Jenny was crying.
“He knows all about this. He has seen everything. He will always remember it.”
Jenny’s tears were like a further admission that this was so.
“Please leave me alone, Andy.”
She knew she was weak, and that my anger gave me strength; but her weakness was my only hope. It was no good my knowing one or two distorted details. I thought: If I know more, if I know everything, it might make it easier.
“He works in the bank, I know that.”
I didn’t know that. It was simply the thought that only someone in the office could have passed her the note. I was sure it had been handed to her — slipped somehow — and not sent.
She was sobbing — she didn’t reply.
“It’s probably someone I’ve met.”
Her eyes were red, and the flesh around them was loose and raw. They were like two wounds, still bleeding.
“As soon as I was gone you took up with him, and all those letters I wrote meant nothing—”
“I loved getting your letters,” she said, and I was hurt because I wanted her to deny the other thing. “I saved all of them — even all the postcards. I have them upstairs. You don’t believe me.”
But I did. I had seen my letters in the back of one of her drawers, all neatly stacked. I knew everything that was in those drawers.
I said, “He slept here, you cooked for him — I’m sure Betty knew about it, too. That’s probably why she left—”
Jenny’s face was in her hands. Was this true? I thought: Deny it.
“—and I know that the day I called you from Siberia — early that morning — you were with him in bed. You had been out the night before. You hated my waking you up. That’s why you were so snappy with me, even though I’m your husband. He was in the bed, on my side of the bed, waiting for you—”
She was still crying bitterly, and I thought: Say something.
“—And he’s waiting for you now. He writes you notes. You’re still seeing him!”
She said, “No — it’s over!”
It was her only denial, and it was a terrible one, coming just then, because it meant that everything else I had accused her of had probably been true.
4
It was not only the thought that someone else had made love to her — though that appalled me and wakened in me a primitive insanity: a man with a hatchet got to his feet and began to dance in my mind. There was something worse. In many ways, mine had been a dangerous trip. I remembered the bad episodes, the rickety buses on mountain roads; the poisonous food and water; hotels that were firetraps; the abusive and crazy people I had met; Vietnam.
I might have died. It had always been a persistent worry of mine that I was doomed to die in a casual accident in a dismal place, where I had no business to be. I often dreamed of train smashes, of my arms being hacked off by an angry mob, of catching fire. I always traveled as a stranger. But I reassured myself with the sentiment that my family was waiting. It was a methodical superstition, like singing to keep my spirits up, and as long as they were thinking of me I would be safe — they were keeping me alive; and if I died they would be brokenhearted.
Now I knew better. I knew that if I had died it would have made little difference. They would have been sorry in the guilty way that people are when some awful thing they desire deep down actually occurs. It might have been convenient, my death, for someone else had already taken over and totally displaced me. He had sat in my chair, written at my desk, probably used my books. He had put his feet on my Chinese stool. He had slept on my side of the bed, and made love to my wife, and played with my child. I imagined it in the simplest way. My vision was of the dining table, and a sticky spoon in the jam jar. It was there when I left; and then I died, and someone else was at the table. But the jam jar hadn’t moved. It remained, with the smeared spoon in it. The pronouncement It doesn’t matter if you die is devastating. She hadn’t said that, but I knew she was thinking it.
And I saw now that my death would not have mattered. I was a fool for ever believing in my importance. I felt I didn’t count. Knowing all this was like dying; not cut down with one swipe of a blade, but going slowly as the truth sank in and spread like an infection.
I had always thought the most cynical lines in literature were in the Jacobean play The White Devil, by John Webster, and went something like: Before your corpse is cold your wife will be screwing:
O man,
That lie upon your death-bed and are haunted
With howling wives! Ne’er trust them; they’ll remarry
Ere the worm pierce your winding sheet,
Ere the spider make a thin curtain for your epitaph.
It had seemed too cruel and taunting to be true.
It was true. I believed my case was worse, for I had not died but had only gone away.
She had said: I pretended to myself that you were dead.
She also said she had told me everything. Could that be so? I thought: There must be more. She said there was nothing.
“What’s his name?”
“What good will it do if I tell you that?”
“I’ll know who it is.”
“It’s all over,” she said. “You’re back. It’s different now. Don’t you see that I love you?”
“If you loved me you wouldn’t have done that.”
“I didn’t realize you’d take it so hard,” she said. “I hadn’t guessed it would hurt you.”
“It’s killing me.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so melodramatic,” she said.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, and then pushed her against the wall, abruptly banging her head. She was shocked, but she made no sound except a sudden gasp, so I did it again. This time she was frightened and hurt, and she began to cry.
“Please—”
“Melodramatic!” But I knew that melodrama is nearly always the result of that accusation.
My instinct was brutal. I only knew the effect of my anger on her after I was violent. I wanted to hit her again. I could only prevent myself by picking up an ashtray and smashing it on the floor. I succeeded in frightening her — indeed, she was terrified. Her terror gave me no pleasure, but it did calm me, by making her passive.
From the little room upstairs came Jack’s just-woken voice. “Daddy, what’s that noise?”
I knew that if he had not been there I would have gone much further.
How many times after that did I tell him, “I dropped something”?
He wanted passionately to hear me say that, though he knew it was a lie. Lying made me responsible. He feared that one day he would be burdened by the truth.
It was a storm that had broken over us. In old folktales witches have the gift of being able to whistle for a wind. I saw Jenny as having this witch’s gift, but the wind was still blowing, long after she wanted it to stop. We were all afraid; we all wanted it to be over.
In my jealous anger I looked for more proof and when I could not find anything I was only the more suspicious, because finding nothing at all seemed like definite proof that something was being concealed.
“Stop — you’re hurting me!”
“Tell me his name!”
“Daddy — Mummy!”
We were angry voices and thuds and screams. We were the worrying couple you hear from a window late at night, their voices so loud you can’t tell which window. Screaming at each other, screaming at the window so that someone might hear. At their most desperate they want everyone to hear them fight. And you think: They’re ignorant, they’re dangerous. We were them.