The note devastated me. I spent a miserable two days in Frankfurt and whiled the evenings sniveling and sighing in my room instead of dancing, kissing and making love to the man I had known, admired and found so terribly attractive ever since I was a teenager. I always loved him and now I was in love with him. I could not understand his reluctance to take me despite my urging. I knew it was not because he felt he had to be faithful to Maria. I surmised that at some point in the life of a man comes the need for sexual renewal especially after a long marital life. For some it is literally a tearing apart of the soul. The need, on one hand, to engage in exciting sex which has long since vanished from his marriage and time is running short and, on the other, the whole enslaving complex of family relationships, of love and emotions, habit and debt that ties him to a wife he has no reason to dislike and who, indeed, has shared with him the ups and downs of a common life. He mentioned early on how much Marquez's letters, that mother gave him, troubled him. I understand that they were the trigger to the flowering of thoughts that had probably crossed his mind but which he had diligently suppressed. He was of a different generation whose moral standards were much more rigid than the social amorality of our times.
I now know his story and one can accuse him of hypocrisy, which is, after all, so common, so universal a human trait. For it is, is it not, the trait that holds society together? If he were as morally upright as all that he would not run after a married woman and would not salivate at the thought of her for years and years, even after his own marriage, waiting for an opportunity and a sign from her to join her and continue their passion and deception.
Passion.
What a wonderful word. Passion means to live intensely. To be fanatically interested, involved to the point of madness. To be a prisoner, yes, but with what rewards! It is like a drug with a constant high, the adrenaline coursing in your blood.
But unlike a drug that hooks you more and more until it kills you, passion itself, eventually dies out. It is, moreover, to my mind, a valid excuse for deception.
Perhaps, the only excuse. If not forgivable, at least understandable. This is my judgment on this affair of Paul and mother. An affair that was my constant source of envy. That threw me in his arms.
I, of course, started noticing and suspecting the relationship after its sexual aspect was over. He was our guest, with his wife and boys, on two occasions, at our summerhouse on the Riviera. I was growing up, a teenager, and his good looks and pleasant manner captivated me. When I was home I was always near him to be able to just look at him and I often wondered how someone as handsome as he was could marry such a commonplace woman. The inexplicable happens in life often enough and Maria was nice but hardly his match. I started noticing that something was not altogether normal between him and mother. Supposedly, they were next-door neighbors in Cairo and together with Ismini, his sister, formed an inseparable trio. Yet during the first few days they were both moody and silent and some days later, as if the ice had broken, they could not take their eyes off each other. Anyone would notice it but daddy and Maria seemed oblivious.
The same thing happened on their second visit some ten years later despite the huge time gap. By that time I was a married woman with fully-grown feminine antennas that captured the slightest perturbations of moods and atmosphere, the meanings of smiles, of seemingly casual and not so casual glances. I had no doubt there had been something very intense between them in the past and wondered if it 37
was still on line. I mean physically, because there was no doubt it was there in their souls. The vibrations did not escape my aerials and I could not help, once again, feeling anger and extreme jealousy despite the fact that I was newly married. I could not help comparing Tony to Paul who even at the age of fifty was gorgeous and charming whereas my Tony, though a good lover, was a near opposite. I also suspected that my mother was having casual affairs throughout her life, which I could never pinpoint but which, nevertheless, antagonized me and little by little caused me to despise her for her infidelities to my boring, unglamorous, money-oriented but loving and generous father.
Deep in my heart I wished to take Paul away from her. It would be a sort of revenge for many things. For her being beautiful, intelligent, cultured and the darling of society, which I never was. I hated her for despising Tony and being indifferent and disdainful towards me but mainly for being a faithless and self-centered wife. The truth is I did not possess any of her many gifts. Not her beauty or her special type and certainly not her intellect. Ironically, because I have repeatedly articulated my bile against it, I seem to have fully inherited her avidity for sex and penchant for adultery.
So much time has gone by and I still wonder if all those feelings of inferiority towards my mother fired my passion for Paul. I nearly achieved my revenge but for my collaborator's last-minute cold feet. I do not know what would have happened had we become lovers. If God exists, he surely created this life of puzzles and uncertainties to amuse himself. Or, perhaps, to make our lives more turbulent, intriguing and interesting.
What of Sonia, my dear mother? When father died she inherited the bulk of his estate. Instead of being the glamorous society woman of concealed possibilities, she became the wealthy, merry widow. She tried to maintain the glamour and the possibilities, which she now flaunted and were henceforth mostly unconstrained and unconcealed with plastic surgery and facelifts. It was, it is, and it always shall be a losing battle. But she did find a handsome virile young man who reminded her of Paul in his prime and imprisoned him with her wealth and a marriage proposal. I cannot vouch for his other qualities for I only saw him a few times.
She called Paul on the phone quite a few years before we met by chance the second time in the street. The conversation according to Paul went something like this:
“Hello, Paul, this is Sonia.”
“Good Lord, Sonia, how did you know I was still alive?”
“Oh my Paulie, why do you sound so hurt? I could be asking the same question.”
“That's true, my dear. Forgive me. How are you?”
“On top of the world, these days.”
“How so?”
“Remember the transcript I gave you? The e-mail Marquez sent to his friends?”
“Oh yes.”
“Did you do anything about it?”
“I tried several times and missed.”
She laughed.
“Oh my Paulie, I once warned you that if you didn't change you would be one of the losers in this life.”
“At the time, I did not understand what you meant.”
“Do you now?”
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“One always understands when it is too late, don't you think?”
“Perhaps. Some more than others.”
“Presumably you are always a step ahead.”
“I try, my dear, I try. Did you know that what Marquez wrote goes for women, too?”
“The older I grow, the less I seem to know, the less I am certain about things.
Life is so varied and indecipherable and ultimately meaningless.”
“So what is the answer?”
“Seize the day, should be the motto. Grasp from life the small joys day by day.
Make each day as happy and pleasant as you can.”
“Yes, my Paulie. You're right. And you did not follow that?”
“For a few, all too short instances in the span of my humdrum existence.”
“Yes? When?”
“On each and every occasion I was with you.”
“You're very sweet and I love you.”
“You're still my girl. There was never any other.”
“Oh, now you'll make me cry and I have happy news. Oh Paulie, life is indeed strange.”
“And the happy news?”
“I'm getting married and I called to invite you to my wedding.” Silence.
“Paulie, are you there?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Will you come? Shall I tell you about him?”
“No, Sonia, please. I don't want to know about him and it would break my heart to come to your wedding because I am sure you are making the wrong choice. I have a feeling he is a person not only younger than you but also not worthy of you and it would depress me to see the derisive smiles of your guests. It is a certainty I have and I sincerely hope I'm wrong.”
“That was nasty.”
“No, my Sonia, I could never be nasty with you. I always tried to find good reasons for your unconventional behavior. And we were always honest with one another. You are a truly intelligent woman. But intelligent persons are not exempt from doing some very silly things. Don't you see these are words of love and pain?
And I do wish you, my darling, all the happiness of this world.” Paul was wrong, however. Sonia made the perfect marriage. She had a handsome virile poodle of a man whose only occupation was to indulge her every whim. She on the other hand kept him beautiful and elegant in expensive clothes and fancy sports cars. If he did anything sneaky on the side, that's another matter. I must confess, though, to being malicious because I never heard of anything. It's just the way life is.
And now?
I see Paul every day.
Now that the sex is out, we are as good as married.
Athens 14 December 2003
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