Free The World as I Found It by Bruce Duffy Page B

passing purblind the frizetted whores and the Moulin Rouge before marrying her as a prig of twenty-two.
    Alys was — or once had been — a courageous and freethinking public woman, a champion of women’s suffrage, social reform and workers’ groups. Early on, she had been a tremendous influence on him, helping him research his first book, German Social Democracy . Nor was she without strength of character. Daughter of an evangelist, she would take a podium with the indomitable moral fearlessness of a saint mounting a gibbet to say a few defiant words, and never allowing herself to sink into despair. How he had once loved the charm of her sectarian thees and thous — it was as if they had their own language, ancient and intimate. Now, though, he associated them with hysterical outbursts — pleas that made him feel like Henry VIII with Anne Boleyn clutching his knees, begging for her life.
    Still, he had been practical in those first years of their alienation. Divorce was not an acceptable expedient; it would have been social and professional suicide. Besides, Alys wouldn’t have granted him a divorce. Instead, he buried himself in his work, and over the next years they found a modus vivendi . Alys managed his household and saw after his every need, setting food before his closed door as for a spirit. To Russell, she was like a piece of furniture, a heavy oak bureau he was careful not to collide with. It occurred to him, and not unpleasurably, that she must have wondered if she still had a face or hips or if, in his mind, she even existed. But for all his mental powers he could not make her vanish. Like the chambers of a heart, their two small bedrooms were separated by a wall through which he could hear her, shuffling, coughing, bumping, a clumsy woman deep in want, craving love and a child — forgiveness.
    Affection he might shirk, but sex he could not avoid. Sex was his conjugal duty, and as an aristocrat, he strongly believed in duty. Alys knew this, and periodically, with what seemed a subconscious desire to torture him, she would beg him to come “lie” with her. He could not stave her off forever. Feeling himself a life shirker and a bedroom criminal, he would flog them both by lumbering over her, mashing his face into the pillow so as not to see her. She was a heavy woman, with white, doughy skin, freely perspiring. His slack penis was bent like a thumb, and unwilling. Not a word passed between them. For him, there was only nullity as he rocked and hated and punished her, thinking of mathematical entities, flaccid abstractions, empty sets. And failing, mightily failing. Hearing her gently ask, with the faint catch of a sob, Thee cannot? and wanting then to strike her. Jumping up, he would walk quietly into his room and note in his diary, as if he were making an entry in a ledger, that he had made his “sacrifice” and thus had earned his reward: three months absolved from suffering her touch.
    Then came Ottoline. Russell had first met her the year before while campaigning for Philip Morrell, a liberal candidate who was trying to win a seat in Burnley. Philip won the election, and sometime later, when Russell was attending a dinner at their home in Bedford Square, in the heart of Bloomsbury, Philip was suddenly called away. There were several other guests, but when they left, Russell, without quite knowing why, remained, sitting by the fire with Ottoline. He did not plan or anticipate what happened. They were quietly talking when out of nowhere he said cryptically, There is always a tragedy in someone’s life if one knows where to look for it. He remembered Ottoline looking at him, not knowing what to say. He was surprised himself and suddenly found himself telling her of the misery of his marriage and the vile emptiness of his life.
    They slept together soon enough, but for him not often enough. He was in rut — completely mad for new life, mad to jettison Alys and