Forgotten Life. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ about it. What I felt about it didn’t matter to her in the slightest. How can you recover from that? It’s so unlike her. Generally she’s so considerate. But perhaps she’s been like that all the time. I mean, how long have we been married – and all the time she was secretly quite indifferent to what my feelings were if they got in the way of her pleasure? “I’m enjoying it too much to stop …” Christ, what an insult. It’s as if I’m bleeding inside and yet, now we’re back home, I have to continue as normal. We both continue as normal, as if nothing had happened. It’s grounds for divorce, isn’t it?’

      ‘Do you want a divorce?’

      ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. It’s a crowning insult, isn’t it?’

      ‘Did she mean it as an insult? Was she not also upset at that moment?’

      ‘I should hope she was! Isn’t it at such moments that the truth slips out? How often had they had it off together? Not just in Boston. New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles. Can you imagine, they might have done it in Salt Lake City? Ugh … At least I seem to have put paid to Hernandez. I made sure they weren’t alone together for the rest of the time we were there. And I don’t think he had the appetite for it after being found out. Men don’t, do they? There are rules to the game, you know, and if you’re caught out, fine, then however much it costs you say you’re sorry and you stop. You stop, don’t you, for the sake of the other person’s feelings? Isn’t that the rule? You and the other woman know you run that risk. If found out – all over. Finish. Isn’t that the rule?’

      ‘Do you think of it as a game with rules?’

      ‘There are rules, aren’t there? Remember your ethology. In everything there are rules, in every species. Otherwise civilization falls apart. Even when two nations threaten each other, rules remain. If that wasn’t so, then the planet would have been destroyed long ago. Even nations which hate each other obey rules, almost unwittingly. How much more so between individuals. How am I going to live now? Am I supposed to go on as if nothing had happened?’

      ‘What has really happened? Sheila returned to England with you, didn’t she?’

      ‘I can’t talk to you, Mrs Emerova. You’re supposed to offer me something, you know. A therapist is supposed to use his or her own feelings in the service of the patient. That’s me. How should I best behave in this mess?’

      ‘Do you feel it is a mess? Your marriage is continuing, isn’t it?’

      ‘It’s continuing, yes. But for how long? What’s she thinking? Is she longing for Hernandez every moment of the day? “I’m enjoying it too much to stop.” It puts me off my stroke, I don’t mind admitting. Yes, I do mind admitting it. I feel that when we have intercourse she’ll just be thinking of him all the while, and making comparisons.’

      ‘Does that make you feel inferior?’

      ‘Oh, Christ, it makes me feel bereaved. Our calling has little defence against bereavement. How am I to know what she’s thinking?’

      ‘May you not suppose that she wants everything to continue as normal?’

      ‘What right has she to hope that? I’m the one who should be deciding about that! Instead, I’m arranging for a party for her next Thursday, to celebrate her latest effusion …’

      ‘Doesn’t that suggest that you both want everything to continue as normal?’

      ‘Well, it can’t continue as normal, can it? That’s not possible. Not while I still have so much anger inside me. Okay, under the stress of the tour, when she’s the cat’s whiskers and the whole world’s bending an ear to her, I quite understand that then she’s feeling so good that she wants the odd extra bit of adulation – I mean, this guy Hernandez, he has no interest in her as such, he’s only interested because she’s the grand and glorious Green Mouth who brings so much money into his company, whose new novel has got 1.5 million copies in print. It’s impersonal on both sides, in a way, all part of the big Green Mouth act – I understand that, it’s my business to understand. Good for her! But “I’m enjoying it too much to stop …” Am I supposed not to feel angry and hurt because I’m an analyst? What do you expect?’

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