The Act of Love by Howard Jacobson

Author:Howard Jacobson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780143170655
Publisher: Penguin Group (Canada)
Published: 2009-12-21T10:00:00+00:00

I too was standing at the rear but changed my position when I saw him enter. It felt like a changing of the watch. He stepped forward, I stepped back. A woman in front of me turned round to see what the commotion was, so loudly was my heart beating.

Marisa’s talk was a success. That air she had of being somewhere else worked well when she spoke in public. She didn’t try to please. She gave the impression of a person looking deep into a subject which both was and wasn’t in the room with her. The right way, I have always thought, to address art. As something that is and isn’t of one’s time.

People went up to her afterwards to talk about this and that. I hung back, as I always did. Not a husband’s business to be nosing into his wife ’s public triumphs. But I had more reason to stay out of the way this time because Marius, too, was waiting to say something to her. He let others go before him. I recognised the tactic. He wanted to be last. When he did have her to himself he ventured an observation he hoped she wouldn’t find too personal.

‘A very impressive act of concealment,’ he said, touching his moustaches nervously.

She wondered what he meant.

‘I feel I have been listening to someone speaking fondly of an enemy rather than a friend,’ he went on.

‘I don’t think of Lady Blessington as my enemy. Why should I? She is past doing me any harm.’

He smiled a slow sad knowing smile. ‘A person can harm you from the grave,’ he said.

She looked up at him. She wasn’t used to looking up at men. ‘And what harm, even from the grave, is it that you think I fear? Not the harm of a comparison, I hope. I’m not competing with her for fortune, or for looks.’

His eyes went from her to the painting and back again. His expression suggested she had nothing to fear from any such comparison. ‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘I think you bear a striking resemblance to her, or she to you if you prefer it that way.’

‘Well I wouldn’t say no to her figure,’ she laughed. Marisa had never needed me to teach her how to her flirt.

She coloured a little. So did he.

‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if the similarity isn’t precisely the reason for your hostility towards her, if that isn’t to put it too extremely. There ’s something in her eyes that might remind you of yourself. Something that would be direct and yet isn’t. Not a pleading, exactly, but a half-sadness, and with it a sort of expectation of sympathy she isn’t certain she deserves or even wants.’

Rather than look at Marius, who was becoming guilty of something very close to impertinence, Marisa looked at the portrait. He was right. Lady Blessington leans a little forward in her scarlet chair, lightly clasping her hands – a gesture of nervous ownership, of composure not quite attained.

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