Deception, p.12
Deception, page 12
“So, except insofar as I’m supposed to believe that she’s based on an English woman you had an affair with in New York a hundred years ago, she doesn’t exist, other than in your imagination.”
“And in yours.”
“And you never had an affair with Olina. I’m to believe that too. Otherwise I’m not only paranoid but, even worse, philistinely naive.”
“Ivan was broken enough, he’d lost enough—Olina was all he had. Not only did I not but he never even accused me of it. Nor did he ever tell me what a lousy writer I am. Phone him in New York and ask him. Phone Olina—ask her.”
“Explain to me if you will, then, how you happen to know all these things about English life that this English woman who doesn’t exist tells you in your studio while you are conducting this affair with her in your head.”
“Because I’ve been living here awhile and I sometimes pay attention. Because I learned a little from Rosalie. Because it’s my business to seem to know more than I do. This woman is simply the repository of all that.”
“But the conversations are so intimate.”
“I see where that might be maddening. Of course I understand how this might drive you just a little nuts. But intimacy is interesting too—it’s a subject too.”
“Postcoital intimacy. That’s the subject.”
“Is it? I hadn’t thought of it precisely that way.”
“Well, please do. That serenity. That talk. That’s the whole mood. You’re more intimate with her than you are with me.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Lately it is.”
“Well, these things wax and wane—detachment and tenderness, incredible tenderness and then incredible inaccessibility, that’s the pattern with people who’ve stuck together as long as we have. What I’m thinking about with her isn’t that. It’s the love that exists because it’s compartmentalized. The stolen moment that can’t be sustained.”
“It’s sustained in that notebook.”
“You know, I ought really to interpret your jealousy as a terrific tribute to my persuasiveness.”
“And I suppose I ought to interpret what I’ve read here as a measure of my terrific failure. Whether I believe she exists or whether I believe she doesn’t exist, certainly the love for her exists, the desire for her to exist exists. And that is even more wounding. The whole notebook is nothing more than an attempt to escape the marriage and me.”
“And if it were? If it is? Where have you been? The attempt to escape the marriage is an ingredient of marriage. In some I’ve seen it’s the vital principle that keeps it going. I wrote these things out, not to wound you, but partly, I think, to trace down the logic of that—the illogic of that. It’s too bad you can’t read it that way.”
“How would you read it if I was charged up with desire for somebody who is everything you’re not?”
“You really cannot allow yourself to be crushed like this over a situation that is invented.”
“Can’t I? Can’t I? Oh, you’re right. It isn’t fair, I’m sure. It’s just, you have been so remote…terribly remote.”
“If so, that’s something else.”
“No, no. It’s the same thing. You wouldn’t have an imaginary friend, you wouldn’t need an imaginary friend…And are you going to publish that notebook? The novel and then the notebook, the tragic lament for the life you once led? Is that the plan?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you? Is that why the sections are interspliced like that, with all that Czechoslovak mirroring of everything, because you don’t know?”
“It’s occurred to me. I’m not sure what it adds up to, if anything. But of course I’ve thought of it.”
“To publish it as it is?”
“I said I don’t know. There’s something to be said for being shed of all the expository fat, but I haven’t begun to think it through. I don’t really know what it is I’ve got. A portrait of what? Up till now I have been fiddling with it on the side and mostly worrying about the novel.”
“Well, maybe you should, you know, think it through. Because what you’ve got a portrait of is adulterous love, and, consequently, it might be advisable to take your name out—don’t you think? ‘Philip, do you have an ashtray?’ You would change that to ‘Nathan,’ would you not? If it were ever to be published?”
“Would I? No. It’s not Nathan Zuckerman—it’s not meant to be Zuckerman. The novel is Zuckerman. The notebook is me.”
“You just told me it’s not you.”
“No, I told you it is me, imagining. It’s the story of an imagination in love.”
“But if one day it should be published more or less as it is, liberated from exposition et cetera, people aren’t going to know that it’s just a little story of an imagination in love, any more than I did.”
“They generally don’t, so what difference does that make? I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t.”
“Yes, I can see where that might be a lot of fun for you and your readers, letting them decide—but what about me?”
“You’ll have to decide as well, if you insist on not believing what this actually is.”
“I meant, what about humiliating me?”
“How could you be humiliated by something that’s not so? It is not myself. It is far from myself—it’s play, it’s a game, it is an impersonation of myself! Me ventriloquizing myself. Or maybe it’s more easily grasped the other way around—everything here is falsified except me. Maybe it’s both. But both ways or either way, what it adds up to, honey, is homo ludens!”
“But who would know that, aside from us?”
“Look, I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you—it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists. Neither is shame. Feeling shame is automatic in me, inescapable, it may even be good; it’s yielding to shame that’s the serious crime.”
“But who is even talking about shame? All it would require is your having that wretched American girl say, ‘Nathan, do you have an ashtray?’ All it would require is that, in three or four places, and none of this would be a problem for anyone. Where are you going?”
“Out! Somebody telling me what to write happens to drive me absolutely nuts, so I am going out!”
“Don’t. Don’t go alone! I’ll come with you.”
“But we cannot continue this fight on the street. It has gone far enough. It is over. I simply cannot be hounded like this for something I have written, particularly by you. Darling, this is writing, that is all it is!”
“But published as it is—”
“Jesus Christ, is this Eastern fucking Europe? I will not be put in that position! That is too absurd! I won’t have it! You cannot stop me from writing what I write for a simple and ridiculous pathological reason—because I cannot stop myself! I write what I write the way I write it, and if and when it should ever happen, I will publish what I publish however I want to publish and I’m not going to start worrying at this late date what people misunderstand or get wrong!”
“Or get right.”
“We are talking about a notebook, a blueprint, a diagram, and not about human beings!”
“But you are a human being, whether you like it or not! And so am I! And so is she!”
“She’s not, she’s words—and try as I will, I cannot fuck words! I’m going out—alone!”
“HELLO? Hello?”
“Hello.”
“…Hello.”
“It’s me.”
“I know. I recognize your voice.”
“I certainly recognize yours.”
“How are you?”
“How am I? I’m okay. How are you? That’s what I was calling about.”
“I’m fine. I’ve been trying to call you. But I didn’t know where to reach you. I tried your number. Your old number is not operative.”
“In what country were you trying to call me?”
“Your studio in England.”
“I’m not there anymore. I’m living in America for good now. Look, how are you?”
“I’m very well. I’ve been thinking so much about you. Ever since I read your book I haven’t known whether to call or not. I thought about it a lot.”
“I’ll bet you did. I thought about it too. I thought about its effect on your marriage.”
“Oh, well, he didn’t read it.”
Laughing. “Wonderful. Of course. All that worrying for nothing. How are you anyway? Tell me.”
“I’m fine, aren’t I? I don’t know where to begin really.”
“Did you wonder why I didn’t call you?”
“No, I didn’t. I just thought it was a decision. The last time we’d spoken, I don’t think everybody was very happy. You made it very clear you had to go your way. I thought, yes, you have to go your way and I suppose I have to go mine. And that was a couple of years ago. So I went my way and you went yours.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m very glad you called because I’ve missed you such a lot. For a long time I didn’t call because you said you didn’t want to see me because it wasn’t a love affair any longer. So I—”
“No, no. You said you didn’t want to see me. You said you couldn’t take any more of this guilty secret stuff.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. Many times. You know I have a good memory.”
“Goodness, do you! I was astonished. And in that way you betrayed yourself, because two people said, ‘I heard you in that book.’ To me.”
“Really?”
“Yes, exactly my voice.”
“Who said that?”
“I do have friends who read literature and who also listen to me.”
“Well, you have a distinctive delivery. I was in love with you for twenty reasons but that was one of them. For me, it was a long, wonderful, finally very sad, important—”
“I would say the same.”
“I don’t think anyone’s ever been quite so appreciated before. I was nuts about you.”
“Oh.”
“Did you know?”
“I…oh, dear…”
“Don’t turn English.”
“Well, I was thinking…”
“You were thinking what?”
“Why it didn’t happen. As it does in the book. One of the reasons was that you were away so much, particularly at the beginning. And it stayed in the world of fantasy. It stayed like a dream, really. It was so enclosed.”
“You’ve been on my mind so much.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about you too.”
“Shall I start the ‘Remember that afternoon we’ stuff?”
“Yes! Yes!” Laughing. “I’m not young anymore, by the way. When I met you I was still young. When you get to be thirty-eight it’s suddenly all over. You know what I mean. It’s not all all over but some of it’s all over.”
“The glow gone?”
“Oh, that was gone probably around the age of nineteen. I’ll be thirty-nine any minute. I’m thinking of having a party in the dinosaur hall of the Natural History Museum.”
“That’s a lovely place. That’s a very good idea.”
“I just mean I think I’m turning that corner of thinking of myself quite differently. You know, when you absolutely don’t think of yourself as a girl, you don’t…I don’t know, it’s hard to put quickly, but that transition, which is so difficult for women, is one that I’ve begun. I’m sure you’ve heard about it.”
“I didn’t call before because I didn’t want to disturb your life again. Are you still living together?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Yes.”
“We get on much better.”
“Maybe I had something to do with it.”
“Oh, I would think so. One of the reasons that I didn’t call you again, though I didn’t think I should anyway, was that I didn’t realize that I was pregnant when I last saw you. I have another child.”
“Oh, my. Do you?”
“Yes. And I find that’s very ironic. Given the book. And of course it’s a boy. So there we are. He’s a very nice boy.”
“Whose boy is it?”
“It’s, it’s my husband’s…it is.”
“Okay. I had to ask.”
“He asked too.”
“Are you sure? That it’s his?”
“Absolutely certain.”
“Well, ironies abound. You had the son all right but not by my character and not in my book. I imagined it but he did it. That’s the difference between us; that’s why you live with him and not me.
“Yes. That’s life for you. Always slightly askew fiction.”
“So you’re the mother of two.”
“Yup.”
“You said that sadly.”
“Ah well, I just think the phrase has some sad connotations. But they’re lovely children. I’ve kind of been very busy these days counting my blessings.”
“And so you and your husband are just hitting it off now?”
“Well, doing the decent thing, you know? I keep wondering where the big problem is these days. Obviously there are the intractable problems. Loneliness—I feel terribly lonely, I get quite bored sometimes at my job. But still, short of the big ones, there’s nothing wrong.”
“Do you have a lover?”
“No. No, I don’t. Listen, I was astonished to see this character so terribly passive. I had simply no idea. Insofar as it’s me…”
“Insofar as it’s you, insofar, it’s pretty much you.”
“Well, I’m not like that anymore.” Laughing. “I’m a positive person now.”
“Are you, really? Thank God that happened after I wrote about you. Positive people in books put me to sleep.”
“But the passivity—it was terrifying. To me that’s a portrait of somebody who’s in deep trouble. Somebody who’s absolutely out of the ordinary swim of life. Don’t you think?”
“Well, at a certain point the writing did take over and alter things.”
“I can see where it came from, however. A friend of mine, just a few weeks ago, he’d finished the book and he asked me just how many times I’d had lunch with you. He said. There’s a character in this book that’s extraordinarily like you.’ My husband was sitting right there. I said something noncommittal. I don’t know what I said.”
“You said, ‘I don’t eat lunch.’ ”
“I didn’t really know how to say anything tremendously clever at that point. The other thing that troubled me is why, why do you do that? Why do you take life like that? And especially considering that you wanted secrecy—and our relationship was distorted by secrecy, by your almost paranoid efforts to keep the whole thing hidden. For the sake of your wife. Why did you then write a book which she, I’m sure, can’t help but think is based on a real person? Why?”
“Because it’s what I do. It wasn’t paranoia. It was never paranoia. It was protecting somebody from something she couldn’t be expected to be happy about. Besides, she thinks the real person is Rosalie Nichols.”
“Oh, of course. Of yesteryear.”
“Yes. Who did live upstairs like the woman in the book.”
“Well, I know all that. We talked about her. She was at Oxford with me.”
“I know.”
“How funny. And what does Rosalie Nichols think?”
“It fooled her too. She said, ‘All the time I thought you loved me for my body when in fact it was only for my sentences.’ ”
“I knew she would say that to you. I knew that would happen, I just knew she would think it was herself. She’s having a fine time, I’ll bet. And I also expect to be told by someone or other, sooner or later, that it’s her.”
“That’ll be original, won’t it?”
“Not only do you steal my words, you’ve given them to someone else.”
“You want to be angry about that too?”
“I don’t like it much.”
“Would you have liked it better if I’d included in a footnote your name and address?”
“All of it’s difficult. Angry, yes. I was angry. I thought if I was in your wife’s position I’d know immediately that he’d been being consumed by somebody else for a very long time. And it seemed to me a complete reversal of everything you said. All the deformities imposed on our time together were pointless, because you’d done this anyway.”
