happened,” he said. Someone had informed him by phone. His girlfriend had gone to bed with an old lover. He couldn’t stop smoking cigarettes and he couldn’t stop imagining the things you should never imagine but always do. You could see it playing out on his pale, childlike features: She does this to him, he does that to her. We’ve all done it, but you’d step in front of a car to spare your own son doing it.
“I think she’s making a terrible mistake,” I said, uselessly. In the long silence (puff, puff), I found myself thinking about Natasha and her betrayal of Prince Andrei.
“I’ll never take her back,” my son said.
Then, miraculously (but not surprisingly), a few months later, just after Christmas, his girlfriend suffered a change of heart. It started with an emissary (“She really misses you”), then a “surprise” encounter at a party (“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to have to kiss you”). Where did she learn to speak like that? Had she read War and Peace too?
So there we were again, bundled in coats on the porch. Snowflakes, some large, some small, settled indecisively on the front lawn. I knew what he was thinking. Recriminations and brutal quizzes lay just ahead for both of them. “What if she does it again?” he said.
“You know what Tolstoy says.”
“What?”
I said, “Tolstoy says a woman can never hurt you the same way twice.”
“You think that’s true, Dad?”
“Yes,” I said finally, “I believe it is.”
With a swift but circumspect movement, Natasha came nearer; still kneeling, and carefully taking his hand, she bent her face over it and began kissing it, softly touching it with her lips.
“Forgive me,” she said in a whisper, lifting her head and glancing at him. “Forgive me.”
“I love you,” said Prince Andrei.
Writers sleep better if they trick themselves into believing that the great masterpieces of literature were written in old-age homes—by the grey and the venerable, in other words. Kazuo Ishiguro (Remains of the Day) confessed to a reporter that he’d ruined an afternoon for himself (possibly his life, he joked) when, on one imprudent occasion, he did some elementary math and discovered how old his favourite writers had been when they produced their chefs-d’oeuvre . I did the same thing myself a while ago and I now share his dismay: Virginia Woolf, only forty-two when she wrote Mrs. Dalloway ; Scott Fitzgerald, an unforgivable twenty-nine with The Great Gatsby . Joyce’s Ulysses (punishingly dull but nevertheless—), thirty-nine. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was forty-one when he finished War and Peace , arguably the greatest novel ever written, after which, instead of taking a Caribbean vacation, he launched into an obsessive study of ancient Greek and then took up the bicycle. (Russ Meyer, by the way, was the same age when he finished Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! )
When I finished War and Peace , I had a hell of a tan and I wanted (a lifetime bad habit) to keep the party going. I came back to Toronto and one of the first things I did was to buy a no-nonsense hardback of Anna Karenina . But it didn’t work this time. Something was different; I couldn’t engage; the novel didn’t block out the dozen worries that nibbled at my attention. I thought it was the book. It was as if—and I’m not convinced this isn’t the truth—Tolstoy had used all his favourite characters in W&P and was now working through the B-list. After a hundred or so pages, I put the book aside. And that’s where it stayed for seven years, until 1992.
I was greyer, fatter, and witnessing, with escalating upset, the death of a love affair. Another love affair. (Love, I’ve learned, is a living creature and when it’s dying, like an animal too weak to care who feeds it, the signs are unmistakable.) Molly Wentworth and I spoke to each other with excessive caution, the way people speak who have lost their natural ease with each other, a mother
“I think she’s making a terrible mistake,” I said, uselessly. In the long silence (puff, puff), I found myself thinking about Natasha and her betrayal of Prince Andrei.
“I’ll never take her back,” my son said.
Then, miraculously (but not surprisingly), a few months later, just after Christmas, his girlfriend suffered a change of heart. It started with an emissary (“She really misses you”), then a “surprise” encounter at a party (“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to have to kiss you”). Where did she learn to speak like that? Had she read War and Peace too?
So there we were again, bundled in coats on the porch. Snowflakes, some large, some small, settled indecisively on the front lawn. I knew what he was thinking. Recriminations and brutal quizzes lay just ahead for both of them. “What if she does it again?” he said.
“You know what Tolstoy says.”
“What?”
I said, “Tolstoy says a woman can never hurt you the same way twice.”
“You think that’s true, Dad?”
“Yes,” I said finally, “I believe it is.”
With a swift but circumspect movement, Natasha came nearer; still kneeling, and carefully taking his hand, she bent her face over it and began kissing it, softly touching it with her lips.
“Forgive me,” she said in a whisper, lifting her head and glancing at him. “Forgive me.”
“I love you,” said Prince Andrei.
Writers sleep better if they trick themselves into believing that the great masterpieces of literature were written in old-age homes—by the grey and the venerable, in other words. Kazuo Ishiguro (Remains of the Day) confessed to a reporter that he’d ruined an afternoon for himself (possibly his life, he joked) when, on one imprudent occasion, he did some elementary math and discovered how old his favourite writers had been when they produced their chefs-d’oeuvre . I did the same thing myself a while ago and I now share his dismay: Virginia Woolf, only forty-two when she wrote Mrs. Dalloway ; Scott Fitzgerald, an unforgivable twenty-nine with The Great Gatsby . Joyce’s Ulysses (punishingly dull but nevertheless—), thirty-nine. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was forty-one when he finished War and Peace , arguably the greatest novel ever written, after which, instead of taking a Caribbean vacation, he launched into an obsessive study of ancient Greek and then took up the bicycle. (Russ Meyer, by the way, was the same age when he finished Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! )
When I finished War and Peace , I had a hell of a tan and I wanted (a lifetime bad habit) to keep the party going. I came back to Toronto and one of the first things I did was to buy a no-nonsense hardback of Anna Karenina . But it didn’t work this time. Something was different; I couldn’t engage; the novel didn’t block out the dozen worries that nibbled at my attention. I thought it was the book. It was as if—and I’m not convinced this isn’t the truth—Tolstoy had used all his favourite characters in W&P and was now working through the B-list. After a hundred or so pages, I put the book aside. And that’s where it stayed for seven years, until 1992.
I was greyer, fatter, and witnessing, with escalating upset, the death of a love affair. Another love affair. (Love, I’ve learned, is a living creature and when it’s dying, like an animal too weak to care who feeds it, the signs are unmistakable.) Molly Wentworth and I spoke to each other with excessive caution, the way people speak who have lost their natural ease with each other, a mother
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