At all of these places the car and driver would wait, and I would walk briskly in, through whatever gate or door, trying to look purposeful; trying not to look so lonely and empty. Then I would stare and stare, so I would have something to say later. But I could not really make sense out of what I was seeing. Buildings are only buildings. There’s nothing much to them unless you know about architecture, or else about what once happened there, and I did not know. I lacked the talent for overviews; it was as if my eyes were right up against whatever I was supposed to be looking at, and I would come away only with textures: roughness of brick or stone, smoothness of waxed wooden banisters, harshness of mangy fur. The striations of horn, the warm gleam of ivory. Glass eyes.

In addition to these educational excursions, Richard encouraged me to go shopping. I found the shop clerks intimidating, and bought little. On other occasions I had my hair done. He did not want me to get it cut or marcelled, and so I didn’t. A simple style was best for me, he said. It suited my youth.

Sometimes I would just amble around, or sit on park benches, waiting until it was time to go back. Sometimes a man would sit down beside me, and try to begin a conversation. Then I would leave.

I spent a lot of time changing my costumes. Diddling with straps, with buckles, with the tilt of hats, the seams on stockings. Worrying about the appropriateness of this or that, for this or that hour of the day. No one to hook me up at the neckline or tell me what I looked like from the back and whether I was all tucked in. Reenie used to do that, or Laura. I missed them, and tried not to.

Filing my nails, soaking my feet. Yanking out hairs, or shaving them off: it was necessary to be sleek, devoid of bristles. A topography like wet clay, a surface the hands would glide over.

Honeymoons were said to allow the new couple the time to get to know each other better, but as the days went by I felt I knew Richard less and less. He was effacing himself, or was it concealment? Withdrawal to a vantage point. I myself however was taking shape—the shape intended for me, by him. Each time I looked in the mirror a little more of me had been coloured in.

After London we went to Paris, by channel boat and then by train. The shape of the days in Paris was much the same as those in London, although the breakfasts were different: a hard roll, strawberry jam, coffee with hot milk. The meals were succulent; Richard made quite a fuss over them, and especially over the wines. He kept saying we weren’t in Toronto, a fact that was self-evident to me.

I saw the Eiffel Tower but did not go up it, having a dislike of heights. I saw the Pantheon, and Napoleon’s tomb. I did not see Notre Dame, because Richard did not favour churches, or at least not Catholic ones, which he considered enervating. Incense in particular he considered stultifying to the brain.

The French hotel had a bidet, which Richard explained to me with the trace of a smirk after he caught me washing my feet in it. I thought, They do understand something the others don’t, the French. They understand the anxiety of the body. At least they admit it exists.

We stayed at the Lutetia, which was to become the Nazi headquarters during the war, but how were we to know that? I would sit in the hotel café for morning coffee, because I was afraid to go anywhere else. I had the idea that if I lost sight of the hotel I would never be able to get back to it. I knew by then that whatever French I had been taught by Mr. Erskine was next to useless: Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point would not get me any more hot milk.

An old walrus-faced waiter attended to me; he had the knack of pouring the coffee and the hot milk from two jugs, held high in the air, and I found this entrancing, as if he were a child’s magician. One day he said to me—he had some English—“Why are you sad?”

“I’m not sad,” I said, and began to cry. Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.

“You should not be sad,” he said, gazing at me with his melancholy, leathery walrus eyes. “It must be the love. But you are young and pretty, you will have time to be sad later.” The French are connoisseurs of sadness, they know all the kinds. This is why they have bidets. “It is criminal, the love,” he said, patting my shoulder. “But none is worse.”

The effect was a little spoiled the next day, when he propositioned me, or I think that is what it was: my French wasn’t good enough to tell. He wasn’t so old after all—forty-five, perhaps. I should have accepted. He was wrong about the sadness, though: far better to have it while you’re young. A sad pretty girl inspires the urge to console, unlike a sad old crone. But never mind that part.

Then we went to Rome. Rome seemed familiar to me—at least I had a context for it, provided long ago by Mr. Erskine and his Latin lessons. I saw the Forum, or what was left of it, and the Appian Way, and the Coliseum, looking like a mouse-eaten cheese. Various bridges, various well-worn angels, grave and pensive. I saw the Tiber flowing along, yellow as jaundice. I saw St. Peter’s, though only from the outside. It was very big. I suppose I ought to have seen Mussolini’s Fascist troops in their black uniforms, marching around and roughing people up—were they doing that yet?—but I did not see them. That sort of thing tends to be invisible at the time unless you yourself happen to be the object of it. Otherwise you see it only later, in newsreels, or else in films made long after the event.

In the afternoons I would order a cup of tea—I was getting the hang of ordering things, I was figuring out what tone to use with waiters, how to keep them at a safe distance. While drinking the tea I would write postcards. My postcards were to Laura and to Reenie, and several to Father. They had photographs on them of the buildings I had been taken to visit—picturing, in tiny sepia detail, what I ought to have seen. The messages I wrote on them were fatuous. To Reenie: The weather is wonderful. I am enjoying it. To Laura: Today I saw the Coliseum, where they used to throw the Christians to the lions. You would have been interested. To Father: I hope you are in good health. Richard sends his regards. (This last was not true, but I was learning which lies, as a wife, I was automatically expected to tell.)

Towards the end of the time allotted for our honeymoon we spent a week in Berlin. Richard had some business there, which had to do with the handles of shovels. One of Richard’s firms made shovel handles, and the Germans were short of wood. There was a lot of digging to be done, and more projected, and Richard could supply the shovel handles at a price that undercut his competitors.

As Reenie used to say, Every little bit helps. As she also used to say, Business is business and then there’s funny business. But I knew nothing about business. My task was to smile.

I have to admit I enjoyed Berlin. Nowhere had I been so blonde. The men were exceptionally polite, although they did not look behind themselves when striding through swinging doors. Hand-kissing covered a multitude of sins. It was in Berlin that I learned to perfume my wrists.

I memorized the cities through their hotels, the hotels through their bathrooms. Dressing, undressing, lying in the water. But enough of these travel notes.

We returned to Toronto via New York, in mid-August, in a heat wave. After Europe and New York, Toronto seemed squat and cramped. Outside Union Station there was a mist of bituminous fumes, from where they were fixing the potholes. A hired car met us and took us past the streetcars and their dust and clanging, then past the ornate banks and the department stores, then up the slant of land into Rosedale and the shade of chestnuts and maples.