Politics didn’t interest Fran. So she wasn’t interested in the political dimension of her work, let alone the moral dimension. But, Georg asked himself, am I any different? I told Helen that for Benton/Bulnakov it would mean a defeat to pay me money, and that this defeat was what mattered to me. But what did I want to do with the money? Punish and avenge myself and cash in-I made it pretty easy for myself.
Nevertheless, the question remained what really interested Fran. Her job? She seemed to have an obsequious relation to her work; the obsequious relation to Benton had been part of it. “Did you love him?”-“He wasn’t bad to me. I have a lot to thank him for, he even wanted to pay for Jill.”-“Why didn’t you let him?” Georg wanted to hear her answer. Her submissiveness reminded him of the fatalism with which one submits to the weather, come rain or shine. So she could have taken Benton’s money as a gift from heaven. But no. “I can’t do that, because I don’t know whether he’s the father.” She seemed surprised at his strange question, morally surprised. So the theory about the weather was out. Still, the job for her was just a job, just like the weather is only the weather; it left her uninvolved.
Jill? Fran’s life revolved around Jill. At the same time, Georg saw that in dealing with Jill she was strangely businesslike; Jill was a practical problem requiring practical solutions. When Fran breastfed her it was a technical procedure of providing and receiving nourishment. There was no mother-child intimacy. Georg recalled paintings in museums that radiated more warmth than the sight of Jill at Fran’s breast.
And me? Is she interested in me? Does she love me? Georg often had the feeling that for her he too was a piece of the world that one can’t change, that one had to accept, happy when he was happy, and bending under his blows. Every day she was happier with him. He noticed it. And why not? He took care of Jill, cleaned up and cooked for Fran, and slept with her. When she had her orgasm, when cries burst from her and she held on to him tightly-Now, he thought, now I’ve gotten through to you, shaken you. But when afterward she stretched out, she reminded him of a dog eagerly splashing through water and shaking itself dry, the drops spraying all around. He had not gotten through to her, shaken her, but was simply one of the pleasures the world offered.
Sometimes he wanted to grab and shake her. As if there were another Fran in the Fran he was with, as if he could break through the shell in which she, whether happy or sad, seemed uninvolved and unreachable: to hack his way through the hedge of roses and shake the sleeping princess awake if he couldn’t kiss her awake. He knew the feeling from Cucuron. Once, leafing through Helen’s books, he had come across the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty. He knew that the king’s son who kissed the sleeping princess awake had simply come at the right time. The hundred years had passed, and the day had come when she was to awaken again. Sleeping Beauty is not to be awakened simply by a kiss.
Once Georg did grab Fran and shake her. It was on a Sunday, and for the first time she hadn’t gone to the library to translate, but spent the whole day with him. They took Jill into their bed, and the three of them bathed in the bathtub. They had Bloody Marys and eggs Benedict for breakfast, and read their way through the thick Sunday Times. At two, the phone rang. Fran picked up, said “yes” and “fine” and “till then.” At three she began saying that Sunday together was lovely, but she wasn’t used to their being together so much. She needed her space, and time to be alone. He agreed, and went on reading. She asked him whether he didn’t feel that way too, and whether he wouldn’t like to go out for a few hours.
“In this weather?” He shivered.
“It’s just a little rain. It’ll be like a blanket, you won’t be seen or recognized. You’ve been cooped up in the apartment all week.”
“Maybe later.”
At three-thirty she got to the point. “Somebody’s coming at four, and I’d be happy if you could leave me alone with him for a while.”
“Who’s coming? What’s going on?”
“Sometimes… a man comes to see me and we…”
“You sleep together.”
She nodded.
“Is he the one who called up before?”
“He’s married, and only knows at short notice when he can get away.”
“Then he calls up, comes over, you fuck, and he buttons up his pants and leaves.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Do you love him?”
“No. It’s… he is…”
“Benton?”
She looked at him, afraid. How he knew and hated that glance. And the small, shrill voice in which she finally asked him: “You’re not going to do anything to me? Or to Jill?”
The old feeling of helplessness and fatigue came over him. No, he thought, I won’t put up with that anymore, but I won’t beat her either. “Fran, I don’t want this. I’m not sure what our relationship is, but everything will be ruined if you sleep with Benton now, and I don’t want everything to be ruined. Don’t open the door when he comes.” Should he tell her he loved her?
But she had already started rationalizing, sentence after sentence, in a whining voice. “No, Georg, that’s impossible. He knows I’m here and that if I’m here I’ll open the door. He’s coming all the way from Queens. He’s my boss, and Monday I’ve got to go back to work-Monday, that’s tomorrow. I won’t let you mess up my life. You’d like that, wouldn’t you! And how do you imagine it? Joe is outside the door, hears Jill screaming and me running around, and I don’t open it? Have you thought of that? It doesn’t work that way. You come bursting into my life and make demands. I never promised you anything. And what do you think Joe is going to do when he’s outside and I don’t let him in? Do you think he’ll shrug his shoulders, go down the stairs, get in his car, and go home? He would obviously think something happened to me when I tell him he can come over and then don’t open the door. He’ll call the super and the fire department, and I wouldn’t like to think what would happen then. I…”
He grabbed her, shook her, and screamed into her face in which her voiceless mouth went on forming sentences: “Shut up, Fran, stop!” She screwed up her face. “You’ll write a note saying you had to take Jill to the hospital, and you’ll leave it on the door downstairs. And if he comes up anyway-I’ll deal with him, which is perhaps the right end for this crazy story! I’ve had it!” Jill had woken up and was screaming, and Georg saw the fear again in Fran’s look. “Do it, otherwise you and Jill will regret it.”
She wrote the note and stuck it on the door downstairs. Benton didn’t buzz. They finished reading the paper, cooked together, and went to bed early, because Fran had to be up early. They made love, and it seemed to Georg that she was so passionate because he was so remote.