Portraits of a Marriage by Sandor Marai

Author:Sandor Marai [Marai, Sandor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2011-02-22T05:00:00+00:00

Part III

What are you looking at, darling? Photographs? You carry on. At least you have something to do while I make the coffee.

Wait, let me put my housecoat on. What’s the time? Half-past three? I’ll just open the window for a moment. No, don’t get up, stay in bed. Look how bright the moon is. It’s quite full. The town is absolutely quiet at this time, fast asleep. In half an hour, at four, the trucks will start rumbling, bringing vegetables and milk and meat to market. But Rome is properly asleep now in the moonlight. I don’t tend to sleep at this time, because I have been waking at three with a pounding heart for a while now. What are you laughing at? I don’t mean a pounding heart as when we are making love. Stop laughing! The doctor says it is at this time the heart rate changes, you know, as when you change gear from first to second in the car. And another man—not a doctor—once told me that three in the morning is when the earth’s magnetic field changes. Have you any idea what that means? I don’t, either. He had read it in a Swiss book. Yes, it was him, the man whose photograph you are holding. He said it.

Don’t move, darling. If only you knew how beautiful you are when you lie in bed, your head propped on your arm, your hair falling over your eyes! You have to go to the museum to see men’s bodies as splendid as yours. And your face too, yes … what can I say? It’s the head of an artist. Why are you looking at me so suspiciously? You know I adore you. Because you are gorgeous. Because you’re an artist. Because you are my one and only. You’re a gift from God. Wait, don’t move, let me kiss you! No, just here, in the corner of your eye! And your brow! No, relax. You’re not cold? Shall I close the window? It’s mild out in the street, and those two orange trees under the window are shining in the moonlight. When you’re not here at night I often lean on the window-sill till dawn and watch the moonlit Via Liguria, this sweet and lovely street. See? There’s someone stealing along by the houses, just as in the Middle Ages. Do you know who it is? You mustn’t laugh at me. Just because I’m in love with you, just because I think you are the only one in the world for me forever, my dear, it doesn’t mean I’m silly. It’s old age slinking along the Via Liguria under my window, and not just here, but all over Rome and everywhere else, all over the world.

Old age is a thief and a murderer. One day he enters the room. He has blacked his face up with soot, like a burglar. With both hands he tears the mop of hair off your head, hits you across the face

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