Read Online Memories of a Marriage by Louis Begley - Free Book Online

told Father I was in St. Moritz skiing and would call on New Year’s Eve if I could get through. Yes, I was having a great time. He didn’t think to ask for a number where he could reach me. I particularly didn’t want to lose face with the hotel people—they were the ones who counted just then—so I came up with the idea of asking the concierge to book a
couchette
for me on the night train to Paris. That was where I said I was going to spend the fêtes. Actually, I wasn’t sure whether I’d really go to Paris and hunker down at the apartment or pretend to be sick and stay in bed until the NewYear. Another scheme came into my head, and I couldn’t get rid of it. It was to throw myself down the hotel stairs, which were carpeted, and pretend I had fallen. I’d fake a concussion or something like it. By that time, it was late, and I had been crying, and I was hungry. I had dinner sent up to the room. When the table was cleared, I asked the waiter to leave the wine and my wineglass and bring another bottle of the same wine. I remember it very well. It was a Fendant de Sierre I had ordered to go with the lake fish I had that evening. White wine has always made me sleep, but nothing was happening. I just sat there, drinking and crying. Finally I got undressed, took a hot bath, put on my pajamas, got into bed, and had a Seconal and a Miltown with the rest of the wine. That didn’t do the trick, and I was determined to have a good night’s sleep, so I took another Seconal. In retrospect, what happened next is clear, though I have no memory of how it happened. I must have sleepwalked because the next morning, around six, the chambermaid found me splayed on the stairs. Luckily, I was unconscious. I had broken my leg, the pain would have been unbearable, and help wouldn’t have come no matter how loud I called. The hotel was almost empty on account of the approaching holidays. My loss-of-face problem was halfway solved: I wasn’t the lady who had no place to go for Christmas; I was the lady who had drunk too much Fendant. I didn’t care. I was in the hospital. When I returned with my big fat cast the roly-poly doctor found nurses to help me. They slept on a foldout cot in the living room. I refused to be in a clinic. At first the physiotherapist came to the hotel. Later the nurse took me there. Fatherforced Mother to come over to check up. She realized how much I was drinking and yelled and carried on about how if I didn’t check into the clinic to be looked after for my leg and dried out I wouldn’t be welcome in Bristol. Also how they’d stop my money, which I knew they couldn’t do because of the trust. It wasn’t the first time. I mean she’d thrown me out of the house once before, when I got in trouble in my last year at Farmington and wasn’t allowed to attend graduation. The head was afraid I’d contaminate the other girls! So I told Mother to fuck herself.
    Hubert showed up eventually one evening, cool as a cucumber, took a good look, told me I’d been letting myself go,
Tu t’es vraiment laissée aller, ma vieille
, and asked if my keeper—the nurse had tactfully withdrawn into the bedroom—was always there. Wasn’t there some way to send her on an errand, get her to stretch her legs,
se dérouiller les jambes?
The idea wasn’t hard to get: he thought I was underfucked. A little sex would put me in gear. I had been drinking little glasses of Fendant, and the feeling of revulsion he had at first inspired slowly yielded to an imperious and monstrous need to be used by him, to descend even deeper into humiliation. I called out to Madame Berthe and said that monsieur would stay for dinner. I’d see her in the morning. She said,
Bien, madame
, and was out the door. I was wearing a long silk peignoir; it was easiest at home with the cast. Getting dressed to go to physiotherapy was a production. I was sitting on a small sofa—I guess you could call it a love seat. He didn’t try to undress me. Just spread