Rameau's Niece (17 page)

Felt her absence deeply? How deeply? Deeply enough to seek solace elsewhere? A relief to have her back? What did that mean? Why a relief?

"Didn't you have your students to keep you company, to occupy you?" Margaret said.

"Well, I suppose."

Aha! Margaret thought.

"But it's not really the same thing, is it?"

Aha!

She thought about Prague constantly, confused and simply embarrassed by what had happened there. Which was precisely nothing, she reminded herself. Yet that nothing filled her with shame.

Then again, she thought, if I felt that way, if I felt overwhelmed by desire like that, then my marriage must be lacking. If my marriage is lacking, Edward is lacking. If Edward is lacking, I need something else, someone else. That certainly is sound, logical, circular reasoning. And anyway, who knows what Edward does with those adoring students of his? And if Edward thinks Walt Whitman is so great, then a little overwhelming sensuality and indulgence will strike him as healthful and grand, won't it? Not that he ever has to know.

For weeks, she went over the same ground, becoming more and more resentful. She had been sexually attracted to a stranger on a plane! How could Edward do this to her?

I am a fallen woman, she would think, and she would feel sick with a sense of her own dishonor. Edward, she would continue, the be-all and end-all of my existence, is not all, after all. He has failed me. And then she would become angry.

One afternoon, as she walked toward the bus stop, seething with regret and fury, she saw a man drop a candy wrapper on the ground. Don't do that, you fool, she thought, outraged. There is a garbage can not two feet from you. Don't litter. And then she laughed at herself, a sinner worried about a litterbug. And then she laughed again out loud and felt a sudden sense of power. She was a sinner! She had already transgressed, just by thinking of it, just by wanting to. Now she had nothing to lose. She was free.

The force of her attraction to another man, to other men, was exhilarating, an almost kinetic intensity carrying her along with it. Adultery, the failure of loyalty and honesty, was really an act of sublime Romantic rebellion. She had been given a chance at self-fulfillment. That door she'd let click behind her when she married Edward was now wide open, and it opened onto a pilgrim's path, the path to truth and philosophical awakening—to Enlightenment.

Reason fueled by Romanticism. Or vice versa. She felt herself overcome by an analytical fascination with her own desires. She luxuriated in a cold, cold passion.

***

The marathon editing sessions with Richard became oddly charged now. They worked in Richard's office until the days became a week and then almost two. When Margaret left the office each day it was night. Once, fat wet snowflakes fell, silhouetted by the yellow of the streetlamps. Margaret bumped home in a taxi through the unearthly flurry. Had she eaten? Edward asked her. No, she didn't think so, she said. And she went to bed. Richard's voice, caressing, followed her, murmuring in her dreams.

"You're never home," Edward said one night, bending over her to kiss her before she fell asleep. "You've left me for an overrefined homosexual pedant." He sometimes referred to Richard as her other husband.

Each morning she rode to the office on the subway. She could think of three times when she had felt this same tremulous anticipation. When Richard had edited her first book. When she'd gone to a psychiatrist for a year. And her first trip with Edward. Courtship, psychotherapy, editing, Margaret thought. For the true egotist, they are all one.

She watched Richard as he hung up his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, then furiously slapped through piles of papers on his desk, found something, handed it to his assistant, and sarcastically inquired if he could manage to make three Xeroxed copies. They were where they belonged now, side by side at Richard's desk in Richard's office. No more shapeless world, infinite and buzzing with aimless attention-sucking uncles and nurses and taxi drivers.

To Margaret's delight, the phone rang, and Richard spluttered, stomped, and finally yanked the receiver toward him, then murmured his silvery "Hello?" At the sound of his voice, Margaret found herself unaccountably happy.

Perhaps she was in love. Perhaps it was Richard she desired. With gratitude and tenderness, she watched Richard speak into the phone and did not hear what he said. With his close-cropped hair and pink, close-shaven face, he looked very, very clean—radiant, Margaret thought—and she was overcome by a desire to touch that cleanliness, as if some of it, shining and uncomplicated, would rub off on her. To touch Richard, Margaret thought. What an astonishing idea.

"Margaret," he said, when he'd hung up, "your eyes are glittering and your cheeks are flushed."

"What?"

"Do you have the flu?"

"What? No."

"You're not contagious, are you?"

"No."

"I don't want to catch anything."

She studied him, so sturdy and well groomed, a refined Ivy League wrestling coach sort of a style. He leaned back in his chair and returned her stare. Richard, she thought. There you are. She smiled at him, excited by her secret thoughts.

"Germs are airborne," he said gravely.

Well, it felt like being in love, very much like being in love. She couldn't bear to be away from him. She forgot what to say when they were together. She thought everything he did was wonderful, even the things she knew very well were not wonderful at all but petty and unpleasant. He was her editor, her teacher. She felt indistinct, barely recognizable stirrings of physical desire. Yes, that all sounded right.

"Richard, I think I'm falling in love with you."

"You may admire me from afar if you like."

Her lust for Richard was irritating and short-lived, like a mosquito. Puzzled, though somewhat relieved, Margaret considered possible reasons for this. Richard was not interested in women? Yes, but that made him something of a challenge, and it had not stopped her initial infatuation. She was no longer interested in other men? No. She was still cruising dads pushing strollers in the supermarket.

We've finished editing! That's all, Margaret realized. And so, didactic lust has bit the dust.

She turned toward Edward, who was lying beside her in bed, correcting papers, and watched him carefully. He had been unusually quiet this evening. His hair stuck up in tufts so defiant they seemed political. Had he read his students the poem about the boys bathing? The twenty-eight young men? And the one woman watching them? He had, she knew. He had read the poem, and twenty-eight young women had been watching him. He should be reading Whitman to her, not to twenty-eight girls trembling at their desks.

"How many in your Whitman seminar?" she asked.

"Nine. That's the cutoff. Nine spotty children who want to know if attendance counts."

"Does it?"

"No. They come to class anyway, they arrive early, they stay late, they dog my steps, loyal, adoring little pups jostling one another in their eagerness to approach their master. You know, I can't wait to see them either. Each Tuesday, each Thursday! Completely ignorant, this litter. They stare up at me, hushed. Whitman is astonishing the first time round."

They stared up at him, hushed. It was part of his magnanimous sense of his own glory, teaching. He rose before a class and presented himself and all he knew, and facing him, in the cloudless morning sunlight of his presence, his students basked, warmed themselves, and grew.

Which is all very nice, unless you happen to be the wife, Margaret thought. I am the wife.

I dwelled on happy thoughts of Rameau's niece and our imminent reunion. Barely registering my surroundings, I realized I was headed directly toward a secluded spot to which my pupil and I had often come, a lovely corner of the garden little frequented by anyone but us.

I heard a rustling, perhaps of skirts, and my heart leapt. Could it be she? Here, in our own corner of the garden, our own private place of study? Had she sensed I would return that day? Had she gone there to await my arrival, knowing I would repair there directly in search of her?

I reached the place and, oh! that I had lengthened my trip, or that the horse had thrown a shoe, or that I had rested, a long and sound sleep, or changed my clothes, dressing slowly and meticulously, before seeking Rameau's niece. For indeed she was there, my pupil, in that spot where I expected her. The skirts that rustled were hers. But she was not alone, and her skirts rustled not from the breeze, nor as they brushed against a shrub, but as they were lifted and arranged by her companion, pushed here and there as her companion sought their most expeditious disposal.

Her companion was clearly a man of low birth. He was in fact, the gardener, and I at first assumed this meeting was not of my pupil's choosing; but one look at her face, her gentle, untroubled expression, convinced me otherwise. She was sighing, breathing heavily. Through her half-open eyes she saw me then, and with an effort, she sat up, her clothes draped in disarray, and pushed the gardener from her. A robust young lad with an appealing aspect, he had caught my eye more than once as he toiled in the kitchen garden. But now I looked at him not with admiration, although what I saw of him now was robust indeed as he stood stupidly before me, his breeches below his thighs, his shirt rolled up under his vest. Then, in an instant, he was gone, running, as well he should have, pulling up his breeches as he went.

I turned to my pupil, now rearranging her skirts, smoothing her bodice. I waited, expecting her to hurl herself at my feet, to beg my forgiveness, trembling, with downcast eyes. Instead, she looked at me, evenly and without embarrassment. And, to my further astonishment, she smiled.

Margaret woke up each morning in a groggy panic. Often she had been dreaming of the Frenchman, and as she opened her eyes she wondered where she was. Then, as the feel of his skin against hers receded further, she would see the Venetian blinds and hear Edward humming in the bathroom. What time was it? What was she forgetting? she wondered. What had she neglected while dreaming of a man she didn't even know? What meeting? What phone call? What bill to be paid? What was she working on? What brilliant ideas had slipped her mind while she slept?

Restless and disgusted, Margaret tried to console herself with this romantic formulation: To forget is to live in a world of shadows, of unreality. A forgetful person was the only authentic person, for life made no sense and so confusion was the only truth!

No cigar, Margaret. Try again?

Forgetfulness is an absence of humanity, of concern for one's fellow man. To forget is to negate. Forgetfulness is nihilism.

Or perhaps forgetfulness was escapism? Or a sign of purity, an inability to be tainted by the worldly horrors of existence?

Forgetfulness was insensitivity! Forgetfulness was sensitivity, openness to anything new! Forgetfulness was antipathy! Forgetfulness was sympathy, an embrace of life unencumbered by prejudices!

Was forgetfulness discretion, the ability to filter out what didn't matter?

No. Margaret knew the real answer. Forgetfulness was never knowing what mattered. To judge was to compare? Then forgetfulness was an inability to make judgments based on information because of an absence of information. Forgetfulness was stupidity. Margaret shuddered.

Edward was singing now, and listening to him crow splendidly, Margaret felt anger and disappointment wash over her. I am angry at Edward. Therefore, she thought in an attempt to meet this difficulty in a useful and rational way, Edward must be doing something to make me angry at him. What, though?

It was true that Edward was going to be forty in a few months. Perhaps that was it. Everyone knew what that meant, every American anyway. Forty meant mid-life. And mid-life meant mid-life crisis. Husbands chased young girls in order to deny their own mortality. They moved to faraway places with warm climates. They quit their jobs. They chased more young girls to deny their own mortality even more in faraway places with warm climates, where, without jobs, they had plenty of leisure time in which to chase young girls. In the sun. It was almost inconceivable that this was happening to her husband, her Edward, who didn't much care for young girls or tropical vacations, whom she had trusted so completely—but not inconceivable enough.

Margaret was going to be thirty. In two years, anyway. Being so much younger than Edward had always seemed such a good idea, a deterrent to this absurd phenomenon. But thirty, while still two years away and ten years younger than forty, no longer struck her as being all that young. Edward was going to be forty and have a mid-life crisis. It said so in every pop psychology book in every rack in every airport gift shop. No wonder she was angry at him, Margaret thought.

"It's bloody awful out there," Edward said one day, his eyes red and teary from the sub-zero wind.

"What do you mean? It's March. What do you expect. The seasons are very important. It's boring to live in an unchanging climate, day after day, sunny, sunny, sunny. It's enervating and debilitating. The British Empire wasn't built by beachcombers."

"The British Empire has collapsed, and I'm thinking of joining it. What a ghastly day."

"I think it's lovely outside. Invigorating," Margaret said.

"Yes. You are young and foolhardy. But now you have inspired me. What is a little cold to an Englishman? Even an aging Englishman like me? Come, Margaret. A stroll!"

"I suppose you want to move to Tahiti. You want to retire, don't you?" she said.

"The women there are far too voluptuous for my taste," Edward said. "But it's a thought."

Margaret watched him drink a cup of tea and remembered when they had been married only a few weeks, how she would wake up and wonder where she was and look at him with a sudden, powerful recognition and wonder how this had happened to her, how she had wound up beside someone she loved so much that she wanted to wake up beside him forever.

M
ARGARET POURED
her coffee and turned on the TV in the kitchen. Seated in an armchair by a coffee table, a woman in a navy blue dress and pearls sat demurely reciting obscene rap lyrics. Was she the wife of a senator? An enraged mother moved to unaccustomed political action? A new, white female rap singer with an ironically understated style?