This was his way of laying open a subject-not entirely flattering, but then he never flattered anyone, nor did he level with you in order to put you down. He simply believed that a willingness to let the selfesteem-structure be attacked and burned to the ground was a measure of your seriousness. A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.
But some time before, in her wonderfully polished but also clumsy not-of-this-world way, Vela had already begun divorce proceedings. It appeared that she had retained a lawyer as much as a year earlier. This lawyer, a woman who belonged to a tremendous downtown law firm, knew to a nickel what my assets were, and Vela's demand was for twenty-five percent of my bank account, tax-exempt. She went downtown regularly to have her hair and her eyebrows done and to shop for dresses and shoes. Often she lunched with a friend-or with her lawyer.
We had no domestic routines at all. What we had was a loose arrangement-a household, not the locus of married love or even affection. When supplies ran low, Vela went to the supermarket and bought up a storm-apples, grapefruits, meats for the freezer, cakes, tapioca puddings for dessert, canned tuna and tomato her rings, onions, rice, dry breakfast cereals, bananas, salad greens, cantaloupes. I tried several times to teach her how to choose a melon by sniffing it at the bottom, but evidently she didn't want to be seen doing anything out of line for a person of beauty and delicacy. She bought bread and rolls, soap powder for the dishwasher, steel wool for the pots. Several hundred dollars' worth of groceries were then delivered in cardboard boxes. After shopping, she didn't return to the apartment but drove on to the university. I took delivery at home and stacked the fridge and the kitchen shelves. I stomped the cartons flat and took them down in the elevator. I was on friendly terms with the super and didn't want to bother him with the trash.
Kerrigan, the poet and translator who lived with his mother-in-law a floor above us, asked me one day why I had to dispose of my own junk and when I explained my relationship to the superintendent he said, "Everybody but you gets respected." My answer was that this might be true but that the super had to be spared and that the man tacitly indicated that he needed his dignity to be acknowledged. And that I would rather lug the flattened cartons be low than have to think about his demand for esteem.
Toward the last, without realizing how near the end-zone was, I was still trying to puzzle out Vela, to get a handle on her motives. She preferred deeds to words, conceding that she couldn't compete with me verbally, and one day when I was reading a book (my regular diet of words) she wandered into the room entirely nude, came to my bedside and rubbed her pubic hair on my cheekbone. When I responded as she must have known that I would, she turned and left me with an air of having made her point. She had won hands down without having to speak a word. Her body spoke for her, and very effectively too, saying that the end was near.
There was nothing in the book I had been reading in bed that was of the slightest use to me. Nor could I go in pursuit of Vela to ask, "What does this behavior mean?" The large apartment was di vided into zones-she had hers, I had mine. I'd have to go looking for her-and she would anyway refuse to discuss the message just delivered.
So I turned to Ravelstein. I phoned to say that I needed to talk to him right away and I drove across the city, a distance of twelve miles. I had worked this out-eight blocks to the mile as laid out by the original planners or founders.
Arriving, I for once accepted Ravelstein's offer of a cup of his coffee. I needed something strong to drink. I knew of course what a passion he had for the kind of incident I was about to describe. The freaky improvisations of creatures under stress-the more bumptious they were, the more he cherished them.
"In the nude, hey? She was making a statement, as they say. And what was your impression? What was she telling you in her untutored way?"
"It's my impression that she was saying she was no longer available."
"The kiss-off, eh? And you weren't expecting it-or were you, in your bones, aware it was coming?"
"Certainly I saw it coming. She and I could never make a go of it."
"But I wonder whether there are facts which might have escaped you, Chick. I don't blame you for demanding that she should behave as a wife ought, according to your lights. But they have lights, too, the women. She has a considerable reputation in her own field. She's a high-grade scientist, they tell me, and she may not feel like cooking your dinner-clocking in at five o'clock to peel the potatoes."
"She grew up in a starving country…"
"In the eyes of the world it's a big deal to be a chaos physicist-I don't know what it's about but it's considered highly prestigious. Only you give her no credit."
"She came to tell me that her body would no longer be available. To communicate any considerable matter she preferred actions to words. When she broke the news of our decision to marry to her mother, she waited until boarding time at the airport the day of Mama's return flight to Europe and at the last possible moment said, 'I've decided to marry Chick.' The old girl hated me. Vela let it be thought that she loved her mama, but in fact she crossed her in every way possible."
"But the opposite is true?" Ravelstein asked.
"I don't know the true answer, nor does anyone else know it. People go to the trouble of organizing a view of themselves and the view gives them the consistency or the appearance of consistency society seems to require. But Vela really has no organized view…."
"Okay, okay," said Ravelstein. "But your idea was that she would come to love you. She'd love you because you are lovable. But this Vela of yours reserves her intellect for physics. The idea of leading a warm family life is her number one antipremise. So from this we pass to the supermarket, where Vela buys a few hundred dollars' worth of chow and has it delivered in boxes by young criminals who have parole officers keeping an eye on them. You can cook this shit yourself, and eat it by your lonesome, and then scrub the pots. Just as your mother did after feeding her family a real meal, cooked with love. You thought that if you could get her to prepare your dinners with love she'd come to love you. So her comment on this is satirical; she sends you the groceries. Just as she belongs to a different universe altogether. And you belong to a third universe, the vanishing one of old-fashioned Jews. The soul of another is a dark forest, as the Russians say… you're fond of Russian sayings."