Because the moment he discovered that the woman had left town and gone to England — it was just that no one knew her address in England, neither her family nor her friends — my husband became genuinely ill with waiting, and there is probably no greater suffering than waiting. I know the feeling … Later, once we were divorced, I was waiting for him much the same way, for about a year. You know how it is: you wake up in the morning like an asthmatic, gasping for air. You put a hand out in the dark seeking another hand. You can’t understand how the other person is no longer there, nearby, in the next house or the next street. You walk down the street but the other person is not there to meet you. There’s no point in having a telephone; the papers are full of news that means nothing to you — items of no consequence, such as that a world war has broken out, or that in a capital city of some one million inhabitants whole rows of streets have been destroyed … You hear out the news politely, as it goes in one ear and out the other, and say things like: “Really? … Imagine! … How interesting!” or “How sad!” But you don’t feel anything. There is a lovely, wise, sad Spanish book — I’ve forgotten the author’s name; it was the kind of name a toreador might have, a very long name — in which I read that in this sleepy, feverish, magical state, the state experienced by those who wait or are absent from those they love, there is something of the self-induced trance; even their eyes are like the eyes of sick people when they wake from sleep, exhausted, far away, their eyelids slow to rise. People like that see nothing of the world, they just see a face, the one face; nor do they hear anything, just the one name.
But one day they wake.
Take me, for example.
They look around and rub their eyes. They can see rather more than one face now … or to be precise, they still see the face but it’s as if through a haze. They see a church spire, a copse of trees, a picture, a book, other people’s faces: they see the infinite variety of the world. It is an extraordinary feeling. What was unbearably painful and raw to the touch one day no longer hurts. You sit on a bench and feel calm. You think thoughts like “Chicken stew” or “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.” Or “I should buy a new bulb for the table lamp.” All this constitutes reality, each part as important as the rest. Yesterday all this seemed impossible, pointless and uncertain: yesterday was a different reality. Yesterday you still yearned for revenge or deliverance, you wanted him to ring you or to need you, you wanted him to be carted off to jail and executed. While you still feel this, the other person is out of reach and laughing. While you still feel it, you are in his power. As long as you are crying out for vengeance, he is gleefully rubbing his hands together, because vengeance is desire too: vengeance is dependency. But there comes a day when you wake, rub your eyes, give a yawn, and suddenly discover you don’t want anything. You could bump into him in the street and it wouldn’t matter to you. Should he ring, you’d pick it up if you felt like it. Should he want to see you and insist you must meet, well, why not? And you know what? All this time, you are relaxed, at ease with yourself … there is no tension, no pain, nothing trancelike in it. What happened? You don’t understand. Now you no longer want vengeance, no vengeance at all … and you discover what real vengeance is, the only, perfect form of vengeance, which is that there is nothing you want from him, you wish him no harm but no good either, he cannot hurt you anymore. Men in bygone days used to write letters to their lovers at such times, addressing them as “Dear madam …” And that said everything, you know. What it said was: “There is no more pain to be got out of me.” That was the point a wise woman started sobbing. Or not. A wise man may then send a magnificent gift, a bunch of roses or a life annuity … why not? You can do anything, now it no longer hurts.
That’s how it is. I’ve been through it. One day I woke and started to live again. I got on my feet and walked.
But my husband, poor soul, did not wake. I don’t know whether he is cured even now. Sometimes I pray for him.
So two years passed. How did we spend our time? We carried on living. My husband said good-bye to the world, quit his social circle, stopped seeing people — all without saying a word, like a swindler who is secretly planning to skip the country but keeps working, apparently conscientiously. The other person — his real wife — was abroad. We waited for her. It wasn’t a bad life: the fact is, we got on quite well those two years. Sometimes, at table or reading a book, I stole a glance at his face, the way a relative might steal a glance at the face of someone sick, and while they are inwardly horrified at the other’s sickly pallor, they smile sweetly and pass a cheerful remark, such as “You’re looking much better today.” We were waiting for Judit Áldozó, who had vanished from town, the monster … Because she knew that was the worst thing she could do. You don’t believe me? You think she might not have been a monster? You think she too paid a price, she too fought, she too is a woman, maybe, she too felt something? Am I right? … Go on, comfort me, because I would really like to think so myself. She had sat around for twelve years and then she charged off to England. There she learned English, she learned how to eat in polite company, she got to see the sea. Then one day she came home with seventy pounds in her purse, wearing a tartan skirt and cologne by Atkinson. That was the point at which we divorced.
It broke my heart, of course. For a whole year I thought I might die of it. But then one day I woke up and learned something … yes, the most important thing a person can learn by herself.
Shall I tell you what that is?
I won’t hurt you?
You can bear it?
Well, yes, I bore it. But I am reluctant to tell just anyone, I don’t want to take away people’s illusions by telling them they have invested all that faith in a false idol, one that begets so much suffering and so much that is wonderfuclass="underline" heroic deeds, works of art, extraordinary human endeavors. I know you are in that condition at the moment. You still want me to tell you? …
All right, since you ask. But you mustn’t be angry with me afterwards. Look, darling, God has punished — and rewarded — me by allowing me to suffer and not die in the process. What was it I discovered? … Well, my dear, it was this: that there isn’t a real wife; not a real anything.
One day I woke, sat up in bed, and smiled. I felt no pain at all. Suddenly I understood that none of this was real. That there is no real anything on earth or in heaven. No real wife, no intended, that’s for certain. There are only people, and there isn’t that certain one-and-only, wonderful, single being, the one fated to make you happy. There are only people, and people have something of everything in them: sugar, salt, the sweet and the bitter, the lot … Lázár knew that when we stood in the door and parted, but he said nothing, only smiled, because I had told him that I was going away and would find my husband’s intended, his real life. He knew she was nowhere to be found … But he didn’t say anything, then went off to Rome and wrote a book. That’s what all writers do in the end.