I imagine you’re surprised to find me here.”
“Not as surprised as you might think.”
“Well, you needn’t worry, I won’t stay long. Edward will be along as soon as I leave.”
“He knows you’re here?”
“My husband and I have no secrets from each other. Please sit down. What I have to say won’t take more than a few minutes.”
I sat. “Actually, I’m glad you’re here,” I said. “It gives me a chance to ask you just what the hell you thought you were doing, talking Julia into putting money down on that house.”
“Talking her into it! I did nothing of the kind.”
“Yet you didn’t discourage her.”
“Why should I have? There’s no reason she shouldn’t stay in Portugal if she likes.”
“On the contrary, there’s a very good reason. It’s not safe.”
“Is any place? Plenty of people have done plenty of guessing in the last few years—and look where it’s got them.”
“I’m sure you’ll understand, Mr. Winters, when I say that I don’t think it would be in my best interest—or Julia’s—for you and my husband to remain on the same continent.”
“I see. So you’re perfectly willing to throw Julia to the wolves—”
“How dare you accuse me of throwing Julia to the wolves, when it’s you who’s doing the thing that will surely kill her? Or should I put the matter more bluntly? Very well, I will. You are having sexual relations with Edward. I can endure it. Julia could not.”
“And why does she have to find out?”
“Exactly. She mustn’t find out. Not under any circumstances. Of course, there’d be less of a risk if you stayed in Portugal. But you’ve closed off that avenue of possibility, and now it seems that in a week or so, the four of us will be sailing off to New York. Won’t that be grand? No doubt we’ll sit together every night at dinner. And after dinner, every night, you and Edward will go off and—what lie shall we all agree upon?—have a cigar? That old ritual of the gentlemen and the ladies separating for a bit? Or do you prefer the afternoons? Teatime.”
“Please! Not so loud.”
“What, you’re afraid of people hearing? Good. You should be.”
She turned away and lit a cigarette. Her hands were shaking. There was something splendid about her, splendid and aristocratic and ungainly, what with the humped back and the disordered hair and the long, white neck poised for the guillotine.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she went on. “You’re thinking I’m going to forbid you from seeing Edward. Well, I’m not. I’m not stupid. I know my own limits. And so instead I’m going to offer you what seems to me a quite reasonable proposition. You may do whatever you like with Edward, and I shall look the other way—so long as Julia remains in the dark.”
“And why is it that all of a sudden you’re so concerned about Julia?”
“Because she’s vulnerable.”
“And you’re not?”
She blinked. “This may come as a shock to you, but I know my husband better than anyone alive. Trust me, none of this comes as a surprise.”
“You’re referring, I suppose, to your arrangement—”
“Is that what he calls it? How funny.” She leaned across the table, until she was so close that I could smell her perfume, the perfume Julia had carried into our hotel room the night before. “Mr. Winters—Pete—please listen to me. You have no idea, no idea at all, what you’re getting into with Edward.”
“Don’t I?”
“No, you do not. If you were a woman, I’d tell you the same thing. If you were me as I was twenty years ago, I’d tell you the same thing. He’s not well, Edward … Oh, I know he comes across as charming and odd and clever. But that’s only a screen. And yes, perhaps I’ve made it worse, coming to his rescue so many times, putting up with things no reasonable woman would tolerate … I don’t know what he told you about the men. It’s true that I slept with them. But not, as he seems to have convinced himself, because I wanted to. It was because he wanted me to. Which isn’t to say there weren’t a few times when I thought, Iris, you might as well enjoy yourself. You deserve to. In fact, there was one chap who was perfectly prepared to leave his wife if I left Edward. Now I wonder if I shouldn’t have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She leaned in close across the table. “Have you ever noticed that when we’re walking down the street, the four of us, and it’s too narrow to go two abreast, I always walk behind Edward? Well, do you know why? It’s because if I went ahead of him, there’d be the chance that when I turned my head, he’d be gone. There, how’s that for a confession? I love him—I can’t bear the idea of losing him, no matter what it costs me. I’m not what I appear. I’m not indomitable. If anything, I’m weak. Embarrassingly weak. What Julia feels for you, I feel for Edward.”
“Julia! I’ve always been a disappointment to Julia.”
“It would be so much easier for you if that were true.”
“I see, you’re referring to the talk you gave her yesterday. ‘Exhilarating,’ she called it. An impressive feat.”
“You speak as if I’m a mesmerist. If only I had that kind of power!”
“Well, whatever you did, the effect didn’t last. She hates me again.”
“Don’t be foolish. When a certain kind of woman—I include Julia and myself in this category—when a certain kind of woman loves a man, she will do anything—anything—to hold on to him. Julia understands that as well as I do. It’s why she’s so determined to keep you in Portugal. Because she knows she has a better chance here than in New York. Even if she doesn’t see why.”
“And you? You’re telling me that’s the only reason you slept with all those men? To hold on to Edward?”
“I slept with them, yes. Just as I would have slept with you. So that afterward he could come and smell you on my body, on the bedsheets. So that I could answer his very detailed questions. So that he could take the nightgown I’d been wearing into the bathroom and … Don’t look shocked. You’ve no right. Not after what you’ve done. That evening you went with him to Estoril, I’d prepared myself—I mean by that exactly what you think I mean. Only then the thing I’ve anticipated from the beginning, the thing I knew would happen eventually—it finally happened. The only surprise was that it was you. I’d always expected it would be some youth who slayed him, some stunningly handsome youth … Well, who can account for taste?”
“I’m not deprecating you. In one sense I’m glad. You’re less likely to drive him over the edge than a younger man would be. As for me, the whole business comes as something of a relief. Because at least now it’s all out in the open. For you and Julia, on the other hand—honestly, I think it would be far better if you stayed here. Stayed away from us. We’re poison. But I suppose it’s too late for that now.”
“If what you’re asking is whether I still plan to take my wife back to New York, the answer is yes. Even kicking and screaming, I’ll take her.”
“Then there’s only one other thing I have to say. Don’t get it into your head that Edward will leave me. He won’t. You can ask him yourself.” She gathered up her things. “Well, I suppose I’d better be going. He’s waiting across the street. He’ll be in shortly.”
“And what if Julia finds out—but not from me? From someone else?”
“The consequences will be yours to live with, won’t they?”
I looked away, toward the baffling clock. She stood. “You probably think I’ve enjoyed this. Or at least that I’ve got some primitive satisfaction from it. Well, I haven’t. For me this entire conversation has been extremely distasteful.”
“Then why have it?”
“Because there are occasions when none of the choices are good. You simply have to calculate which is the least bad.”
“Like going home.”
“More or less.”
I tried to laugh. She did not let down her guard. And how glorious she looked right then! Edward had been right to compare her to the Madonna with the Long Neck. There was something authentically Mannerist about Iris, a quality at once magisterial and freakish, as if her body had been laid out on a torture rack and stretched beyond endurance, and now the elongated splendor of her limbs, the erotic torque of her neck, testified to the indivisibility of suffering and grace.
A few minutes after she left, Edward came in, with Daisy.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m all right,” I said. “What about you?”
He sat down. “What can I say, Pete? This is what happens when you get caught up with people like me. People who don’t take precautions. If you never want to see me again, I’ll understand.”
“And what do you want?”
“I’m in no position to want anything.”
“Fine. Let’s go then.”
“Where?”
“You know where.”
He didn’t even order a beer. Outside, the sun was at its most brutally bright, that brightness that precedes its setting. Daisy at our side, we walked toward Rua do Alecrim, toward the iron staircase and the unmarked door.