staring at us. There was so much sadness, helplessness, and, yes, despair, in his face that I had to stop and look back. I thought my heart would break in the looking. Maybe I never loved him so much as at that moment.
So we sat in the conservatory, Lázár and I … I hope this story isn’t boring you? Do say if it is. But I won’t bore you much longer. That evening flashed by like a dream, you know.
The conservatory was full of scents, muggy, hot, exhausting, like a jungle. We sat under a palm and through the open door could see the brilliantly lit halls inside … Somewhere far off, in a corner of the third room, there was music: quiet, delicate music. Guests were dancing. There was a game of cards going on in another room. It was a grand occasion, splendid and soulless, like everything in that house.
Lázár was smoking a cigarette, listening, watching the dancers. I hadn’t seen him for a year and now he seemed like a complete stranger … He radiated such extraordinary loneliness, he might as well have been living at the North Pole. Loneliness and calm. A sad calm. I suddenly understood that he had stopped wanting things: he didn’t want happiness, he didn’t want success, maybe he no longer wanted even to write. All he wanted was to know the world, to understand it, to get to the truth of it … He was bald and always looked as though he were politely bored. At the same time there was something of the Buddhist monk about him, his slightly slanted eyes inscrutably watching the world so you couldn’t tell what he thought of anything.
Once we had drunk our black coffee he spoke.
“May I be honest with you?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” I answered.
“Listen,” he said harshly. “No one has a right to interfere in somebody else’s life. I’m not an exception. But Peter is my friend … not just in the cheap, casual sense of the word. I have very few friends. This man, your husband, has kept the magical memories of our youth, along with its secrets. What I want to say may sound a little dramatic.”
I sat there serene, white as a statue, like the benevolent ruler of a tiny nation. I was carved in stone.
“Carry on,” I encouraged him.
“Well, then, let me put it in the crudest possible way. Forget it!”
“That is indeed crude,” I said. “But I don’t understand. Forget what?”
“Peter, the lilac ribbon, and the person with the lilac ribbon. Do you understand? I’m putting it crudely, the way they do in the movies. Forget it … You don’t know what you’re doing. You are poking your fingers in a wound that had begun to heal. It no longer bleeds. The blood has started to clot. It has a very delicate crust. I’ve been observing your lives for five years now, watching this situation develop. You want to probe the wound now. But I warn you, if you probe it, if you scratch it with your nails, there will be blood everywhere … Something — indeed someone — in him might bleed to death.”
“As dangerous as that?” I asked, watching the dancers.
“I believe so,” he said, carefully thinking it over. “As dangerous as that.”
“Then I simply have to do it,” I said.
There was something in my voice, a certain hoarse ringing or tremulousness … He took my hand.
“Be patient. Bear with it,” he pleaded. He was quite agitated now.
“No,” I said. “I will not bear with it. I have been cheated for five years. It’s worse for me than for women whose husbands are faithless, besotted, skirt-chasing fools. For five years I have been struggling with somebody to whom I could not put a face, someone who lives with us, in the house, like an apparition. Well, I’ve had enough of it. I can’t help my feelings. Let my enemy be flesh and blood, not a phantom … You once said that the truth was always simpler than it appears.”