The Story of My Wife Read Free

at hand is a wild nighttime romp, a murder, or dreamy walks in cemeteries and parks, Füst does what he must.
    He develops each sequence masterfully and embellishes them with the most ingenious of devices. The master novelist adheres to his own aesthetic precepts, alternating cleverly and refreshingly bet ween narrative summaries and "evocative delineations," that is, brief surveys of great blocks of time, and focused exposes of shorter stretches.
    His somewhat mannered prose has a unique rhythm, a captivating ebb and flow; moreover, the regular alternation of voices and viewpoints suggests the wild contradictions at work in the author himself —he knows the language of compassion as well as the language of despair; he can be unusually kind and unusually cruel.
    Captain Jacob Störr is a man without illusions, but his one pas sion: his undying wish to know what makes his wife tick makes him so alert, so eager, so tormented, we can't help liking him. I wouldn't mind joining the captain for a good stiff drink in a bar. Even if I didn't see him again, I'd remember him. If you, too, want to remember this decent seaman, who, though not at all stupid, is still a big fool for bungling life's greatest gift simply because he's too wor ried about it not being really his—if you want to listen to a common place story as told by an irresistible narrator, then do read Captain Störr's reminiscences about his wife.

 
    THE STORY OF MY WIFE
     
    Te vocamus, quod sic plasmavisti hominem et
    hominem itidem vocamus, qui tamen debet
    praestare seipsum . . .  percipe hanc
    altercationem in corde nostro diabolicam,
    Domine! Et oculos sanctos Tuos in inopiam
     nostram conjicere non gravator, sed conspice
    portentum clam nobis abditum, in extis . . .
     accedit, quod allectationes nutriunt ipsum
    velut alece. Et ne nos inducas in
    tentationem, supplicamus ad versprum,
    peccatum tamen ostium pulsat intratque
    domum et intrat prorsus ad mensam. Amove
    ergo sartaginem igneam, qua caro siccatur,
    nam animal in me debile crebro.
    (From a medieval devotions)
     

One
    MY WIFE'S BEEN UNFAITHFUL, THIS MUCH I HAVE LONG suspected. But that she should take up with a man like that... I stand over six feet tall, weigh 210 pounds, am a veritable giant, in short, the sort of person who—as they say— only has to spit on someone and the man is finished.
    That's what I first thought I would do to Monsieur Dedin . . . Ah, but this is not where I should begin . . . It's no use; I still get worked up when I think of him.
    The truth of the matter is that getting married was a mistake— all the more since up until then I had very little to do with women, I was cold by nature. I look back on my early youth and find that the only story of an erotic nature worth recollecting is the following: I could not have been more than thirteen. The place was a park in the Dutch city of Sneek, in Friesland, where we then lived. A governess sat in the park with a small child, whom she kept admonishing:
    "Veux-tu obéir, veux-tu obéir?"
    I loved the sound of the words. She also said to the child:
    "Vite, vite, depêche-toi donc."
    And I liked that too. It's quite possible I decided right then and there that I would marry a French woman. At any rate, I enjoyed listening to that sweet melody. Then, as though by divine inspiration, I walked to the edge of the park, tore out a page from my exercise-book, and wrote two words on it, in Dutch (for I could not yet then write in French, nor did I speak the language, though I did understand it when others spoke it).
    "Greppel, greppel," I wrote, that is, let's lie in the ditch a little. There was indeed a rather deep, grassy ditch nearby. With the piece of paper I walked back to the governess and stood meekly before her, looking at her sweetly, the way I did when as a little boy I was sent with a list to the corner grocer. Then I held up the little piece of paper in front of her.
    Naturally, the governess thought I was crazy.
    She