Portraits of a Marriage Read Online Free

great deal to say about that tendency of his. There were many who hated the writer, though, of course, some people hate anyone who is well known. He never spoke about his books or about literature when we met. He just wanted to know something about everything. One evening he called in and I had to explain to him in great detail how to prepare rabbit stew. Would you believe it? Yes, rabbit stew. He wanted it down to the last detail; he even asked the cook. Then he started talking about giraffes. It was all very interesting. He could talk about anything and he knew a great deal; it was only literature he never spoke about.
    Was there a touch of madness in the two of them? I myself thought there might be at first. But then I dismissed the thought. It was simply—as so often in life—not what I expected. They were not mad, I thought, they were just peculiarly private people.
    Then Lázár dropped out of our lives. We read his books and articles, but we didn’t see him. Sometimes there was gossip about his connection with some politician or a well-known woman, but no one knew anything for sure. Politicians swore that our famous author-friend was a member of their party; some women boasted of having captured this elusive exotic beast and bound him head-to-foot. But time after time, the fugitive went to ground and disappeared. Years passed and we saw nothing of him. What was he doing in that time? I don’t know. He lived. He read. He wrote. Maybe he performed conjuring tricks. And that reminds me …
    It’s five years later now. I’d been married to my husband for eight years. The baby was born in the third. Yes, it was a boy. I sent you his photograph. I know—he was gorgeous. Then I stopped writing to anyone,including you. The child was everything: he was all I lived for: everyone else, close or distant, disappeared. One shouldn’t be allowed to love so intensely. Nor should anyone be the object of such love, not even our own children. Love is the fiercest kind of selfishness. So yes, when the child was born, our correspondence came to an end. You were my dearest friend, but I didn’t need you—not even you—anymore, because the child had arrived. Those two years while the child was alive were as much happiness as the world could offer. I felt superhuman, calm and fearful at once. I knew the child wouldn’t survive. How did I know? People just know such things. Some of us feel everything and are fully aware of our fates. I knew that such happiness, such beauty and goodness as was concentrated in that little child, was not to be. I knew he would die. No, don’t argue, and don’t look so horrified: I just know this better than you do. But those two years were years of happiness. He died of scarlet fever. It was winter, three weeks after his second birthday.
    Why do innocent children die? Can you tell me that? Have you thought about it? I have thought deep and long. Not even God answers questions like that.
    I don’t have very much else to do, so this is what I think about. Yes, even now. And I will think about it as long as I live. One never recovers from such a loss. The death of a child is the one true form of torture. Everything else is merely a shadow of this one agony. You are not acquainted with it, I know. And you know what? I don’t know what to say, whether I envy or pity you for not knowing it … I think I pity you.
    Perhaps it would have been different if the child hadn’t arrived that third year. And other things might have been different too, very different, if he had survived. They might. A child is, after all, the greatest of miracles, the one true meaning of life; and yet—we shouldn’t deceive ourselves on this point—no child can resolve the problems between two people. A child cannot calm fits of anxiety or solve insoluble complexities. But there’s no point in talking about that now. The fact is, the child was born on a particular day, lived two years, and then died. I spent two more years