John Barth - Letters

As is her wont with me, she answered calmly, gravely, fully. She was okay, all things considered. She no longer feared, as she had last winter, that she would kill herself. She had assumed, when we began our affair in ’67, that it would be brief and end in the destruction of someone she much loved: Peter by suicide; me by homicide; herself by either; the children somehow. For she had hoped and expected that we two would chuck the world and go away together — to Italy, to Italy — and she had imagined that Peter, despite his best resolves and infinite responsibility, would find the situation unendurable. Since things had not gone as she’d wished, she was relieved that nothing fatal had ensued. But that fact reminded her that her love for me, and whatever it was I’d felt for her, had been inconsequential; she hated that. With all her heart she wished still that we had run off to Italy, if only for a season, and let the chips fall where they might. She did not hate Peter for being complaisant (out of his fancied and unwarranted guilt for having let Marsha once seduce him); but she didn’t admire him for it, either. She did not hate me for having been unable to love her as she’d loved me: she only regretted it — almost, but not quite, to the point of self-destruction.

Most of all she lamented my refusal to make her pregnant. Marsha’s opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, Magda believed me capable of loving deeply; but even if I’d gone so far as to marry her (which she’d never expected), she would not have given my love for her more than two years — inspired as it was in part by the shock of my divorce. Inasmuch as she herself would never cease to love me, she wished as strongly now as ever that we’d had a child together, through whom she could gratify that love. A child — and my removal from the scene — would have been the fittest end to our affair, in her judgment. It was only because I’d not given her that child that she was able to bear, indeed required, my continued presence in the house: I was surrogate for the child who was to have been surrogate for me. And how are you, Ambrose?

Oh, shot to hell. I told her the story of my set-down on the beach and my rewakened interest in Bea Golden. The former mightily amused her, as I meant it to. She hoped and trusted I was teasing her about the latter. I’m drawn to has-beens, I said. The exhausted. The spent. Maybe I’ll write an old-fashioned novel: characters, plot, dialogue, the works. Maybe I’ll remarry and start a family.

That hurts, Ambrose.

Sorry, said I, taking her hand. It’s late. I’m tired and a little drunk. What I really feel is a mighty urge to go forward by going back, to where things started. Rewind, you know. Rebegin. Replay.

That is known as regression, Magda declared; I bid you good night. She leaned to buss me; got wind of old Bibi, perhaps; anyhow made a small sound of pain, an indeterminate whimper. I held her to it. I don’t know what yours are like, Yours, but Lady Amherst’s lips are pleasingly dry and firm; Jeannine Mack’s (in the old days) were hot and hard; “Mary Jane’s” just lately were wet and thin and a touch maloccluded; Marsha Blank’s I don’t remember — but Magda Giulianova’s, now as a quarter-century ago, are two extraordinary items of flesh. A man cannot kiss those lips without craving to take one into his mouth; a man at once wants more… come on, Language, do it: read those lips, give them tongue! Language can’t (film either, I’m happy to add; it’s the tactile we touch on here, blind and mute) do more than pay them fervent, you know, lip service.

Tears. Not her, Magda prayed. Meaning Marsha! I shook my head. Time to end the mystery, at least the evening; I wanted that mouth again, that man cannot kiss without tumescing. To cool us down (so I truly, innocently intended) I told her gently of Germaine.

Something of a male chauvinist, Magda was at first startled and a bit amused (the lady had once been pointed out to her in a shopping plaza). The woman’s fifty, Ambrose! Etc. Then relieved, clearly, that her successor was no smashing 25-year-old. Then curious: bona fide British nobility? Well, part Swiss, and not born to the gentry; more of a scholar than a blue blood; disappointed writer, actually, like yours truly. Then more curious, and a touch excited: What’s she like? Is she crazy about you? Are you madly in love? Well, let’s say ardently in sympathy. Remarkable woman, Germaine Pitt: I suspect she’s as given to Erotic Fantasy as I am, for example. Then more excited than curious: Did you have to teach her how to do it right, the way you did me, or had she had a string of lovers already?

Magda.

She was glad, she said. She’d been worried for me since our breakup. I needed sexual companionship, not just the odd lay. She’d known I was sleeping with someone; had hoped and prayed it was someone good both in and out of bed… Breathier now, and tearier, that remarkable lower lip shaking. But God I miss it, Ambrose (Magda seldom uses nicknames, nor enounces that trochee without stirring me to the bowels. I think I know who Ambrose is only when Magda speaks the name): it isn’t fair; Peter can’t do it; you shouldn’t have showed me those things are real; I was satisfied enough; I don’t want to be unfaithful to him; it’s only sex; who gives a fuck; anyway that’s not it, that’s just not it. I miss you. I love you. I’m going crazy.

Ditto, Truly. Look here, Mag…

You mustn’t refuse me when I beg you, Ambrose.

Magda, you know as well as I. She was on me then: the lips, the lips, hands, hair. Poor John Thomas, thought his shift was done, took a bit of coaxing he did. Magda favors the rec-room Barcalounger, herself on top: still shy of her heavied hams, she eases herself onto me with a happy gasp, slips the gown off to give me her breasts and shoulders, goes to it. I’d early learned — unemancipated Mag! — in these circumstances to give detailed running orders for my gratification. When she gets it off she never cries out (there’s usually a sleeping child, or adult, about), just closes her eyes and makes a small, awestruck sound that goes on and on.

Sex.

Now what. She sat there a postclimactic while, holding shrunk J.T. tight in her vaginal fist and giving me serene instructions. I was not to worry. She would not keep after me to make love to her or otherwise infringe on my new attachment, which she approved. I should fetch — Mrs. Pitt? Mrs. Amherst? — over to meet the family as soon as possible: it would help her, Magda, to see us together as a couple, and to have the family so see. I should make plans to move out of the Lighthouse — in easy stages, for Angela’s sake. Maybe first to the old Menschhaus up the street, now that Mother’s hospitalizing had left the place vacant. Angela of course must stay with them, until and unless… A few tears here (J.T. was released). Soon the twins would be off on their own; dear Angela was all she had left. Why hadn’t I given her a baby? She quickly calmed, apologized. I reminded her she’d doubtless be a grandmother before very long: young Connie had the looks of an early breeder, and Carl was obviously a stone-horse: both would marry within the year and get offspring at once.

This talk pleased her; she climbed off me, smiling. I’ve done an immoral thing, Ambrose, she said then, and I don’t care what you or anybody thinks. I thought she meant this anniversary reenactment of our original infidelity, and waved it away; reminded her wryly I’d been doing retakes all weekend. Not that, she said. All those months I begged you to make me pregnant, and you said No, it wouldn’t be right, I never once tried to trick you. I wanted everything we did to be together, 100 %. The IUD was in there, every time, even when you’d forget to remind me.