THE TELEPHONE TRIED to wake me up. It failed at first, but it kept ringing for a couple of minutes. Ultimately, I was forced to pick up the call. As I lifted the receiver, a woman’s voice announced sharply: ‘Hello!!...’ It was not a solicitation. The voice continued without pause: ‘Darling, this is a friend calling… You don’t know me, but I know you and the scoundrel you have for a husband…’
‘How dare you…?’
‘Your husband is sleeping around and has told everyone he knows.’
‘I’m not listening to this drivel.’
‘If you want to confirm that what I am saying is true, all you need to do is wait until lunch time. At the lunch break he’ll call to say that he won’t be home for supper because he has a meeting at work. The meeting is actually with his secretary, and is not at the office but in one of these hotels that rent by the hour. Specifically, he likes to go to ‘The Nest,’ an establishment in the red light district, at 67 Virtues Street. He always asks for Room 11, which is the one least visible from the street. If you show up tonight after seven you will catch him in the act.’
‘And how do you know all these details?’
‘That’s how he and I used to do it.’
‘Liar! … Liar! …. My husband would never …!’
Click.
Eric had gotten up late and in a bad mood, as I had stayed in bed and let him fix his own breakfast. In a dream I heard him fumbling around in the kitchen, spewing curses.
Eventually he left, slamming the front door so hard that it almost got me out of bed. He didn’t come to say goodbye, maybe because I had not gotten up to make him breakfast.
The telephone rang again. I looked at the clock: twelve fifteen. Trembling, I lifted the receiver.
‘Hi, mom….’
‘It’s not your mom, it’s Eric.’ He sounded so cold and distant! ‘Listen, I am not eating at home tonight. Some reps from a Swedish company are visiting and we need to show them our hospitality, so I’m having dinner with them and my boss. Don’t wait up for me, I don’t know when we’ll get done.’
I didn’t answer. ‘Are you there?’ he asked. ‘Yes, it’s fine,’ I replied automatically. He hung up.
All of a sudden, it was past six o’clock. I got dressed in a rush, looked for the 9 mm Glock Eric had insisted that I get for my protection, threw it in my purse, and left almost running in search of my car.
As I approached the red light district, the hysterical energy that impelled me began to dissipate. I realized that if I confronted them, I was going to end crying like a baby and they were going to laugh at me. No, there would be time enough to settle the score. I made a U-turn and returned home.
How bitter was that night! Sitting on the sofa, my handbag laying rigidly between my knees; eyes that no longer could cry fixed on the door frame; my soul hanging by a thread while my mind raced through all sorts of conflicting emotions, analysing the process of our separation, noting how small differences grew until they became cracks and then chasms. I kept caressing with one hand our wedding picture, sitting on the table in front of the sofa, and holding in the other the gun, still in the handbag.
An eternity later, I heard his steps, which multiplied as he approached; the key scratched the door lock, and the door swung away, admitting into the apartment the hallway shadows.
‘What are you doing awake at this late hour?’ he greeted me.
‘Eric, we have to talk. I know everything.’
‘What do you mean, you know everything?’
‘Everything is everything. I know you have been unfaithful to me, God knows for how long, without for a moment thinking of the pain you would be inflicting once I found out.’
‘Woman, who has been filling your mind with all that crap?’
‘Yes, deny it, what does it matter? Try to hide what everybody knows. You and your secretary! What a shame!’
‘My secretary? I’ve never even paid attention to her.’
‘Then what were you two doing tonight in Room 11 of “The Nest”?’
Eric never keeps from responding to someone else, but this time he didn’t find what to say. He knifed me silently with angry eyes.
Finally, he declared: ‘You’re crazy.’
‘Yes, crazy with anger. To think I held you up as an idol, that I worshipped you, and you have betrayed me in such a vulgar way.’
‘Aww, mama, that’s enough. If you want to believe those stories, that’s your problem.’ He seized the head of the sofa and bent towards me, flexing the muscles in his chest and arms. I thought he was going to hit me, but he only snarled venomously:
‘OK, let’s talk frankly. We can’t go on like we are. There is no home, no marriage, nothing between us.’ Then he added in a somewhat calmer tone:
‘It’s impossible. We need to separate. Tomorrow I will go see my lawyer.’
‘That’s how you want to fix it, we get a divorce and you continue with that tart….’
‘With her or with whoever I please. It shouldn’t matter to you, because I won’t stay with you one more day!’ he shouted, striking the sofa not far from my head.
‘And I thought that you liked me, that you loved me so much.’
‘That was at first. I never had imagined that a woman could be so superficial, so lazy, so useless. What’s more, you’re worthless in bed. You’re as cold as a corpse…’
‘So, you are going! You are abandoning me…!’ As I mumbled, my hands moved as if they had a life of their own. ‘So, you are leaving!’ I repeated.
‘What are you doing? Put that gun away, for Heaven’s sake… Don’t play with it…’
‘So, you are trying to leave me …!’ I raised the gun, and panic took human form in front of me.
‘Please don’t shoot!!’
Despite my jealousy and disappointment, I still loved him. That’s why I turned the barrel of the gun away at the last minute and shot towards the floor. However, seeing the insane look on my eyes, Eric threw himself at me trying to pry the gun away from me and, as we fought, another shot rang and was lodged in Eric’s upper back. He fell at my feet with a heavy thud.
I still can see him on the floor, opening and closing his mouth like a drowning fish, breathing fitfully. I was able with great difficulty to drag him to the sofa, and leaned him against it as best I could. Then I began pacing back and forth, not knowing what to do. He finally opened his eyes and looked at me, his face a mask of pain. ‘Do something,’ he moaned. ‘Call an ambulance.’
I finally snapped out of it and ran to the telephone. While I waited for the ambulance to arrive, I found a towel and tried to stanch his wound. The bullets of a 9 mm are small, and the wound did not bleed all that much. Then I noticed that his bowels had emptied from the scare and started to laugh uncontrollably: Eric, wounded and bathed in blood and shit, was a frightful image that at the same time seemed ridiculous. He was startled by my laughter, and kept staring at the black holes in the carpet, the gun on the table, and the mad woman in front of him.
He would not press charges and, because of that, everything was labelled an accident and I was able to escape liability. Eric went into convalescence, but did not recover entirely. The bullet had shattered the first vertebra of his dorsal spine. He would never walk again.
Now you can see me, sitting next to him on our bed, helping him eat his soup. He tells me, in a tone of voice that he had not used with me in years: ‘My dear…’
One gets tired of reading how happiness in a marriage is based on respect, understanding, tenderness, mutual forbearance and all the rest. If so, what explains our case? The Eric that I now nurse is not the man I married, and not one trait is left of those that made him attractive to me. I still hate him for his betrayal, but guilt dominates all other emotions. And maybe I still love him a little.
For his part, Eric is perhaps grateful that I spared his life, and that I am his caretaker and protector. I think that now he even loves me a little.
We have an ideal marriage.
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