those depths in which, shadowed, great aspirations, dreams, like white whales, lay, scarcely stirring the surface, thousands of fathoms down. It is too simple. I spent my youth and my adolescence writing about her; we became engaged when I was seventeen; and two years later, on an afternoon in November, we were married.
* * * *
O nurturing tender Theresa, sweeter than a soft wind over a hurt hand, rise and accuse me. Turn in my wounds like a knife in a grave. Wherever pity is she has an indigenous place, and compassion, seeing her, comes up like a lamb for her administrations. What moved you, Aphrodite with the long legs, to tie yourself to the engine on which my character goes careering to its own destruction? Wherever I arrive I find my life in flames.
Those exquisitely melancholy afternoons of my adolescence, when I used to walk with the abstraction of a somnambulist through the damp avenues of Richmond Park, thinking that life would never happen to me, wondering why the banked fires of my anticipations, burning in my belly worse than raw alcohol, seemed not to show to strangers as I wandered in the gardens. And often it appeared to me, the frustration, in the disguise of an hallucination: looking between the trees that dripped with hanging mist I sometimes saw classical statues take on an instant of life, turning their naked beauty towards me; or I heard a voice speak out of a bush: “Everything will be answered if you will only not look around.” And I have stood waiting, not daring to look behind me, expecting a hand on my shoulder that would tender an apotheosis or an assignation—but there was only the gust of wind and the page of newspaper blowing breezily up and past me like a dirty interjection. Or a bicyclist flashed by, offering possibility until he reached me and decamping with it when he had passed. For I was suffering from a simple but devastating propensity: I was hoping to live.
* * * *
I cannot say that I knew anything at all about Theresa when we were married: I can only say that I knew nothing about anything.
* * * *
What can I reply, you admonitory ghosts, to placate your accusations? Why do you so daemonaically pursue me, I who have wished only to live with you and love you? Who are you, too importunate voices, responding with the condemnation “Guilty!” to all my appeals for help or consolation? Ghosts with your hearts held up like fatal evidence in your hands, you are the loved ones whom we have murdered. Just as, to them, we are among their unforgettable attendants.
* * * *
We honeymooned in a cottage by the sea; we were almost entirely happy. In the mornings I would walk along the rocky foreshore and then, returning, write for an hour or two. She would do those things about the cottage that our very simple life required should be done. They were not much; not exacting. She, too, would read a lot, or play with the kitten on a couch. But, earlier than our first day of marriage, we were never alone. Between us as we stood and kissed, the homunculus of origin, curled like a caterpillar, quickened. Wherever we were, we were eternally three.
* * * *
At night, downcast by the side of the bed, she would pray for our forgiveness. I could not understand. I could not bring myself to intercede for exculpation—my bed was made and I would not pray it unmade. I cannot forget how passionate her prayers were at that time—it was as though she knelt just within reach of the feet of the saints, and was silently begging them for their personal attention. Thinly clad in a transparent nightgown, she knelt with her hands crossed over her breasts and her head bent down on the bed. We had both been born and educated in the Roman Church—she wept sometimes, because I could not succeed in praying. Then she would rise from her knees, her eyes bright with restrained tears, and leaning over me, cover my face with her breasts. We were so deeply in love that old Adam
* * * *
O nurturing tender Theresa, sweeter than a soft wind over a hurt hand, rise and accuse me. Turn in my wounds like a knife in a grave. Wherever pity is she has an indigenous place, and compassion, seeing her, comes up like a lamb for her administrations. What moved you, Aphrodite with the long legs, to tie yourself to the engine on which my character goes careering to its own destruction? Wherever I arrive I find my life in flames.
Those exquisitely melancholy afternoons of my adolescence, when I used to walk with the abstraction of a somnambulist through the damp avenues of Richmond Park, thinking that life would never happen to me, wondering why the banked fires of my anticipations, burning in my belly worse than raw alcohol, seemed not to show to strangers as I wandered in the gardens. And often it appeared to me, the frustration, in the disguise of an hallucination: looking between the trees that dripped with hanging mist I sometimes saw classical statues take on an instant of life, turning their naked beauty towards me; or I heard a voice speak out of a bush: “Everything will be answered if you will only not look around.” And I have stood waiting, not daring to look behind me, expecting a hand on my shoulder that would tender an apotheosis or an assignation—but there was only the gust of wind and the page of newspaper blowing breezily up and past me like a dirty interjection. Or a bicyclist flashed by, offering possibility until he reached me and decamping with it when he had passed. For I was suffering from a simple but devastating propensity: I was hoping to live.
* * * *
I cannot say that I knew anything at all about Theresa when we were married: I can only say that I knew nothing about anything.
* * * *
What can I reply, you admonitory ghosts, to placate your accusations? Why do you so daemonaically pursue me, I who have wished only to live with you and love you? Who are you, too importunate voices, responding with the condemnation “Guilty!” to all my appeals for help or consolation? Ghosts with your hearts held up like fatal evidence in your hands, you are the loved ones whom we have murdered. Just as, to them, we are among their unforgettable attendants.
* * * *
We honeymooned in a cottage by the sea; we were almost entirely happy. In the mornings I would walk along the rocky foreshore and then, returning, write for an hour or two. She would do those things about the cottage that our very simple life required should be done. They were not much; not exacting. She, too, would read a lot, or play with the kitten on a couch. But, earlier than our first day of marriage, we were never alone. Between us as we stood and kissed, the homunculus of origin, curled like a caterpillar, quickened. Wherever we were, we were eternally three.
* * * *
At night, downcast by the side of the bed, she would pray for our forgiveness. I could not understand. I could not bring myself to intercede for exculpation—my bed was made and I would not pray it unmade. I cannot forget how passionate her prayers were at that time—it was as though she knelt just within reach of the feet of the saints, and was silently begging them for their personal attention. Thinly clad in a transparent nightgown, she knelt with her hands crossed over her breasts and her head bent down on the bed. We had both been born and educated in the Roman Church—she wept sometimes, because I could not succeed in praying. Then she would rise from her knees, her eyes bright with restrained tears, and leaning over me, cover my face with her breasts. We were so deeply in love that old Adam
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