Part 15 (1/2)
In Paris they visit the Louvre and take the boat ride along the Seine and eat at little Latin Quarter bistros and buy ancient objets d'art in the galleries of St.-Germain-des-Pres. She has never been to Paris before, though of course he has, so often that he has lost count. It is very beautiful but strikes her as somehow fossilized, a museum exhibit rather than a living city, despite all the life she sees going on around her, the animated discussions in the cafes, the bustling restaurants, the crowds in the Metro. Nothing must have changed here in five hundred years. It is all static -- frozen -- lifeless. As though the entire place has been through Process.
Leo seems to sense her gathering restlessness, and she sees a darkening in his own mood in response. On the third day, in front of one of the rows of ancient bookstalls along the river, he says, ”It's me, isn't it?”
”What is?”
”The reason why you're so glum. It can't be the city, so it has to be me. Us. Do you want to leave, Marilisa?”
”Leave Paris? So soon?”
”Leave me, I mean. Perhaps the whole thing has been just a big mistake. I don't want to hold you against your will. If you've started to feel that I'm too old for you, that what you really need is a much younger man, I wouldn't for a moment stand in your way.”
Is this how it happens? Is this how his marriages end, with him sadly, lovingly, putting words in your mouth?
”No,” she says. ”I love you, Leo. Younger men don't interest me. The thought of leaving you has never crossed my mind.”
”I'll survive, you know, if you tell me that you want out.”
”I don't want out.”
”I wish I felt completely sure of that.”
She is getting annoyed with him, now. ”I wish you did too. You're being silly, Leo. Leaving you is the last thing in the world I want to do. And Paris is the last place in the world where I would want my marriage to break up. I love you. I want to be your wife forever and ever.”
”Well, then.” He smiles and draws her to him; they embrace; they kiss. She hears a patter of light applause. People are watching them. People have been listening to them and are pleased at the outcome of their negotiations. Paris! Ah, Paris!
When they return home, though, he is called away almost immediately to Barcelona to repair one of his paintings, which has developed some technical problem and is undergoing rapid disagreeable metamorphosis. The work will take three or four days; and Marilisa, unwilling to put herself through the fatigue of a second European trip so soon, tells him to go without her. That seems to be some sort of cue for Fyodor to show up, scarcely hours after Leo's departure. How does he know so unerringly when to find her alone?
His pretense is that he has brought an artifact for Leo's collection, an ugly little idol, squat and frog-faced, covered with lumps of brown oxidation. She takes it from him brusquely and sets it on a randomly chosen shelf, and says, mechanically, ”Thank you very much. Leo will be pleased. I'll tell him you were here.”
”Such charm. Such hospitality.”
”I'm being as polite as I can. I didn't invite you.”
”Come on, Marilisa. Let's get going.”
”Going? Where? What for?”
”We can have plenty of fun together and you d.a.m.ned well know it. Aren't you tired of being such a loyal little wife? Politely sliding through the motions of your preposterous little marriage with your incredibly ancient husband?”
His eyes are s.h.i.+ning strangely. His face is flushed.
She says softly, ”You're crazy, aren't you?”
”Oh, no, not crazy at all. Not as nice as my father, maybe, but perfectly sane. I see you rusting away here like one of the artifacts in his collection and I want to give you a little excitement in your life before it's too late. A touch of the wild side, do you know what I mean, Marilisa? Places and things he can't show you, that he can't even imagine. He's old. He doesn't know anything about the world we live in today. Jesus, why do I have to spell it out for you? Just drop everything and come away with me. You won't regret it.” He leans forward, smiling into her face, utterly sure of himself, plainly confident now that his blunt unceasing campaign of bald invitation will at last be crowned with success.
His audacity astounds her. But she is mystified, too.
”Before it's too late, you said. Too late for what?”
”You know.”
”Do I?”
Fyodor seems exasperated by what he takes to be her wilful obtuseness. His mouth opens and closes like a shutting trap; a muscle quivers in his cheek; something seems to be cracking within him, some carefully guarded bastion of self-control. He stares at her in a new way -- angrily? Contemptuously? -- and says, ”Before it's too late for anybody to want you. Before you get old and saggy and shriveled. Before you get so withered and ancient-looking that n.o.body would touch you.”
Surely he is out of his mind. Surely. ”n.o.body has to get that way any more, Fyodor.”
”Not if they undergo Process, no. But you -- you, Marilisa -- ” He smiles sadly, shakes his head, turns his hands palms upward in a gesture of hopeless regret.
She peers at him, bewildered. ”What can you possibly be talking about?”
For the first time in her memory Fyodor's cool c.o.c.ky aplomb vanishes. He blinks and gapes. ”So you still haven't found out. He actually did keep you in the dark all this time. You're a null, Marilisa! A short-timer! Process won't work for you! The one-in-ten-thousand shot, that's you, the inherent somatic unreceptivity. Christ, what a b.a.s.t.a.r.d he is, to hide it from you like this! You've got eighty, maybe ninety years and that's it. Getting older and older, wrinkled and bent and ugly, and then you'll die, the way everybody in the world used to. So you don't have forever and a day to get your fun, like the rest of us. You have to grab it right now, fast, while you're still young. He made us all swear never to say a word to you, that he was going to be the one to tell you the truth in his own good time, but why should I give a d.a.m.n about that? We aren't children. You have a right to know what you really are. f.u.c.k him, is what I say. f.u.c.k him!” Fyodor's face is crimson now. His eyes are rigid and eerily bright with a weird fervor. ”You think I'm making this up? Why would I make up something like this?”
It is like being in an earthquake. The floor seems to heave. She has never been so close to the presence of pure evil before. With the tightest control she can manage she says, ”You'd make it up because you're a lying miserable b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Fyodor, full of hatred and anger and pus. And if you think -- But I don't need to listen to you any more. Just get out of here!”
”It's true. Everybody knows it, the whole family! Ask Katrin! She's the one I heard it from first. Christ, ask Leo! Ask Leo!”
”Out,” she says, flicking her hand at him as though he is vermin. ”Now. Get the h.e.l.l out. Out.”
She promises herself that she will say nothing to Leo about the monstrous fantastic tale that has come pouring out of his horrid son, or even about his clumsy idiotic attempt at seduction -- it's all too shameful, too disgusting, too repulsive, and she wants to spare him the knowledge of Fyodor's various perfidies -- but of course it all comes blurting from her within an hour after Leo is back from Barcelona. Fyodor is intolerable, she says. Fyodor's behavior has been too bizarre and outrageous to conceal. Fyodor has come here unasked and spewed a torrent of cruel fantastic nonsense in a grotesque attempt at bludgeoning her into bed.
Leo says gravely, ”What kind of nonsense?” and she tells him in a quick unpunctuated burst and watches his smooth taut face collapse into weary jowls, watches him seem to age a thousand years in the course of half a minute. He stands there looking at her, aghast; and then she understands that it has to be true, every terrible word of what Fyodor has said. She is one of those, the miserable statistical few of whom everybody has heard, but only at second or third hand. The treatments will not work on her. She will grow old and then she will die. They have tested her and they know the truth, but the whole bunch of them have conspired to keep it from her, the doctors at the clinic, Leo's sons and daughters and wives, her own family, everyone. All of it Leo's doing. Using his influence all over the place, his enormous accrued power, to shelter her in her ignorance.
”You knew from the start?” she asks, finally. ”All along?”
”Almost. I knew very early. The clinic called me and told me, not long after we got engaged.”
”My G.o.d. Why did you marry me, then?”
”Because I loved you.”
”Because you loved me.”
”Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.”
”I wish I knew what that meant,” she says. ”If you loved me, how could you hide a thing like this from me? How could you let me build my life around a lie?”
Leo says, after a moment, ”I wanted you to have the good years, untainted by what would come later. There was time for you to discover the truth later. But for now -- while you were still young -- the clothes, the jewelry, the traveling, all the joy of being beautiful and young -- why ruin it for you? Why darken it with the knowledge of what would be coming?”
”So you made everybody go along with the lie? The people at the clinic. Even my own family, for G.o.d's sake!”