Story of the Month: The Blue Curtains

I, my friend, am the captive of a spell that has taken hold of me and possessed me until I can no longer free myself from it. I am driven in everything I do — I say it contented and at ease; and it makes no difference to me whether it was amulets and charms that bewitched me, as you and my mother believe, or whether it was nobility, perfect womanhood, and goodness of character that bewitched me, as I believe. What matters is that I am happy in this spell and jealous of it. Why deny it, my friend, when I have always known you frank and brave? I am certain it was my mother who sent you to me, in the hope that you might succeed in persuading me where she had failed. Come then, let me tell you my story, and afterward judge between us as you please.

My mother would always seize on my wife's absence to say to me:

My heart, my son, burns with sorrow for you whenever I see you, in the prime of your youth, beside your aging wife who bears no children. Sometimes I would dodge this talk, and sometimes I would beg her to leave me be, for I was happy with the one I had chosen for myself and accepted. But I will not hide from you that a few months ago I began to listen to my mother's talk, and her words began to sink into the depths of my soul. Among the things she would say:

How can you bear it, my son, to be granted no children, when ten years have passed since your marriage? By God, I do not know how happiness finds its way into a house empty of children, who scatter the tedium and boredom that overtake a married couple from time to time.

What my mother says is true. Boredom had begun to creep in between me and my wife: when we spent an evening at home, the long hours would pass without our exchanging a single word — I reading, she knitting; one of us might yawn and the other answer with a longer yawn. Is not such stagnation a frightful thing in the life of a young couple? I used to bear it contentedly in the past, but I had come to find it unbearable. So then — I want children. And why should I not dare to settle this matter? Am I the only man who will sacrifice his wife for the sake of children? Hundreds and thousands of men sacrificed their wives before me, and they had their acceptable excuse. But I do not wish, my friend, to go on deceiving you as I deceived myself in the past. Behind everything I have told you there was a bewitching young woman to whom my heart had attached itself. The children and the boredom I told you about were nothing but excuses I invented before my own conscience, so as to be rid of my poor wife and win the one who had not yet passed her twentieth spring. And I thank God I did not succeed in what I aimed at — see to what lengths self-deception can sometimes go.

The young woman was a neighbor of my mother's, and I would find her there whenever I came to visit, as if she and I had an appointment. My visits to my mother multiplied: I used to visit her once a week, and soon I was visiting her every day; and the cunning girl wove her nets about me, until, once sure of her prey, she began to dictate her conditions. She would not accept me as a husband unless I divorced my wife and wrote her a bond for a thousand gold liras, payable to her the day I took my wife back, and unless I presented her on our wedding day with a diamond ring weighing no less than ten carats. I accepted it all. But the knot of knots was how to broach the matter to my wife — gentle and at peace in her home, striving for my happiness and caring for me as if I were her pampered child. It occurred to me to stir up a quarrel between us that would end in separation, but I did not succeed. How can you scowl at one who smiles at you? How pick a quarrel with one who keeps peace with you and bears your harshness with an open heart and a wondrous patience? A terrible oppression seized me that all but killed me. I was perplexed, dazed, agitated, not knowing what to do. I had bought the ring and written the bond, and nothing remained but to divorce her and contract marriage with the one my heart yearned for. Then I hit upon a way that pleased me. I would tell my wife I was traveling — it was my habit to travel from time to time on account of my trade — and ask her to go to her family during my absence, which this time would last longer than usual. Then I would write her a letter confessing everything, and what was between us would end on the easiest of pretexts. What a splendid idea! Why had I not hit upon it before? And when morning

came I broached the splendid idea to her, trying my utmost to be natural with her, as she was used to seeing me. And then a pallor rose over her gentle face; she sank onto a couch near her and sat there, her head bowed toward the floor; the ghost of a sad smile passed over her lips, and she began to shake her head as if to say:

This is what I was waiting for. My God — what had come over her, that this mute gloom should seize her? Had she learned what I intended for her? And how had the news reached her? A curse on this town that keeps no secret! I wanted to say something, but the spittle dried in my throat and the words deserted my mind, and I found nothing to say. She sat down on the couch opposite, and a heavy silence settled between us. I reached my hand into my pocket to take out the tobacco case — do we not resort to the cigarette in our nervous moments, to ease our breasts? — and my hand stumbled upon a small velvet box. What a dull fool I am! I had forgotten the ring in my pocket, and a shudder ran through me when I touched it, like a criminal at the sight of the instrument of his crime... She must have seen it and understood everything.

I kept from looking at her, for fear our eyes should meet and she read something in mine. Then I stole a glance at her, and there she was, still in her first posture, like a statue of stone, dignity and pride showing upon her despite the deep sorrow. She had laid one hand upon the other — her hands, exquisitely formed, still soft and fresh, like the hands of the Gioconda — and on her hand the wedding ring had begun to gleam. What a painful memory that ring brought back to me: the day I knelt before her and covered her hands with kisses, then reached into my pocket and drew out this very ring and placed it on her finger; and she pressed my head to her, and I closed my eyes and felt as if I were the happiest man on the face of the earth. And then her tears fell scattered and warm upon my face. My God — you weep in our happiest hour? She said in a trembling voice: "If you only knew how much I love you, and how much I sacrificed for your sake when I consented to wear this ring. You know I am older than you, and that I was married before you and bore no children; a day must come when you will tire of me and pull this ring from my hand. What misery will await me then? And do you suppose I could bear it?" And I pressed her to me, saying: Dearest of all people to me, is there anyone on earth

who could ever tire of you? Promise me, by your Lord, never to repeat those words in my hearing again, for they wound me to the core.

No doubt she is remembering all of that now. Why did she not burst out weeping, and revile me, and curse me, and call me the ugliest of names? Anything, by God, would be easier for me than this silence that all but strangles me. I felt a strong impulse urging me to rise and gather her into my arms and beg her pardon and her forgiveness. But this feeling — surely it comes of the spell my mother had so often told me about; so let me hold out a little: this is the hardest stage of our case. Then the telephone bell rang, and I breathed freely again, as if it had released me from my captivity. I hurried to answer it; it was a trivial call, and I did not go back to her, but put on my coat and went out into the street, got into my car, and set to roaming the roads without any aim. I was like a man in fever, assailed by all manner of forebodings, unable to fix my thoughts on a single point. By God, I wished some accident might befall me and end my life, to deliver me from what I was in.

When lunchtime came I returned to the house, and hesitated long before entering it, asking myself: what is she doing now? Is she still sunk where she was, or has she gone to her family? I turned the key in the door and entered like a thief — and there was the house in the best of order: the flowers fresh and arranged in their vases, and everything gleaming — the floor, the walls, the windowpanes, the mirrors. What a fairy she is! How could she have accomplished all that, when we keep no servant, and she in such grief and anxiety and agitation? What can she be aiming at behind all this? Is it to prove to her rival that she is a mistress of the house of the first order? I was dumbfounded when I saw two large suitcases in the entrance; then she appeared before me, dressed in her full outdoor clothes, her face still pale, her eyes worn. My tongue failed me before her; then she said in a low voice, without looking at me: Would you be so kind as to drive me in your car to my family's house? I answered in a quavering voice: As you wish. Then she looked at the two suitcases, and looked at me, and said: Will you carry them, or shall I? I said, stammering: No — I will carry them. And I carried the two heavy suitcases and put them in the trunk of the car, saying to myself: My God, is it with such ease that everything between us is concluded?

Then she closed the house door gently and took the whole of it in with one glance, as if bidding it a last farewell; then she walked, head bowed, to the car, opened its door, and sat in the back seat, contrary to her habit. I was on the point of inviting her to sit beside me — but would not my inviting her be absurdity itself?

I turned the wheel of the car, my hands trembling — and suddenly she cried out to me: Stop! Stop, for God's sake! I forgot — I forgot to close the windows of the sitting room, and the sun will ruin the blue curtains. So I stopped the car, and she went back to close the windows; and I leaned my weary head on the wheel and closed my eyes and began saying to myself:

Poor soul! What are the blue curtains to you now, whether the sun ruins them or not? You know very well that they are yours no longer — that they will soon become the property of a rival of yours. And I remembered how she had gone round the markets when she bought those curtains, until she found that rare shade of blue; and how many days she spent bent over them, embroidering their edges and hemming their borders. No one ever entered our house without praising those curtains, and the taste that had chosen them, and the craftsman's hand that had embroidered them. You, poor soul, are the mother of this house: you created it, you tended it, and you want it whole and kept from harm, as a mother wants her child, even if it be in another's keeping. What a hard, stony-hearted man I am! How could I deprive you of all this? Ah, if only you could bear children! And at once there loomed in my imagination the figure of the girl of twenty, bending and laughing and looking at me slyly, as if to say: Is it truly for the children's sake that you leave her — or for mine?

And I found myself leaping from the car, crossing the garden in two strides, and pushing the door — colliding with her face to face behind it; then seizing her hand and drawing her back into the house, saying to her: Is it not better, my dear, that you stay here to look after your blue curtains? She understood what I meant, and collapsed onto the first seat she saw and burst into tears. Her strong nerves, which had been able to master the tears of grief, could not master the tears of joy.

And I found myself kneeling before her and kissing her hands; then I reached into my pocket and took the diamond ring from its velvet box and placed it on her finger; and she pressed my head to her, and her tears fell warm upon my face. I felt an immense relief, as if a heavy load had been lifted from my shoulders — or as if I were a drowning man who had wrestled with waves and tempests, and, coming at last to the shore of safety, sank into rest. So let this be a spell, my friend: I am content with it, at peace in it, and I would accept no deliverance from it, as though it had never been.