Helen Oyeyemi - Mr. Fox

I must have been twenty-five years old when I realised Christ never came back from the dead. Some people would say it wasn’t a big deal, it was just that I wised up. But I’m talking about something I’d always believed until then. I damn near knocked myself flat with these new thoughts. I mean, the resurrection could be true — it could be, I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for sure. But it probably isn’t true. So that means Christ was killed and that was the end for him. He’d gotten mixed up with some pretty intense people in his lifetime, though, and those people thought he was too important to let go. And they made themselves important with this idea that their friend couldn’t be killed, told everyone all about it. And hundreds died because they believed Christ couldn’t be killed, and thousands more suffered, I mean, the martyrs, think of all the martyrs, and — I was walking down a street in Salzburg, eating an apple, when these thoughts came to me, and I just kept right on chewing and swallowing, chewing and swallowing, since it was something to do.

Love. I’m not capable of it, can’t even approach it from the side, let alone head-on. Nor am I alone in this — everyone is like this, the liars. Singing songs and painting pictures and telling each other stories about love and its mysteries and its marvelous properties, myths to keep morale up — maybe one day it’ll materialize. But I can say it ten times a day, a hundred times, “I love you,” to anyone and anything, to a woman, to a pair of pruning shears. I’ve said it without meaning it at all, taken love’s name in vain and gone dismally unpunished. Love will never be real, or if it is, it has no power. No power. There’s only covetousness, and if what we covet can’t be won with gentle words — and often it can’t — then there is force. Those boys at the bar downtown, coming round talking idly about more ideas to die for. Something terrible’s coming, and everyone in the world is working to bring it on. They won’t rest until they’ve brought it on. Mary, come back — distract me. No, stay away, you’re the problem.

From The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Cappelanus

1. Marriage is no real excuse for not loving.

2. He who is not jealous cannot love.

3. No one can be bound by a double love.

4. It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing.

5. That which a lover takes against the will of his beloved has no relish.

6. Boys do not love until they arrive at the age of maturity.

7. When one lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required of the survivor.

8. No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons.

9. No one can love unless he is impelled by the persuasion of love.

10. Love is always a stranger in the home of avarice.

11. It is not proper to love any woman whom one would be ashamed to seek to marry.

12. A true lover does not desire to embrace in love anyone except his beloved.

13. When made public love rarely endures.

14. The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized.

15. Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved.

16. When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved his heart palpitates.

17. A new love puts to flight an old one.

18. Good character alone makes any man worthy of love.

19. If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives.

20. A man in love is always apprehensive.

21. Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love.

22. Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his beloved.

23. He whom the thought of love vexes eats and sleeps very little.

24. Every act of a lover ends in the thought of his beloved.

25. A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved.

26. Love can deny nothing to love.

27. A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved.

28. A slight presumption causes a lover to suspect his beloved.

29. A man who is vexed by too much passion usually does not love.

30. A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved.

31. Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men or one man by two women.

That nails it — I like this Cappelanus fellow!—M.F.

Ha, ha, ha. . indeed.—S.J.F.

HMMMMM.—D.F.

Istayed in bed almost all day Monday. To see if St. John would notice, and if he did notice, to see what he would do about it. But he didn’t notice, didn’t even come up to ask me about dinner. Too busy with his book, I guess. It can’t be easy killing people off the way he does, especially since each death has got to be meaningful. I heard him on the radio once, before I even met him — a fan of his called in, oh so earnest, asking him why some character or other had died in such a meaningless way. St. John’s answer: “I was going to say that the meaninglessness of her death has a meaning in itself, but the truth is, I missed that one. So thanks. I’m going to work harder.”

While he worked, he played a symphony I liked — he played it very loudly, but it was good that way, rising through the floorboards and welling up around me. I was lying on music, my arms and legs flopping down over a pillar of the stuff, my back the only straight line in me. If only my old dance teacher could have seen me, she’d have had a fit. I was always the girl who was “just so.” It was the easiest thing in the world back then — if I felt as if taking too deep a breath would make me fall flat on my face, that meant I was “just so.”

There was housework to do, things to dust and scrub and polish and move around and fret over, work that has never been visible to anyone else, and I took great pleasure in not doing any of it. I spent a few hours looking at a book of watercolors that just happened to be lying around, but they began to make me feel weepy. They were so faded, the landscapes, and they reminded me of some I’d started and put up in the glasshouse, half finished, because painting them made me yawn so much, and I didn’t suppose that anyone who came out there for a cocktail on a summer evening would care enough to ask if they were supposed to look like that. They’ve been there two summers and no one’s asked yet.

When it got dark, Mary Foxe came and sat by me with a candle. I’d gone so dead in my senses and my brain that I’d been expecting her, and it was actually nice to have a change. She closed the door so we’d have some privacy. I didn’t protest. “He won’t be coming up,” Mary Foxe said. “He’s probably going to go to sleep in there tonight.”

“Again. I know.”

She was naked, and not a bit self-conscious about it. She didn’t need to be. What I saw by candlelight made me sure that this was really going to happen — St. John Fox had dreamed himself up a nice little companion who wasn’t going to get old, and he was going to drop me and live with her. She looked younger than me, a lot younger than him—

“For God’s sake, put some clothes on, will you,” I told her.

“I don’t know where they’ve gone. I think I’ve annoyed him and he’s trying to punish me. I’m sorry if I’m making you feel uncomfortable. Give me any old thing to wear and I’ll put it on,” she said, in a very simple way. No guile, no false concern, just honesty. I couldn’t really be mad at her when she spoke to me like that.

I got out of bed. “Come on.” We went to my dressing room and I gave her a lilac shirtwaist to put on. I didn’t tell her, but it was my favourite thing to wear. I’d worn it in Buenos Aires on the first day of our honeymoon. There it was all over again, the first day, the first day, the first day, his hand in mine, all that woven into a dress. And there was no denying that Mary Foxe looked as cute as a button in my dress; its shade brought out interesting hues in her hair, or vice versa. I was glad we were the same dress size. It was something of a consolation to know that I’m nowhere near as fat as I sometimes think I am.