Blind Assassin (34 page)

About my bridal night, or rather my bridal afternoon—the sun was not yet set and the room was bathed, as they say, in a rosy glow, because Richard did not pull the curtains—I will tell very little. I didn’t know what to expect; my only informant had been Reenie, who had led me to believe that whatever would happen would be unpleasant and most likely painful, and in this I was not deceived. She’d also implied that this disagreeable event or sensation would be nothing out of the ordinary—all women went through it, or all who got married—so I shouldn’t make a fuss.Grin and bear it had been her words. She’d said there would be some blood, and there was. (But she hadn’t said why. That part was a complete surprise.)

I did not yet know that my lack of enjoyment—my distaste, my suffering even—would be considered normal and even desirable by my husband. He was one of those men who felt that if a woman did not experience sexual pleasure this was all to the good, because then she would not be liable to wander off seeking it elsewhere. Perhaps such attitudes were common, at that period of time. Or perhaps not. I have no way of knowing.

Richard had arranged for a bottle of champagne to be sent up, at what he’d anticipated would be the proper moment. Also our dinners. I hobbled to the bathroom and locked myself in while tie waiter was setting everything out, on a portable table with a white linen tablecloth. I was wearing the outfit Winifred had thought appropriate for the occasion, which was a nightgown of satin in a shade of salmon pink, with a delicate lace trim of cobweb grey. I tried to clean myself up with a washcloth, then wondered what should be done with this: the red on it was so visible, as if I’d had a nosebleed. In the end I put it into the wastepaper basket and hoped the hotel maid would think it had fallen in there by mistake.

Then I sprayed myself with Liù, a scent I found frail and wan. It was named, I had by this time discovered, after a girl in an opera—a slave girl, whose fate was to kill herself rather than betray the man she loved, who in his turn loved someone else. That was how things went, in operas. I did not find this scent auspicious, but I was worried that I smelled odd. I did smell odd. The oddness had come from Richard, but now it was mine. I hoped I hadn’t made too much noise. Involuntary gasps, sharp intakes of breath, as when plunging into cold water.

The dinner was a steak, along with a salad. I ate mostly the salad. All the lettuce in hotels at that time was the same. It tasted like pale-green water. It tasted like frost.

The train trip to New York the next day was uneventful. Richard read the newspapers, I read magazines. The conversations we had were not different in kind than those we’d had before the wedding. (I hesitate to call them conversations, because I did not talk much. I smiled and agreed, and did not listen.)

In New York, we had dinner at a restaurant with some friends of Richard’s, a couple whose names I’ve forgotten. They were new money, without a doubt: so new it shrieked. Their clothes looked as if they’d covered themselves in glue, then rolled around in hundred-dollar bills. I wondered how they’d made it, this money; it had a fishy whiff.

These people didn’t know Richard all that well, nor did they yearn to: they owed him something, that was all—for some unstated favour. They were fearful of him, a little deferential. I gathered this from the play of the cigarette lighters: who lit what for whom, and how quickly. Richard enjoyed their deference. He enjoyed having cigarettes lit for him, and, by extension, for me.

It struck me that Richard had wanted to go out with them not only because he wanted to surround himself with a small coterie of cringers, but because he didn’t want to be alone with me. I could scarcely blame him: I had little to say. Nonetheless, he was now—in company—solicitous of me, placing my coat with tenderness over my shoulders, paying me small, cherishing attentions, keeping a hand always on me, lightly, somewhere. Every once in a while he’d scan the room, checking over the other men in it to see who was envying him. (Retrospect of course, on my part: at the time I recognized none of this.)

The restaurant was very expensive, and also very modern. I’d never seen anything like it. Things glittered rather than shone; there was bleached wood and brass trim and brash glass everywhere, and a great deal of lamination. Sculptures of stylized women in brass or steel, smooth as taffy, with eyebrows but no eyes, with streamlined haunches and no feet, with arms melting back into their torsos; white marble spheres; round mirrors like portholes. On every table, a single calla lily in a thin steel vase.

Richard’s friends were even older than Richard, and the woman looked older than the man. She was wearing white mink, despite the spring weather. Her gown was white as well, a design inspired—she told us at some length—by ancient Greece, the Winged Victory of Samothrace to be precise. The pleats of this gown were bound around with gold cord under her breasts, and in a crisscross between them. I thought that if I had breasts that slack and droopy I’d never wear such a gown. The skin showing above the neckline was freckled and puckered, as were her arms. Her husband sat silently while she talked, his hands fisted together, his half-smile set in concrete; he looked wisely down at the tablecloth. Sothis is marriage, I thought: this shared tedium, this twitchiness, and those little powdery runnels forming to the sides of the nose.

“Richard didn’t warn us you’d be thisyoung,” said the woman.

Her husband said, “It will wear off,” and his wife laughed.

I considered the wordwarn: was I that dangerous? Only in the way sheep are, I now suppose. So dumb they jeopardize themselves, and get stuck on cliffs or cornered by wolves, and some custodian has to risk his neck to get them out of trouble.

Soon—after two days in New York, or was it three?—we crossed over to Europe on theBerengeria, which Richard said was the ship taken by everybody who was anybody. The sea wasn’t rough for that time of year, but nevertheless I was sick as a dog. (Why dogs, in this respect? Because they look as if they can’t help it. Neither could I.)

They brought me a basin, and cold weak tea with sugar but no milk. Richard said I should drink champagne because it was the best cure, but I didn’t want to take the risk. He was more or less considerate, but also more or less annoyed, though he did say what a shame I was feeling ill. I said I didn’t want to ruin his evening and he should go off and socialize, and so he did. The benefit to my seasickness was that Richard showed no inclination to climb into bed with me. Sex may go nicely with many things, but vomit isn’t one of them.

The next morning Richard said I should make an effort to appear at breakfast, as having the right attitude was the war half won. I sat at our table and nibbled bread and drank water, and tried to ignore the cooking smells. I felt bodiless and flaccid and crepey-skinned, like a deflating balloon. Richard tended me intermittently, but he knew people, or seemed to know them, and people knew him. He got up, shook hands, sat down again. Sometimes he introduced me, sometimes not. He did not however know all of the people he wanted to know. This was clear by the way he was always gazing around, past me, past those he was talking with—over their heads.

I made a gradual recovery during the day. I drank ginger ale, which helped. I did not eat dinner, but I attended it. In the evening there was a cabaret. I wore the dress Winifred had chosen for such an event, dove grey with a chiffon cape in lilac. There were lilac sandals with high heels and open toes to match. I had not yet quite got the hang of such high heels: I teetered slightly. Richard said the sea air must have agreed with me; he said I had just the right amount of colour, a faint schoolgirl blush. He said I looked marvellous. He steered me to the table he’d reserved, and ordered a martini for me and one for himself. He said the martini would fix me up in no time flat.

I drank some of it, and after that Richard was no longer beside me, and there was a singer who stood in a blue spotlight. She had her black hair waved down over one eye, and was wearing a tubular black dress covered with big scaly sequins, which clung to her firm but prominent bottom and was held up by what looked like twisted string. I stared at her with fascination. I’d never been to a cabaret, or even to a nightclub. She wiggled her shoulders and sang “Stormy Weather” in a voice like a sultry groan. You could see halfway down her front.

People sat at their tables watching her and listening to her, and having opinions about her—free to like or dislike her, to be seduced by her or not, to approve or disapprove of her performance, of her dress, of her bottom. She however was not free. She had to go through with it—to sing, to wiggle. I wondered what she was paid for doing this, and whether it was worth it. Only if you were poor, I decided. The phrasein the spotlight has seemed to me ever since to denote a precise form of humiliation.The spotlight was something you should evidently stay out of, if you could.

After the singer, there was a man who played a white piano, very fast, and after him a couple, two professional dancers: a tango act. They were in black, like the singer. Their hair shone like patent leather in the spotlight, which was now an acid green. The woman had one dark curl glued to her forehead, and a large red flower behind one ear. Her dress gored out from mid-thigh but was otherwise like a stocking. The music was jagged, hobbled—like a four-legged animal lurching on three legs. A crippled bull with its head down, lunging.

As for the dance, it was more like a battle than a dance. The faces of the dancers were set, impassive; they eyed each other glitteringly, waiting for a chance to bite. I knew it was an act, I could see that it was expertly done; nonetheless, both of them looked wounded.

The third day came. In the early afternoon I walked on the deck, for the fresh air. Richard didn’t come with me: he was expecting some important telegrams, he said. He’d had a lot of telegrams already; he would slit the envelopes with a silver paper knife, read the contents, then tear them up or tuck them away in his briefcase, which he kept locked.

I didn’t especially want him to be there with me on the deck, but nonetheless I felt alone. Alone and therefore neglected, neglected and therefore unsuccessful. As if I’d been stood up, jilted; as if I had a broken heart. A group of English people in cream-coloured linen stared at me. It wasn’t a hostile stare; it was bland, remote, faintly curious. No one can stare like the English. I felt rumpled and grubby, and of minor interest.

The sky was overcast; the clouds were a dingy grey, and sagged down in clumps like the stuffing from a saturated mattress. It was drizzling lightly. I wasn’t wearing a hat, for fear it might blow off; I had only a silk scarf, knotted under my chin. I stood at the railing, looking over and down, at the slate-coloured waves rolling and rolling, at the ship’s white wake scrawling its brief meaningless message. Like the clue to a hidden mishap: a trail of torn chiffon. Soot from the funnels blew down over me; my hair came unpinned and stuck to my cheeks in wet strands.

So this is the ocean, I thought It did not seem as profound as it should. I tried to remember something I might have read about it, some poem or other, but could notBreak, break, break Something began that way. It had cold grey stones in itOh Sea

I wanted to throw something overboard I felt it was called for. In the end I threw a copper penny, but I didn’t make a wish.

He turns the key. It’s a bolt lock, a small mercy. He’s in luck this time, he has the loan of a whole flat. A bachelorette, only one large room with a narrow kitchen counter, but its own bathroom, with a claw-footed tub and pink towels in it. Ritzy doings. It belongs to the girlfriend of a friend of a friend, out of town for a funeral. Four whole days of safety, or the illusion of it.

The drapes match the bedspread; they’re a heavy nubbled silk, cherry-coloured, over wispy undercurtains. Keeping a little back from the window, he looks out. The view—what he can see through the yellowing leaves—is of Allan Gardens. A couple of drunks or hobos are passed out under the trees, one with his face under a newspaper. He himself has slept like that. Newspapers dampened by your breath smell like poverty, like defeat, like mildewed upholstery with dog hairs on it. There’s a scattering of cardboard signs and crumpled papers on the grass, from last night—a rally, the comrades hammering away at their dogma and the ears of their listeners, making hay while the sun don’t shine. Two disconsolate men picking up after them now, with steel-tipped sticks and burlap bags. At least it’s work for the poor buggers.