The most we see here is a hint of decoration on the main street, most likely for the tourists. (Buy! Take something from Switzerland to your children!) But I still haven’t been by there yet, so this strange feeling can’t be Christmas. There isn’t a single Santa Claus hanging from a chimney, reminding us we should be happy the whole month of December.
I toss and turn in bed, as usual. My husband sleeps, as usual. Tonight we made love. This has become more frequent, I don’t know if it’s to cover up my affair or because my libido has been heightened. The fact is that I’ve been more sexually excited by him. He doesn’t ask me questions when I get home late, and he doesn’t show that he’s jealous. Except for the first time, when I had to rush straight to the bathroom, I follow Jacob’s instructions to eliminate all traces of odors and stained clothing. Now I always bring an extra pair of panties, take a shower at the hotel, and enter the elevator with flawless makeup. I don’t show any nervousness or raise suspicions. Twice I ran into people I know, and I made sure to say hello and leave them asking: “Is she meeting someone?” It’s good for the ego and absolutely safe. After all, if they’re in the elevator of a hotel in the same city where they live, they’re just as guilty as I am.
I fall asleep and then awake again a few minutes later. Victor Frankenstein created his monster, and Dr. Jekyll allowed his to come to the surface. This still doesn’t frighten me, but perhaps I need to go ahead and lay down a few rules for my behavior.
I have a side that is honest, kind, caring, professional, and capable of keeping my cool at difficult moments, especially during interviews, when some subjects prove aggressive or evade my questions.
But I am discovering a more spontaneous, impatient, wild side, one that is not confined to the hotel room where I meet with Jacob and one that is beginning to affect my daily routine. I am more easily irritated when a salesperson chats with a customer even though there’s a line. Now I go to the supermarket only out of necessity, and I’ve already stopped looking at prices and expiration dates. When someone says something I don’t agree with, I make a point of responding. I discuss politics. I defend movies everyone hates and criticize those everyone loves. I love surprising people with ridiculous and out-of-place opinions. In short, I’ve stopped being the reserved woman I always was.
People have started to notice. “You’re different!” they say. It’s one step away from “You’re hiding something,” which soon turns into “You only need to hide if you’re doing something you shouldn’t.”
I may just be paranoid, of course. But today I feel like two different people.
All David needed to do was order his men to bring him that woman. He didn’t owe anyone an explanation. And when trouble arose, he sent her husband to the battlefront. It’s different in my case. As discreet as the Swiss are, there are two situations when they become unrecognizable.
The first is in traffic. If someone lingers a fraction of a second to start his car after the light turns green, we immediately start to honk. If someone changes lanes, even with a turn signal flashing, he will always get a dirty look in the rearview mirror.
The second concerns the dangerous event of change, whether it’s our house, job, or behavior. Here, everything is stable, everyone behaves as expected. Please don’t try to be different or suddenly reinvent yourself, because you’ll be threatening our whole society. This country worked hard to reach its “finished” state; we don’t want to go back to being “under renovation.”
MY ENTIRE family and I are at the place where William, Victor Frankenstein’s brother, was murdered. For centuries, this was a swamp. After Calvin’s ruthless hands turned Geneva into a respectable city, the sick were brought here, usually to die of hunger and exposure, and thus keeping the city from being infected by any epidemics.
Plainpalais is huge, the only spot in the city center with virtually no greenery. In winter, the wind is bone-chilling. In summer, the sun makes us drip with sweat. It’s ridiculous. But since when have things needed a good reason to exist?
It’s Saturday and there are antiques vendors with stalls scattered all around. This market has become a tourist attraction and even appears in travel guides as a “good thing to do.” Sixteenth-century relics intermingle with VCRs. Antique bronze sculptures from the remote corners of Asia are displayed alongside horrible furniture from the eighties. The place is swarming with people. A few connoisseurs patiently examine a piece and talk at length with the vendors. The majority, tourists and onlookers, find things they will never need but end up buying because they’re so cheap. They return home, use them once, and then put them in the garage, thinking: “It’s completely useless, but it was a bargain.”
I have to keep the children under control the entire time; they want to touch everything, from valuable crystal vases to fancy toys from the turn of the nineteenth century. But at least they’re learning that intelligent life exists beyond video games.
One of them asks me if we can buy a metal clown with a movable mouth and limbs. My husband knows their interest in the toy will last only until we get home. He says it’s “old” and that we can buy something new on the way back. At the same time, their attention is diverted by some boxes of marbles, which children used to play with in the backyard.
My eyes fixate on a small painting; it’s of a nude woman, lying in bed, and an angel in the process of turning away. I ask the vendor how much it costs. Before telling me the price (a pittance), he explains that it’s a reproduction done by a local unknown painter. My husband observes us without saying a word and, before I can thank the man for the information and move on, he’s already paid for it.
Why did you do that?
“It represents an ancient myth. When we get back home I’ll tell you the story.”
I want to fall in love with him again. I never stopped loving him—I’ve always loved him and always will—but our life together is verging on monotony. Love can withstand this, but for lust, it’s fatal.
I am going through an extremely tough time. I know my relationship with Jacob has no future and I’ve turned my back on the man with whom I’ve built a life.
Whoever says “love is enough” is lying. It isn’t and it never has been. The big problem is that people believe what they see in books and movies—the couple that strolls along the beach holding hands, gazes at the sunset, and makes passionate love every day in nice hotels overlooking the Alps. My husband and I have done all that, but the magic lasts only one or two years, at most.
Then comes marriage. Choosing and decorating the house, planning the nursery for the children to come, kisses, dreams, a champagne toast in the empty living room that will soon be exactly as we imagined—everything in its place. Two years after the first child is born, the house has no more room and, if we add something, we risk looking like we live to impress others and will spend the rest of our lives buying and cleaning antiques (which will later be sold for a song by our heirs and eventually wind up at the Plainpalais market).