Portraits of a Marriage Read Online Free Page B

style, with many acquaintances, part of a considerable society. It just so happened that we were alone.
    Just once I saw him in a different light, just once and for a moment only. It was the moment the child was born, when that pale, sad, lonely figure was first allowed into the room. He entered awkwardly, as if he were taking part in a scene that was deeply embarrassing, overfamiliarly human, as if he were a little ashamed to be an actor in it. He stopped by the crib, leaned forward uncertainly, his hands clasped behind his back as usual, wary and reserved. I was exhausted at the time but I watched him very closely. He leaned over the crib and then, for a moment, that pale face of his lit up with some inner glow. But he didn’t say anything. He gazed at the baby for a long time, for maybe twenty minutes in all, without moving. Then he came over, put his hand on my brow andstood silently by my bed. He didn’t look at me but stared out of the window. It was dawn on a foggy October day. He stayed by my bed a while longer, stroking my brow. His palm was hot. The next moment he was talking to the doctor. It was as if he had abruptly finished one conversation and started another, with a different subject.
    But now I know that in that moment, perhaps for the first and last time in his life, he was happy. He might even have considered revealing something of the secret he called his humanity. While the child was alive he talked to me differently, with a greater intimacy, but I still felt I was not entirely part of him. I know there are people who struggle desperately to overcome a kind of inner resistance, some blend of pride, fear, sensitivity, and uncertainty, that won’t let them join the crowd like the others. But he would, up to a point at least, for a while, have made his peace with the world for the sake of the child. I could see him struggling with himself and was filled with a kind of crazy hope while the child was alive. He was trying to change his nature, to domicile it the way a circus trainer tames a lion. Silent and proud and sad as he was, he was doing his best to be humble and obedient. He’d bring me presents, for example. It was enough to make me weep the way this newly “humble” man—a man who’d always been ashamed to bring me little presents for Christmas or my birthday but insisted on something expensive like a pleasure cruise, a fur coat, a new car, or jewelry—now started bringing me what I had really been missing, touching little gifts hardly worth anything, such as a bag of hot chestnuts he’d bought on the way home, sweets, and so on. Up till that time I’d had the best of everything: the best doctors, the finest nursery, and this wonderful ring I am wearing now. Yes, it is valuable. But now he’d arrive home wearing a shy smile and clumsily unwrap a little package containing, say, a delicately crocheted baby’s jacket and bonnet. He’d put it down on the nursery table, give a brief, apologetic smile, then quickly leave the room.
    I tell you I could have wept at those times. Wept with joy and hope.
    But there was another feeling too, an important part of the complex whole, and that was fear. It was the fear that he would not win the struggle, that he could not overcome himself, that neither of us couldmanage our lives, not even with the help of the baby. It was the fear that there was something not right about all this. But what could it be? … I’d go to church and pray. Help me, God! I pleaded. But God knows that the only help we can receive is that which we ourselves give.
    But he certainly struggled with himself while the child lived.
    I can see you’re impatient. You ask me what the problem was between us. You want to know what kind of man my husband really was … It’s a hard question, darling. I have been puzzling over it for eight years. Even after we parted I continued puzzling. Now and then I think I finally have the truth. But it’s made up of entirely unreliable pieces of