Mortals

psychoanalyst, just nodding and waiting for the great confession to work its way up and out of her beautiful mouth, except that he lacked the strength for it. What he would appreciate most would be something voluntary. That would be the only event he could think of that would lead to his forgiving her, that moment arriving, his forgiving her in a fundamental way. His face felt metallic, especially around his mouth. His smile would be unnatural, if he had to smile. His eyelids felt metallic or stiff, like the eyelids in a ventriloquist’s dummy.

He would love to forgive her, not that forgiving her would mean they could go on together, it wouldn’t. But it would make the next phase of ending everything easier for him to bear, or so he thought. He could just sink his silence in a demonstration of utter fatigue and keep waiting, waiting for her to go first. And then if she did she could be forgiven in a flash, or not exactly in a flash but rapidly, pretty rapidly.

She said, “Do you want to open your present? I’ll open it for you. It isn’t anything. I got it at a jumble sale. Do you want me to open it?”

“No,” he said.

“Because you’re tired. You’re just too tired right now?”

“Right.” He laid his arm across his eyes.

“Do you want me to let you sleep?”

“No,” he said more violently than he’d intended. He wanted her to be in his presence. The phone could ring. If it did it would be Morel. Or she could make a call and whisper.

“You have to tell me everything, how you are, what happened to you. I’m so glad to have you safe, Ray. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll do anything you need.”

He said, “I want you to tell me everything too.”

“What do you mean? You mean since you left, what I’ve been doing? It’s nothing. It’s not interesting.”

“To me it is.”

She said, “I know you’ve been through something terrible. You have to tell me about it.” She was being careful. She wanted to know everything, but she wanted to be dutiful, too, and not ask about anything having to do with the agency that he wouldn’t be comfortable telling her about. She was still trying to be his good wife. She had some feeling for him still. He couldn’t stand it much longer.

“Tell me something,” she said.

He sat up. He had to be at least sitting up for what was coming next. He should be on his feet for it but right then it was too much to ask.

He said, “I’ll tell you something. You have a lover.”

She had been sitting near him on the bed, but she jumped to her feet, looking indignant, but feebly.

“Are you insane?” she said.

“No, not yet. Just admit it.”

“This is wrong,” she said.

“Yes, it is. Yes, it is. But you have a lover.”

“I don’t. I don’t. I don’t know who told you that.”

She was suffering. He didn’t want that.

She was pacing up and down, manically. He had never seen her in such a state and he was in pain seeing it.

Now her tears were coming.

“I don’t want this,” she said.

“I don’t either, but you have a lover and that’s what we have to work with.” Tears were coming to his eyes too.

“It isn’t true.”

He got to his feet and caught her to him. She had to hold him up. They sat down on the bed, side by side, in misery.

“It’s Morel. Come on.”

She was silent.

“Look, tell me the truth. I’ve already done most of my suffering over it. You were lucky not to be around for that. Just admit it and then I’ll let you make me an omelette. I’m ravenous, suddenly. So just admit it. We’ve known each other a long time. Just say it.”

“Okay, then. It’s true.”

“Life is unbearable,” he said.

Each day since his return had been worse than the one before it, and there had been eight of them. Today it was the prospect of sitting down with Chester Boyle that was weighing on him as the moment approached. Otherwise he would say the day had been about equal in sadness and what, leadenness, to the seven preceding. But now the day was worse. He was sitting and waiting and reading in the American Library. The librarian knew him. When she felt the coast was clear she would admit him to the workroom and buzz him on through to Boyle’s ridiculous tiny secret chamber.

Nothing was good. He was reading the Weekly Mail of January 18 to 21, 1993, the current issue. He was back in the present. The lead front-page story had to do with far-right groups in South Africa making secret deals with Frelimo to set up all-white colonies in Mozambique. It would never happen. Clinton, the new president of the United States, was apparently allowing the dictator Saddam Hussein to use helicopters against the Marsh Arabs, who had been encouraged by the United States to rise against Saddam. If there was good news in this issue of the Weekly Mail he wasn’t finding it.

At home, with Iris, it was bad. Things were static. They weren’t speaking much and she was coming and going again. For the first couple of days she had shadowed him anxiously, staying around him. But she had given that up and was coming and going again and not necessarily letting him know where she was going. At times he felt dead, but most of the time he felt himself dying, in the process, dying of sadness. Feeling dead was a respite, strangely enough. They were sleeping in the same bed but still not speaking except on mundane matters. She was still making some effort to talk to him. She was in distress. He wasn’t trying not to talk to her, he couldn’t talk to her. And he was being tormented by lust. It made it worse that she had stopped reaching out to touch him during the night. Their bed was too vast. It had been a luxury to them, in the past. Now he wanted the bed to be narrower. He was being tormented by lust and sexual memory, sexual memories. He remembered her saying, at some point not too long in the past, Celibacy I find very sexy in the person engaging in it. It wasn’t doing anything for her lately.

He had managed to take care of a lot of housekeeping matters in the last few days, mostly housekeeping connected with St. James’s. He hadn’t told them he was leaving, yet. No one had seemed unduly interested in what he was doing there, why he was carrying his stuff out.

Now the librarian was crooking her finger at him and now she was jerking her thumb in the direction of the workroom.

Boyle was in place when Ray entered the secret chamber. Ray liked to keep thinking of it as that. It was claustral in there. He supposed Boyle liked that because some people would say anything to get out of an environment like that, agree to anything. There was a new banker’s green-shaded lamp on Boyle’s table with the shell of the shade tilted a little away from Boyle, toward himself. It would have been friendly of Boyle to adjust the shade so the light fell straight down. Of course it was intentional.

Boyle looked rather haggard. He was still obese, and he looked bad, haggard and blotchy. He was wearing a dress shirt and tie, a black tie. Somehow he looked like a mourner. Boyle was slow to reach for Ray’s hand. The handshake was not warm. Boyle was studying him.

Boyle said, “Good to see you, Ray. I’m just back. I gather you’re okay. You’re all right? You’ve been to the embassy nurse. You’re taking care of your knee. You’re okay.” It was a statement. There was no inquiry in any of it.

“I’m all right,” Ray said. Boyle had gone to some trouble to check on his condition. That was interesting.

Boyle said, “You turned the Cruiser in. I saw the vouchers.”

“It’s all right too, the Cruiser.”

“Good. I don’t have a report from you. Unless I missed it. I’ve been in the field. You know. I have a ton of