Free The Happy Marriage by Tahar Ben Jelloun Page B

life and left the house when he wanted, as if he wasn’t ill anymore. He would walk to his studio, which was situated in the 14th arrondissement, quite a distance from his place. He had a commission from Barcelona’s City Hall to commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but he was having trouble getting started. One morning, when he’d woken up more tired than usual, his wife had driven him to his studio. During the drive, he’d softly asked her if she could come pick him up around five o’clock. Quite unexpectedly, she’d blown up at him: “I’m not your chauffeur and this isn’t your taxi. You know, I’ve been your nurse for over a month now! Who do you think you are? Do you think the universerevolves around you? You’re taking advantage of the fact that you’re sick, so don’t count on me anymore!”
    They’d been on Rue d’Alésia at the time. The painter had flown into a rage and had retorted: “If that’s the case then I’m happy to walk.” She’d suddenly slammed on the brakes and opened the door. He’d climbed out of the car and had walked to his studio on his own.
    That incident definitely capsized their married life. Clashes followed and neither of them resembled their former selves anymore. He had his share of responsibility in that whole affair. His weakness, his naïveté, his illusions, and then that eternal hope that she would one day change. To avoid bickering with her, he’d begun to flee the house for secret rendezvous with more loving women, women who admired him both as an artist and as a man. He found a great deal of comfort with those women and a kind of sweetness that he really needed. Those secret relationships helped to keep him balanced and avoid abruptly leaving his house. The children were happy, they loved him and cuddled him. Henceforth, his happiness would take place in different places and different times, but never in the same place, there was never any continuity. He thought he could reconcile all these differences and lead a double life without ever jeopardizing that oft-mentioned equilibrium.
    Things were going so badly between them that he convinced her to go to couples’ therapy with him. “I’m not crazy! If I’ve consented to go with you, it’s to show your psychiatrist how crazy, perverse, and monstrous you are!” is what she’d hit him with just before their appointment. She’d looked at him with eyes full of resentment in the waiting room.
    The psychiatrist had explained how the sessions would work before beginning. She hadn’t cared about any of that. She had launched into a tirade in front of that stranger about the horrors of their married life, comparing the painter to an ayatollah who wanted his wife tolive in purdah, sought to prevent her from leading her own life, gave his children’s money away to his brothers and sisters, traveled all the time for his work; he was basically a ghost husband … “He’s never there! After our children were born, I was forced to assume two roles, those of the father and the mother. I do everything I can to make sure they still love him, even though he’s literally abandoned them, but he doesn’t care; he always uses the excuse that he has to go work in his studio, that he has to travel for his exhibitions, and so we never see him. And when he does come back, he’s always in a bad mood, he shouts, screams, and hits the children!”
    He gave the psychiatrist his version of events, which was a lot simpler: “For some time now we haven’t had the same idea of what married life should be like, nor the same philosophy on education; her family interferes too much and makes her choices for her, and I’m not allowed to say anything about it. What she’s told you really doesn’t match reality. I’m sorry, she’s not playing the same game here, she refuses to examine herself, while I’ve come here because I have doubts and because I’d like us to have some couples’ therapy!”
    She canceled