had changed a lot since meeting this fellow Mikhail, but did that justify ending a marriage that has lasted ten years?
Even if she had slept with him and fallen in love, wouldn’t she weigh in the balance all the time that we had spent together and everything we had conquered before setting off on an adventure from which there was no turning back? She was free to travel whenever she wanted to, she lived surrounded by men, soldiers who hadn’t seen a woman in ages, but I never asked any questions, and she never told me anything. We were both free, and we were proud of that.
But Esther had disappeared and left clues that were visible only to me, as if it were a secret message: I’m leaving.
Why?
Is that question worth answering?
No. Because hidden in the answer is my own inability to keep the woman I love by my side. Is it worth finding her and persuading her to come back? Begging and imploring her to give our marriage another chance?
That seems ridiculous: it would be better merely to suffer as I had in the past, when other people I loved had left me. It would be better just to lick my wounds, as I had also done in the past. For a while, I’ll think obsessively about her, I’ll become embittered, I’ll bore my friends because all I ever talk about is my wife leaving me. I’ll try to justify what happened, spend days and nights reviewing every moment spent by her side, I’ll conclude that she was too hard on me, even though I always tried to do my best. I’ll find other women. When I walk down the street, I’ll keep seeing women who could be her. I’ll suffer day and night, night and day. This could take weeks, months, possibly a year or more.
Until one morning, I’ll wake up and find I’m thinking about something else, and then I’ll know the worst is over. My heart might be bruised, but it will recover, and become capable of seeing the beauty of life once more. It’s happened before, it will happen again, I’m sure. When someone leaves, it’s because someone else is about to arrive – I’ll find love again.
For a moment, I savour the idea of my new state: single and a millionaire. I can go out in broad daylight with whomever I want. I can behave at parties in a way I haven’t behaved in years. The news will travel fast, and soon all kinds of women, the young and the not so young, the rich and the not as rich as they would like to be, the intelligent and those trained to say only what they think I would like to hear, will all come knocking at my door.
I want to believe that it is wonderful to be free. Free again. Ready to find my one true love, who is waiting for me and who will never allow me to experience such humiliation again.
I finish my hot chocolate and look at the clock; I know it is still too soon for me to be able to enjoy the agreeable feeling that I am once more part of humanity. For a few moments, I imagine that Esther is about to come in through that door, walk across the beautiful Persian carpets, sit down beside me and say nothing, just smoke a cigarette, look out at the courtyard garden and hold my hand. Half an hour passes, and for half an hour I believe in the story I have just created, until I realise that it is pure fantasy.
I decide not to go home. I go over to reception, ask for a room, a toothbrush and some deodorant. The hotel is full, but the manager fixes things for me: I end up with a lovely suite looking out at the Eiffel Tower, a terrace, the rooftops of Paris, the lights coming on one by one, the families getting together to have Sunday supper. And the feeling I had in the Champs-Elysées returns: the more beautiful everything is around me, the more wretched I feel.
No television. No supper. I sit on the terrace and look back over my life, a young man who dreamed of becoming a famous writer, and who suddenly saw that the reality was completely different – he writes in a language almost no one reads, in a country which is said to have almost no reading public. His family forces him to go to university (any university will do, my boy, just as long as you get a degree, otherwise you’ll never be anyone). He rebels, travels the world during the hippie era, meets a singer, writes a few song lyrics, and is suddenly earning more money than his sister, who listened to what her parents said and decided to become a chemical engineer…
I write more songs, the singer goes from strength to strength; I buy a few apartments and fall out with the singer, but still have enough capital not to have to work for the next few years. I get married for the first time to an older woman, I learn a lot – how to make love, how to drive, how to speak English, how to lie in bed until late – but we split up because she considers me to be ‘emotionally immature, and too ready to chase after any girl with big enough breasts’. I get married for a second and a third time to women I think will give me emotional stability: I get what I want, but discover that the stability I wanted is inseparable from a deep sense of tedium.
Two more divorces. Free again, but it’s just a feeling; freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose – and commit myself to – what is best for me.
I continue my search for love, I continue writing songs. When people ask me what I do, I say I’m a writer. When they say they only know my song lyrics, I say that’s just part of my work. When they apologise and say they’ve never read any of my books, I explain that I’m working on a project – which is a lie. The truth is that I have money, I have contacts, but what I don’t have is the courage to write a book. My dream is now realisable, but if I try and fail, I don’t know what the rest of my life will be like; that’s why it’s better to live cherishing a dream than face the possibility that it might all come to nothing.
One day, a journalist comes to interview me. She wants to know what it’s like to have my work known all over the country, but to be entirely unknown myself, since normally it’s only the singer who appears in the media. She’s pretty, intelligent, quiet. We meet again at a party, where there’s no pressure of work, and I manage to get her into bed that same night. I fall in love, but she’s not remotely interested. When I phone, she always says she’s busy. The more she rejects me, the more interested I become, until, at last, I manage to persuade her to spend a weekend at my house in the country (I may have been the black sheep of the family, but sometimes rebellion pays off – I was the only one of my friends at that stage in our lives to have bought a house in the country).
We spend three days alone, contemplating the sea. I cook for her, and she tells me stories about her work and ends up falling in love with me. We come back to the city, she starts sleeping at my apartment on a regular basis. One morning, she leaves earlier than usual and returns with her typewriter; from then on, without anything being said, my home becomes her home too.
The same conflicts I had with my previous wives begin to surface: women are always looking for stability and fidelity, while I’m looking for adventure and the unknown. This time, though, the relationship lasts longer. Nevertheless, two years on, I decide it’s time for Esther to take her typewriter back to her own apartment, along with everything else she brought with her.
‘It’s not going to work.’
‘But you love me and I love you, isn’t that right?’
‘I don’t know. If you’re asking me if I like your company, the answer is yes. If, on the other hand, you’re asking me if I could live without you, the answer is also yes.’
‘I’m glad I wasn’t born a man. I’m very content with my female condition. All you expect of us women is that we can cook well. Men on the other hand are expected to be able to do everything – they’ve got to be able to keep a home afloat, make love, take care of the children, bring in the money and be successful.’
‘That’s not it either: I’m very happy with myself. I enjoy your company, but I just don’t think it’s going to work.’
‘You
