I stopped him. It would leave me open to charges of disloyalty if I were to admit that she was indeed the very strange phenomenon he described. I saw her with the eyes of a lover. But not entirely. I also took a naturalist's view of her. She was a very beautiful woman. And I admitted also that certain aspects of her face reminded me of Giorgione. On a small map you could place Vela's origins in Greece or even Egypt. Of course a big-time intellect is a universal phenomenon, and Vela had a major league brain. The scientific part of it de served particular respect. Ravelstein, however, held that examples of great personalities among scientists were scarce. Great philosophers, painters, statesmen, lawyers, yes. But great-souled men or women in the sciences are extremely rare. "It's their sciences that are great, not the persons."
I must drop Paris now and get back to New Hampshire.
A few days in the country led me to conclude that Ravelstein's visit was proof of his affection. He didn't care about the fields, trees, pools, flowers, birds: These wasted the time of a superior man. Why did he give up his bank of telephones, his restaurants, and all the conveniences and erotic attractions of New York or Chicago? Because he wanted to see firsthand what was going on between Vela and me in New Hampshire.
One day was enough. "I've been watching," he said, "and I see she's got you staked out on an anthill," he said. "Don't you ever do anything together? Hiking?"
"No, come to think of it."
"Swimming?"
"At odd times she jumps in the neighbor's pond."
"Barbecues, picnics, visitors, parties?"
"Not her cup of tea."
"She can't talk to you about her central interests…" Ravelstein's big face was now very close. Holding his breath, he silently led me to consider it all from his point of view: Why did I submit to an ordeal of daily tensions which would never end?
All that Vela needed, as she often said, was to sit in a quiet angle with a notepad and draw her diagrams, knees up, breath held, and immobile. But she was all the while also directing negative currents toward me. The beauty of this New Hampshire corner with great maples and centuries-old hickories-the periwinkles and mosses in the shaded corners signified… well, to Vela they signified very little. She concentrated on her great abstractions.
"How do you figure in this?" said Ravelstein. "Do you maybe represent all that any man will ever get from her… So the fascinating question is whether she concentrates on her science or on her witch-work, because in your ignorance that's how it must seem."
That seemed to be a fair way to state the case.
"The regular pattern for her," I said, "is to pack up her things every few weeks, including her party clothes, because there are social gatherings as well as hard sciences. She drives away in her white Jaguar and attends science conferences up and down the Eastern seaboard."
"Would you say that, apart from the hint of rejection, there is also some relief for you when she goes?" Ravelstein could be sympathetic. But more often he speculated on my paradoxical oddities. "What do you get out of this place?" he would say. "This is sup posed to be your quiet green retreat where you think and work. Or at least advance your projects…"
I was generally open with him, and willing to entertain criticism. He took a genuine interest in the lives of his friends, in their characters, their deeper intimacies-their sexual needs or kinks: Often he surprised me by the selflessness of his observations. He did not try to promote himself over you in noting your faults. In a way, I was grateful to be observed by him, and I found myself speaking to him openly about my peculiarities.
I can offer a sample conversation.
"I grant you that this is a beautiful and peaceful place," said Ravelstein. "But can you explain what Nature does for you-a Jewish city type? You're not a Transcendentalist update."
"No. That's not my line."
"And to your country neighbors you're one of the beasts that should have been drowned in the Flood."
"Oh, absolutely. But I don't worry about fitting in or belonging to the community. It's the stillness all around that attracted me."
"We've had this conversation before…."
"Because it's important."
"Life speeding away. Your days fly faster than the weaver's shuttle. Or a stone thrown into the air," he said like an indulgent parent, "and accelerating downward at the rate of thirty-two feet per second squared-a metaphor for the horrifying speed of approaching death. You'd like time to be as slow as it was when you were a child-each day a lifetime."
"Yes, and to do that you need some reserves of stillness in your soul."
"As some Russian puts it," said Ravelstein. "I don't know which one, but you always incline toward the Russians, Chick, when you try to explain what you're really up to. But in addition you have been working for years at the problem of arranging your life-your private life, that is. And that's why you turn out to be the owner of this house and those three-hundred-year-old maple trees, to say nothing of the green carpet meadows and the stone walls. The liberal politics of our country make it possible to be private and free, not molested in your personal life. But your hasting days fly on in full career-while your wife is determined to defeat your plan for peaceful fulfillment. There's got to be a special Russian expression for this thee-ah thee-ah constellation. I can see how she vamped you. She's a really classy looker, when she gets herself up, and she has a most sexy figure…
At first Ravelstein had been extremely careful not to offend Vela. He wanted us, for the sake of our friendship, to get on smoothly, and he was warm, markedly attentive when she spoke. He deferred to her. He did all this with a virtuoso air-like an Itzhak Perlman playing nursery tunes for a small girl. But his deeper judgment had to be set aside. When he rushed into the hotel bedroom in Paris he was still covered by the _entente cordiale__ he had with Vela. He never lied to himself about the observations he made. He kept accurate mental records.
But he and I had become friends-deeply attached-and friend ship would not have been possible if we hadn't spontaneously understood each other. On this occasion he leaned his bald head on the back of his chair. The size of his large, simpatico, creased pale face made me wonder at the power of the supporting muscles in his neck and shoulders because his legs had a minimum of muscle. Just enough to serve his purpose, or to do his will.
"It would have been so easy to make a sane connection. But you need an extreme challenge. So you find yourself trying to please a woman. But she refuses to be pleased-by you, anyway.
"Lucky for you," he went on, "you have a vocation. So this is just a side thing. It's not a genuine case of sex-slavery or psychopathology. Of Human Bondage, yes. But for you it's only marginal. You may simply be having fun, and diverting yourself in the pure green innocence of the White Mountains with these minor vices-sex tortures."
"Ever since you burst in on us in Paris she began to say that you and I were carrying on together."
He was stopped cold by this. In the silence I could see this unexpected "information" being processed by an apparatus-I mean this seriously-of great power. That Ravelstein was vastly intelligent is not a challengeable proposition. He was at the head of a school. To several hundred people here and in England, France, and Italy he was exactly that. He interpreted Rousseau to the French, Machiavelli to the Italians, et cetera.
After a pause, he said, "Ha! And by carrying on together does she mean what I think she means? After years of marriage?… How long have you been married?"
"Twelve whole years," I told him.
"Twelve! How pathetic," Ravelstein said. "Like a prison term you sentenced yourself to. You're even a faithful husband. You served day after day after day with no time off for good behavior or applying for parole."