Tahar Ben Jelloun - The Happy Marriage

But he also experienced some horrifying nightmares. In particular one in which a short, squat man had snared him in a trap and extorted a large sum of money from him, as well as a few paintings. He’d introduced himself as an art dealer, but had actually turned out to be a failed painter who’d reinvented himself as a businessman or rather a swindler who worked in cahoots with a brother of his who was a gigolo in the villas of the Côte d’Azur. Before his stroke, the painter had managed to forget him and contemptuously consign the memory of him to the trashcan of oblivion. He’d preferred to ignore what had happened instead of spending years stuck in the corridors of the law courts, especially since the only proof he had was a handful of phony receipts with made-up addresses, signed with a stolen signature stamp. But now that little man had come back again to mock him, just as he’d become physically infirm. The painter watched him as he walked around his canvases with a torch that had been soaked in alcohol and was ready to be ignited. The painter had shut his eyes, but the devil himself had appeared and burst out in hysterical laughter. The painter began to think of the ways in which he wanted to butcher him. He pictured him being crushed in a cement mixer and his bowels being spit out onto the mud, choking in the face of death after long agonizing hours.

Then he chased those thoughts of revenge from his mind and asked God to one day mete out His justice, at which point the stocky scam artist suddenly disappeared, this time for good.

At night, the Twins helped him into the car to go to the studio. Yet since his wife was away on a trip, he asked them to take him back to the house instead and told them to call Imane so that she could come over as soon as possible to recommence his physical therapy sessions. He settled into the room, which he’d long since vacated. It smelled like his wife’s perfume, it was littered with her things, and her clothes had been scattered willy-nilly. There were countless beauty products in the bathroom. He asked the maid to change the sheets and tidy the house.

Over the years, the painter had grown indifferent to how jealous others were of him. He’d come to terms with it and turned his indifference into a philosophical outlook. The most jealous people he’d had to deal with had been the women he’d loved and fellow painters who neither understood nor acknowledged his success. He’d put himself through much self-examination and had reached the conclusion that it was better to be envied than ignored and talentless. Nevertheless, his wife’s jealousy still got to him and he wasn’t able to be indifferent to it. She had to be stronger than he was and more determined than the others, steamrolling ahead without looking back to see just how much damage her repeated bouts of jealousy — which bordered on madness — had caused. There are many different kinds of madness, and his wife’s wasn’t extreme, but it was just enough to make his life a living hell. There was nothing he could do apart from suffer through it or flee, slip away or face more violence and cruelty. He chose to suffer through it, though under protest.

One day he’d told her: “Jealousy is a symptom of one’s weakness of character and a lack of empowerment!” He’d tried to reason with her that men and women had to allow one another enough space and privacy; otherwise, everything would fall apart or blow up. But she’d refused to listen to him and had instead followed the advice her charlatans gave her to the letter.

Privacy. A notion she knew nothing about. As far as she was concerned, a wife and husband weren’t supposed to have secrets between them. To her, a couple was a union where one plus one equaled one. It reminded him of a Moroccan television show where a journalist had interviewed four women from different age groups and varying backgrounds, all of whom were unmarried. The interviewer had wanted to figure out the causes behind this “anomaly.” One of the women said she’d simply never had the chance to get married, because her boyfriend had been an alcoholic; another said she’d wanted to focus on her career rather than find a husband who would either exploit her or prevent her from working; the third said that she’d decided never to get married after seeing her parents go through a divorce; while the fourth said she was looking for a man with whom she could share everything to the point that their two personalities could merge into one. None of them mentioned the existence of a perfect place where two individuals could work on their relationship while still respecting each other’s differences, not to mention their right to disagree.

He dozed off while watching a film. His mind felt fuzzy and lethargic. He thought he could detect the shadow of a man in the distance, maybe his father coming toward him in a white djellaba, with his trimmed beard, and a bright, smiling face. His father looked younger than he did. He looked at him and recognized him, but he couldn’t hear any sounds, just like in a silent film. His father drew close to him, bent over, picked up his right hand, and kissed it. The painter told himself that the world had been turned upside down in this vision. After all, he was usually the one who kissed his mother’s and father’s hands. Kissing someone’s cheek had only been introduced to Morocco at the time when the country had become independent, in 1956.

After that kiss on his hand, the painter had woken up in a good mood. He’d paused the film and asked for some tea. They’d told him: “Imane is making some right now!” “Let’s hope this isn’t another vision!” the painter had muttered in reply.

That night he had a dream that morphed into a nightmare and he’d woken up with a crushing migraine. He’d had to visit a head of state. It was summer, and he’d had to wear a white linen shirt and matching trousers. It was explicitly specified on the invitation card. On the way to the palace, a bird had shit on him, leaving a mustard-yellow stain on his beautiful shirt. He needed to change it, but he didn’t have time. He asked one of his friends to lend him a fresh shirt. But that friend only had colored shirts. He wasn’t happy about that. Time was running out and he had to make it to the reception. He chose a gray one, and when he left his friend’s house, he was stopped by some plainclothes policemen: “You have to come with us, you’ve been convicted and we must take you to prison right away!” He’d tried to ask them what he’d been charged with, and they’d told him: “Don’t make this harder on yourself, you know exactly what you’ve been charged with!” They’d confiscated his cell phone and said: “You won’t be doing any painting in prison and you won’t have any pencils or notebooks either. These are our orders!” He’d screamed, but no sounds had come out of his mouth. His wife had looked at the scene from the threshold, alongside his best friend. But they hadn’t done anything to help him. He’d wanted to call his lawyer, but his mind had suddenly drawn a blank and he couldn’t remember his telephone number or his name. He had a headache. Then he woke up. He would have loved to stand up and open the window. It was three o’clock in the morning. Everyone was asleep. He managed to sit up in bed and kept his eyes open so he wouldn’t return to that nightmare.

By the morning, tiredness had made him fall asleep. He hadn’t woken up when the Twins brought him his breakfast. They had left the plate on his bedside table and gone.

A new bout of pain interrupted his sleep. A cramp in his left leg. He yelled out, then shut his eyes, waiting for the cramp to loosen. “The day’s gotten off to a bad start!” he told himself. It would be best not to go to work in his studio. Instead, he needed some comfort and some massages.