Free Out of Egypt by André Aciman Page A

how little you know my wife! She is so spiteful that if she were to die before me, she would immediately send for me so as never to allow me to forget I was ever married to her.”
    Indeed, the Princess’s jealousy had nothing to do with love. The more she disliked her husband, and the more he fled from her, the more she was afraid of losing him. She was a model of dutiful solicitude because she wished him dead in small doses every day—which is how he loathed her, with the scrupulous devotion of weak, unfaithful husbands. She was attentive to his minutest needs: his specially brewed coffee in the morning, his ration of spinach pastries at noon, her special consommés for his special rice, the dried fruit sauce for his lean meats, his lightly starched shirts and neatly pressed handkerchiefs whose creases she was forever smoothing; down to the way she would decorate his plate with assorted cheeses, dips, and olives when it was time for his raki at night—in all this, she was the most punctilious of wives, begrudging him nothing, yet with every gesture reminding him that she had brought nothing into his life save those things he had never asked for. Ironically, he had far greater need of her love—of which she had some—than she had of his—of which there was none.
    â€œYou should never say such things about her,” said the Saint, who was always eager to come to anyone’s defense, partly because she was kind and didn’t like to encourage slander, but
also because her little rebukes always seemed to force people to intensify their original indictments of others.
    â€œShe’s been the perfect wife for you: your cook, your maid, your nurse, your seamstress, your barber, your mother even. How many times has she saved you from certain ruin? She’s the most intelligent woman on Rue Memphis.”
    â€œI know,” he said turning to the Saint with doleful sarcasm in his eyes. “I know. God gave her the biggest brain in the world. But he gave her nothing else. In her company even an iceberg would catch cold.”
    At that moment the Princess returned from her daily visit with her siblings. “How could you two be playing cards in the dark like this?”
    â€œRomance,” explained the husband without looking up.
    â€œBut didn’t you hear the news?”
    â€œWhat news?”
    â€œThe war is over.”

    To celebrate the armistice, the Princess, who had just walked in with Madame Dalmedigo, decided to improvise a real tea, with meringue, fig and date jams, petits fours, and homemade biscuits, which she kept under lock and key in one of the many cupboards in the pantry. Another neighbor, Arlette Joanides, who was walking past their veranda with her daughter Micheline, was stopped, told of the news, and summarily invited for tea. Half an hour later, Aunt Flora, her mother, Marie Cantacouzenos, and Fortunée Lombroso, still later joined by Maurice Franco and Liliane Arditi, had come also —so that, when Monsieur Jacques arrived home from work, he was informed by his daughter that her mother was still visiting across the street. “Then go fetch her and tell her, once and for all, that her place is here”—indicating their dark
and empty living room—“and not there,” pointing to the henhouse. The families were back on speaking terms, but there always remained a certain froid between the men. The eighteen-year-old daughter, who had been reading a novel, slipped a cardigan over her shoulders, rushed downstairs, and in a second was ringing at their neighbor’s door. “I’ve come to tell my mother that my father wants her to come home now.” “Come in and don’t be silly. Where are we, in the Middle Ages?” cried the Princess, who by now had learned to understand the deaf girl’s speech. “We’re having tea and playing cards, come in.”
    The young girl came in but continued to linger near the