43

Conflicting Opinions

It’s not in my nature to hold a grudge. I’m always looking for the reasons why someone behaved badly and when I uncover them I blame the reasons and not the guilty party. I’m always trying to understand and forgive the one who acted wrongly. To understand is to forgive.

I understand C.

I’m beginning to forgive C.

In talking about living and living we both discovered that there’s nothing that can be said about it. Things like these have to be discussed without words; both people must come to an understanding and express themselves with silent voices. Trying to persuade one another out loud will only ruin it. It can make you suspect that the other person is only trying to do you a favor.

C. admits that when it comes to living he thinks more about himself than about anyone else. He justifies this (if such a thing needs justification) by saying that no one else has given the matter as much thought. Since his childhood he’s been determined to see the world as a grab bag. Those who don’t push their way in and grab what they want come away with nothing. Sure, it’s not nice to grab. But why should he try to be any nicer or better than anyone else?

In his life, he’s met women who approached their relationships with him like men, businesslike and cynical. They taught him not to take women too seriously. Over time and with experience he came to base his view of women on those who, if they were still able to feel shame, would never have stopped blushing.

And it wasn’t only these women who taught him to take women with a grain of salt—he learned the same lesson from many great men as well. He read their atrocious views and tried to remember them and take them to heart. He has a whole collection of such views. He wrote them out by hand in books. In his efforts to educate me he told me to read the collection so that I could see that he was not entirely to blame for his own beliefs about women. Living with books taught him what women are, and that they can be no other way.

This is a part of what I read about women in C.’s horrid list:

Zola: “A woman is the axis around which evil turns.”

Heine: “Women have only one way of making us happy and thirty thousand ways of making us unhappy.”

Napoleon: “When a woman heads a government, the government will not succeed.”

Confucius: “An ordinary woman has as much reason as a hen; an extraordinary woman has as much as two hens.”

Urri: “Every woman consists of three parts: a body, a soul, and a dress.”

Cervantes: “Between a woman’s ‘yes’ and her ‘no’ I wouldn’t venture to put the point of a pin, for there would be no room for it.”

Totsitum: “All women are good, but not in their own homes.”

Bodenstedt: “There is no logic to a woman’s room.”

Axenstern: “The Almighty God is fashionable with the women.”

Metelus: “Nature made it so that it is impossible to live with or without women.”

Alfred Misa: “A woman is like a shadow—if you chase her she runs away, and if you flee her she chases you.”

Propertius: “Beautiful women are always frivolous.”

Andreiev: “A woman’s room is not a goal, it is a tool for reaching the higher goal.”

English proverb: “A woman becomes what a man makes of her.”

For a long time I have wondered how to respond to C.’s list of bad opinions about women—and I’ve come up with an answer!

I will give him a list of other opinions—good opinions—of women also written by great men. This will show him that you always find whatever you are looking for.

Here’s what I’ve found so far:

Lessing: “Nature meant woman to be her masterpiece.”

Goethe: “The society of women is the nursery of good manners. Only he who knows how to respect women can earn their pleasure.”

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: “Women are only untrue in lands where men are tyrants.”

Because C. collects the opinions of so very many great men that they keep him from forming his own opinion, I gave C. a large number of good opinions by great authors and authorities.

He didn’t like it and was annoyed at himself for showing me his disgraceful list (which was grimy, to boot). He took it back. He didn’t want me to add good opinions of women to his list.

C. was very candid with me. He told me that he’s sad I don’t trust him when he’s been so good to me.

When a good man is good, he’s just doing what comes naturally and doesn’t deserve to be thanked. But when a bad man is good, when he forces himself to be good for someone else’s sake, then he deserves praise.

C. forces himself to be good for me. He wants to see whether in keeping his distance from me he can be closer to my ideal. He thinks that maybe in time he’ll be converted to my religion. He’ll begin to believe that goodness is the religion of all religions.

He believes that I’m a very good girl and that by being good to me he might even be able to convince me to be bad. Let him go on thinking this way. There will come a time when he won’t believe this anymore and then he will realize that I’m not as good as he thinks I am, that I can be bad too.

For now, I’ve lost my appetite for hating him. I’m starting to get used to him, I guess.

He’s driven by loneliness. Loneliness and a desire to fool other people. People look at you with pity that’s almost insulting when they see that you’re alone. And they show you respect or even jealousy when they see that you have someone else.

That’s how Katya looked at me yesterday when C. and I went with another girl to a concert and ran into her there. She stared at us almost the whole time until C. noticed (he couldn’t help noticing) and asked me with a smile, “Who’s the redhead who keeps looking at us?”

“A girl. Do you want me to introduce you?”

“No. Why would you?”

“Just because.”

“I’m not interested in her.”

“Why not?” I asked, because it seemed to me that she did interest him, but he didn’t want to admit it.

“She looks sassy.”

“She’s a daredevil,” I corrected him.

He rebuked me loudly. “So she’s a daredevil. I hate that type of woman!”

“I think that a fox like that is drawn to honorable men.”

“Why?”

“They’re easier to fool.”

C. smiled and took my hand. He glanced flirtatiously at Katya and blew her a kiss.

“Do you think that I want to fool you?” he asked, considering what I’d said before.

I answered that I might think so. But I’m not worried about it.

“Why not?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

“It takes two to have an argument,” I said with a grin. He sighed, then laughed. Katya looked at us again and the concert continued.

Katya told Rae that she saw me at a concert with a young man who looked like an intellectual. A. overheard (this happened at B.’s house) and asked why he hasn’t seen me around in a long time. Rae asked him where he could expect to see me, since my intellectual man hardly lets me out of his sight.

“Is he so in love with her?” A. asked.

“He’s head over heels!” Rae answered.

Rae says that she takes a strange pleasure in exaggerating every time that she talks about love.

“And she’s in love with him?” A. asked.

“She? She doesn’t let on.”

“She’s a quiet one,” Katya added, “still waters run deep.”

“As long as they’re not full of mud,” A. retorted.

Mrs. B. added pointedly, “She isn’t the kind of girl who’s interested in inserting herself as a third where there’s already a twosome.”

Rae said that Mrs. B. knows who’s been keeping B. out late at night and she wants to expose Katya to the world. She’s only waiting for the right moment, when she’s gathered some more facts about her. A. probably won’t give her any dirt, but B., who talks in his sleep, might share information unawares. And then she’ll have a picnic!

Rae can’t wait for the picnic. She hates Katya. And she’s jealous about B. Perhaps even more than Mrs. B. is.

A. asked Rae where I’m living now. She told him.

Maybe he’ll come to see me?

My God! I’d be glad to make the man I hate love me, if only to make the man I love stop hating me! If only he’d love me, even just a little bit.

No, I’m forgetting myself. My wholehearted love won’t be satisfied with a little bit of his love. It has to be as I said before: all or nothing.

A. must be curious to see how C. loves me. He must also want to find out if I love C. Very good. Let him conclude that I love C. That I don’t love A., only C.

I’ll show him! I’ll show the whole world and I’ll even convince myself that I love the man I hate.