Edgar Doctorow - All the Time in the World

One Monday morning, Jelena said, I’m going to the beach. Would you like to come with me? And so there he was applying sunblock to her thin back, while the gulls wheeled about and the little birds with stick legs went running along in the wet sand, just out of reach of the incoming tide. Jelena’s bathing suit hardly deserved the name, some bits of cloth and a strap or two. Ramon did not own a suit. He’d removed his shirt and rolled up his trousers. There were very few bathers this workday morning, but the beach was embellished with the refuse of the weekend past — hunks of charred firewood, beer bottles, McDonald’s wrappers, plastic bags, balls of aluminum foil, wet newspapers, and the occasional used condom. But they had found a reasonably clean spot where Ramon had only to dispose of a few pieces of broken glass and so here they were in the sun with the hushing waves rolling in and the gulls crying and Jelena’s vertebrae easily countable as she bent forward and he rubbed the sunblock over her back.

Afterward, they sat side by side on their towels and watched the waves.

Ramon, would you like to hit me?

No. Of course not. Jelena, what a strange thing to say. Why?

I have been rude to you when you have done something only for my sake. I would deserve it.

No, I understand your mind, Jelena. Nothing is settled for you. You are new in another country. You are loosely attached. My mother, just before she died, told me that she had never really got used to the States, though she’d lived most of her life here. Of course, everyone is different, but it takes time to make yourself American.

Well, if not you then someone will have to hit me. Maybe Alexander. He knows to do it.

Who hits you? Alexander? Is that your boyfriend?

Yes. In a way of speaking. But it is best if you hit me, Ramon.

She turned to him, removed her sunglasses, and he saw that she was crying. Forgive me, she said, I am the worst of people. I don’t know anymore what I am doing.

Ramon’s heart beat faster. Is Alexander coming here?

He says. But he speaks through Borislav. I am of no importance. Oh, I am so wretched, she said. And she got up and walked to the surf and stood there as, even in his misgiving, he recorded her lovely figure, the long legs, the small, firm haunches, the huddled shoulders as she stood at the water’s edge hugging herself.

LEON SAID, RAMON, you should talk to me first. You have made a mistake.

You know those people?

Of course. It is my business to know. When they came into his restaurant Borislav’s stature should have risen in your estimation to the level of the totally untrustworthy.

I am in love with Jelena.

It can be felt as love when you want to fuck someone and can’t.

We are man and wife. In my love for Jelena, I will fuck her.

You would have been better off still walking her to the door and leaving. Now you are in there with all of them and you are vulnerable.

What can they do?

They will speed things up. And you could be out on your ass with no job and a court appearance. And I am a busy man, Ramon. I don’t need this thing of my brother for our lawyers to divert themselves and the P.D. to smirk at.

I will not touch her.

They don’t need you to. You’re in the house, the husband, you’re right there — what is it your movie people say — on location? You’re on location, Ramon! It is a federal law — they made it to punish domestic violence against women. She gets hit and she gets the divorce right now, and the whole thing is done not in two years but in two weeks. And here is this Alexander flying in on her green card to be married.

She would have to bring charges against me. Jelena would not do that.

Oh, please, Ramon. What am I dealing with here? So they give her a couple of black eyes, a broken nose — you think she would like more of the same if she refused to bring charges?

None of this will happen, Leon. So, as I understand it, it’s not for Jelena, the daughter of Borislav’s late uncle, to make a better life for herself in America?

We’re still looking into that. It may be no more than what it seems. There are other ways to have got him in, long before this. So if they’ve taken these pains, and it is not what it seems, we have something to learn. He hasn’t been a faithful boyfriend, we know that. Listen, Ramon, in the meantime just get out of there. Leave your clothes like you’re coming back. They’ll wait. They need you around to make the strongest case. You’ve got your cash. Let them look for you if they want to set you up.

THEY TOOK THEIR LUNCH to have on the beach. But it began to rain — a misty rain with the combers rolling in, and everything was gray, the sky, the seawater, and there was no line at the horizon.

They sat on the boardwalk with their bags of sandwiches and drinks on the bench between them. Jelena had pulled up the hood of her sweater. He could not see her face.

I love you, Jelena.

I know. You are reliable, Ramon. As a husband should be.

You’re making fun.

No. I have come to respect you. I find myself thinking about you without meaning to. You are very odd.

I made a decision to love you when Borislav showed me your picture and sent me to marry you.

A decision.

Yes, this was an arranged marriage, and they are the best, when the decision is to love someone you don’t know. Those have always been the most sacred, the marriages arranged before there is love and by other people.

The old way, from long ago, yes, and there is a good reason that it was given up.

Well, I know that my mother and father’s marriage was arranged by their parents. The two young people sat there in embarrassment while their families negotiated. They had not met before. My mother told me that. And she and my father were together for forty years. And when he died she wept, how she wept. Neither my brother nor I could console her.

Well, Ramon, that may be, but you and I have not sat in embarrassment while our parents negotiated. So where were the parents? It is a written green-card marriage, yours and mine.

But it is still a sacred bond. Whether the marriage is arranged by one’s parents or by a drunken idiot, with the bride kissing the wrong man, and all for the wrong reasons — it is the same. Whether through one’s family or out of a desire to go to another country, it is the same mysterious thing going on underneath, doing its work in the manner of fate. And once it is done there can have been no other thing.

That is very philosophical, Ramon. Your brother told me you are a graduate from college.

And there is the sea in front of us, Jelena, that you have come over, to be in this country. And so that’s the way it is.

Ramon carefully slipped her hood back and touched her cheek and she turned to face him. He leaned forward and kissed her lips.

Here is what we will do now, Jelena. We will find a taxicab and leave. Just the way we are. We will buy what we need in the city. I have money.

Ramon—

It is no longer safe for you here. Or for me. Come. Anyway, it is too cold here in the rain. Take the sandwiches. Aren’t you hungry? I am. We will eat on the way.

WHEN LEON CAME in that evening, he found Ramon and Jelena standing at the window looking at the lights of the city. They were holding hands.

Leon coughed to get their attention. They were flustered, as if they’d been caught doing something forbidden.

Leon shook his head and smiled. Is this the lovely Jelena? So it is! Snatched from under their foreign eyes. Ah, my brother, he said, I should have known. I should have known.

Leon went behind the bar and brought out a bottle of champagne. Come, we’ll drink to it. He set out the glasses and popped the cork. Let the war begin, he said.