Free Summertime by J. M. Coetzee Page A

quite prepared for him to fight back, to argue the case for musical sex. But he did not rise to the bait. Instead he put on a sullen, defeated look and turned his back on me.
     
I know I am contradicting what I said earlier on, about him being a good sport and a good loser, but this time I really seemed to have touched a sore spot.
     
Anyway, there we were. I had gone on the offensive, I couldn't turn back. 'Go home and practise your wooing,' I said. 'Go on. Go away. Take your Schubert with you. Come again when you can do better.'
     
It was cruel; but he deserved it for not fighting back.
     
'Right – I'll go,' he said in a sulky voice. 'I have things to do anyway.' And he began to put on his clothes.
     
Things to do! I picked up the nearest object to hand, which happened to be a quite nice little baked-clay plate, brown with a painted yellow border, one of a set of six that Mark and I had bought in Swaziland. For an instant I could still see the comic side of it: the dark-tressed, bare-breasted mistress exhibiting her stormy central-European temperament by shouting abuse and throwing crockery. Then I hurled the plate.
     
It hit him on the neck and bounced to the floor without breaking. He hunched his shoulders and turned to me with a puzzled stare. Never before in his life, I am sure, had he had a plate thrown at him. 'Go!' I shouted or perhaps even screamed, and waved him away. Chrissie woke up and began crying.
     
Strange to say, I felt no regret afterwards. On the contrary, I was aroused and excited and proud of myself. Straight from the heart! I said to myself. My first plate!
     
[Silence]
     
Have there been others?
     
Other plates? Plenty.
     
[Silence]
     
Was that how it ended, then, between you and him?
     
Not quite. There was a coda. I'll tell you the coda, then that will be that.
     
It was a condom that spelled the real end, a condom tied at the neck, full of dead sperm. Mark fished it out from under the bed. I was flabbergasted. How could I have missed it? It was as if I wanted it to be found, wanted to shout my infidelity from the rooftops.
     
Mark and I never used condoms, so there was no point in lying. 'How long has this been going on?' he demanded. 'Since last December,' I said. 'You bitch,' he said, 'you filthy, lying bitch! And I trusted you!'
     
He was about to storm out of the room, but then as if on an afterthought he turned and – I am sorry, I am going to draw a veil over what happened next, it is too shameful to repeat, too shaming. I will simply say it left me surprised, shocked, but above all furious. 'For that, Mark, I will never forgive you,' I said when I recovered myself. 'There is a line, and you've just crossed it. I'm going. You look after Chrissie for a change.'
     
At the moment I uttered the words I'm going, you look after Chrissie , I swear I meant no more than that I was going out and he could look after the child for the afternoon. But in the five paces it took to reach the front door it came to me in a blinding flash that this could actually be the moment of liberation, the moment when I walked out of an unfulfilling marriage and never came back. The clouds over my head, the clouds in my head, lightened, evaporated. Don't think , I told myself, just do it! Without missing a step I turned, strode upstairs, stuffed some underwear into a carry-bag, and raced downstairs again.
     
Mark was barring the way. 'Where do you think you are going?' he demanded. 'Are you going to him ?'
     
'Go to hell,' I said. I tried to push past, but he grabbed my arm.
     
'Let me go!' I said.
     
No screams, no snarls, just a simple, curt command. Without a word he let go. It was as though out of the skies a crown and regal robes had descended upon me. When I drove off he was still standing in the doorway, dumbstruck.
     
So easy! I exulted. So easy! Why didn't I do it before?
     
What puzzles me about that moment – which was in fact a key moment in my life – what puzzled me then and