Really, it was as if they were living several lives at once. As if they were living their fathers’ and sons’ lives too. As if they weren’t individual, simple, once-and-once-only personal beings, but a move in a long game, which is not any individual’s game but the family’s, the family of a certain class. That’s why they took such care, such anxious care, of those family photographs and family groups. It was like a museum protecting beautifully painted portraits of the famous and long-dead: “Grandfather and Grandmother on the occasion of their engagement.” “Father and Mother’s marriage.” The photograph of a bankrupt uncle in his frock coat or wearing a boater. The picture of a happy or unhappy great-aunt smiling from beneath a veil while holding a parasol. That was them, all of them, together, a slowly evolving, slowly decaying composite person, a prosperous family. It was all utterly alien to me. For me, family was a necessity, a need. For them it was a project.
So that’s what they were like. And because they always took the long view and made careful calculations, they could never really feel at peace. The only people capable of being at peace are people who live in the moment. It’s the same with the fear of death. Atheists don’t fear death, because they don’t believe in God. Are you a believer? What’s that you’re muttering? Yes, I see you nodding to say yes, you are, but how much? I have only ever seen one man who, I was certain, had no fear of death. It was the artist man, that’s right — him. He didn’t believe in God, so he was afraid of nothing, neither of death nor life. Believers are frightened of death because they cling to everything religion promises them; they believe there is life after death, but also judgment. Our artist friend didn’t believe any of that. He said that if there was a God he could not be so cruel as to land people with eternal life. You see how crazy they all are, these artistic types? But respectable families — they fear death as much as they fear life. That’s why this family was religious, and prudent, and virtuous … Because they were afraid.
I can see you don’t understand. They themselves could probably understand it on an intellectual level, they being such cultivated people, but not in their hearts or their guts. Their hearts and guts never had a moment of peace. They were afraid that all the calculations, all the planning, all that keeping things tidy, weren’t worth anything: that one day it would all be over. But what did they really think would be over? The family? The factory? The money? No, these people knew that what they were afraid of was nowhere near so simple. What they were afraid of was that one day they’d have no energy left and be too tired to hold things together. You know that Eytie mechanic, the one we took that ancient jalopy of a car to the other day, to see what was the matter with it? Remember how he told us the engine was still running and that there were no cracks in it, but that the whole thing had metal fatigue? It was as if my employers were frightened of developing metal fatigue; that everything they had scraped together would fall apart, and then their “culture” would be done for.
That’s enough about them. I could go on forever. Just think of all the secrets stored in their drawers and in those safes that were built into the walls, where they kept deeds and shares and documents and jewels. What are you shrugging for? But my darling, my one and only, these things are not as we proles imagine! The rich are really strange. Maybe there is some dark crevice in their souls where they are hiding something else. It was the key to this safe, hidden in this crevice, that I wanted to steal from them. I wanted to discover what was locked deep in their hearts.
But the rich remain rich even when dispossessed. I saw them after the siege, clambering out of their cellars, chiefly the Christians but then the Jews too, people who had somehow managed to survive, every one of them robbed and dispossessed to the extent that you couldn’t imagine having less. Nevertheless — robbed of everything, their houses bombed flat, their businesses in ruins because of the war and what followed it, not to mention the great change you could sense in the air even before it happened, the surprise the Commies were preparing for them — these rich Christians and Jews, the rich, were back in their villas within two years, and the women with their neat little earrings and silver-fox collars were back in the Café Gerbeaud. How did they do it? I don’t know. But I’m quite sure that their lives straight after the war were not different from before and during. They were just as fussy about their food and clothes. When the first train set off for abroad and they had received their first travel permit from the Russian high command in Budapest, they were already complaining about having to spend the night in the upper berth of their sleeping car to the shops in Zurich or Paris. You see what I mean? Being rich must be a condition, much like sickness or health. Say you are rich, you might, in some mysterious way, be rich forever, but however much money you have, you never feel properly rich. Maybe you need to believe in your wealth in order to be properly rich — I mean, the way saints and revolutionaries believe that they are different. And you can’t afford to feel guilty if you are rich: if you felt guilty for a second you’d be finished. The not-truly-rich, those who have visions of the poor while indulging in a beefsteak and drinking Champagne, will eventually lose out, because they are insincere in their wealth. They’re not rich out of conviction, they are only pretending, cowardly, sneakily, to be rich. You have to be very disciplined to be rich. You can perform a few charitable acts, but only as a kind of a fig leaf. Listen, darling. I hope one day, when I am no longer around and you meet someone who has more jewelry left than I have, you will not be too sensitive about such things. Don’t be cross. I’m just telling you what I think. There! Give me your lovely artistic hand, let me clutch it to my heart. Can you feel it beating? It’s beating for a proper prole, you see. Well, there you are. That’s me all over.
Enough to say I was a clever little girl and quickly learned all there was to know about wealth. I served them for a long time and learned their secrets. But one day I left them, because I’d grown tired of waiting. What was I waiting for? I was waiting for my husband to desire and miss me. What are you looking at? I waited just as I should under the circumstances. I was strong. I had a plan.
. . .
Have another look at his photograph, take a good look. I kept it because I paid the photographer good money for it, when I was still a maid, because he was still with his first wife.
Let me adjust the bolster under your head. Go on, relax, stretch out. You should always relax when you’re with me, darling. I want you to feel good when you are with me. It’s exhausting enough for you working all night in that bar with the band. When you are here in bed with me, you should do nothing except love me, then relax.
Is that something I said to my husband too? No, sweetheart. I did not mean for him to feel good when he was in bed with me. And that was the trouble, really. Somehow I couldn’t resolve in myself to make him feel good with me, though he did everything to please me, poor man, undertook every kind of sacrifice for my sake. He broke with his family, with society, with all his usual ways. When he came to me it was really like emigrating, the way some bankrupt man-about-town sets out on a sea voyage to a faraway land. Maybe that was exactly why I could never reconcile myself to him; he just wasn’t at home with me. All the time he was with me it was as if he had run away to an exciting, spicy, hot country like Brazil and married some local woman. Does such a person ever wonder how he got there? And when he is with that local woman, even at the most intimate moments, isn’t his mind elsewhere? Isn’t he thinking of home? Perhaps. It made me nervous. That was why I didn’t want him to feel too good when we were together, at table or in bed.