Tahar Ben Jelloun - The Happy Marriage

My wife thought that she loved me — and so did I. I don’t love her anymore and that’s fine by me …

A few days after finishing his list, he listened to the tape before heading out for his appointment at the psychiatrist’s. The painter felt he’d missed the big picture. So he hit “record” again and said: “I’m solely responsible for this failure. There were many more differences between us than simply our social standing or ages. No, the real difference between us was a lot worse than that. We’ve never shared a life throughout the entirety of our marriage and we never even realized it.”

He’d never taken the initiative to leave a woman. His wife would be the first. His decision was final. He’d taken a long time to reach that decision, but the stroke had finally helped to sway him more convincingly than any of his friends or his psychiatrist. He’d waited for Christmas to pass, had prepared a speech, had completed the paintings he’d been working on, had rested, then had chosen a day when she’d seemed calmer than usual and had asked her to come see him in his studio late that afternoon.

When he’d announced his decision to leave her, and told her that he didn’t love her anymore, she pretended that she hadn’t heard him and instead asked him where he wanted to dine that evening. He didn’t answer her. A long silence ensued. All of a sudden, she went on the offensive: “But what will become of me? Everything you have you owe to me: your career, your success, your money. You’re nothing without me, just a wreck stuck in a wheelchair. It was thanks to me and my intelligence and the energy of my youth that you became famous and celebrated, and that your paintings are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. All of that will fall apart when I’m gone. Not to mention that I’ll make you pay dearly for this! You have no idea what I’m capable of. You wanted to have children with me, to start a family, and so you’ll have to assume your responsibilities. I won’t lift a finger to help you and one morning you’ll wake up and find yourself face to face with cruelty in the shape of a woman. I’m the one who made you, and I know how to destroy you!” On that note, she left, slamming the door behind her. The painter wasn’t shaken. He was going to hold steady.

When his wife realized a few days later that he wasn’t kidding, and that he wasn’t making idle threats and was serious about wanting to leave her, she took the initiative and handed him a letter written by a lawyer asking the painter for his opinion. The lawyer suggested an uncontested divorce. Knowing his wife and having heard all the threats she’d made, the painter was initially surprised. He read and reread the letter, then told himself: “After all, it’s better this way, this will make things easier and quicker.”

He grew disillusioned in the weeks that followed. His wife had absolutely no intention of agreeing to a compromise. She was going to be ruthless, sick or not, disabled or not, she’d made up her mind: that man would have to pay for the audacity of wanting to leave her. The painter couldn’t find any rest. War had been declared and nothing would be able to stop it. “Uncontested divorce!” The idiot who’d come up with that term — one of those formulaic sentences of which there were so many in the world — couldn’t have imagined that the word “uncontested” didn’t mean anything to his wife.

Some of his friends volunteered to talk to her, to try and bring her to her senses since she was being so unreasonable. They wanted to help them reach a solution that would be mutually beneficial, without any more damage being caused and without involving the kids. Poor friends! They spent hours talking to her, which was a complete waste of their time. She listened to them, smiled, thanked them for their friendship and their concern. But it was like she had a thingamajig, a blender situated between her ears that pulverized their words into nothingness. Sometimes she swore that she would call her lawyer and withdraw from the divorce proceedings, then she would return home and ask their children to act as witnesses: “Your father wants a divorce, he wants to leave us, he’s found a girl who’s got her clutches on him and who wants to steal our money. I will have to ask the girls to lend me some money.”

When one of the children told her that it was the driver who always went out to do the shopping and run errands, and that their father still gave him money for that, she dodged the question and said: “I know, but he doesn’t want to anymore … Regardless, I wonder what kind of woman could possibly want him, considering the state that he’s in. He’s just a wreck, a vegetable, he’s good for nothing, he can’t paint anymore and his agent told me that he’s very worried because the price of his paintings have dipped lately!”

She was ready to do anything so long as it accomplished her aims.

One morning, after a sleepless night, the painter finally managed to doze off and had an erotic dream, something that hadn’t happened to him in a long time. He found himself at a party, where he met a young, sexy woman, with laughter in her eyes, and a slender, well-proportioned body, who was married with two children. She had come to the party without her husband. She worked as an official at the Ministry of Sports, and was away from home for work. As he’d been about to leave the party, she’d caught up to him and said: “Are you driving home? No? In a taxi or on foot? I have a car, why don’t you let me give you a lift?” To thank her, he’d placed his fedora on her head. It suited her really well. “Keep it!” In the elevator, she unbuttoned her blouse and pounced on him. When they got to the ground floor, she dragged him to a dark corner and pulled her skirt down. She wasn’t wearing any panties. Their excitement had reached its zenith, and they made love right there on the spot, standing up, the fedora fell off her head and tumbled onto the floor, then a rat passed by below. On seeing the rat, the painter had screamed and woken up with a start. “Damned rat!” he’d exclaimed.

Who was that young woman, where had he seen her? Where do the faces we see in our dreams come from? She resembled a French actress whose name he’d forgotten. Perhaps he’d watched one of her films on television or somewhere else. The painter smiled, but it turned into a grimace when he saw the lawyer’s crumpled-up letter in regards to the uncontested divorce lying on the bedside table amidst a jumble of medicine bottles. Without wasting a moment, he called his lawyer to check in with him and ask him to speed up the proceedings.

When the painter was ready and had washed and dressed, he called the Twins so he could start his physical therapy session. It now consisted of a series of gymnastics exercises and little walks. His assistants took him to a gym and helped him with his exercises. As he wanted to chat a little, he asked one of them:

“Are you married?”

“I am, sir.”

“Are you happy?”

“Let’s say it’s fine.”

Then he turned to the other.

“What about you, are you married?”

“No, sir.”

“And why not?”

“Have you seen what Moroccan women are like these days? Freedom, equality, they’re the ones in charge now. I see how much my poor brothers suffer …”

“But a lot of Moroccan women aren’t liberated, besides, that’s a good thing, they work, they can contribute to the family budget …”

“One day, my mother got tired of my father never talking to her and so she asked him if they could have a conversation — she was bored. Without taking his eyes off the television, my father told her, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll talk to you.’ The next day, my mother was very happy and impatient to have that conversation with him. But my father remained silent. ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked him. After a long silence, my father told her: ‘This is what I’m thinking about: if I’d killed you eighteen years ago, I’d only have two years left of my jail sentence right now!’ ”