“Tomorrow we go home.”
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s be on our way.”
Suddenly he spoke up in that melancholy, deep voice of his that always touched me. It was like a solemn instrument of some primitive tribe:
“Tell me, Ilonka, what do you think we should do after this?” he asked.
Did I understand what he meant? He was talking about us, our life together. It was a starry night. I looked at the stars, the autumnal stars in that Italian sky, and shuddered. I felt the moment had come when we had to speak the truth. My hands and feet were cold but my palms were sweating with excitement.
“I don’t know, I really don’t know. I couldn’t bear to leave you. I can’t imagine life without you,” I said.
“I know, it’s very difficult,” he calmly replied. “I wouldn’t want it, either. Maybe it’s not the right time yet. Maybe there will never be a right time. But there’s something in our life together, just as there is in this holiday, as in everything in our mutual lives, that is shameful and unbefitting. Is it that we daren’t tell each other what that is?”
At last he had said it. I closed my eyes and felt dizzy. I stayed silent like that, my eyes closed.
“So tell me at last, what is it that is driving us apart?” I asked.
For a long time he said nothing, simply thought. He put out his cigarette and lit another. He was smoking strong English cigarettes at that time, the smoke of which always made me feel a little giddy. But that smell was part of him too, like the smell of hay in his linen cupboard, because he loved to scent his clothes with a bitter oil smelling of hay. What extraordinary details constitute our sense of a person!
“I don’t feel a great need to be loved,” he finally said.
“That’s impossible,” I said, grinding my teeth. “You are a human being. You have an absolute need to be loved.”
“It is precisely this that women don’t believe, cannot know, and do not understand,” he said as if addressing the stars. “That there exists a type of man who has no need of love. He gets on fine without it.”
He spoke without pathos, from a great distance, but perfectly naturally. I knew he was telling me the truth now. At least he believed he was telling me the truth. I started to argue.
“You can’t know everything about yourself. Maybe you just don’t have the courage to feel. You should be less certain, more humble,” I pleaded with him.
He threw away his cigarette. He stood up. He was tall — did you see how tall he was? — a head taller than me. But now he towered over me, leaning against the balcony railings, looking more melancholy than ever with the foreign stars behind him. I wanted to unravel him, to find his secret heart. He crossed his arms.
“What is a woman’s life?” he pondered. “Feeling possesses every cell of her, from head to foot. I am perfectly aware of this, but I can only understand it in an intellectual way. I can’t surrender myself to feeling.”
“And the child?” I raised my voice.
“That’s the point,” he retorted, his voice slightly shaking. “I’m willing to put up with a lot for the child’s sake. I love the child. It’s through the child that I am able to love you.”
“And I …” I began, but did not finish. I did not dare tell him that it was the opposite for me, that the child was a vehicle for my love of him.
We spoke for a long time that night, with many long silences. Sometimes I think I remember every word.
“It’s impossible for a woman to understand. A man’s life depends on the state of his soul. The rest is all extra, a side product. And the child? The child is this strange miracle,” he said, then turned to me.
“This is the right time to make a vow. Let’s do it right now. Let’s vow to stay together. But try to love me a little less. Love the child more,” he pleaded, a little hoarse, almost as if he were threatening me. “Your heart must let me go. That’s all I want. You know I have no ulterior motive. I can’t live under conditions of such emotional tension. There are men more feminine than me, for whom it is vital to be loved. There are others who, even at the best of times, can only just about tolerate the feeling of being loved. I am that kind. It is a kind of shyness, if you like. The more masculine a man, the more shy he is.”
“What do you want?” I cried. “What can I do?”
“Let’s make a pact,” he said. “Let’s do it for the child’s sake so we can stay together. You know exactly what I want. Only you can help,” he continued, frowning. “Only you can loosen this knot. If I really wanted to leave, I would simply leave. But I don’t want to leave either you or the child. However impossible it might prove, I want to try harder. I want us to stay together: together, only not so intensely, not so unconditionally, not so much as a matter of life or death. Because I can’t go on like this,” he added. “I am very sorry but I just can’t.” And he gave a polite smile.
Then I asked something stupid.
“In that case, why did you marry me?”
“When I married you I knew almost everything about myself. But I didn’t know enough about you. I married you because I didn’t know you loved me as much as you do.”
He looked almost frightened as he said that.
“Is that a crime?” I asked. “Is it such a crime to love you as I do?”
He laughed. He stood in the darkness, smoking his cigarette, softly laughing. It was sad laughter, not in the least cynical or superior.
“It’s worse than a crime,” he answered. “It’s a mistake.”
Then he added, in a friendly way:
“I didn’t make that answer up. Talleyrand said it first when he discovered that Napoleon had had the young duc d’Enghien executed. I have to tell you, it’s a cliché.”
Fat lot I cared about Napoleon and the duc d’Enghien! I understood exactly what he wanted to say. I began to bargain with him.
“Listen,” I said. “The situation may not be quite so intolerable. We will both grow old. You might find the warmth of love more comforting once you yourself grow cold.”
“But that’s precisely it,” he quietly replied. “That’s the whole point. It is the thought that old age is inevitable, that it’s creeping on.”
He was forty-eight at the time he said this, forty-eight precisely that autumn. He looked a lot younger, though. It was after our separation that he began to age.
We didn’t say any more about it that night. Nor the next day — not ever. Two days later we set off home. On our return we found the child in a fever. He died the following week. After that we never talked about anything personal again. We simply lived together waiting for something. For a miracle, perhaps. But there are no miracles.
One afternoon, a few weeks after the child’s death, I came home from the cemetery and went into the nursery. My husband was standing in the dark room.
“What are you doing here?” he asked me roughly. Then he came to his senses and left the room.
“I’m sorry,” he said, over his shoulder.
It was he who had fitted out the room. He had personally chosen every piece of furniture and arranged everything about it, right down to the position the furniture was to occupy. True, he hardly ever entered the room while the child was alive, and even then he used to stand confused on the threshold, as if he feared the awkwardness and ludicrousness of an emotional scene. But he asked to see the child each day, in his room, and every morning and evening he had to have a report of how the child had slept and its general state of health.