CHAPTER 16

Monsieur Sorbonne After His Marriage

After some days at the downtown hotel, Monsieur Sorbonne decided to check out his situation in life. Perhaps after her “it’s-all-over” tizzy, the fortitudinous Miss Gutz had come to her senses and would now let him come back home.

This thought in mind, he drove to the print shop, where it was reported to him that Miss Gutz was off on a two-hour lunch with a farmer. Something strange had happened to her, a print shop cohort said. Two days ago she had lost all verve for her work. Her moods had veered from melancholia to rage, and she was threatening to change professions. She was tired of working so hard, she said, tired of slaving for her useless husband. She had sat around on a boat with him for two years, while he sailed by the stars and read his astronomy books (so the cohort reported) and now—she had stamped her foot—she wanted more, something better. She wanted to be cared for and paid for, to be treated like a wife.

A farmer had shown up two days ago needing some stationery printed for his hog farm. He had then somewhat courted Miss Gutz, telling her tales of farmhouse sunrises. It was he who had taken her to lunch.

This didn’t bode well, thought Monsieur Sorbonne. He thanked the informative cohort, got in his car, and drove on. As he approached his house, he wondered what might be the point of trying to reinsert himself into his life with Miss Gutz. They had had a brief, curious marriage. They had had a good trip in the boat—speaking in general, that is. They hadn’t turned upside-down and both drowned or come down with scurvy. But they had also had no romance, no heartfelt conversations beneath the moon, no tenderness, no passion. It had been for them both an effort, an exercise in fortitude.

Perhaps his indiscretion with Mademoiselle Objet—impulsive at the time—represented an unpremeditated but much needed scintilla of joy in his drab daily life. It was, in fact, perhaps a clue that his marriage was over and he should move on. He regretted, for Miss Gutz’s sake, the awkwardness of it all. He hadn’t, in truth, ever wanted to hurt her; and now, he supposed, he should apologize, at least express his regrets, or leave her a note at the door. But when he arrived at the house, the front door was barred with two black, creosote railroad ties, along with a sign in big block letters— Times Roman, 1000 point, he noted to himself—which said, “KEEP OUT, and this means YOU!!”

It really was over, Monsieur Sorbonne surmised, supposing the YOU referred to himself. Slightly stunned by the odd finality of it all, he backed his car out of the driveway and headed back to the hotel.