Julia and the Bazooka and Other Stories by Anna Kavan

Author:Anna Kavan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0.86001.630.7
Published: 1970-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Now and Then

Now it's sometimes difficult to believe he's the painter first met four years ago.

Then he was completely absorbed in his work. He'd had important one-man shows in Paris and Amsterdam, his pictures were exhibited in galleries everywhere, all the critics agreed he had a brilliant future before him. Besides working hard, he did strenuous things when he wasn't working, liked climbing, swimming, speedboats, fast cars, was learning to fly his own plane.

Now he doesn't work at all any more. He's given up painting and all his other pursuits. Now the only thing he likes is to lie on a bed or a sofa, doing absolutely nothing.

Then he was very particular about his appearance, fastidious. He had eighteen pairs of shoes and a fantastic number of elegant suits for all sorts of occasions and climates. His shirts, which he sometimes changed several times a day, were specially made by hand, with an embroidered monogram on the pocket. don't mean that he dressed formally. In the country, he often wore the same sort of clothes as the local people, only his were always made by a famous tailor and never lost their style.

Now he lounges about all day in a dressing gown, untidy, unshaved. When he does dress, his expensive clothes look as if they had been passed on by someone else, too tight for him, unpressed, stained with food, drink, ash, God knows what.

The first time went out with him, I remember he wore a blue shirt and corduroy trousers as soft and as white as milk. He was very attractive then, very sexy. He wasn't exactly slim, but certainly not at all heavy, just muscular and solidly well-proportioned in the brown masculine Mediterranean way, with an aquiline profile and beautiful sea-colored eyes set in long, long lashes.

Now he's put on weight and it doesn't suit him. It makes him look middle-aged, mediocre. His SkIn is still brown, but somehow it looks unhealthy, more like jaundice than suntan.

Outwardly, and in every other way, he's become totally unlike the man I married.

Then we had such a lot in common. Now we're absolute opposites in almost everything. Then he was lively, friendly, amusing; sociable, but able to do without people. His work always came first. Now he's become more gregarious since he stopped working, but in a disagreeable way. Every night he has to find somebody to drink with; he doesn't seem to care who it is.

Then, underlying his gaiety, there was a sort of secret seriousness, not displayed to the world, which to me was attractive, endearing. I could sense how seriously he was involved, with his work, and with all kinds of private, interior things. So I thought then, anyhow.

Now this inner seriousness has ceased to exist. His whole personality is entirely different.

Then he was quite content to be alone with me and his work. Now he has no time either for work or for me, but only for strangers he picks up in bars. I simply don't understand it.

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