I Confess Read Free

drank in long, thirsty gulps. Her neat little stomach rose and fell with every swallow. I turned away. I couldn't watch her. The smell of fresh, cold beer hit me suddenly and I felt renewed waves of nausea. This peculiarity of hers to drink beer on awakening, regardless of her surroundings or the situation she might be in, always aroused the same astonished aversion in me. Yolanda was the only woman I knew who could do this, and I didn't like it. Meanwhile she had emptied a second glass, sat down on the bed and stuck a cigarette in her mouth. I gave her a light. She blew a cloud of smoke into the room and asked, "Where?"
    That was another one of her peculiarities: to pepper a conversation with gaps, thus letting it die for a while, then abruptly picking up the thread only to break it again just as unpredictably. At first this had confused me, but I soon became used to it.
    "There's something I have to attend to...."
    "But you're coming back?"
    "No."
    "No?" Her right eyebrow went up. "We were going to the theatre."
    "Sorry, but I can't. Go with someone else."
    I laid a hand on her shoulder and started to stroke her, absentmindedly, but she shook me off. "Don't."
    "What's the matter?"
    She looked at me wordlessly. Her lips, usually full and pouting, were narrowed; her nostrils quivered; a strand of hair was hanging down her face again, but she didn't seem to notice it. Still she said nothing. All I could hear was the rain and her breathing.

    "I asked you something." My headache was getting worse. Mechanically I reached for a cigarette.
    "You have to go to your wife, right?"
    "Among other things."
    "Why didn't you teU me before?"
    "You knew it."
    "I didn't know it."
    My temples were pounding. I could feel the blood coursing through them. "Yolanda, what's the matter with you? Are you jealous?"
    "Of Margaret?" She knocked the ash off her cigarette contemptuously. It fell on the carpet. It always fell on the carpet.
    "So... what then?"
    "I'm not jealous. I've had all I can take."
    "Of what?" I was very nervous, very irritated. The words came from me slowly; I knew my face betrayed my pain.
    "Don't look so miserable!" She took a few quick puffs. "You have no reason to be miserable. If anyone does, it's me."
    "Is that so?"
    "Yes, that's so."
    "You mean you're doing badly."
    "I'll say I'm doing badly."
    "I don't satisfy you."
    "You don't."
    "Then perhaps we should call it quits."
    "Perhaps."
    I pulled myself together and smiled at her. "Just a minute," I said. "What's the matter with us? How did we get into all this? A few minutes ago everything was peaceful—or wasn't it?"
    She didn't answer.
    "So come on, let's be friends agam. If it's anything I did, I'm sorry." I knew very well that I hadn't done a thmg, certainly nothing to be sorry for, but I said it just

    the same. Anything to have peace. "There now, is everything all right?"
    "No."
    I drew a deep breath. She seemed determined to make a scene.
    "Why not?" '
    Dear God, how familiar I was with all this, the words, the looks, the hysteria. How unbearable it all was, and how ridiculous!
    "Because it doesn't suit me."
    "What doesn't suit you?"
    The same old dialogue, the same old sequence of events: phrases repeated, hstened to, concihatory smiles. And a headache. Above all, a headache.
    "Nothing suits me!"
    She jumped to her feet, slipped into a robe and began to pace back and forth. You could see how much good this Uttle outburst was doing her, how she was enjoying it. Her wide, green silk housecoat fluttered around her white thighs. She stumbled on one of her high heels and kicked off her slippers. "Nothing! What do you take me for anyway? How long do you think you can keep this up?"
    "Keep what up?"
    "This httle ritual. Love by timetable. Monday from four to eight, Wednesday evening in the olBBce, if you've got something you want to dictate, Thursday morning, and then the weekend, if your wife chooses to go away."
    I looked at her. I thought she had grown older in the three