Adultery(58)

I feel like I inflicted this abuse on myself. I want to go back in time, only that’s impossible. I need to make a plan to regain lost ground, but I can’t think straight. All I can do is cry, feeling ashamed and hateful.

How could I have been so na?ve? Thinking that Marianne was looking at me and saying what I already knew? Because I felt guilty, like a criminal. I wanted to humiliate her, to destroy her in front of her husband so she wouldn’t see me as just a pastime. I know I don’t love him, but he has slowly been giving me back some of the joy I’d lost, keeping me from the pit of loneliness I had been drowning in up to my neck. And now I am realizing that those days are gone forever. I have to come back to reality, to the supermarket, to the days that are all alike, and to the safety of my home—something that was once so important to me, but had started feeling like a prison. I need to pick up the pieces that are still left. Perhaps confess everything that happened to my husband.

I know he’ll understand. He’s a good, intelligent man who always puts family first. But what if he doesn’t understand? What if he decides that he’s had enough, that we’ve reached our limit and he’s tired of living with a woman who started off complaining of depression and now laments being left by her lover?

My sobbing wanes and I start to think. Work awaits, and I can’t spend the whole day sitting in this street filled with the homes of happy couples who have Christmas decorations on their doors, with people coming and going without noticing I’m there. I can’t watch my world collapse and not do anything about it.

I need to reflect. I have to draw up a list of priorities. In the coming days, months, and years, will I be able to pretend I’m a devoted wife instead of a wounded animal? Discipline has never been my strong suit, but I can’t behave like I’m unstable.

I dry my tears and look straight ahead. Time to start the car? Not yet. I wait a bit longer. If there is one reason to be happy about what happened, it’s that I was tired of living a lie. How long before my husband suspected something? Can men tell when their wives fake an orgasm? It’s possible, but I have no way of knowing.

I get out of the car and pay for more parking time than necessary. That way I can walk around aimlessly. I call in to work and give a lame excuse: one of the kids had diarrhea and I need to take him to the doctor. My boss believes it; after all, the Swiss don’t lie.

But I do lie. I’ve been lying every day. I’ve lost my self-respect and I don’t know where I’m headed anymore. The Swiss live in the real world. I live in a fantasy one. The Swiss know how to solve their problems. Incapable of solving my own, I created a situation where I had the ideal family and the perfect lover.

I walk through this city that I love, looking at its shops and businesses that—with the exception of places for tourists—seem to have frozen in the fifties and don’t have the slightest intention of modernizing. It’s cold, but not windy, thank God, which makes the temperature bearable. Trying to distract myself and calm down, I stop in a bookstore, a butcher shop, and a clothing store. Each time I go back out into the street, I feel like the low temperatures are helping put out the bonfire I’ve become.

Can you train yourself to love the right man? Of course you can. The problem is forgetting about the wrong man, the one passing by who came in a door that was left open without asking permission.

What exactly did I want from Jacob? I knew from the beginning that our relationship was doomed, although I never imagined it would end in such a humiliating way. Maybe I just wanted what I got: adventure and joy. Or maybe I wanted more—to live with him, to help him grow his career, and to give him the support he no longer seemed to get from his wife and the affection he complained he lacked at one of our first meetings. To pluck him from his home, the way you pluck a flower from someone else’s garden, and plant him on my land, even though I know flowers can’t survive being treated that way.

I’m hit with a wave of jealousy, but this time there are no tears, just anger. I stop walking and sit on a bench at a random bus stop. I watch the people coming and going, all so busy in their own worlds, tiny enough to fit on the screen of the smartphones from which they are unable to unglue their eyes and ears.

Buses come and go. People get off and walk quickly, maybe because of the cold. Others board slowly, not wanting to get home, to work, or to school. But no one shows any anger or enthusiasm; they’re not happy or sad, just poor souls mechanically carrying out the mission that the universe assigned on the day they were born.