Free The Story of My Wife by Milán Füst

and the opposite seems just as reasonable. ... I was almost sorry I didn't shoot myself that night.
    Mind you, I was still sound as a bell, nothing was wrong with me, as of yet. All the same, I was like a watch that kept perfect time but with a funny, hollow tick, as if something had already snapped inside.
    But it so happened that Monsieur Dedin, his mere existence, gave me strength to go on, if only because I began to take him seriously now, and noted other things as well, which I will relate presently.
    One day we were sitting in the Café de Saint Luc, which was owned by an old friend of mine, a sea captain from Normandy. And of course Dedin was with us, too, which was now the case almost all the time. Don't ask me how I could stand it. Or how he could do it.
    When does this writer write? I often wondered. I was inclined to believe he did absolutely nothing, let alone write. Maybe he carried his rich uncle's chamber pot around. And then put on his little hunter's hat and headed for a wild night on the town. The man, as you can see, irritated me to no end.
    Nevertheless, I told my wife one day:
    "That Dedin seems like a decent fellow."
    Well, she lit up like a lightbulb.
    "You see, you see; I told you." And she beamed.
    That's how far this thing has gone, that's how open she was about it, damn it.
    Why, then, did I make that appreciative remark? For two reasons: First of all, I was pleasantly surprised. He didn't steal, though he had the opportunity. He returned my wallet which I left on a table in a bistro; he didn't pocket it but brought it back. A promising beginning, surely.
    The other reason was that I could no longer put up with my wife's suffering demeanor. Ever since that time when I was a little rough on her, she'd been giving me dirty looks. As though I'd killed her papa. But now that we made up, she showed no mercy. We had to be together all the time. I called him a decent fellow, didn't I? She tried so hard to bring us closer, to match us up. This is how a typical conversation was conducted:
    She'd be walking in the middle, between Dedin and me, and turn from side to side as she talked.
    "Dedin says you can get finer cigars than these." "My husband says it's time we went to a different cinema." Like that. Dedin would sometimes send me messages, too, but I never sent him any.
    All I kept thinking about was how to get rid of this guy. For no matter how I looked at it, this arrangement was not very good. Even under the best of circumstances, he'd remain the ideal friend who brought her books and things, and kept feeding her stories about how she could make a pretty good movie actress. (With this sort of claptrap, I noticed, every woman can be swept off her feet, even the very best.) He'd still be the cultivator of her soul, and I, the uncouth husband, the breadwinner, the workhorse.
    The truth is I was dimwitted enough to fill the role.
    At my friend's place, on the other hand, I felt more comfortable. He was a man after my own heart. To him I didn't have to explain what it was like to have things like "What kind of captain are you? Where is your sense of duty?" thrown at your face.
    "Tell me the truth," my friend now said to me, "do you really like the blasted sea all that much? (And the question, needless to say, could not have come at a better time.)
    "I myself love it," he went on with a grin, "always have, especially from afar. Come on, man, be honest: aren't you glad when you leave those rotten tubs, those floating prisons, when your foot hits dry land? Especially after that accident of yours?"
    "God only knows," I sighed.
    But he persisted: "Can you eat anything this good on a boat?" (He was serving us some chewy meat cooked with a kind of polenta, a regional specialty, apparently, prepared in my honor, expected to be praised.)
    "But let's chat about something good ... It just occurred to me: Why don't you and me open a nice little inn. . . ? What do you say? It's no life being away at sea all the