30

We’ll See . . .

Rae came to see me today and I introduced her to C. She was crazy about him. He made a very good impression on her!

“How can a person know so much?” she said admiringly after he left. “My God! He’s practically an encyclopedia! Whatever I asked, he knew the answer!”

“Do you know if they were the right answers?” I asked.

“No,” she admitted. “But if he didn’t know the answers, he wouldn’t have given them. He did know. I’m sure he knew. And he’s so handsome too. Yes, he looks very intelligent. You can see right away that he’s educated. And the way he stares so intently—”

“He’s nearsighted.”

“Oh, that’s why. But that’s also a good thing,” Rae said with a melancholy smile. “I wish my beau had worse eyesight. Maybe then he wouldn’t see my flaws and I wouldn’t have to hide them. Only just yesterday I wished that my engineer—I said my! He’s as much mine as I’m his!—I wished that he couldn’t see.”

“Couldn’t see what?”

“He noticed that I had a gray hair and he wanted to pluck it out. What a fool! As if it would solve anything to make me look a little younger by pulling out one hair. Three years from now, when I’m finally through waiting for him, there’ll be a lot more gray hairs.”

“Does he really expect you to wait for him?”

“Yes. Just wait. Wait for him to graduate before we get married. In the meantime, we’ll go on with our affair and see what happens. B. saw him with me and didn’t like him.”

“And you trust B.’s opinion?”

“Why not? B. is my good friend. I don’t know why you seem to have fallen out with him.”

“It’s better to be good friends from a distance.”

“That’s not the way I see it.”

“Then we have a difference of opinion.”

“He loved you, didn’t he?”

“Who knows.”

“I know he did. And what’s more, you weren’t indifferent to him either. You wouldn’t have broken it off with him if it weren’t for his wife and child. And, as you know, I’m different than you. If I loved someone, I wouldn’t worry about such things. I’d carry on the affair, up to a certain point, of course, for as long as I could. What else is life for? That’s why Katya amazes me. She lives in a way that you don’t.”

Rae spent the night in my room. In the morning when we went into the hall and I unlocked the kitchen door and opened it so we could wash up, my landlord’s family looked at us very strangely. It seemed like they were puzzling out whether Rae had only just appeared to take someone else’s place. Maybe they thought that she was a man dressed as a woman.

It all felt so insulting, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to take it.

C. proposed that we have a love affair. As long as I have no marriage prospects ahead of me, I should at least take whatever life offers me. Whatever bit of beauty I now possess will fade over time, and I’ll regret that I didn’t take everything life gave me.

That’s how he spoke to me and I threw him out of my room for it. I didn’t even scold him for talking that way. I listened to him and I hated him for it. My hatred gave me an odd sort of strength to hear him out. I didn’t even let him see that I hated him. But when he took my silence as assent and wanted to move on from words of propaganda to practical actions, I calmly showed him the door, as though he’d asked me for directions.

“You don’t mean it,” he said, with a skeptical smile.

“Leave my room.”

“But, you know, you can’t drive me away like that.”

“I’m not driving you away, I’m asking you to leave.”

“But why? You listened to me so patiently, all the way to the end. Surely you must be joking!”

“You came here with a bargain in mind, a sale. You wanted to cheapen me in my own eyes, so that you could get me more easily. I listened to you devalue my worth, but I found that it would cost me too much. And so—I’m not for sale. Go look for some other wares.”

“You can be so cutting, so severe! I didn’t mean it that way.”

“No need to say anything. I don’t care whether you meant it or not. We won’t be making any deals. Go.”

He looked at me, biting his lip. He grabbed his hat, reached for the door, and slammed it behind him.

He still thought he was in the right!

I see that my landlords are watching me, and I’m embarrassed to show that I can see it. I know how restricted I feel here, but I still can’t bring myself to move to another place. Maybe I have it out for myself. It’s like I’m my own enemy and I’m trying to get even with myself.

Sometimes I want to go up to those who take themselves for the morality police and ask them, “Can’t I just look after myself? Why do you need to keep tabs on me? I’m old enough to watch out for myself. And if I should decide to fall, my dear society, no matter how much you tried to protect me, you wouldn’t be able to keep me from it!” But I don’t confront anyone. I ask nothing and I say nothing. My self-respect and my higher ideals stay with me.

For a whole week, C. pursued me tirelessly in letters and in person, all the while insisting he wouldn’t speak to me anymore. I didn’t care what he talked about, I didn’t want to hear him talk at all. I told him to get it into his head once and for all that I will not cede my will to someone else’s. He can’t force me into his ideal version of “such love affairs.” He should look for someone more desperate for such high callings. They’re not for me.

He promised to be quiet. He’ll wait for me to come to him. Sooner or later I’ll realize that free love is the greatest happiness, the holiest ideal, the world has to offer!

I had no argument to make against his waiting for me to reach that conclusion. He can wait as long as he likes!

“You’ll be waiting for a long time, though,” I warned him.

“As long as it takes!” he agreed. “What do I have to lose? I’m a man. In the meantime, I can live however I want. You’re the one who doesn’t have it good. Retreating from life as you do is bad, even from the standpoint of health. You’ll grow old and decrepit before your time.”

I told him not to worry about that. He should stop trying to talk me into being sick. I feel very healthy, no thanks to his threatening me with my own demise. If I meet someone who wants to share my whole life loyally and earnestly, then perhaps I’ll become his life partner, as they call it. I’ll make us a clean and comfortable home and trade in poetic love for practical devotion. But to throw myself into the waves of the sea, as he says, to be tossed into the stream of life—that’s not what I’m after. You’d have to be either a dumb fish or an accomplished swimmer to want to throw yourself in like that. I am neither of those things. I’m just a person, a girl, who wants to stay out of the mud, who wants to keep herself from crawling into the swamp. Did he understand?

He said that he understood me very well, better than he wanted to, and he felt he should bite his tongue for saying such words to me. He won’t talk to me that way again. He’ll only come to see me every now and again and talk about general things. We’ll read interesting things together, or he’ll go with me on a stroll, or to a concert or the theater, or even the opera.

“So now we’re good friends,” he said, giving me his hand.

“Good acquaintances.”

“When you know me better, you’ll certainly accept my friendship.”

“We’ll see.”

It was like we were competing with one another, placing bets. Actually, I’m almost curious to see if he’ll be able to keep up this role and not resort to any tricks. He’s an interesting subject to study, after all. He’s certainly planning to study me. He’ll examine me from a scientific standpoint and I’ll approach him from a psychological one.