37

At Odds

I’m not myself; I’m like someone else. Something is beginning in me. Something is ending. My mood changes like the weather. Sound reason compels me to tell C. to go away, since I don’t believe anything will happen between us. And yet, when he comes, I invite him to stay. I’m not interested in his scientific speeches and yet I listen to them obediently.

When he wants to, he can speak very nicely. But his voice is so cajoling, almost like a priest, and it’s too sweet, embarrassingly sweet. Also, when he wants to, he isn’t bad at what he does when he’s not talking. He’s fine in every “circumstance,” as he would say. But he needs a reason. Good behavior must be well compensated. He’s hoping that over time I’ll come to see his merits and I won’t make him suffer anymore.

I let him hope.

He awakens and arouses my desire to live. When I think of how I’ve withered, a sort of physical despair settles over me. What am I? What is my purpose on earth? Was I born to die without ever really living?

C. says that I’m terribly backward, not modern at all. I have so many old-fashioned beliefs and I’m suspicious of everything new and progressive. I’m romantic, and at the same time so practical, so careful and calculating. I’m poetic and prosaic, sentimental and cynical. From what he says, I know that I am a lot of different things. I don’t know if there’s anything I’m not.

Oh, yes, there’s one thing. I’m not so young anymore.

When he tells me this I can see that he’s trying to provoke me. But I just smile and agree that I’m not only “not so young anymore,” I’m quite old. And I don’t understand how he, a man who is so very young (though he is in fact not so very young) could love me, or at least pretend to love me.

He answers, “I love the autumn of life.”

C. tells me that many great men, especially learned men, were in love with older women. They not only loved them, they even married them.

“Were they happy?”

“Very happy! They understood each other very well.”

“And they were still happy? They must have been truly great men.”

“I also want to be a great man,” he said with certainty. “You’ll see.”

“God help you.”

“Maybe you can help me.”

“How?” I asked.

“It’s simple. Give me the spirit to accomplish great things.”

“For—others?”

“Above all, we’ll help each other.”

“So that you can climb to the heights of those you value more than me and leave me behind?”

“We won’t make any contracts. If you make yourself so important to me that I can’t do without you, then maybe we could be happy together forever.”

“That seems like small hope for happiness. We aren’t great enough for that.”

“We can be great.”

“Maybe you can. You’re so small that you have a lot of room for growth,” I retorted.

“You are trying to pick a fight with me.”

“I’m not trying to do anything with you. Let someone else find the spirit that’s already in you. I’d advise you not to waste any more time on me. It will come to nothing.”

“You’ll get better,” he reassured me.

“Not for you!”

“Then for whom?”

“For—someone else. When I’m with you I fight to maintain self-control. If you ever finally convince me that I must, as you call it, live, I’ll go to him, to someone else.”

C. bit his lips in angry silence.

“Our romance began at the end,” laughed C. “Most romances start with the good, and end in anger. We argued in the beginning, but things will be good by the end.”

“Perhaps a love like ours might have yet another end,” said C. “Maybe it’ll end in marriage.”

Then he laughed. “Oh, I hate legal marriage! I can’t imagine a worse misfortune. What could be worse than taking two separate people and binding them together by law for their entire lives, so that they can never be free?”

“So if you don’t like it, don’t get married,” I said.

“But what do you do if you want to be with someone who thinks that people should marry?”

“Then you shouldn’t want her. Want someone else.”

“What if you don’t like anyone else as much as you like her? What if you only want to love her, and no one else?”

“Then love her from afar.”

“But what if you want to love her from nearby? What if you want to be very close to her?”

“Then marry her.”

“Isn’t that wrong?”

“Then don’t do it.”

“Isn’t that worse?”

“Then do it.”

“It’s just like Sholem Aleichem’s ‘Advice’: ‘Divorce, don’t divorce; don’t divorce, divorce!’”

“Yes, it’s like that.”

Cheek, exasperated by my “cruel” indifference, had the cheekiness to want to prove to me that I absolutely cannot understand what living is. No matter how much I’ve read, I haven’t read what I would need to read in order to understand. What I need is a “master”: a modern person with a systematic education, a professional who understands me better than I know myself. He enthusiastically explained that with such a man I’d finally open my eyes and see that those naïve, innocent girls of once upon a time whose romances ended in weddings don’t exist anymore. “Girls don’t think about their holy innocence as a treasured possession like they used to. Girls today like to go from one man to another, not settling with one person for their whole lives so that he can support them. They want to live and to enjoy their lives just like men do. And they don’t want to be a burden to a man for his entire life just for a minute of happiness. Today’s girls would be ashamed to live under such circumstances! They don’t want men to have to pay that kind of a price for them! It’s obscene! It’s—”

“Does the modern woman have children?” I asked hurriedly, seeing that he’d paused to catch his breath.

“Children?”

“Yes, children. You know, regular old children.”

“What do they need children for?”

“So they can have pride and pleasure from them, for instance.”

“They have no use for children! Leave childbearing to women who don’t know how to avoid having children. Women who know how to get out of it can be happy without children. And if a woman decides that she wants to have a child, then let her have one! Who cares? I’m all for a matriarchy: let her have the kid if she wants it, and let it be her choice. His responsibility goes no farther than whatever he agrees to. If he wants to have a child, then he can care for it. Right?”

“Sure, sure. I hardly know how it could be any other way. If a man wants a child, he should care for it. That’s only right.”

C. didn’t notice my sarcasm, or at least he pretended not to. He just squeezed and kissed my hand as though to thank me for agreeing with him at least on one point, when it came to children.

After speaking about many other things, he returned to the topic. “So, when it comes to children we agree. But about love—”

“We’re at odds.”

“But why?”

I could easily have told him that it’s because I hate him. But I kept my mouth shut about that, and instead I said, “Because I believe in marriage.”

“No,” C. said after a long pause, “I won’t go against my principles. For me marriage would be suicide. I must be free! My darling, you don’t understand me. I cannot, I simply cannot, go against myself. My convictions are who I am. My principles are my heart and soul. They’re everything.”

“Stick with your principles.”

“And you?”

“I’ll stick with myself.”

“By yourself?”

“I’m used to it by now.”

“Living like this, just fading away, growing old . . .”

“Everyone wants to live longer and not grow old! But we inevitably grow older until we die.”

“Let’s not talk about death. We have a long time left to live and to enjoy life. It’s true that winter comes after autumn, but before your winter comes I will give you a summer. An Indian summer! Say yes, say yes!”

I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say anything. I just watched as he got down on his knees and begged me to love him. An ugly enjoyment overtook my soul, which was so unhappy with my life. Maybe it isn’t kind for me to act this way toward love, whatever it is, but that’s just how I am. I’m starting to love the hate he inspires in me when I think of how he wants to hold me in his arms only to toss me aside later.

I’ll embrace my hatred for him and that will help me win my battle. I’ll bring him to the point where he wants to marry me, and then I’ll be the one to reject him.

He’s told me all sorts of horrible, disgusting stories about his life with women. He thinks this is the way to arouse my instincts, which he describes as not yet awakened to life. I listen to them as though I were an ignoramus looking up to a wise, all-knowing man whose every word is sealed with the stamp of science. Knowing that I won’t fall for his charms helps me keep up my pretense and make it hard for him to tell whether his tricks are working on me.

Love makes you good, soft, generous, and kind. Hatred makes you hard and cruel, but strong. And I have to be strong. I must be strong. I have only myself to take risks for me and protect me from ruin.

The circumstances were good. I was dressed when he arrived and ready to walk in the street, rather than having him in my room until late at night. In the street, his arguments against marriage are weaker. His surroundings limit his thoughts, and he concentrates only on his feelings. His words of propaganda aren’t as weighty without his gesticulations. Until he notices that the reason I want to go into the street with him is to keep him from sitting in my room, I’ll keep on walking with him.