XI
Our housekeeping went from bad to worse. I was unable to interfere, for she regarded every opinion expressed by me, every suggestion of a change made by me, as an insult. I had to remain passive, powerless in face of the wanton extravagance of the servants who wasted the food and neglected the children.
There was nothing but misery, discomfort and quarrels. When she returned from her journey to Finland, the expenses of which I had paid in advance, she had two hundred crowns in her pocket, the financial result of her performances.... Since she kept the cash I made a mental note of the sum, and when she asked me for money, long before the date on which it was due, I asked her, surprised by the unexpected demand, what she had done with her money? She replied that she had lent it to her friend, and argued that according to the law she was free to dispose of all moneys earned by her.
“And I?” I replied.... Moreover, to withdraw housekeeping money is not disposing....
“It’s a different thing in the case of the woman!”
“In the case of the oppressed woman, you mean? In the case of the female slave who permits the man to defray, the whole expenses of the household? These are the logical consequences of the humbug called ‘the emancipation of woman.’”
Emile Augier’s prophesies in the Fourchambault, with reference to the dotal system have indeed been fulfilled. The husband has become the slave of the wife. And there are plenty of men who allow themselves to be deceived to such an extent that they dig their own graves. Fools!
While the misery of my married life slowly unfolded itself, as a ribbon winds off a spool, I took advantage of my literary reputation to tilt at foolish prejudice and attack antiquated superstitions. I wrote a volume of satires. I threw a handful of pebbles at the principal charlatans of the metropolis, not forgetting the sexless women.
I was at once denounced as a writer of pamphlets. Marie was strong in her disapproval, and immediately made friends with the enemy. She was respectability personified, and complained bitterly of the misery of being tied to a scandalmonger! She lost sight of the fact that the satirist was also a famous novelist and had made a name as a playwright.
She was a saint, a martyr. She deplored the dismal prospects of her unhappy children. They would have to bear the consequences of the dishonourable actions of a father who had squandered their mother’s dowry, ruined her theatrical career, ill-treated her....
One day a paragraph appeared in one of the papers stating that I was insane; a brochure, written to order and paid for in cash, spread abroad the martyrdom of Marie and her friends; not one of the absurdities which her little brain had hatched was forgotten.
She had won the game.
And as she saw me go down before my enemies, she assumed the role of the tender mother, weeping over the prodigal son. Amiable to all the world, except to me, she drew all my friends over to her side, false ones and true ones alike. Isolated, in the power of a vampire, I abandoned all attempt at defence. Could I raise my hand against the mother of my children, the woman whom I loved?
Never!
I succumbed. She surrounded me with kindness—abroad, at home she had nothing for me but contempt and insults.
I was exhausted by overwork and misery; I suffered much from headaches, nervous irritability, indigestion... the doctor diagnosed catarrh of the stomach.
It was a very unexpected result of mental strain.
It was strange that the illness did not break out until after I had decided to go abroad, the only means of escape, so it seemed to me, from the net woven round me by those countless friends who were everlastingly condoling with my wife. The symptoms of this mysterious malady first showed themselves on the day succeeding a visit to the laboratory of an old friend, from where I had taken a bottle of cyanide; it was to bring me release, and I had locked it in a piece of furniture belonging to my wife.
Paralysed and depressed, I was lying on the sofa, watching my children at play, thinking of the beautiful days that lay behind me, preparing myself for death.
I determined to leave nothing in writing which could throw light on the cause of my death and my sinister suspicions.
I was ready to make my exit, disappear from ken, killed by the woman whom I forgave with my last breath.
Marie was watching me out of the corners of her eyes; wondering, perhaps, how much longer I should linger on this earth, before I left her to enjoy in peace the income which the collected works of the famous writer would yield her, and the sum which doubtless Government would grant her towards the education of the children.
She was a success in my play, so big a success that the critics called her a great tragedienne. She almost burst with pride. She was allowed to choose her next part; the result was a complete fiasco. Now she could no longer deny the fact that it was I who had made her, that she had to thank me for her laurels, and feeling herself in my debt, the strength of her hatred increased. She besieged the various theatrical managers, but could find no engagement. Eventually I was obliged to reopen negotiations with Finland. I was willing to leave my country, my friends, my publisher, to settle in the midst of her friends who were my enemies. But Finland would have none of her. Her career was over.
During all this time she led the life of a woman free from all duties as mother and wife. My health did not permit me to accompany her to the artistic circles which she frequented, and consequently she went alone. Sometimes she did not come home until early in the morning, very often she was intoxicated and made sufficient noise to wake up the whole house. I could hear her stumbling into the night nursery where she slept.
What is a man to do in a case of this sort? Is he to denounce his own wife? Impossible! Divorce her? No! I looked upon the family as an organism, like the organism of a plant; a whole, of which I was a part. I could not exist independently of it; without the mother, life seemed impossible to me, even if I had had the custody of the children. My heart’s blood, transmitted through my wife, flowed through the veins of their small bodies. The whole was like a system of arteries intimately connected and interdependent. If a single one were cut, my life would ebb away with the blood which trickled down and was sucked up by the sand. For this reason the infidelity of the wife is a terrible crime. One cannot help sympathising with the “Kill her!” of a well-known author, who shows us a father stricken to death because he has come to doubt the legitimacy of his offspring.
Marie, on the other hand, identified herself with the crazy endeavours to increase women’s rights and liberties, and fully endorsed the new doctrine that the woman who deceives her husband is not guilty, because she is not his property.
I could not degrade myself to spy on her, I did not want proof which meant death to me. I wanted to deceive myself, live in a world of my own, which I could create at my pleasure.
But I was deeply wounded. I doubted the legitimacy of my children; I was haunted by the suspicion that although they bore my name and were supported by my earnings, they were yet not my children. Nevertheless, I loved them, for they had come into my life as a pledge of my future existence. Deprived of the hope to live again in my children, I floated in mid-air, like a poor phantom, breathing through roots which were not my own.
Marie seemed to lose patience, because I lingered so long. It was true before witnesses she treated me with the tender love of a mother, but when no one was present she tortured me, just as the little acrobat is pinched by his father behind the scenes. She tried to hasten my end by cruelty. She invented a new torture; justifying her conduct with my temporary weakness, she treated me as if I were a cripple. One day, proudly boasting of her physical strength, she threatened to strike me. She rushed at me, but I seized her by the wrists and forced her down on the sofa.
“Admit that I am the stronger, in spite of my illness!”
She did not admit it; she merely looked disconcerted, and, furious at having made a mistake, she left the room, sulking.
In our mutual struggle she had all the advantages of the woman and actress. It was impossible for me, a hardworking man, to hold my own against an idle woman who spent all her time spinning intrigues. In an unequal struggle of this sort the man is certain to be caught in the end in a net which enmeshes him on all sides.
“In love,” said Napoleon, that most excellent judge of women, “one only wins by flight.” But how could a carefully guarded prisoner escape? and as for a man sentenced to death....
My brain recovered after a rest, and I conceived a plan of escape from this stronghold, although it was most carefully guarded by my wife and the friends which she had so successfully duped. I used cunning; I wrote a letter to the doctor in which I expressed a haunting dread of insanity, and suggested a trip abroad as a remedy. The doctor fell in with my suggestion, and I at once informed Marie of his opinion against which there was no appeal.
“By doctor’s orders!”
Her very formula when she had successfully dictated to the doctor the treatment she wished him to prescribe for her.
She grew pale when she heard it.
“I don’t want to leave my country!”
“Your country?... Finland’s your country! And as far as I know, there is nothing in Sweden which you could possibly miss; you have no relations here, no friends, no career.”
“I refuse to accompany you!”
“Why?”
She hesitated, and after a while continued—
“Because I’m afraid of you! I won’t be left alone with you!”
“You are afraid of a lamb that you lead by the nose? You aren’t serious!”
“You are a knave, and I won’t stay with you unprotected!”
I felt sure that she had a lover. Or else she was afraid of my discovering her indiscretions.
So she was afraid of me, of me who crouched at her feet like a dog, whose leonine mane she had clipped, leaving him but a fringe like a horse’s; who waxed his moustache and wore up and down collars, to be better equipped for the struggle with dangerous rivals. Her fear of me increased my dread and stimulated my suspicions.
“This woman has a lover whom she is loath to leave, or else she is afraid of retribution,” I said to myself.
After endless discussions she wheedled a promise out of me to stay away no longer than a year.
The will to live returned, and I eagerly finished a volume of poems which was to be published in the winter following my departure.
Summer in my heart, I sang with fresh inspiration. I sang of my beloved wife as she appeared to me on the day of our first meeting, a blue veil fluttering from her straw hat, a blue veil which became the flag which I hoisted when I sailed into the stormy sea. One evening I read this poem to a friend. Marie listened with profound attention. When I had finished she burst into tears, put her arms round me and kissed me.
A perfect actress, she played before my friend the part of the loving wife. And the simpleton regarded me from that day as a jealous fool whom heaven had blessed with the sweetest of wives.
“She loves you, old boy,” my friend assured me again and again. And four years later he reminded me of the scene as a convincing proof of her fidelity.
“I swear to you at that moment she was sincere,” he reiterated.
Sincere in her remorse, perhaps! Face to face with my love which transformed the wanton into a madonna. It was not very surprising.