Chapter 6 #2
“That’s what I understand from him,” I answered.
“He doesn’t want to know, and he doesn’t want me to know either.
” I tried to get Max’s attention by making a funny face.
Both Halimi and I were in a kind of anxious euphoria at our joint decision to experiment.
Negotiations on exactly how we might do it were dragging on.
“I just don’t get why this is what you want to formalize …
” Halimi would say when I broached the subject of “the rules,” holding my hand and stroking the engagement ring he gave me with great ceremony one Saturday morning.
I smiled but wouldn’t drop the subject. In fact, after agonizing over it for a number of weeks, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to marry him just because I was in love with him and pregnant with his child.
Eventually I decided that yes, it was enough—but I was determined to straighten out the subject of adultery.
“I just want to deal with it,” I’d say to him. He would stare at me with characteristic feline pleasure, totally ignoring my words and ensconced in a halo of blind adoration, as if resisting the urge to jump me.
“I mean, it’s clear we both have healthy libidos and a tendency to get turned on by others,” I would say, trying to catch his wandering attention. “And instead of causing each other pain, I just want to neutralize it, you know? So we can trust each other.”
“You’re so sweet,” Halimi would say, and once, when he was in a cooperative mood, he continued, “but it’s human nature to sin, my love.
It’s got nothing to do with sex or not, with men or women, right?
That’s the secret, the excitement, the danger.
The fact you’re doing something forbidden and it’s so fun. That’s the sin.”
“So, you do believe that you and I are going to sin, right?” I said impatiently.
Halimi fell silent and looked at me.
“Yes, Diti, yes,” he answered unwillingly.
“So, you’re just going to accept the pain we’ll cause each other?”
“Look,” he said, trying not to smile, “we need to be super discreet.” When he saw my face fall, he quickly added, “Without overdoing it, of course.”
“I want to know the truth,” I said in a voice brimming with seriousness. “And I expect you to give it to me,” I added.
“Come on, Diti, honestly …” Halimi pleaded. “You want me to report to you every time there’s a chance I might fool around with someone whose name I won’t even remember an hour later? Why would you want to know?”
I didn’t know what to say in response. A cold fury swept over me, but I didn’t let it go. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t willing to accommodate me.
“And maybe it isn’t human nature at all, the tendency to ‘sin,’ the secrecy and the lying, maybe that’s unique to you, Saul,” I said brusquely.
“Could be,” he said icily, and from that moment until we retired for the night, he treated me with cold politeness.
He was horribly distant and reacted with one-syllable responses.
This was the first time he’d ever treated me like that—and suddenly it hit me that he was capable of totally alienating himself from me.
I cried that night and felt short of breath.
I moaned and groaned, and my pregnant belly moaned and groaned along with me.
Halimi tried to feign calm, but he was worried.
I stopped him when he began dialing the emergency number.
I told him between clenched teeth that I was okay and forced myself to relax both my muscles and my nerves.
I breathed deeply, in and out; I swallowed again and again; I inhaled and exhaled.
He brought me more water than I could drink, placed a damp towel on my forehead, and then simply sat beside me and stroked my hair, and occasionally my arms. It did the trick, and I fell asleep.
In the morning, it was like it never happened.
I worked on my laptop in the living room; he returned from his walk through the neighborhood—maybe he’d bought cigarettes.
When he came into the living room, he was humming happily to himself and looked around his former bachelor pad, transformed into a warm nest for the coming baby chick.
Drapes and lampshades and pictures and framed memories—tickets from a particularly good music festival where I most likely was impregnated, a poem by a Polish writer we both liked, a photo of us in Cambodia, the red-and-gold bedspread I flung across his old couch—everything that rounded and softened the sharp corners and empty surfaces.
I saw the pleasure on his face when he entered the apartment, knowing that all this was his now.
He leaped on me with declarations of adoration and gestures of love, and I yielded with bursts of laughter.
Anything to do with “the rules” made him revert to his impressive passivity, and me to my ideological determination.
“Why can’t we live in solidarity with this thing as well? So that it’ll be something we are equal partners in?” I attacked him from another angle, focusing on his weakness for social issues.
Halimi sighed. “Because I’m telling you again,” he would begin, and I never knew if the look on his face was sad or if he was simply losing patience.
“This. Isn’t. About. Sex. If you want it that bad, then okay—I’ll try letting you know when I’m attracted to someone, and if you give me the green light, I’ll go for it and let you know what happens afterward.
Yup. So that’s an option. I hope. And you, too, okay?
If you’re attracted, and so on and so forth, I’ll give you the green or the red light, and if you really want to, you can tell me all about it, but please spare me the details.
” He stared at me for a moment after stuttering this out, and we both burst out laughing.
“But it is all about sex, right? I don’t know why you deny it,” I said to him on another occasion, after we’d watched a movie full of unnecessary cruelty about a tormented foursome.
“Because it is all about sex. The ‘secrecy,’ the ‘excitement,’ and the ‘danger.’ You don’t get that same rush flying model airplanes, do you? ”
“Not flying model airplanes, no …” Halimi chuckled and then thought for a moment.
“But I do get it with drugs and alcohol. I know I’m hurting myself when I’m going through a rough patch, but I get a kick out of it.
” He looked at me seriously, pronouncing each word with precision.
“And the very fact I enjoy doing something that hurts me somehow amplifies the enjoyment. It’s a cruel, vicious cycle.
” He sighed theatrically and sank down into the armchair.
Then, he gave me one of his catlike smiles.
“I feel like kicking you,” I said for the umpteenth time when he repeated this performance.
“Okay, I know it’s about transgressing and all that, but let me ask you a straight question.
What if I come home one evening smelling of aftershave and semen, and my makeup all smudged? ” I said quickly, feeling juvenile.
“Smelling of aftershave and semen, and your makeup all smudged?” Halimi laughed.
“Come on, Limi, I want to know how you’d feel. Really.”
“But why would you come home smelling of aftershave and semen with your makeup all smudged?” he asked, utterly amused. He was clearly going to use that sentence in our own private lexicon from now on.
“And why would you fuck a dysfunctional hipster in the restroom of a club while I’m dancing just a few feet away?” I asked, feigning innocence. The corners of his mouth drooped, but I didn’t let up.
He squirmed, forced himself to focus, and looked me straight in the eyes. “How would I feel? I’d probably want to throw up,” he said slowly, “and at the same time, I’d want to fuck you wildly. And maybe cry a bit too,” he added, clenching his hand to his forehead.
“And wouldn’t you want to ask me who and what it was?”
“I would probably want to, yes.”