Intimacies(7)

Very surprising what happened, the man standing beside me said. I nodded, distracted, as if I knew what he was talking about. Adriaan was deep in conversation with a woman whose back was turned toward me. As I watched, she waved her hand through the air, Adriaan leaned closer as if he had not quite heard the words she had spoken. His handsome face bowed down to hers. A moment later, she laughed, tossing her head back to reveal her throat.

I knew her quite well, he said. I looked up at the man beside me, he had put a great deal of product in his hair, so that it stood up in rigid and glistening waves. He obviously wished to emphasize the plenitude of his tresses, at his age many men had already begun to lose some or all of their hair, but the effect was a little absurd, he looked not like a virile man in the prime of his life but rather like a juvenile and inexperienced teenaged boy who had not yet learned how to manage his appearance. They were a bit of a golden couple, he continued. I think they even met at university, over the years they grew to resemble each other—both very tall, both very good-looking, eventually both successful and sophisticated. It just goes to show, the man said, a sneer crossing his near handsome face, how little you know of what really happens inside a marriage.

The utterance was entirely commonplace but I was startled, at that point I did not even know that Adriaan was or had been married. I turned to look at the man, who was gratified either by the small attention or my expression of surprise and smiled smugly. Even from the inside, he continued, encouraged, what do you really know of your own marriage? One day you realize you are living with a stranger. It must have been like that for Adriaan, she left in such a horrible way, she went away to Lisbon for the weekend and never came back. He didn’t even know what to tell the children, whether or not she would be returning, they are teenagers, the worst possible age for something like that to happen.

I nodded, I said mechanically that adolescence was difficult enough without that kind of an interruption, one could only imagine their reaction to such a betrayal. Apparently she sent Adriaan an email, the man continued. One would have expected a call at the very least, don’t you think? And I had to agree, there was something cruel about sending an email, it was too convenient a mode of communication for a matter so grave, you could tell she was a selfish and self-absorbed person. Still, Gaby has always been very honest with Adriaan, the man said, and that’s something, isn’t it?

When did this happen? I asked. The man shrugged. Less than a year ago. She left in the dead of winter, perhaps she’d had enough of the bad weather. I looked through the glass sides of the atrium, that night too, rain was falling. I took out my phone and looked up the weather in Lisbon: a balmy 70 degrees and sunny. The man self-consciously touched his lustrous hair before asking if I wanted another drink. Below us, Adriaan was still speaking to the woman. She must have said something amusing because Adriaan laughed, his eyes still on her, even from a distance I could see that he was interested in this woman. I was suddenly gripped by the definite sensation that he would leave the party with her, having arrived with me, the feeling so vivid it was like a premonition. The woman turned, she set her glass on the tray of a passing waiter. For a fleeting moment I saw her profile, she had small but pronounced features, a face full of clarity. Winter in Lisbon is meant to be wonderful, the man said.

I excused myself, I could bear his presence no longer. The man seemed surprised, perhaps he thought he’d been making some headway with me. I crossed the bridge and descended the stairs, rejoining the party below. I made my way toward Adriaan, he looked up, immediately he stretched his arm out to stop me. Where have you been, he asked, and he turned to the woman he had been speaking with. She put her hand out and introduced herself, her manner friendly and perhaps a little curious, as we spoke Adriaan casually placed his hand at the back of my neck. She moved away soon after, almost without leaving an impression, as Adriaan turned to me it seemed odd that I had been so threatened by this woman, someone clearly of minimal significance to him, and with whom he had only been making small talk.

But I had also only been making small talk with the man on the bridge, I had been away from Adriaan for no more than ten or perhaps twenty minutes. Nonetheless, in that brief span of time he had been transformed, I looked at him and his handsome exterior, he in no way seemed like a figure unmanned, someone nursing a private wound. And yet he had been abandoned by his wife in the cruelest and most humiliating manner, he was now a figure to be whispered over at parties, a man whose most intimate catastrophe was now the stuff of idle and malicious gossip. He looked around the party, his manner was a little restless, and as I watched him, contours appeared to his face that I had been unable to see before, for better or worse, he was now a more complicated figure in my imagination.

He asked if I wanted to get some fresh air, and said he wanted a cigarette, sadly he had started smoking again. He was not looking at me as he spoke and I did not ask what had caused this resumption of a habit that, from his expression, he had clearly struggled to lose. He took my elbow and steered me toward one of the many covered balconies that lined the atrium. The rain had not slackened and the balcony was empty. Adriaan took out a cigarette, he was about to light it when the glass door to the balcony opened again, and the man from the bridge emerged. Adriaan looked up, he did not immediately greet the man, although it was obvious that he recognized him. I thought that was you slipping away with the young lady, the man said. Adriaan did not reply. He played with the cigarette between his fingers for a moment longer and then slipped it into the breast pocket of his suit jacket as if to save it for later, perhaps he did not want to be seen smoking in front of this man.