A Separation(26)

Of course, he would have. But on the other hand, what was to say that this was not a matter of interpretation? Perhaps he had merely been making conversation, or perhaps he was even being practical (if he was alone, he would only require one key, one place setting at breakfast, for example). But it seemed cruel to point this out and I could see the scene clearly enough, Christopher had always known how to make an entrance, it was his departures that needed work. I wondered how long it had taken for him to bustle the woman up to his room, had it been the work of days rather than weeks, hours rather than days, how efficient was he now in these matters. In my case it had been, I remembered, one week exactly.

The waiter brought our first courses, mine was a small mesclun salad topped with some very pale grated carrot, the vegetables flown in from some distant place and then transported by truck no doubt. There was nothing native about my plate and I felt depressed just contemplating it, these vegetables in the aridity of a landscape that allowed only for olives, prickly pears, it was my own fault for ordering the dish.

Meanwhile, Maria was calmly cutting into an extravagant plate of food, a lobster dish that had been set on the menu in what had seemed to me an unnecessarily complicated prose description, several lines at least, all of which was almost certainly intended to justify the inflated price that accompanied the dish, one of the most expensive on the menu. She was eating with relish, unlike my salad, her dish looked delicious, the meat rich and glossy, a lobster claw, partially disemboweled, rose out of the pile of meat and butter like an upraised fist.

It was hard not to be distracted by the sight of this woman, who ate her expensive dish with such deliberate pleasure. Perhaps she had every right to the little luxury, I might have been the one paying, but if Christopher had wronged her in some way—and how could he have not—wasn’t it right that as his wife, I should pay recompense? I waited for her to continue and wondered if she had sat in this restaurant, perhaps at this very table, with Christopher. She might have ordered the same lobster appetizer, he would have appealed to her appetite, to her desire for carnal satisfaction, encouraging her to be expansive.

Once a woman is behaving in a way that is other to herself, once she is acting in a manner out of the ordinary, unlikely things become possible, and that is half the task of seduction. Perhaps now, as she sucked the meat out of the lobster’s claw, her chin growing slick with butter, she was reliving her own seduction, to which my presence was a mere ancillary. As if her emotions had been softened by the succulent dish, she began to speak of Christopher, without anger, almost dreamily. I thought he was very handsome, she said, men don’t look like him around here. His manner was completely different too, he was always laughing, most of the time I didn’t know what he was laughing at, but there was nothing mean about his laughter, I never felt like he was laughing at me.

All the women in the hotel were instantly attracted by him, she continued, from the moment he arrived they were talking about how handsome he was, how sexy—this was embarrassing and I averted my gaze, it was as if a girlfriend had referred to my own father as sexy, the word sounded jejune coming out of her mouth, so childish as to be utterly divorced from the act of sex itself—everyone had noticed that he had come alone, very few men come to the hotel alone, and none as young and handsome as he.

She lowered her eyes modestly to her plate, where they contemplated the ruin of the lobster dish. She had made short work of it. I never expected that he would notice me, she continued, of all the women working at the hotel. I hadn’t noticed so many female staff at the hotel, the way she said it you would have thought there were absolute hordes, all of whom she had succeeded in beating off with a stick, but in any case I got the point, I understood that Christopher was a trophy. But, she continued, he took an interest, he kept stopping by, whenever I was working he would come and talk to me, he was obviously a busy man but he seemed to have plenty of time.

Christopher is always very good at finding time for the things he is interested in.

I tried to sound neutral, I wanted to keep my bitterness out of the conversation, but she barely seemed to notice that I had said anything at all, she continued almost without pause. And he was so interesting, I can say with my hand on my heart—she did pause this time, to lift her hand and place it on her bosom, which heaved with emotion, a gesture I thought Christopher would have found endearing, even enchanting, for all its apparent gaucheness—that I had never met such an intelligent man in my life. This was hardly surprising, the bar did not seem to be set especially high, Stefano, for all his merits, was not obviously an intellectual force.

But that was unkind. As the waiter took our plates away—mine still bearing a large portion of the salad, Maria’s wiped clean—she continued. He knew about so many things, but he talked about them in a way that didn’t make you feel bad or small, he wasn’t an arrogant type, even if he had so many privileges. Here, she paused to look at me, as much to say that I, on the other hand, had been ossified by my privilege. I nodded grimly and ordered another glass of wine for both of us, she had nodded in a cursory, almost dismissive way when I asked if she would care for a second. After a moment, she added, Christopher is a gentleman, I saw that at once.

All right, I said, Yes, I suppose you are right.

I almost laughed, it was an absurdity, he was no more real to her than a prince in a fairy tale, a hero from a novel, and this despite the fact that he had treated her badly. Still, as she continued to speak, I thought she must harbor hopes of holding him to account, I listened and waited for her to reach the point, the reason why she had asked to sit down in the first place. But this seemed to elude her, and as she continued to tell me about Christopher’s virtues, about his appealing manner, his kindness, without going into any detail about what had actually taken place between them, I thought again that perhaps nothing had happened, she had simply fallen in love with him, his small and rather nonspecific attentions having been enough.