I don’t know what to do.
I say to Astrid I’ve heard about this. Postpartum depression.
She laughs loudly at the idea tho it isn’t that funny.
An Extraordinary Day!
As usual went out & dragged anxieties along the boulevards until found a café to sit when anxieties wanted coffee & a cigarette. Paris all around me. A drunk pissing like he was nothing but a bladder in a hat, his ribbon of urine snaking its way through cobblestones. Two policemen paced the boulevard because to march would give off wrong impression.
Walked to the Seine & sat down beside it.
On bench next to me a woman had her legs stretched out catching a rare dose of sun. Nice legs- long & sinewy. She was looking at me while I was looking at her legs. I did a combination shrug & smile & before my brain recognized her, my mouth did.
– Caroline! I cried.
– Marty!
We leapt up at the same time & gazed at each other with deep surprise and joy.
– I went to find you! I shouted.
– Dad died!
– I know! I saw his grave!
– It was awful!
– Everyone I love is dead too!
– I know!
– Everyone! Mum! Dad! Terry! Harry!
– I heard! I rang home when Dad died and my uncle in Sydney told me the news!
– It was awful!
– I’m married! It’s terrible!
– No!
– Yes!
– Well, I’m a father!
– No!
– That’s what I said!
– Marty, let’s run away together!
– I can’t!
– Yes you can!
– I have to fulfill my parental duty!
– Well, I can’t leave my husband either!
– Why not?!
– I still love him!
– So we’re stuck!
– Hopelessly stuck!
– You look good!
– You look beautiful!
We both took a breather & laughed. I had never been so excited. She cupped my face in her hands & kissed me all over.
– What are you going to do? I asked.
– Let’s rent a hotel room & make love.
– Are you sure?
– I’m sorry I ran out on you.
– You were in love with my brother.
– I was young.
– And beautiful.
– Let’s get that room.
A small hotel above a restaurant, we made love all afternoon. I won’t go into specifics except to say I didn’t disgrace myself at all- duration was respectable & thunderstorm raged outside as we left the curtains open & I knew that this would hang hazy in our minds as a half-remembered dream & we would step back afterwards into our lives & when I thought this my heart painfully contracted there in the dark.
– So you’re the father of a French child, she said.
Strangely that thought had never occurred to me before & while I love the French & theoretically am indifferent to my own country, one’s roots hold a strange grip. Suddenly unpleasant my son wouldn’t be Australian. There’s no better country in the world to run away from. Fleeing from France is fine when German tanks are rolling in but in peacetime why would you bother?
We held each other giddily she was thin & so smooth I could’ve skipped her across a lake & she squeezed me in spasms & I kept kissing her as a way to stop her looking at the time as day turned to night. I couldn’t waste this opportunity & I couldn’t bear to hate myself again so I said that I didn’t position myself deliberately in the path of love but it happened and to that end I would leave Astrid and the child so we could be together. She lapsed into a long silence her face barely visible in the dark. Then she spoke softly You cannot leave your son and mother of your child I couldn’t handle the guilt besides I love my husband (a Russian named Ivan of all things). These people were insurmountable obstacles she said then added I love you too, but more as an afterthought hers was an I love you couched in conditions. It was not unconditional love. There were clauses and loopholes. Her love was not binding. I smiled, as if my mouth were compelled by tradition to do so.
I felt a violent mood swing coming on.
She and Ivan were going to visit his family in Russia for a while maybe six months or longer but when we said goodbye we arranged to meet again in exactly one year not on top of the Eiffel Tower but on the side & see if anything’s changed. She said I love you again & I tried to take her at her word & after we said goodbye I walked aimlessly feeling like my heart had swung open briefly then shut before I had a chance to see what was inside. I walked for a couple of hours wanting desperately to cry on someone’s shoulder but when I reached the Seine the sight of Eddie my only friend made me protective of my secret.
– Where have you been? You’re late.
– The boat isn’t here yet, is it?
– No he said absently gazing out upon the silent Seine.
One day I think history will judge me badly or worse accurately.
Night
It’s night now & am watching Astrid sleep & am thinking of van Gogh. When he was fired from an early job he wrote When an apple is ripe a soft breeze will make it fall from a tree.
Love is like that. Love was inside banked up & has poured out at her arbitrarily. I say that because I realize dammit I love her I love her but I don’t like her I love the girl I don’t like. That’s love for you! It goes to show love has little to do with the other person it’s what’s inside you that counts- that’s why men love cars mountains cats their own abdominal muscles that’s why we love sonsofbitches & blood-lesscunts. I don’t like Astrid one bit I love her.
Maybe Caroline’s tacit rejection of me had the same effect on my love for Astrid as the cooling of the universe had in aiding the formation of matter. & who would have guessed the heart is spacious enough to love not one but two people at once? Maybe three? Maybe I can love my son too.
The End!
This is the end!
Everything has changed drastically & permanently. Last big change- life will never be same again.
It started ordinarily enough. Was in Shakespeare & Co. bookshop leafing through secondhand paperbacks when I heard a voice Hey Céline!
A familiar voice, a familiar ugliness. The Alaskan husky striding toward me not slowing down the way people normally do but walking at full speed stopping abruptly an inch from my face.
– I’ve been looking for you. Don’t go to the pier tonight, he said.
– Why not?
– Have you finished Journey yet?
– Not yet, I lied.
– Shit’s going down tonight. I can’t say any more than that.
– Go on.
– OK. We’re going to blow your boat out of the water.
– Why?
– You’re our rivals.
– Not me. I don’t even know what’s in those crates.
– That’s why you shouldn’t show up.
Ran around all afternoon trying to find Eddie & wrote notes & left them for him everywhere at his house at his favorite restaurant with his barber. Notes all identical:
Stay away from work tonight. They’re going to blow up the boat into a trillion pieces.
Even left note at my house on the kitchen table for Astrid telling her to pass on message should she see Eddie. She wasn’t home. Why was I so terror-stricken that Eddie might die? Friendships are an unforeseeable burden.
At 4 went to a movie then passed by Eddie’s place once more on my way home but he wasn’t there & when I came home I opened the door to see him sitting in my kitchen a beer in his hand as though it were just an average day tho I spotted gaps in his tireless optimism. I caught him sighing wearily.
– You just missed Astrid, he said.
– I looked all over for you today. What a business you got me into!
– Back pain again? Anyway, I thought we’d walk together.
– What do you mean? Didn’t Astrid tell you about the note?
– No, she said she was going down to the Seine.
I stood thinking for a few seconds before I got it. I looked at my watch. 7:40.
Left baby w/ Eddie & ran out of house & along wet pavement covered in a frosty sweat. Stumbling, I hurled myself toward the mighty Seine. What is she thinking? Ran palpitating, my feet hitting the wet pavement like little heartbeats. What is she going to do? I ran & suddenly I was not alone: along came the shame of a man who all at once discovers he’s been ungrateful so we ran the three of us- me & shame & ingratitude running together like three shadows of three men who were running just ahead. I know what she’s thinking. Almost out of breath. Are my lungs half empty or half full? Don’t know what to do with my appetites. Astrid loved me greedily & I loved her back in reluctant nibbles. I thought I was as small as I could be but was wrong having once more shrunk in my own eyes. I know what she’s going to do!