VI
Summer had come again. I was in a position to ask for a few months’ leave, which I purported spending with my—family in the solitude of one of the green islands on the shores of the Stockholm Archipelago.
I was beginning to reap the harvest of my scientific researches. My treatise was read by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in the Institut de France. I was elected a member of several foreign scientific societies, and the Imperial Russian Geographical Society conferred its medal upon me.
At the age of thirty I had won an excellent position in the literary and scientific world and a brilliant future lay before me. It was pure happiness to lay my trophies at Marie’s feet.... But she was angry with me because I had “disturbed the equilibrium.” I had to make myself small to spare her the humiliation of having to look up to her husband. Like the good-natured giant in the fable I allowed her to pull my beard, and as a consequence she presumed on my good-nature. She took a pleasure in belittling me before the servants and before her friends who were on visiting terms with us, especially her women friends. She gave herself airs; raised by me on a pedestal, she posed-as my superior, and the more insignificant I pretended to be, the more she trampled on me. I deliberately fostered in her the delusion that I had to thank her for my fame, which she did not understand and which she apparently thought little of. I took a positive delight in making myself out to be inferior to her. I contented myself with being no more than the husband of a charming woman, and eventually she came to believe that she, and not I, possessed genius. This applied even to the details of everyday life. Being an excellent swimmer myself, for instance, I taught her to swim. In order to encourage her, I simulated nervousness, and the pleasure she took in ridiculing my efforts and talking of her own grand achievements was a constant source of amusement to me.
The days passed; into the worship of my wife as mother a new thought stole and began to haunt me persistently: I was married to a woman of thirty—a critical age, the beginning of a period full of dangers and pitfalls—I could see indications every now and then which made me feel nervous, indications, perhaps not fraught with disaster for the moment, but which carried in them the germ of discord.
After her confinement physical antagonism came to be added to incompatibility of temper; sexual intercourse between us became odious. When her passion was aroused, she behaved like a cynical coquette. Sometimes she took a malicious delight in making me jealous; at other times she let herself go to an alarming extent, possibly, I thought, under pressure of licentious and perverse desires.
One morning we went out in a sailing boat, accompanied by a young fisherman. I took charge of tiller and mainsail, while the lad was attending to the foresail. My wife was sitting near him. The wind dropped and silence reigned in the boat. All at once I noticed that the young fisherman, from under his cap, was casting lewd glances in the direction of my wife’s feet.... Her feet?... Perhaps there was more to be seen; I could not tell from where I sat. I watched her. Her passionate eyes devoured the young man’s frame. In order to remind her of my presence I made a sudden gesture, like a dreamer rousing himself from a dream. She pulled herself together with an effort, and, her eyes resting on the huge tops of his boots, she clumsily extricated herself from an awkward position by remarking—
“I wonder whether boots of this sort are expensive?”
What was I to think of such a stupid remark?
To divert her mind from the voluptuous current of her thoughts, I made the lad change places with me under some pretext or other.
I tried to forget this irritating scene; tried to persuade myself that I had been mistaken, although similar scenes were stored up in my memory, recollections of her burning eyes scrutinising the lines of my body underneath my clothes.
A week later my suspicions were re-awakened by an incident which once and for all destroyed all my hopes of ever seeing this perverse woman realise my ideal of motherhood.
One of my friends spent a week-end with us. He made himself very agreeable to her. She rewarded his courtesy by flirting with him outrageously. It grew late; we said good-night to each other and separated. I thought that she had gone to bed.
Half-an-hour later I heard voices on the balcony. I stepped out quickly, and found wife and friend sitting together, drinking liqueurs. I treated the matter as a joke, but on the following morning I reproached her with making me a public laughing-stock.
She laughed, called me a man of prejudices, cursed with a fantastic and vicious imagination... in fact, deluged me with her whole repertory of futile arguments.
I lost my temper; she had hysterics and played her part so well that I apologised for doing her an injustice. Doing her an injustice—when I considered her conduct absolutely culpable!
Her final words silenced me completely.
“Do you think,” she said contemptuously, “I could bear to go through divorce proceedings a second time?”
And brooding over my troubles I slept with the calm of the duped husband.
What is a coquette?... A woman who makes advances. Coquetry is nothing but making advances.
And what is jealousy?... The fear of losing one’s most precious possession.... The jealous husband? A ridiculous individual because of his absurd objection to lose his most precious possession.