certain that I would have seen him after he was released from prison. But I graduated from college in June, and Sachs didn’t come to New York until August. By then, I had already moved out of my apartment and was on my way to Europe.
There’s no question that it was a strange match. In almost every way that I can think of, Ben and Fanny seemed to exist in mutually exclusive realms. Ben was all arms and legs, an erector set of sharp angles and bony protrusions, whereas Fanny was short and round, with a smooth face and olive skin. Ben was ruddy by comparison, with frizzy, unkempt hair, and skin that burned easily in the sun. He took up a lot of room, seemed to be constantly in motion, changed facial expressions every five or six seconds, whereas Fanny was poised, sedentary, catlike in the way she inhabited her body. She wasn’t beautiful to me so much as exotic, although that might be too strong a word for what I’m trying to express. An ability to fascinate isprobably closer to what I’m looking for, a certain air of self-sufficiency that made you want to watch her, even when she just sat there and did nothing. She wasn’t funny in the way Ben could be, she wasn’t quick, she never ran off at the mouth. And yet I always felt that she was the more articulate of the two, the more intelligent, the one with greater analytical powers. Ben’s mind was all intuition. It was bold but not especially subtle, a mind that loved to take risks, to leap into the dark, to make improbable connections. Fanny, on the other hand, was thorough and dispassionate, unremitting in her patience, not prone to quick judgments or ungrounded remarks. She was a scholar, and he was a wise guy; she was a sphinx, and he was an open wound; she was an aristocrat, and he was the people. To be with them was like watching a marriage between a panther and a kangaroo. Fanny, always superbly dressed, stylish, walking alongside a man nearly a foot taller than she was, an oversize kid in black Converse All-Stars, blue jeans, and a gray hooded sweatshirt. On the surface, it seemed to make no sense. You saw them together, and your first response was to think they were strangers.
But that was only on the surface. Underneath his apparent clumsiness, Sachs had a remarkable understanding of women. Not just of Fanny, but of nearly all the women he met, and again and again I was surprised by how naturally they were drawn to him. Growing up with three sisters might have had something to do with it, as if the intimacies learned in childhood had impregnated him with some occult knowledge, a way into feminine secrets that other men spend their whole lives trying to discover. Fanny had her difficult moments, and I don’t imagine she was ever an easy person to live with. Her outward calm was often a mask for inner turbulence, and on several occasions I saw for myself how quickly she could fall into dark, depressive moods, overcome by some indefinable anguish that would suddenly push her to the point of tears. Sachs protected herat those times, handling her with a tenderness and discretion that could be very moving, and I think Fanny learned to depend on him for that, to realize that no one was capable of understanding her as deeply as he did. More often than not, this compassion was expressed indirectly, in a language that outsiders couldn’t penetrate. The first time I went to their apartment, for example, the dinner conversation came around to the subject of children—whether or not to have them, when was the best time if you did, how many changes they caused, and so on. I remember talking strongly in favor of having them. Sachs, on the other hand, went into a long song and dance about why he disagreed. The arguments he used were fairly conventional (the world is too terrible a place, the population is too big, too much freedom would be lost), but he delivered them with such vehemence and conviction that I assumed he was speaking for Fanny as well and that both of them
There’s no question that it was a strange match. In almost every way that I can think of, Ben and Fanny seemed to exist in mutually exclusive realms. Ben was all arms and legs, an erector set of sharp angles and bony protrusions, whereas Fanny was short and round, with a smooth face and olive skin. Ben was ruddy by comparison, with frizzy, unkempt hair, and skin that burned easily in the sun. He took up a lot of room, seemed to be constantly in motion, changed facial expressions every five or six seconds, whereas Fanny was poised, sedentary, catlike in the way she inhabited her body. She wasn’t beautiful to me so much as exotic, although that might be too strong a word for what I’m trying to express. An ability to fascinate isprobably closer to what I’m looking for, a certain air of self-sufficiency that made you want to watch her, even when she just sat there and did nothing. She wasn’t funny in the way Ben could be, she wasn’t quick, she never ran off at the mouth. And yet I always felt that she was the more articulate of the two, the more intelligent, the one with greater analytical powers. Ben’s mind was all intuition. It was bold but not especially subtle, a mind that loved to take risks, to leap into the dark, to make improbable connections. Fanny, on the other hand, was thorough and dispassionate, unremitting in her patience, not prone to quick judgments or ungrounded remarks. She was a scholar, and he was a wise guy; she was a sphinx, and he was an open wound; she was an aristocrat, and he was the people. To be with them was like watching a marriage between a panther and a kangaroo. Fanny, always superbly dressed, stylish, walking alongside a man nearly a foot taller than she was, an oversize kid in black Converse All-Stars, blue jeans, and a gray hooded sweatshirt. On the surface, it seemed to make no sense. You saw them together, and your first response was to think they were strangers.
But that was only on the surface. Underneath his apparent clumsiness, Sachs had a remarkable understanding of women. Not just of Fanny, but of nearly all the women he met, and again and again I was surprised by how naturally they were drawn to him. Growing up with three sisters might have had something to do with it, as if the intimacies learned in childhood had impregnated him with some occult knowledge, a way into feminine secrets that other men spend their whole lives trying to discover. Fanny had her difficult moments, and I don’t imagine she was ever an easy person to live with. Her outward calm was often a mask for inner turbulence, and on several occasions I saw for myself how quickly she could fall into dark, depressive moods, overcome by some indefinable anguish that would suddenly push her to the point of tears. Sachs protected herat those times, handling her with a tenderness and discretion that could be very moving, and I think Fanny learned to depend on him for that, to realize that no one was capable of understanding her as deeply as he did. More often than not, this compassion was expressed indirectly, in a language that outsiders couldn’t penetrate. The first time I went to their apartment, for example, the dinner conversation came around to the subject of children—whether or not to have them, when was the best time if you did, how many changes they caused, and so on. I remember talking strongly in favor of having them. Sachs, on the other hand, went into a long song and dance about why he disagreed. The arguments he used were fairly conventional (the world is too terrible a place, the population is too big, too much freedom would be lost), but he delivered them with such vehemence and conviction that I assumed he was speaking for Fanny as well and that both of them
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