The Happy Marriage

It was curious and interesting that she’d linked money and sex in a single sentence. The painter had read Freud and he knew a lot about the subject. But to be called “impotent” had made him chuckle. Of course, he hadn’t been able to tell his wife that the other women he’d been with had never had any complaints — quite the contrary, in fact. Still, from time to time that phrase would start ringing in his head like a crazy alarm clock. “Fine, maybe it’s true. She isn’t happy or satisfied, but I know it isn’t true. That is, unless she was faking, and I can’t do anything about that!”

After that incident, he’d asked himself the same old question: “Why have we never been able to speak to each other, to talk without arguing, to understand each other without wanting to smash everything around us — in short, to compromise and live together? Am I a monster and a pervert like she says I am? Am I so emotionally stunted to the point that she has to reproach me for never concerning myself with my family or what goes on in the house? I know that all of this isn’t true, but thanks to her endless accusations I’ve wound up believing her, or at least have started to doubt myself. Perhaps that’s what she was aiming for — to get me to doubt myself, to doubt my abilities, my actions, thus putting me in a corner from which I would be unable to escape, where I would be at her mercy, become her victim, so she would be free to do whatever she wanted, just like she’d been kept in purdah by an ayatollah!” Ayatollah, that was what she always called him. Did she even know what that word meant? It was an insult as far as he was concerned.

Defeat begins the moment that your enemy gets you to doubt yourself to the point that you start feeling guilty and you’re ready to submit to her will and bend to her demands.

One of his friends had confessed to him that his wife used to scratch him during their arguments. “We’re constantly at war,” he’d told the painter, “and sooner or later I’ll lay down my arms. Look, all our childhood friends have abdicated to their wives, they’ve been brought to heel and now they can enjoy peaceful lives. But I’m not at that point just yet. I’ll keep fighting until she sends me to my grave!”

A writer friend of his seemed to live an exceptionally peaceful life. Not only did his wife not vex him, but she actually supported him, fawned on him, and took it upon herself so that nothing or nobody ever bothered him. The painter had asked him for his secret. After a deep sigh, the writer had told him: “I don’t have secrets to share, I simply gave up. She controls everything. I don’t even know my bank account number. I never travel without her and I never see anyone outside our close circle of friends. She’s got access to my phone, my e-mails, and my post … she answers them for me. Journalists are afraid of her and so I’ve rid myself of all the bother of having to deal with them. I don’t even remember the last time I saw a naked woman. So from time to time I watch some pornos while she sleeps. I leave our bedroom on the tips of my toes to feast my eyes and occasionally jack off. There’s my secret. If you want peace, now you know the price you have to pay for it!”

Give up? One may as well disappear! What good would it do to become so small that people wouldn’t even notice you anymore? Was married life impossible unless one of the two transformed into a shadow? The painter reread a book that his friend had written. Dedicated to his wife, the novel told the story of an official who worked at the Ministry of the Interior in a country ruled by a dictator who spent his days torturing political activists but became a perfect husband and father the minute he returned home each night. He would drop off his kids at school in the morning, kiss them, button up their shirt collars so they wouldn’t catch a cold, and fifteen minutes later he would be taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves so he could start torturing his detainees in the basement of his office building. He had a clear conscience.

The allusions to the writer’s personal life were unmistakable. The painter hadn’t mentioned any of this to the writer. But as far as the painter was concerned, living like this would be unthinkable.

XV. Casablanca, August 28, 2000

If a recipe for conjugal happiness did exist, then all human beings would instantly stop getting married.

— SACHA GUITRY, Give Me Your Eyes

Tired of mulling over his dark thoughts on what was a hot midsummer afternoon, the painter closed his eyes and decided to reminisce about the women he’d known in his life. As though in a dream, the vision at first blended in with the horizon, then took on the colors of the sunset.