•
What are you thinking, he asks; you are so silent. She smiles. All thoughts have been driven out of her head. Her face is only flesh. Outside her now, a little harpy perched on the bookstand or hanging from the ceiling, Worry wrings its hands.
•
She is laughing. Over her lover’s sunken shoulder she sees in a brief phosphorescent shimmer the smiling ornate head of the goddess whose whim has undone her, and laughs back. These visions are only to distract.
•
He promised to help her tie up the boxes today. Predictably, after a shower, they make love instead. She must finish packing. It’s terrible to be in love. He’s up again, taking another shower. Are you crying? he asks. He has just finished shaving, lies down beside her. Aren’t you getting dressed? he asks. And they lie gazing at each other in a silence that does not lengthen or gain weight. He composes her face of half-moons.
•
He doesn’t care. It’s obvious. All the chairs are broken. There is no place to put the clean dishes and laundry. She will put up shelves on her own...So that, at least—, she doesn’t finish the sentence. Everything depends on it, but she cannot explain. He is playing with a silver measuring tape; he pulls out the steel band. It springs back by itself, recoiling in its tiny metal case when he lets go. He stretches the steel ribbon across her shoulders: eighteen inches. She wants it now to measure his spine; then he winds it around their waists, then their necks. Giving the figures so fast it is impossible to record them. Why must it be like this?
•
He is measuring spaces, distances. Between his right elbow and her nose. Her belly button and his left pelvic bone, her right nipple and his left eye. The rest is conjecture, he says. Three, two, one. Zero. Minus four, minus six, minus ten:
•
I don’t care, she says. I don’t care either.
─────
Almost time to fetch the children and she hasn’t even made the beds. Can’t face thinking about what to serve for dinner. The effort of putting on her shoes is too much. She remembers how different it used to be—up at sunrise, on her bicycle, with baby in front, balancing laundry and groceries on each handlebar, another child strapped to the back. She remembers the young wife, stoical and innocent. It was beautiful to be always busy, harried; being used up, this was what life was all about, she was becoming almost transparent. But now she is stuck with herself, a grubby phantom that fattens on her days.
It’s like the unmarried girl, her hair all snarls, big as a house—the old shapeless woe, panting for a man to find some use for her. Rubbish. She was the best student in...She played Salome in...And if not for Ezra, she’d be...Rubbish.
•
“So what are we having for dinner?” Standing in line at the meat market on Place Maubert; trays heaped with glossy glands, hearts, brains and livers. The plucked chickens lined in rows all in the same coy posture: rumps pointing up, necks twisted and tucked under their breasts with the head peeping from under one wing. And rows of skinned rabbits laid out on their backs in furry boots, their forepaws tied over their heads, their flanks spread apart—“Well, Mum, what are you going to buy?” This is the way the world ends.
“Let Toby decide today...We’ll take turns deciding—” she manages to say, but the children won’t play this game.
“No, you have to decide, Mummy; we want you to decide.”
Can’t give them spaghetti again...“How about le Self-Service?”
“Oh, yes! There’s a slot machine there.”
“Then we can have spaghetti!”
“Yes! I want to play the slot machine.”
“No,” she announces. “I’m going to make a roast.” But they’re pulling her out of line, then dancing ahead, all excitement, and Joshua taking her arm, festive, kindly and superior, “Cheer up, Mum,” he says, “I know you think the slot machine is bad for my character. But you don’t realize it takes a certain skill...So, it’s really educational,” he concludes and adds, “C’mon Mum, don’t look like that. You should have more fun in life...”
─────
“But why?” Ezra gasps.
He stands stunned in the hallway, still in his galoshes, coat half unbuttoned, a night’s train journey written on his face.
“I don’t want to be married to you,” she repeats.
“But why, Sophie?”
His look of utter bewilderment belies the least suspicion of a rift between them. Hardening his face, biting on his pipe, he struggles to maintain calm. A shattered man, he has not lost all pride. It is difficult not to be moved. Ezra has his moments of beauty: just now, staring expressionless, an animal dazed by a sudden blow, he seems so solitary and forlorn—a stranger, as if he were already deserted, the person she cast out into the street, cut out of her life. If he were to walk out now without a word, she could not bear it.
“So,” he says, and takes another deep breath. “So this is what I must hear when I come to see you. A twelve-hour trip.” He puts a small oblong jewelry box on the table. “A present. Please take it and don’t thank me. Na ja. I am a fool,” he says dryly, gnawing on a pipe stem.
“We have discussed this matter before,” she says, “and I have written you...”
“I thought the matter was settled, I thought—What has possessed you?” He speaks brokenly, tearfully, but with utmost composure, of how they had discussed and settled matters during the three days he visited her in Paris last spring—they had resolved matters, discussed their difficulties: Paris was the solution.
“I think I have been more than generous. How many husbands do you think permit
