No, I’m looking for an answer I can’t find. After reading about ten of those self-help books, I saw that they were leading nowhere. They have an immediate effect, but that effect stops as soon as I close the book. They’re just words, describing an ideal world that doesn’t exist, not even for the people who wrote them.
“But do you feel better now?”
Of course, but that isn’t the problem. I need to know who I’ve become, because I am that person. It’s not something external.
I can see that he’s trying desperately to help, but he’s as lost as I am. He keeps talking about symptoms, but that, I tell him, isn’t the problem. Everything is a symptom. Can you imagine a kind of spongy black hole?
“No.”
Well, that’s what it is.
He assures me that I will get out of this situation. I mustn’t judge myself. I mustn’t blame myself. He’s on my side.
“There’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
I’d like to believe you, but it’s as if my feet are stuck in concrete. Meanwhile, don’t worry, I’ll keep fighting. I’ve been fighting all these months. I’ve been in similar situations before, and they’ve always passed. One day I’ll wake up and all this will just be a bad dream. I really believe that.
He asks for the bill, he takes my hand, we call a taxi. Something has gotten better. Trusting the one you love always brings good results.
JACOB König, what are you doing in my bedroom, in my bed, and in my nightmares? You should be working. After all, it’s only three days until the elections for the Municipal Council and you’ve already wasted precious hours of your campaign having lunch with me at La Perle du Lac and talking in the Parc des Eaux-Vives.
Isn’t that enough? What are you doing in my dreams? I did exactly as you suggested; I talked to my husband, and I felt the love he feels for me. And afterward, when we made love more passionately than we have in a while, the feeling that happiness had been sucked out of my life disappeared completely.
Please go away. Tomorrow’s going to be a difficult day. I have to get up early to take the children to school, then go to the store, find somewhere to park, and think up something original to say about a very unoriginal topic—politics. Leave me alone, Jacob König.
I’m happily married. And you don’t even know that I’m thinking about you. I wish I had someone here with me tonight to tell me stories with happy endings, to sing a song that would send me to sleep. But no, all I can think of is you.
I’m losing control. It’s been a week since I saw you, but you’re still here.
If you don’t disappear, I’ll have to go to your house and have tea with you and your wife, to see with my own eyes how happy you are. To see that I don’t stand a chance, that you lied when you said you could see yourself reflected in me, that you consciously allowed me to bring the wound of that unsolicited kiss upon myself.
I hope you understand. I pray that you do, because even I can’t understand what it is that I’m asking.
I get up and go over to the computer, intending to Google “How to get your man.” Instead, I type in “depression.” I need to be absolutely clear about what’s happening.
I find a website with a self-diagnosis questionnaire titled “Find Out if You Have a Psychological Problem.” My response to most of the questions is “No.”
Result: “You’re going through a difficult time, but you are definitely not clinically depressed. There’s no need to go to a doctor.”
Isn’t that what I said? I knew it. I’m not ill. I’m just inventing all this to get some attention. Or am I deceiving myself, trying to make my life a little more interesting with problems? Problems require solutions and I can spend my hours, my days, my weeks, looking for them. Perhaps it might be a good idea, after all, if my husband asked our doctor to prescribe something to help me sleep. Perhaps it’s just the stress of work that’s making me so tense, especially since it is election time. I try so hard to be better than the others, both at work and in my personal life, and it’s not easy to balance the two.
TODAY is Saturday, the eve of the elections. I have a friend who says he hates weekends because when the stock market is closed he has no way to amuse himself.
My husband has persuaded me that we need to get out of the city. His argument is that the kids will enjoy a little trip, even if we can’t go away for the whole weekend because tomorrow I’m working.
He tells me to wear my jogging pants. I feel embarrassed going out like that, especially to visit Nyon, the ancient and glorious city that was once home to the Romans but now has fewer than twenty thousand inhabitants. I tell him that jogging pants are really something you wear closer to home, where it’s obvious that you’re intending to exercise, but he insists.
I don’t want to argue, so I do as he asks. I don’t want to argue with anyone about anything—not now. The less said, the better.
While I’m off to a picnic in a small town less than half an hour away, Jacob will be visiting voters, talking to aides and friends, and feeling nervous, perhaps a little stressed, but glad because something is happening in his life. Opinion polls in Switzerland don’t count for much, because here secrecy of the vote is taken very seriously; however, it seems likely that he’ll be reelected.
His wife must have spent a sleepless night, but for very different reasons from mine. She’ll be planning how to receive their friends after the result is officially announced. This morning she’ll be at the market in Rue de Rive, where, all week, stalls selling fruit and cheese and meat are set up right outside the Julius Baer Bank and the shop windows of Prada, Gucci, Armani, and other designer brands. She chooses the best of everything, without worrying about the cost. Then she might take her car and drive to Satigny to visit one of the many vineyards that are the pride of the region, to taste some of the new vintages, and to decide on something that will please those who really understand wine—as seems to be the case with her husband.
She will return home tired, but happy. Officially, Jacob is still campaigning, but why not get things ready for the evening? Oh, dear, now she realizes that she has less cheese than she thought! She gets in the car again and goes back to the market. Among the dozens of varieties on display, she chooses the cheeses that are the pride of the Canton of Vaud: Gruyère (all three varieties: mild, salé, and the most expensive of all, which takes nine to twelve months to mature), Tomme Vaudoise (soft and creamy, to be eaten in a fondue or on its own), and L’Etivaz (made from the milk of cows grazed in alpine pastures and prepared in the traditional way, in copper cauldrons, over open wood fires).
Is it worth popping in to one of the shops and buying something new to wear? Or would that appear ostentatious? Best to wear that Moschino outfit she bought in Milan when she accompanied her husband to a conference on labor laws.
And how will Jacob be feeling?
He phones his wife every hour to ask if he should say this or that, if it would be best to visit this street or that area, or if the Tribune de Genève has posted anything new on its website. He depends on her and her advice, offloads some of the tension that builds up with each visit he makes, and asks her about the strategy they drew up together and where he should go next. As he suggested during our conversation in the park, the only reason he stays in politics is so he doesn’t disappoint her. Even though he hates what he’s doing, love lends a unique quality to his efforts. If he continues on his brilliant path, he will one day be president of the republic. Admittedly, this doesn’t mean very much in Switzerland, because as we all know, the president changes every year and is elected by the Federal Council. But who wouldn’t like to say that her husband was president of Switzerland, otherwise known as the Swiss Confederation?