I Confess (2 page)

"You should see a doctor."

"I've seen twenty doctors."

"But there must be something you can do!**

"Sure, sure..."

"So ... what?"

"Pills."

I sat down and looked for my shoes. She was watching me silently. She had an interesting face, with strong astonishingly irregular features, and it was just this irregularity that gave her a piquant look. Her teeth were very white and quite large, her mouth was wide, her lips were full, her nose was not quite straight and her thick black eyebrows stood in strange contrast to her flaming red hair.

One of the peculiarities of her face was that she could raise those bushy eyebrows one at a time to astonishing heights, and there was a nerve in the left side of her nose which occasionally went off on its own in a fluttery way, all of which made her seem more nervous than she actually was.

"You're leaving?" she asked, nonchalantly.

"Yes," I said, tying my shoelaces.

"Aha!"

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, fished around for her slippers with the high heels that lay under a nearby chair. She was a big woman. Now she walked.

naked, past me and out of the room. While I combed my hair I could hear her in the kitchen, opening and closing the refrigerator. Then she came back, carrying a glass and a bottle of beer. She put both down and, looking absorbed, proceeded to open the bottle, which was coated with tiny drops, after which she filled the glass and drank in long, thirsty gulps. Her neat little stomach rose and fell with every swallow. I turned away. I couldn't watch her. The smell of fresh, cold beer hit me suddenly and I felt renewed waves of nausea. This peculiarity of hers to drink beer on awakening, regardless of her surroundings or the situation she might be in, always aroused the same astonished aversion in me. Yolanda was the only woman I knew who could do this, and I didn't like it. Meanwhile she had emptied a second glass, sat down on the bed and stuck a cigarette in her mouth. I gave her a light. She blew a cloud of smoke into the room and asked, "Where?"

That was another one of her peculiarities: to pepper a conversation with gaps, thus letting it die for a while, then abruptly picking up the thread only to break it again just as unpredictably. At first this had confused me, but I soon became used to it.

"There's something I have to attend to...."

"But you're coming back?"

"No."

"No?" Her right eyebrow went up. "We were going to the theatre."

"Sorry, but I can't. Go with someone else."

I laid a hand on her shoulder and started to stroke her, absentmindedly, but she shook me off. "Don't."

"What's the matter?"

She looked at me wordlessly. Her lips, usually full and pouting, were narrowed; her nostrils quivered; a strand of hair was hanging down her face again, but she didn't seem to notice it. Still she said nothing. All I could hear was the rain and her breathing.

"I asked you something." My headache was getting worse. Mechanically I reached for a cigarette.

"You have to go to your wife, right?"

"Among other things."

"Why didn't you teU me before?"

"You knew it."

"I didn't know it."

My temples were pounding. I could feel the blood coursing through them. "Yolanda, what's the matter with you? Are you jealous?"

"Of Margaret?" She knocked the ash off her cigarette contemptuously. It fell on the carpet. It always fell on the carpet.

"So... what then?"

"I'm not jealous. I've had all I can take."

"Of what?" I was very nervous, very irritated. The words came from me slowly; I knew my face betrayed my pain.

"Don't look so miserable!" She took a few quick puffs. "You have no reason to be miserable. If anyone does, it's me."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, that's so."

"You mean you're doing badly."

"I'll say I'm doing badly."

"I don't satisfy you."

"You don't."

"Then perhaps we should call it quits."

"Perhaps."

I pulled myself together and smiled at her. "Just a minute," I said. "What's the matter with us? How did we get into all this? A few minutes ago everything was peaceful—or wasn't it?"

She didn't answer.

"So come on, let's be friends agam. If it's anything I did, I'm sorry." I knew very well that I hadn't done a thmg, certainly nothing to be sorry for, but I said it just

the same. Anything to have peace. "There now, is everything all right?"

"No."

I drew a deep breath. She seemed determined to make a scene.

"Why not?" '

Dear God, how familiar I was with all this, the words, the looks, the hysteria. How unbearable it all was, and how ridiculous!

"Because it doesn't suit me."

"What doesn't suit you?"

The same old dialogue, the same old sequence of events: phrases repeated, hstened to, concihatory smiles. And a headache. Above all, a headache.

"Nothing suits me!"

She jumped to her feet, slipped into a robe and began to pace back and forth. You could see how much good this Uttle outburst was doing her, how she was enjoying it. Her wide, green silk housecoat fluttered around her white thighs. She stumbled on one of her high heels and kicked off her slippers. "Nothing! What do you take me for anyway? How long do you think you can keep this up?"

"Keep what up?"

"This httle ritual. Love by timetable. Monday from four to eight, Wednesday evening in the olBBce, if you've got something you want to dictate, Thursday morning, and then the weekend, if your wife chooses to go away."

I looked at her. I thought she had grown older in the three months we had known each other. She wasn't as pretty. I noticed several places on her body . . . This happened to me with all women, but usually it took longer. The best thmg might be to call it quits.

"You know very well that this timetable, as you choose to call it, is the result of the difficult situation in which I find myself. After all, I'm married."

"And you just sleep with me."

"At your friendly invitation."

"You're a louse."

**It always gave me great pleasure." I got up and went over to her. She resisted when I put my arms around her, but I held her close, pressed her body to mine. For one short moment I felt something akin to desire move me. Then I could smell the beer and let her go. "Wasn't it perfectly clear from the beginning what our relationship would be?" I said. "Or have you suddenly fallen in love with me?"

"By God, no!" She said it softly, and her green eyes glittered angrily.

"Well, then—why all the excitement?"

She walked up to me and looked me in the eye. She spoke hastily. "I'll tell you why, dear Jimmy. Because it has suddenly occurred to me that there is such a thing as dignity, a woman's dignity!"

"Oh, come on. . . ."

"Be quiet!" Now she was standing close to me, her body was touching mine, and I could smell not only the beer but also her hair, her perfume. "I'm not finished. I am of the opinion, dear Jimmy, fhat the pleasure I give you gives me certain rights. Rights of a social nature. The same rights as your wife. More!"

"Yes, yes...."

"You don't agree? What does she do for you? Give you pleasure? Help you?"

"No."

"But I did. Or didn't I?"

**Yes, Yolanda. You did."

'*We may not have loved each other, but we understood each other. From the very first moment. You could come to me whenever you liked. I was always there for you. I was faithful, although I didn't love you. And your wife? Was she faithful?"

"No."

"But you've got to pick her up."

"Yes."

Suddenly she was very far away, as if T were looking at her through the wrong end of an opera glass. Her voice

too came to me as if through a wall of cotton wadding. Only the rain remained loud. And the blood pulsating in my temples. Pam-pampam ... pam-pampam...

"You have to keep up a front."

"That's right."

"Nobody must notice."

"Right."

"Because you have social obligations.**

"That's right."

"Although you haven't loved her in years. Although she hasn't loved you in years."

"Yes, Yolanda."

"And why?"

"Because she's my wife."

I walked away from her. I could feel how the conversation was wearing me out. I had listened to it so many times, not only from Yolanda and not only in Munich. In other cities too. With other women. I was sick to death of the conversation as of so many other things.

"Because she is your wife. That's all?"

"That's aU."

"That's why you can't leave her?"

"No."

"Then why not?"

"Because I don't want to."

I could just as well have said because I wanted to avoid a scandal. Or because I was a coward. But I didn't. These things were none of Yolanda's business. And my head ached.

"But me ... me you want to leave.**

"I don't want to leave you."

"But you're going to."

"What do you mean? When?"

"Now. You're leaving me to go to her.*'

"Yolanda, don't be childish. I'm picking Margaret up at the house of friends and taking her home. Tomorrow I'll see you again."

"From four to eight.**

"It's the best I can do."

"It's not the best you can do. You could do something about the people who are saying filthy things about me. You could do something about the fact that we have to sit around in coffee shops and bars like college kids. You could see to it that this idiotic game of hide and seek comes to an end. That's what you could do. But you don't want to. Because she's your wife."

All I could do was nod; it hurt me to speak.

"Why don't you say something?"

"Because my head aches."

"Stop talking about your head."

"I didn't start this. I have bigger and better worries."

"Yes. Your poor wife."

"Among other things."

"You don't love her, she doesn't love you, but you worry about her. Because she's your wife."

I nodded.

"And of course that's something quite different. Because she's your wife she has to be treated with consideration. Because of her I have to put up with everything. Whereas I ... what am I? I'm nothing but a common, dirty little . . .".

"Yes."

''What!" She turned on me.

"That was what fascinated me in you," T explained, "Don't be angry, Yolanda. It was meant as a compliment. I thought it would please you."

She came up to me. "It pleases me enormously," she said. Her smile was icy. "It was the nicest compliment you could have paid me. I'm sure it's a compliment you could never have paid your wife." Now we were standing close again, both of us were smiling. "If she'd been a common little whore, you would never have been interested in me, isn't that right, Jimmy?"

"No, Yolanda."

"If you could let yourself go at home, you'd never have come to me."

"Certainly not."

'Tor that I want to thank you, darling. It was sweet of you. And now / want to say something nice too." * "Yes?"

"Yes. I want to tell you what you are."

"That isn't necessary. I know what I am." - "No you don't. That's why it's time somebody told you, Jimmy. It's important for your development as a writer. Perhaps you can do something with it in your next film. That is—^if they decide to let you write another film." She smiled broadly; I could see her strong, white teeth. She came closer, threw her arms around me, laid her head against my cheek. "So listen carefully. You are a poor, miserable little bourgeois, Jimmy. One of the worst kind. One of the sad ones who get everything all wrong. A phoney. A sordid Uttle phoney." , "Thanks."

"You're welcome. But I'm not through. You're one of those poor Johns who Jook at every woman with raunchy eyes, first at her legs, and then imagine her always in the same position. Only your imagination is much stronger than your talent. Which is why you're forever on the lookout for new flesh, forever disappointed and restless. As I just said—a pitiful little bourgeois, a very, very sad specimen. In love, as in your profession—mediocre." She stroked my cheek with hers and her hands moved caressmgly down my back. "An insignificant little bourgeois with mile-wide inhibitions and complexes."

"Quite the opposite from you."

"Quite the opposite from me."

"Which is why you tendered your friendly invitation."

*T tendered my friendly invitation because at the time I still thought something could be done with you, that it might be fun "

"... and I had lots of money."

"... and you had lots of money."

**But I was a disappointment."

"Yes, Jimmy."

"Not financially."

"No. Not financially."

"But in other respects."

"In other respects. I think I shall decide to give yon up. T don't want to say that you have no talent, but I don't think you're going to change. No, I'm sure you're not. You're going to stay just the way you are. With your wife whom you don't love, with your work that you don't enjoy, with your chronic dissatisfaction, your constant searching, your waking dreams . . ."

"Yolanda," I said, "you can stop now."

"Why? Why should I stop, dear Jimmy?"

"Because enough is enough."

"But is it enough? Shouldn't I go on to tell you that you're a sap, a failure, a nothing?"

"No."

"I think it would do you good."

"I don't think so."

"But I do."

"Yolanda," I said, smiling, "if you say it once more I'll bash your head in."

She smiled, then she said it again.

I struck her in the face.

The cheek I hit turned a fiery red. T had hit hard. Yolanda was still smiling, but her cigarette had dropped out of her hand. It lay on the carpet. She toed into one of her slippers and put it out.

"Now you can go," she said.

"I'll say."

"And get yourself a new secretary."

"I'll do that."

I walked to the door, turned around once*more, asked, "Why did it have to end like this? Wouldn't it have been simpler to just tell me you'd had enough?"

She shook her head, as if astounded. "You poor idiot," she said.