Tahar Ben Jelloun - The Happy Marriage

The only blonde he’d ever loved in his life came forward at this point, looking as radiant as on the day he’d met her. He’d been seduced by her deep-blue eyes, her sense of humor, and her laughter. He’d invited her to come stay with him in Morocco at a time when he’d still been single, and when he hadn’t been looking for the “ideal woman,” but for someone who made him want to be with her. He still remembered the moment when she’d arrived on the boat, beaming amidst the crowds of weary travelers. He loved those rendezvous at train stations or ports. It was the romantic in him. They’d spent the next few days fooling around. Then they’d left for Corsica, and their relationship had come to a brutal end without any explanations or acknowledgements. She’d simply not shown up. He’d waited for her in a Moroccan restaurant whose décor he still remembered. He also remembered the expression on the face of the young waiter who usually served him and who’d understood that the painter had been stood up. To console him, the waiter had said: “I get it, a woman did that to me, and I gave her a good smack!” The painter had lifted his gaze and replied: “No, I don’t have it in me, and that’s not my style. You can only keep women by being sweet to them, not hitting them. The way we do things here in Morocco is behind the times in most other countries!”

While she walked in front of him without noticing him, the beautiful blonde was thronged by memories of the lover she’d had for a few weeks and whom she’d called her “precious friend,” whom she’d left so suddenly so as to have only good memories of him.

A hand abruptly pulled the painter out of the sweet reverie he’d plunged himself into. It was a nurse who’d come to give him his injections. Still stunned by his dreams, he thought she belonged to the group of women he’d loved. But she was a stern, efficient woman who dressed like a man. She worked in silence and barely even asked him where he preferred to have his injections.

When the nurse left, the painter felt overwhelmed by a great anxiety. After nightfall, the light in his studio had taken on a sad air. Against all odds, one of his former loves had made him feel nostalgic, a feeling he’d wanted to avoid at all costs — as he himself had always said: “Memories are boring!” Then his exhaustion made him numb again. He looked around himself and refused to believe that his life had come to an end, that his work would be left unfinished. He wanted to move but realized he could barely do so and with great difficulty at that. He hated himself and wanted to scream. He thought that if he could destroy everything around him it would at least be a means to answer the call of death, which had shamelessly settled within him. “Death is the disease!” he’d repeated.

Suddenly he’d heard a voice say: “Don’t let it get you down, stay strong, it’s just a bad moment and it’ll pass. Come on, life calls out to you, and it’s magnificent, believe me!” The painter tried to figure out where it was coming from, and turned around as best he could. It was his favorite nephew, an architect who was passionate about music and football, and who had come to pay him a visit. He’d brought him an iPod filled with songs from the 1960s. He didn’t stay long, but before leaving he’d placed the iPod’s earphones in his ears and had left him alone with Bob Dylan.

The painter shut his eyelids, listened to the music, and waited for the parade of the women he’d loved to start flashing past his eyes again just as though he were sitting in a cinema and the film could miraculously start exactly where it had been paused. All of a sudden, the journalist whom he’d used to make giggle all the time because he used to poke fun at her buttocks and bosom — which he used to say were as hard as a wax mannequin’s — appeared just a few feet in front of him. Another oddball who at the time had been torn between her best friend and her boyfriend. She’d readily admitted to him that she loved experimenting with pleasure and that she was ambitious. As it happens, she went on to have a very successful career. The painter remembered having spotted her sitting cross-legged in one of the lounges of the Élysée Palace one evening while interviewing the French president along with another journalist. He’d amused himself by imaging her naked while striking all those risqué poses that she loved to make. At which point everything the president said became very funny.

She was walking elegantly in front of him, but didn’t seem to notice him. He wondered why she’d accepted his invitation. Perhaps she was concealing a camera so she could get a scoop on the funeral of a painter whose canvases were growing pricier by the day.

Then came the turn of the woman whom he thought resembled Faye Dunaway in Elia Kazan’s The Arrangement . She was a friend with whom love had come easily and with whom life had passed without any arguments. She’d come to see him because she’d been writing a thesis on contemporary Moroccan painting and its influences. She was hardworking and tall; she had a sense of humor and a penchant for lightness, which pleased him a great deal. The product of a mixed marriage — her father was Tunisian, her mother French — she was grounded in both cultures and loved to speak Arabic, albeit in a heavily accented way. They’d laughed a lot and often made love wherever they happened to be. She would drag him to a place he didn’t know and passionately give herself to him. Whenever she came to his place wearing a skirt he knew she wasn’t wearing any underwear. He would slip his hand between her thighs and she would let out a cry of joy. He adored her skirts, even the ones she wore in the winter. Whenever she arrived wearing trousers, he knew that she’d either had her period or wasn’t in the mood.

Their relationship came to an end the day she went back to her country to get married. She too belonged to the time before he’d been married. He occasionally regretted not having gotten in touch with her again to resume their sexual encounters. She had a great character, a kind disposition, and plenty of charm.

Around the same time, the painter had been seeing a Moroccan student with exceptional skin. She had left to continue her studies in Canada and had met a brutal death at the age of twenty-four. Memories of her had haunted the painter and her death had wounded him enormously even though he hadn’t known her that well. She’d given herself to him enthusiastically and had hoped for something more than quick get-togethers between classes. He looked for her silhouette in vain.

That same year, the painter had had another affair with a Moroccan woman, someone who’d borne her beauty as though it were a burden, or a tragedy waiting to happen. She had big gray eyes but it was as though something were gnawing away at her. She had a hard time being happy, cried often, and her body tensed up each time he touched her. It was the first time he’d been with a frigid woman. She would weep, cling to him, beg for long, sweet cuddles that helped her to calm down and fall asleep on his shoulder. He knew that she’d suffered some kind of trauma, but it wasn’t his role to psychoanalyze her. Her father must have abused her, and she carried the secret of that wound as though she’d murdered someone. She’d allowed him to understand without spelling it out, then buried her face in a pillow and cried for a long time. She’d gotten married and her parents had thrown her a huge party, but her husband, a kind, charmless man, hadn’t known how to deal with her. He would only return home late at night and neglect her. One evening, she’d called a friend of hers for help, but that friend had been unable to come over because he’d been suffering from angina. He’d spoken to her and had promised he would come see her as soon as he was better. He didn’t want to infect her, he’d said. He’d tried to make her laugh, but the distant voice on the other end of the line had been that of a woman adrift on a vast ocean. “Wait for me, I’m coming!” he’d said. By the time he arrived, there was nobody there. She’d driven to a beach house, swallowed a huge quantity of pills, and gone to sleep. Her suicide had shocked everyone because all the boys of her generation had been driven crazy by her beauty and all the girl were jealous of her charm and elegance.