Free Portraits of a Marriage by Sándor Márai

mind. “It’s possible.”
    It was clear the proposition did not take him by surprise; that he thought almost anything was possible where relationships between people are concerned. Almost as an incidental afterthought, he asked me:
    “And you have never blamed yourself?” His voice was flat again, mere conversation.
    His accent was marked, a little Slovakian. I don’t know why, but his regional accent was almost consoling in that moment.
    “How can I answer such a question, Reverend Father? Who can answer a question like that?”
    “Now look here,” he suddenly said, so informally, so gently that I wanted to kiss his hand. He spoke with zeal, in the simple rural manner that only old village priests can manage. “I can’t know what is hidden in your soul until you tell me, and what you have confessed to me today, child, is just some kind of strategy or ploy. But what God is whispering in my ear is that it is not the whole truth. What he is whispering is that you are full of self-accusation on this or that count. I could be mistaken, of course,” he added to excuse himself, and suddenly stopped there and fell silent. I could see he was regretting something.
    “But that’s good,” he said after a while, his voice faint, almost shy. “If it is self-accusation, it is good. Because then you might eventually be healed.”
    “What should I do?” I asked.
    “Pray,” he simply said. “And work. That is what religion commands us to do. I know no more than that. Are you sorry for your sins? Do you regret them?”
    “I am sorry and do regret them,” I garbled.
    “Five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys,” he said. “I absolve you.”
    Then he began to pray. He wanted to hear no more from me.
    Two weeks later, one morning, I found the lilac ribbon in my husband’s wallet.
    Believe it or not I never went through my husband’s wallet or pockets. I never took anything from him. He gave me everything I asked for, so why should I steal? I know, many women steal from their husbands out of a sense of obligation, almost as an act of virtue. Women generally do a great deal in the name of virtue. “I’m not that kind of tramp,” they say, and get on with doing that which they have no taste for. But I am not that sort. I’m not boasting, I’m simply not.
    And I was only looking into his wallet that morning because he rang to say he had left it at home and was sending one of his clerks for it. That’s no reason, you will say, of course. But there was something odd about his voice, something hurried, almost excited. He sounded anxious on the phone. You could tell from his voice that this little act of forgetfulness meant something to him. This is the kind of thing a person hears not with the ears but with the heart.
    It was the crocodile-skin wallet he was carrying just now, the one you’ve just seen. Did I tell you I gave it to him? … He faithfully used it too. Because I should tell you quite clearly, that man was faithful and true. He kept faith, even with mere objects. He wanted to keep and look after everything. It was the bourgeois in him, the noble bourgeois. Nor was it only objects he wanted to preserve, but all he found delightful, beautiful, valuable, and meaningful in life—you know, the lot: good habits, ways of doing things, furniture, Christian ethics, bridges, the works people had constructed with enormous labor, ingenuity, and suffering, geniuses and laborers both … And it was all part of the same thing to him: he loved this world and wanted to preserve it from danger. Men call this culture. We women don’t use big words like that when talking to each other. It’s enough to remain wisely silent once they startquoting Latin. We know the true essence of things. All they know are concepts. The two are usually quite different.
    But back to the crocodile-skin wallet. He looked after that too, because it was beautiful, because it was finely made, and because I gave it to him. When it needed mending, he