A Separation(35)

I think nowadays they call it sex addiction. Men who can’t stop chasing women, even when they are making fools of themselves. It gets worse with old age, you know. There’s nothing worse than a panting old man. Of course, you must take some responsibility for the situation, she said. But I don’t blame you, I know my son, I’m not sure that any woman would have been able to keep him from straying.

Her eyes suddenly filled with tears, as if she were speaking not of her son’s infidelity but of his death—that was what she was really talking about, and she was right, no woman could have kept him from dying. Things must have been strained between you, Christopher never said a word but I felt it. She paused. If only Christopher hadn’t had reason to come to this place.

He came here, I said, to do research, to finish his book.

Isabella shook her head sharply. The book was only the excuse, she said, Christopher was never serious about his work. He was always running away. He always had somewhere to go, he made his life very busy. I think he was worried that if he stopped, he would realize that his life was empty.

This was unfair—although she loved him to excess, Isabella had never been able to take her son seriously. Now that he was dead, she would never have to acknowledge the depth of his ambitions, the fact that in death he had left things undone. She was not looking at me. I said that he had been close to finishing his manuscript (a lie), that I had read whole chapters (another lie), that in fact there was a critical link (even the phrase sounded false) in the book that could be made through the research he had been doing here in the southern Peloponnese.

Isabella did not respond, perhaps she did not hear me. Standing by the window, she looked like the saddest woman in the world. At any rate, she said, still looking out at the sea, you loved him. Despite his flaws. And that is something. He died loved. She did not look at me for affirmation—perhaps it was not even necessary, it was understood that I loved Christopher, what wife didn’t love her husband? Even when her husband gave her sufficient cause not to? There was an appreciable pause, which Isabella seemed not to notice, before I said, Yes, Christopher was loved by many people, there is no doubt that he died loved.

But he was loved by you, she said insistently, the love of a wife is different, it’s important.

More important than the love of his mother? I asked. I immediately regretted it, I would have taken the question back if I could, the woman’s son had just died, if I could not be generous to her now, when would I? But she replied, somberly, Yes, it is the most important love, the love of the mother is a given, it is taken for granted. A child is born and for the rest of his or her life the mother will love the child, without the child doing anything in particular to earn it. But the love of a wife has to be earned, to be won in the first place and then kept.

She paused, and then added, although I thought without malice, You don’t have children, perhaps it is difficult for you to understand. And I said in reply, Yes, I loved him, Isabella, he died loved, and she said, Ah. That’s all I wanted to know.

? ? ?

And yet her words returned to me, as I went through Christopher’s belongings, packing them up so that they could be taken back to London (the hotel staff had merely placed his things in boxes, they were in a state of total disarray, it was not a task I could have asked Isabella to perform. Isabella, whose grief had already taken precedence over mine, both because of her natural egotism and because the secret of my estranged status from Christopher meant that I did not believe my grief had any claims to make of its own, I allowed the situation to happen).

When I found the June issue of the London Review of Books, it was open to the back pages. Those pages contained personals and real estate listings—colonial-style house on the coast of Goa, four kilometers from Monte San Savino, own wheels essential, life-enhancing writing holiday at luxury retreat. In the bottom left-hand corner, on the page to which the issue was opened, the binding torn at the staples as if the pages had been folded back for some time, was a boxed ad that had been circled with a pen, reading:


INFIDELITIES: Has life become somewhat stale and routine? Would discreet dating introductions give you back that missing special spark?

Infidelities is all about the alternative relationship experience. We offer you a personal, professional, bespoke scheme, far removed from Internet searching. Women are especially welcomed to our unique project. Please telephone James for a private friendly chat.

The ad went on to include both a landline and a mobile phone number. As I read it through a second time, I thought, somewhat mechanically, that the copywriter had no ear to speak of—why, for example, somewhat stale rather than simply stale, why missing special spark rather than missing spark? Perhaps it didn’t matter in most circumstances but the ad had been placed in the London Review of Books, which had an educated and sophisticated readership, a readership who thought of itself that way. The tone of the advertisement was a complete mess, on the one hand it read like a proposal from a bank or an investment opportunity, for example there was the use of the word scheme. On the other hand it sounded like a badly conceived free-love experiment, why describe it as a unique project, why refer to it as alternative?

I smoothed the paper, my hands were trembling a little. It was the final line, the injunction to call James for a private friendly chat, that struck me as the most bizarre, particularly the inclusion of both a mobile and a landline number. I imagined this James, constantly on call, ready to drop everything should his telephone ring, either one, always prepared to enter into private and friendly conversation at any time of day or night, the more I thought about it the more the inconsistency of tone troubled me, on the one hand it was professional, bespoke, on the other hand it was a chat, it was friendly.