had always meant defeat, why should it be any different with her? If you marry a foot-fetishist, you shouldn’t be surprised to find him curled up in your shoe-cupboard.
When he recalled that journey in letters to her, he made oblique references to the word “bolt.” Was this the lock on the compartment, on her lips, on her heart? Or the lock on his flesh? “You know what the predicament of Tantalus was?” he wrote. The predicament of Tantalus was to be tortured in the infernal regions by endless thirst; he was up to his neck in water, but whenever he bent his head to drink, the river would run away from him. Are we to conclude from this that he tried to kiss her, but that whenever he advanced, she retreated, withdrawing her wet mouth?
On the other hand, a year later, when everything is safe and stylized, he writes this: “You say, at the end of your letter, ‘I kiss you warmly.’ How? Do you mean, as you did then, on that June night, in the railway compartment? If I live a hundred years I will never forget those kisses.” May has become June, the timid suitor has become the recipient of myriad kisses, the bolt has been slid back a little. Is this the truth, or is that the truth? We, now, would like it to be neat then, but it is rarely neat; whether the heart drags in sex, or sex drags in the heart.
3
THE DREAM JOURNEY
H e travelled. She travelled. But they did not travel; never again. She visited him at his estate, she swam in his pond—“the Undine of Saint Petersburg” he called her—and when she left he named the room in which she had slept after her. He kissed her hands, he kissed her feet. They met, they corresponded until his death, after which she protected his memory from vulgar interpretation. But thirty miles was all they travelled together.
They could have travelled. If only … if only.
But he was a connoisseur of the if-only, and so they did travel. They travelled in the past conditional.
She was about to marry for the second time. N. N. Vsevolozhsky, officer of hussars, clank, clank. When she asked his opinion of her choice, he declined to play. “It is too late to ask for my opinion. Le vin est tiré—il faut le boire .” Was she asking him, artist to artist, for his view of the conventional marriage she was about to make to a man with whom she had little in common? Or was it more than this? Was she proposing her own if-only, asking him to sanction the jilting of her fiancé?
But Grandpa, who himself had never married, declines either to sanction or applaud. Le vin est tiré—il faut le boire . Does he have a habit of lapsing into foreign phrases at key emotional moments? Do French and Italian provide the suave euphemisms which helps him evade?
Of course, if he had encouraged a late withdrawal from her second marriage, that would have let in too much reality, let in the present tense. He closes it off: drink the wine. This instruction given, fantasy can resume. In his next letter, twenty days later, he writes, “For my part, I am dreaming about how good it would be to travel about—just the two of us—for at least a month, and in such a way that no one would know who or where we were.”
It is a normal dream of escape. Alone together, anonymous, time on one’s hands. It is also, of course, a honeymoon. And where would the sophisticated artistic class go for their honeymoon if not to Italy? “Just imagine the following picture,” he teases. “Venice (perhaps in October, the best month in Italy) or Rome. Two foreigners in travelling clothes—one tall, clumsy, white-haired, long-legged, but very contented; the other a slender lady with remarkable dark eyes and black hair. Let us suppose her contented as well. They walk about the town, ride in gondolas. They visit galleries, churches, and so on, they dine together in the evening, they are at the theatre together—and then? There my imagination stops respectfully. Is it in order to conceal something, or because there is nothing
When he recalled that journey in letters to her, he made oblique references to the word “bolt.” Was this the lock on the compartment, on her lips, on her heart? Or the lock on his flesh? “You know what the predicament of Tantalus was?” he wrote. The predicament of Tantalus was to be tortured in the infernal regions by endless thirst; he was up to his neck in water, but whenever he bent his head to drink, the river would run away from him. Are we to conclude from this that he tried to kiss her, but that whenever he advanced, she retreated, withdrawing her wet mouth?
On the other hand, a year later, when everything is safe and stylized, he writes this: “You say, at the end of your letter, ‘I kiss you warmly.’ How? Do you mean, as you did then, on that June night, in the railway compartment? If I live a hundred years I will never forget those kisses.” May has become June, the timid suitor has become the recipient of myriad kisses, the bolt has been slid back a little. Is this the truth, or is that the truth? We, now, would like it to be neat then, but it is rarely neat; whether the heart drags in sex, or sex drags in the heart.
3
THE DREAM JOURNEY
H e travelled. She travelled. But they did not travel; never again. She visited him at his estate, she swam in his pond—“the Undine of Saint Petersburg” he called her—and when she left he named the room in which she had slept after her. He kissed her hands, he kissed her feet. They met, they corresponded until his death, after which she protected his memory from vulgar interpretation. But thirty miles was all they travelled together.
They could have travelled. If only … if only.
But he was a connoisseur of the if-only, and so they did travel. They travelled in the past conditional.
She was about to marry for the second time. N. N. Vsevolozhsky, officer of hussars, clank, clank. When she asked his opinion of her choice, he declined to play. “It is too late to ask for my opinion. Le vin est tiré—il faut le boire .” Was she asking him, artist to artist, for his view of the conventional marriage she was about to make to a man with whom she had little in common? Or was it more than this? Was she proposing her own if-only, asking him to sanction the jilting of her fiancé?
But Grandpa, who himself had never married, declines either to sanction or applaud. Le vin est tiré—il faut le boire . Does he have a habit of lapsing into foreign phrases at key emotional moments? Do French and Italian provide the suave euphemisms which helps him evade?
Of course, if he had encouraged a late withdrawal from her second marriage, that would have let in too much reality, let in the present tense. He closes it off: drink the wine. This instruction given, fantasy can resume. In his next letter, twenty days later, he writes, “For my part, I am dreaming about how good it would be to travel about—just the two of us—for at least a month, and in such a way that no one would know who or where we were.”
It is a normal dream of escape. Alone together, anonymous, time on one’s hands. It is also, of course, a honeymoon. And where would the sophisticated artistic class go for their honeymoon if not to Italy? “Just imagine the following picture,” he teases. “Venice (perhaps in October, the best month in Italy) or Rome. Two foreigners in travelling clothes—one tall, clumsy, white-haired, long-legged, but very contented; the other a slender lady with remarkable dark eyes and black hair. Let us suppose her contented as well. They walk about the town, ride in gondolas. They visit galleries, churches, and so on, they dine together in the evening, they are at the theatre together—and then? There my imagination stops respectfully. Is it in order to conceal something, or because there is nothing
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