Divorcing Read online

  She is in a room in bed; to this familiar notion Sophie Blind held on while she was having the wildest dream.

  But is she dreaming?

  She is in a room writing. The only trouble is that all the pages of the small pad are already covered with words in some foreign language. She sits up in bed. The room is unfamiliar, high-ceilinged—a marble washstand with a pitcher, the armoire, provincial French—a room in an old-fashioned first-class hotel in a seaside resort in Normandy. Clearly a dream because now she remembers the industrialist from Milan, they were streaking along the Amalfi coast in his Alfa Romeo—that dates and places it; but what has become of him? She must make a note of all this—quick, before he comes—on the lace paper mat on the breakfast tray. The room has changed again but she is used to this. Sophie Blind is used to unfamiliar rooms. She has been traveling all her life.

  This room with printed muslin curtains tacked on the window frame, the drapes an obscure color, bedding piled high, could be in her grandmother’s apartment in Budapest. Pictures of bearded men in silver frames cover the wall. There is the bustle of backroom deliveries; rugs clapped over the sill, brushes scrubbing stone; guests are ushered in and shown out; the door of the buffet creaks each time another wine glass must be fetched.

  She is looking at a page of Dore’s illustrated Bible, a picture showing the deluge, whirling throngs of nude bodies at the bottom, the dead draped voluptuously over rocks, the great white Ark approaching from above; in another second someone turns the page to a pastoral scene. The shadowy figure poking around the room, pulling things from chests, could be a cousin or uncle. Odd, the gaudy paraphernalia—boots, petticoats, hats and fans from the nineties and the twenties. The quick, sure grace with which he handles things and moves suggests her lover, her lover teasing her, putting on her great grandfather’s fur kaftan, next her aunt’s stole of silver foxes; his impersonations go too far. Stop, she pleads, but he is already pulling her mother’s sequined dress over his head: a woman’s painted face appears, a perfect likeness, the blond curls, the black beauty patch just below the left corner of the mouth; she is sitting, in tight, low-cut dress, legs crossed like Marlene Dietrich—Someone shakes the room like a kaleidoscope; chandeliers blossom and drop in mirror-lined ballrooms, there is too much glare and reflection. Now Sophie Blind isn’t sure whether she is dreaming. There is another question on her mind. When you are under their devilish drug, can you remember taking it, even supposing they didn’t slip it in your tea, the dirty bastards, supposing no foul deal, you volunteered like a fool, can you remember when you’re actually under the drug? Sophie Blind doesn’t remember.

  She is looking up at her lover, astonished by the phrase, “...that happiness, so improbable, we call it love...” He sits on the edge of her bed, smoking gravely. She wonders why he looks into the distance, his head thrown back; she wants to see his eyes. “...because you’re dead Sophie,” she hears, like a voice out of a letter she is reading, “Dead.”

  “We’ve been through this before—” she wants to say. Instead her eyes leap for a last glimpse of his dear face. It’s gone. Where? Disappeared. Into the wallhanging? A medieval hunting scene, the background faded greenery; a castle floats sketched faintly in the upper left; in the foreground spotted Dalmatian hounds on their hind legs, painted full-face, are jumping outward—such virtuosity of foreshortening in the Middle Ages; it’s astounding! Modernity, Reformation, Renaissance are classroom jokes after all, as she always suspected—the world ended when it was supposed to in the year 1274, if only they had believed it. “...Why there had to be a twentieth century—?” She hears a familiar voice repeat a student’s question in a heavy German accent. That was in another dream. She can’t see anything now. Actually she sees too much and too fast. It’s the same whether she keeps her eyes open or shut. Her lover is in the room and he wants her to be calm. Who’s having a hunting party in her head? Birds shot in flight are plummeting darkly from all directions and new ones are thrown in as fast, their cries piercing shrill.

  She knows it’s over. She can’t stop now. She must get used to her new voice.

  Yes, I’m dead. I knew I was dead when I came but I didn’t want to be the first to say it. Not just as I arrived. I wasn’t really sure, you see. Everything looked so new, the water tanks on the roofs, the wide avenues, and heavy glass doors; boys playing touch football on the sidewalk. As if I were in New York for the first time. My sense of things is sometimes distorted. But I never felt so intensely alive as now. That’s what’s confusing me. And your presence. Listening. Or just watching my face in sleep, always calm, you said. When I know you’re far away...Perhaps you are speaking to me the words to make everything clear. No need for words perhaps. Women want essentially only happiness, you said, happiness more than power or truth. But I care for truth. Now I am dead I care only for truth.

  I died on a Tuesday afternoon, struck by a car as I was crossing Avenue George V. It was raining heavily. I had just come out from the hairdresser. The time, judging from the traffic, increasingly violent but not yet congested, was shortly before six. I sighted a free cab, waved to it. I stepped off the curb watching for a chance to cross. Just then I saw the doorman of the hotel on the opposite side head toward the taxi with an oversize umbrella, blowing his whistle shrilly. I made a dash for it. I was flung into the center of the road by a car and struck at once. The rest is blurred. Because of the rain only a handful of bystanders gathered. The police and an ambulance arrived within a few minutes. And in less than half an hour normal traffic was resumed.

  It happened so suddenly, and besides my mind was on something else at the time. But it’s quite certain I am dead. It’s in the newspaper. The doctor’s statement lies on the desk of the police even though an official death certificate can’t be made out till tomorrow morning; “Femme décapitée en 18° arrondissement,” it said in France Soir, and the sensation of my head severed from my back is still vivid. My body growing enormous, its thousands of trillions of cells suddenly set free, spread, speeded, pressed jubilant, rushing to the seven gates of Paris, out Porte de Clichy, Porte de la Chapelle, Porte d’Orléans, Porte de Versailles; the fingers of my outstretched arms plunged into the woods of Boulogne and Vincennes.

  DEAREST,

  I’m coming. Don’t be misled by the Crillon stationery. I’m on my way, flying out of Paris tonight. Five days in Amsterdam (I wrote you about the conference); perhaps I can cut it down to three and be in New York by Sunday morning the eleventh by Icelandic. Will cable when I know exactly. Leave a key under the loose tile just in case. I hope this reaches you in time. It was impossible to write the last weeks. Work deadlines, settling the children with my sister-in-law for the summer, and then the final clearing out—a depressing amount of stuff. But now it’s done. I am free at last, the keys turned over to the new tenants, my one suitcase checked at the aérogare. I walked all day, wonderfully light with only my papers and your picture in my pocket.

  Wandered through different markets staring at the same varieties of cheeses and beautifully displayed fruit, even the green string beans arranged in perfect rows; got lost in the flower market. Sat in the lobby of the Crillon for almost an hour trying to write to you. Then strolled around Place Vendôme looking at window displays. Not till all the stores closed for noon did I begin to think perhaps I should have a plan for the afternoon—shop, visit the Musée Grévin, see the new exhibit of ancient Chinese calligraphy or take a last look at the Cycladic heads in the Louvre. But continued in a daze past Châtelet looking into every junk shop along the quai, blocks of sporting goods, fancy tropical birds and fish for sale and back on the other side of the river felt suddenly how senseless all this delight, the fine blue sky, a sudden impatience and anger as I saw women starting homeward with small children from the playgrounds and crowding before butcher shops and bakeries. Braced myself for the standard tourist sunset boatride along the Seine, the ferry packed with a crowd of boys from some German yout
h organization, the “Wundervogel.” And now it’s time.

  Forgive this late and hurried note; I hoped to get it off earlier this day; now I might as well mail it at the airport. Haven’t even begun to think about paper I have to give on Spinoza. Count on spirit of place. It will be my first visit to Amsterdam.

  Love, SOPHIE

  WHILE traveling, Sophie Blind carried her accumulation of some thirty-five years in boxes, suitcases, trunks, barrels, crates and the like. Not on her person, or necessarily accompanying her person. On her person she carried only what was necessary depending on the nature of the journey—whether by boat, plane, train, bus or foot—its length and destination and, finally, the number of persons traveling.

  This seemed the obvious way to deal with things: pack and unpack and pack again if you were traveling, and Sophie had been traveling all her life. When she married she continued traveling with her husband. Ezra Blind was working on a book that might take all his life to complete, or at least the next twenty years; his work required going to libraries and meeting scholars of different countries. Fortunately Ezra managed to get invited as a visiting lecturer to good universities on both sides of the Atlantic as far as Jerusalem. So they lived in many different cities, sometimes for only a few months, sometimes for as long as two years, and traveled to other places in between. Sophie liked traveling. She also liked to have some things she cherished, a few familiar objects around her, wherever she was, beyond the more or less same sky with its same sun and moon and more or less same walls. Some things she found, some she stole, some she bought. Sophie liked traveling. For a wedding present from her father-in-law Sophie asked for an extension of their honeymoon trip instead of a fur coat. Not want a fur coat? Their daughter-in-law must have a fur coat. When at the birth of a son a fur coat was bought, it was for their respective family pictures. She wore the coat for them. She was their daughter-in-law. But did she have to take it along with her everywhere while traveling with her husband? Yes, because Ezra paid part. His father had said, “I want to buy Sophie a five-hundred-dollar fur coat.” Ezra said, “Buy her one for seven hundred dollars. I know a man through whom we can get a nine-hundred-dollar coat for seven hundred dollars. I pay the two hundred and we save four hundred and she will have the best coat.” With Ezra Sophie wore the fur coat and jewelry he bought for her. Whenever Ezra felt desperate about their future, he bought Sophie a piece of heavy silver jewelry.

  He liked her to dress in black. Black was what she was wearing when he proposed to her and it suited her best and went best with the jewelry he bought her. He was always ready to buy Sophie another good black dress. A good black dress was for a lifetime. What Sophie always dreamed of having was a white nightgown, long and soft of the finest cotton or flannel. But Ezra couldn’t understand why she wanted it. She looked better naked. Sometimes he asked her to come to bed in the fur coat. A nightgown? That was a luxury.

  Not everything Sophie kept accumulating followed her in boxes and by freight in crates and trunks; that was difficult and expensive and complicated. Besides, if they were going south, they wouldn’t need all their coats and woolens, although they might need them the year after or at some future time, for they never knew where they would proceed to next. Similarly she would store outgrown children’s clothes which could be useful for the next child. Of course most of the things she collected from different places on the way she could not take with her but stored, depending on where they happened to be, with friends and relatives who were settled. Everything had to be kept for the time when she would be settled and have a great big house with many wings and floors, a cellar for storage, an attic to keep all the pets she had promised the children. In her mind it was all together, she was always in an imagined house, leaving for a trip and choosing one or two things to take with her. But perhaps all she really wanted was that imaginary house and she would always go on traveling and collecting things and living everywhere. In the meantime she managed quite well storing a box here and a suitcase there, with friends or relatives who were settled. Then, if she stayed in the same place for more than a year, even though nothing was ever definite, she could ask for certain things she wanted to be sent. She always wished she could have known and packed in view of future circumstances.

  It was a weakness, she knew, to accumulate and to keep and to remember where she had left things. Things got lost, but that was part of traveling. Not only individual objects, but packages, a whole suitcase, mysteriously lost. She did her best to take care of things, and if they got lost despite her efforts she was cheerfully resigned to it, unlike Ezra who recalled the lost object over and over again. Whether it was something precious to him or simply something he needed that moment, each time a new loss was discovered, he would mournfully enumerate every single item that had gone astray since the day they embarked together. This Sophie did not do. Or she kept it to herself. There was the moment the loss was discovered, the anguish felt. Once is enough was Sophie’s stand. Lost objects wanted to be mourned. Ah yes, you could never grieve enough for those earrings bought in some back street of Genoa. But it was against Sophie’s principles to suffer the loss of anything more than once. How could Ezra take the side of things? Not that Sophie was absolutely sure. In fact she was haunted by those lost things in spite of her principles and it didn’t help to say: Good riddance, I wouldn’t be seen dead in those earrings today! They sent their ghostly eidolon: on the dresser of some hotel room. It was in the nature of things to do this, Sophie concluded, and in her nature as a woman of principles to resist. If that thing still haunts me, Sophie considered, it must be because I did not suffer its loss as truly, profoundly, as I should. But in that case there is nothing to be done. I have missed my moment; or the thing has missed its moment; that is why it keeps coming back. As for the loss of anything that caused her true anguish, that loss she carried in her very marrow, compacted with it. If at any time she had wanted to know the total of what had been lost, all she needed to do was state the last thing lost and Ezra would begin reckoning, today this, yesterday that, all the way back. But Sophie wasn’t interested. Keeping count was men’s business. That’s what her father did and both her grandfathers.

  Yes she loved traveling. It’s the only way to live, Sophie always said, the only way to live in time: fly right with it. Sophie got nervous when they settled too long in one place.

  Sophie made every effort to avoid arguments, but it didn’t always work because Ezra was not content with simply worrying and complaining: he wanted an argument. Furthermore, Sophie had some grievances of her own which she could not always contain in silence. So they quarreled.

  Ezra always won. Whatever the issue and regardless who started it, Ezra always managed to make her come out in the wrong. Sophie didn’t understand how he did it. It must have been his special talent. And in the end he always said she was the most wonderful woman in the world.

  Ezra began with a very small point. So small that Sophie didn’t realize at all that he was starting a quarrel. A little thing that can be settled in a minute, she thought; or a little thing there’s nothing to be done about that can be dismissed in a minute. Then as Ezra went on developing his point for an immoderately long time, it dawned on Sophie that the issue wasn’t simply a particular tie he couldn’t locate and blamed her for failing to pack, or her having failed to pack other items on other occasions, or her disregard for his appearance, or for her own appearance—her disregard for appearances in general. The issue was really all the consequences this had on their lives and would continue to accumulate. The issue was enormous.

  Ezra pursued his point with mounting pathos; now pacing heavily, now standing still so as not to distract from a rhetorical flight, or to anchor a dramatic pause. Sophie watched his index finger: it was tracing circles or stirring some mysterious brew. It launched on a vertical course to the sublime. Loopdiving into the horizontal it stood pointed at her. The index finger started wagging at her increasingly menacingly as
if it didn’t know what to do with itself. At this point she took a deep breath, either to come back at him or storm out of the room.

  Sophie hated arguments. Mostly she kept her grievances to herself. Or it burst out of her suddenly. She would be undecided whether to bring up the matter, or the best way to go about it, and while she was still debating with herself, how and whether at all, it burst out of her, surprising both of them—probably surprising Sophie more than Ezra, who was used to being screamed at by his family, while Sophie was not used to hearing herself scream.

  Ezra listened attentively in a reclining position, very calm. Did he take advantage of a moment when Sophie was too caught in her passion to notice, to sink down on the sofa or slide into bed—or is that how their quarrel started? With Ezra lying in bed when Sophie was up and about and things wanting to be done, more than she alone could cope with, and Sophie’s instant realization that her life reduced to the hopelessness of ever getting anything done. The vision of Ezra reclining, sprawling, yawning—this may have been the true beginning of her rage.

  Sophie Blind didn’t believe the devastating words that erupted from her mouth, or that she was saying them. Besides, Ezra did not register dismay, disbelief, or shock. She saw a pleased expression: sitting upright now, looking at her wide-eyed, he nodded, approving woman raging as woman should, suppressing a smile not too successfully, his face definitely softening, assuming a mask of sternness or simply fright, then vanishing under the blanket when her lunging arms, hands clawing, threatened to bear out the intent of her words on his tender skin, and hiding, he waited for the storm to spend itself. He had little to fear under cover, this was only a woman, throwing her weight on him, fists pounding mostly wall, air, mattress; at worst a jab in the ribs, her fist passing through the barricade of arms and knees. Just a woman, and now increasingly molten, pliable, fluid with rage; his own beloved wife, he knew what to do with her, and in nine months there was a baby.