This last year had been the best of his life. He had added the impossible to his possessions–Dominique Francon. It had been such a joy to laugh casually when friends repeated to him: “Peter, how did you ever do it?” It had been such a pleasure to introduce her to strangers, to say lightly: “My wife,” and to watch the stupid, uncontrolled look of envy in their eyes. Once at a large party an elegant drunk had asked him, with a wink declaring unmistakable intentions: “Say, do you know that gorgeous creature over there?”
“Slightly,” Keating had answered, gratified, “she’s my wife.”
He often told himself gratefully that their marriage had turned out much better than he had expected. Dominique had become an ideal wife. She devoted herself completely to his interests: pleasing his clients, entertaining his friends, running his home. She changed nothing in his existence: not his hours, not his favorite menus, not even the arrangement of his furniture. She had brought nothing with her, except her clothes; she had not added a single book or ash tray to his house. When he expressed his views on any subject, she did not argue–she agreed with him. Graciously, as a matter of natural course, she took second place, vanishing in his background.
He had expected a torrent that would lift him and smash him against some unknown rocks. He had not found even a brook joining his peaceful river. It was more as if the river went on and someone came to swim quietly in his wake; no, not even to swim–that was a cutting, forceful action–but just to float behind him with the current. Had he been offered the power to determine Dominique’s attitude after their marriage, he would have asked that she behave exactly as she did.
Only their nights left him miserably unsatisfied. She submitted whenever he wanted her. But it was always as on their first night: an indifferent body in his arms, without revulsion, without answer. As far as he was concerned, she was still a virgin: he had never made her experience anything. Each time, burning with humiliation, he decided never to touch her again. But his desire returned, aroused by the constant presence of her beauty. He surrendered to it, when he could resist no longer; not often.
It was his mother who stated the thing he had not admitted to himself about his marriage. “I can’t stand it,” his mother said, six months after the wedding. “If she’d just get angry at me once, call me names, throw things at me, it would be all right. But I can’t stand this.”
“What, Mother?” he asked, feeling a cold hint of panic. “It’s no use, Peter,” she answered. His mother, whose arguments, opinions, reproaches he had never been able to stop, would not say another word about his marriage. She took a small apartment of her own and moved out of his house. She came to visit him often and she was always polite to Dominique, with a strange, beaten air of resignation. He told himself that he should be glad to be free of his mother; but he was not glad. Yet he could not grasp what Dominique had done to inspire that mounting dread within him. He could find no word or gesture for which to reproach her. But for twenty months it had been like tonight: he could not bear to remain alone with her–yet he did not want to escape her and she did not want to avoid him.
“Nobody’s coming tonight?” he asked tonelessly, turning away from the fire.
“No,” she said, and smiled, the smile serving as connection to her next words: “Shall I leave you alone, Peter?”
“No!” It was almost a cry. I must not sound so desperate, he thought, while he was saying aloud: “Of course not. I’m glad to have an evening with my wife all to myself.”
He felt a dim instinct telling him that he must solve this problem, must learn to make their moments together endurable, that he dare not run from it, for his own sake more than hers.
“What would you like to do tonight, Dominique?”
“Anything you wish.”
“Want to go to a movie?”
“Do you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It kills time.”
“All right. Let’s kill time.'”
“No. Why should we? That sounds awful.”
“Does it?”
“Why should we run from our own home? Let’s stay here.”
“Yes, Peter.”
He waited. But the silence, he thought, is a flight too, a worse kind of flight.
“Want to play a hand of Russian Bank?” he asked.
“Do you like Russian Bank?”
“Oh, it kills ti–” He stopped. She smiled.
“Dominique,” he said, looking at her, “you’re so beautiful. You’re always so…so utterly beautiful. I always want to tell you how I feel about it.”
“I’d like to hear how you feel about it. Peter.”
“I love to look at you. I always think of what Gordon Prescott said. He said that you are God’s perfect exercise in structural mathematics. And Vincent Knowlton said you’re a spring morning. And Ellsworth–Ellsworth said you’re a reproach to every other female shape on earth.”
“And Ralston Holcombe?” she asked.
“Oh, never mind!” he snapped, and turned back to the fire.
I know why I can’t stand the silence, he thought. It’s because it makes no difference to her at all whether I speak or not; as if I didn’t exist and never had existed…the thing more inconceivable than one’s death–never to have been born….He felt a sudden, desperate desire which he could identify–a desire to be real to her.
“Dominique, do you know what I’ve been thinking?” he asked eagerly.
“No. What have you been thinking?”
“I’ve thought of it for some time–all by myself–I haven’t mentioned it to anyone. And nobody suggested it. It’s my own idea.”
“Why, that’s fine. What is it?”
“I think I’d like to move to the country and build a house of our own. Would you like that?”
“I’d like it very much. Just as you would. You want to design a home for yourself?”
“Hell, no. Bennett will dash one off for me. He does all our country homes. He’s a whiz at it.”
“Will you like commuting?”
“No, I think that will be quite an awful nuisance. But you know, everybody that’s anybody commutes nowadays. I always feel like a damn proletarian when I have to admit that I live in the city.”
“Will you like to see trees and a garden and the earth around you?”
“Oh, that’s a lot of nonsense. When will I have the time? A tree’s a tree. When you’ve seen a newsreel of the woods in spring, you’ve seen it all.”
“Will you like to do some gardening? People say it’s very nice, working the soil yourself.”
“Good God, no! What kind of grounds do you think we’d have? We can afford a gardener, and a good one–so the place will be something for the neighbors to admire.”
“Will you like to take up some sport?”
“Yes, I’ll like that.”
“Which one?”
“I think I’ll do better with my golf. You know, belonging to a country club right where you’re one of the leading citizens in the community is different from occasional week ends. And the people you meet are different. Much higher class. And the contacts you make…” He caught himself, and added angrily: “Also, I’ll take up horseback riding.”
“I like horseback riding. Do you?”
“I’ve never had much time for it. Well, it does shake your insides unmercifully. But who the hell is Gordon Prescott to think he’s the only he-man on earth and plaster his photo in riding clothes right in his reception room?”
“I suppose you will want to find some privacy?”
“Well, I don’t believe in that desert-island stuff. I think the house should stand in sight of a major highway, so people would point out, you know, the Keating estate. Who the hell is Claude Stengel to have a country home while I live in a rented flat? He started out about the same time I did, and look where he is and where I am, why, he’s lucky if two and a half men ever heard of him, so why should he park himself in Westchester and…”
And he stopped. She sat looking at him, her face serene.
“Oh God damn it!” he cried. “If you don’t want to move to the country, why don’t you just say so?”
“I want very much to do anything you want, Peter. To follow any idea you get all by yourself.”
He remained silent for a long time.
“What do we do tomorrow night?” he asked, before he could stop himself.
She rose, walked to a desk and picked up her calendar.
“We have the Palmers for dinner tomorrow night,” she said.
“Oh, Christ!” he moaned. “They’re such awful bores! Why do we have to have them?”
She stood holding the calendar forward between the tips of her fingers, as if she were a photograph with the focus on the calendar and her own figure blurred in its background.