The Days of Abandonment

4

In the following days Mario didn’t show up. Although I had imposed on myself a code of behavior and had decided first of all not to telephone the friends we had in common, I couldn’t resist and telephoned just the same.

I discovered that no one knew anything about my husband, it seemed that they hadn’t seen him for days. So I announced, with rancor, that he had left me for another woman. I thought I would astonish them, but I had the impression that they weren’t at all surprised. When I asked, pretending nonchalance, if they knew who his lover was, how old she was, what she did, if he was already living at her house, I got only evasive replies. A colleague of his at the Polytechnic called Farraco tried to console me by saying:

“It’s that age. Mario is forty — it happens.”

I couldn’t bear it, and I hissed treacherously:

“Yes? So did it happen to you, too? Does it happen to all men of your age, without exception? Why are you still living with your wife? Let me talk to Lea, I want to tell her it’s happened to you, too!”

I didn’t want to react like that. Another rule was not to become hateful. But I couldn’t contain myself, I immediately felt a rush of blood that deafened me, burned my eyes. The reasonableness of others and my own desire for tranquility got on my nerves. The breath built up in my throat, ready to vibrate with words of rage. I felt the need to quarrel, and in fact I quarreled first with our male friends, then with their wives or girlfriends, and finally I went on to clash with anyone, male or female, who tried to help me accept what was happening to my life.

Lea, Farraco’s wife, especially, tried patiently; she was a woman with an inclination to mediate and look for a way out, so wise, so understanding, that to get angry with her seemed an affront to the small band of well-disposed people. But I couldn’t restrain myself, I soon began to distrust even her. I was convinced that immediately after talking to me she hurried to my husband and his lover to tell them in minute detail how I was reacting, how I was managing with the children and the dog, how much longer it would take me to accept the situation. So I abruptly stopped seeing her, and was left without a friend to turn to.

I began to change. In the course of a month I lost the habit of putting on makeup carefully, I went from using a refined language, attentive to the feelings of others, to a sarcastic way of expressing myself, punctuated by coarse laughter. Slowly, in spite of my resistance, I also gave in to obscenity.

Obscenity came to my lips naturally; it seemed to me that it served to communicate to the few acquaintances who still tried coldly to console me that I was not one to be taken in by fine words. As soon as I opened my mouth I felt the wish to mock, smear, defile Mario and his slut. I hated the idea that he knew everything about me while I knew little or nothing of him. I felt like someone who is blind and knows that he is being observed by the very people he would like to spy on in every detail. Is it possible — I wondered with growing resentment — that faithless people like Lea could report everything about me to my husband and I, on the other hand, couldn’t even find out what type of woman he had decided to fuck, for whom he had left me, what she had that I didn’t? All the fault of spies, I thought, false friends, people who always side with those who enjoy themselves, happy and free, never with the unhappy. I knew it very well. They preferred new, lighthearted couples, who are out and about long into the night, the satisfied faces of those who do nothing but fuck. They kissed, they bit, they licked and sucked, tasting the flavors of the cock, the cunt. Of Mario and his new woman I now imagined only that: how they fucked, and how much. I thought about it night and day and meanwhile, a prisoner of my thoughts, I neglected myself, I didn’t comb my hair, or wash. How often did they fuck — I wondered, with unbearable pain — how, where. And so even the very few people who still tried to help me withdrew in the end: it was difficult to put up with me. I found myself alone and frightened by my own desperation.