bulk she wouldnât notice if gradually I removed a chocolate bar, or single packet containing the portraits of my favourite soccer stars, the Brazilians, with their single names. Or I realised that even if she noticed she would never mention this out loud. I wonder if always this is what happens in the families of dauphins. There Candy was and she was willing me to find the tone or story that would allow us somehow not to mention my strange behaviour, or examine its real causes, to exist in a world beyond the actual, and I wanted to be worthy of that performance. At last I came out on â
ME
Iâm just not happy. I think thatâs what this is.
And I was pleased because at that moment I could see she was relieved. Yes, I could see she was thinking that if we played it at that pitch then she could play it too, like we were in the nineteenth century and I had performed some difficult transposition of a bassoon piece to the trombone, or some such tour de force. I do mean tour de force. Itâs often not acknowledged how lying needs such total impresario talent. The problem with lying is that you are told not to think about the truth while you are lying, to believe the lie completely, but what else will you ever think about when you are lying except the fact that you are lying? Thereâs really nothing else to think about, it imposes itself, absolutely, so that even as you begin your first speech you are considering its shadow speech, in which you tell the truth, and when you are then embarked on your second speech the shadow first speech is still there, but now accompanied by its twin, the shadow second. And that Candy understood it was a tour de force needed no more proof than that she was looking at me with such love. It occurs to me that in my family history there were other such performers, I mean people who could bend the world to their desire, like those hypnotists bend spoons. By this I do not just mean the strongmen like my father, who could found business empires, but also the more devious strongmen like my many uncles, among whom were those who found it useful to present themselves as kooks. And if this coincided with your wife discovering one of your secretarial affairs and preparing to leave you as in the case of Uncle Marvin, or that your wife, in the case of Uncle Milo, wanted another child, or other sundry catastrophes, then this couldnât be helped. In a similar way therefore in this conversation with Candy I very simply became the person I needed to become in order to make the lying plausible, which was therefore someone whose life was not going so well and who was depressed, which wasnât after all so difficult because in the end this is not a role thatâs unavailable to most people. And in particular it was available to me: being (a) unemployed and (b) often seething at home in my pyjamas with all the rank smells you care to mention. I think you can see how easy it is for such a subject to lie to his beautiful wife, to tell the world that he is in a deep unhappiness when really all along he is also contemplating the picture that is a naked girl bleeding from the face, or that same girlâs face not bleeding but looking up at him with sweat on her nose and above her lips and the light beginning to filter through the curtains as she comes.
CANDY
Zezette, whatâs wrong?
ME
I think I might just always be about to cry? You know? I think Iâm maybe Iâm unhappy.
CANDY
With us?
ME
With â no, with everything. Not us.
& can happen very casually
Because, to put this another way, it turns out that in the perfect marriage where you are absolutely trusted there is no end to what you can do. For lying only distils its gorgeousness if you are doing it to the person who wakes up next to you every day, who believes they know your inner heart more than they know their own, thatâs the perfect person to lie to because only when you lie to someone like that can you
ME
Iâm just not happy. I think thatâs what this is.
And I was pleased because at that moment I could see she was relieved. Yes, I could see she was thinking that if we played it at that pitch then she could play it too, like we were in the nineteenth century and I had performed some difficult transposition of a bassoon piece to the trombone, or some such tour de force. I do mean tour de force. Itâs often not acknowledged how lying needs such total impresario talent. The problem with lying is that you are told not to think about the truth while you are lying, to believe the lie completely, but what else will you ever think about when you are lying except the fact that you are lying? Thereâs really nothing else to think about, it imposes itself, absolutely, so that even as you begin your first speech you are considering its shadow speech, in which you tell the truth, and when you are then embarked on your second speech the shadow first speech is still there, but now accompanied by its twin, the shadow second. And that Candy understood it was a tour de force needed no more proof than that she was looking at me with such love. It occurs to me that in my family history there were other such performers, I mean people who could bend the world to their desire, like those hypnotists bend spoons. By this I do not just mean the strongmen like my father, who could found business empires, but also the more devious strongmen like my many uncles, among whom were those who found it useful to present themselves as kooks. And if this coincided with your wife discovering one of your secretarial affairs and preparing to leave you as in the case of Uncle Marvin, or that your wife, in the case of Uncle Milo, wanted another child, or other sundry catastrophes, then this couldnât be helped. In a similar way therefore in this conversation with Candy I very simply became the person I needed to become in order to make the lying plausible, which was therefore someone whose life was not going so well and who was depressed, which wasnât after all so difficult because in the end this is not a role thatâs unavailable to most people. And in particular it was available to me: being (a) unemployed and (b) often seething at home in my pyjamas with all the rank smells you care to mention. I think you can see how easy it is for such a subject to lie to his beautiful wife, to tell the world that he is in a deep unhappiness when really all along he is also contemplating the picture that is a naked girl bleeding from the face, or that same girlâs face not bleeding but looking up at him with sweat on her nose and above her lips and the light beginning to filter through the curtains as she comes.
CANDY
Zezette, whatâs wrong?
ME
I think I might just always be about to cry? You know? I think Iâm maybe Iâm unhappy.
CANDY
With us?
ME
With â no, with everything. Not us.
& can happen very casually
Because, to put this another way, it turns out that in the perfect marriage where you are absolutely trusted there is no end to what you can do. For lying only distils its gorgeousness if you are doing it to the person who wakes up next to you every day, who believes they know your inner heart more than they know their own, thatâs the perfect person to lie to because only when you lie to someone like that can you
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