Christina Ch. 03

As I look back on it, I realize that that night marked a watershed in the history of my affair with Paul Bayard. I had a great deal of opportunity to analyze why things went wrong in the months that followed, as I much later walked the decks of foreign ships in unfamiliar oceans or waited to meet some new link in a chain of seeking that somehow seemed to grow longer with each new attempt on my part to reel it in. with the benefit of this cheap hindsight I came to know that our decline was inevitable, and had probably started the night that seedy club manager had tried to use Paul's talent to gain access to my body.

But during the period of decay itself, as things went from bad to worse between us, I was not able to see things quite so clearly. All I knew was that for some inexplicable reason, Paul had turned away from me. I think I would have been able to understand and handle it better had he turned argumentative, or irritable, or even vicious and violent. The coin of strong emotions has two sides, after all, and one expects a great love to breed great antagonisms as a sort of natural fallout.

Instead, Paul simply withdrew. He grew morose and uncommunicative, and took to spending long periods away from our apartment. Although it was difficult for me to see him physically disappear in this way, it was even more tormenting to have him present in the house in body only, while the essence of him, the beautiful spirit that I loved so desperately, had obviously moved out.

I did not confront him at first, hoping as I did that his withdrawal was only a matter of some stray mood, or some necessary passage of the artist through the shadow of his own internal moon. At the time I had no other way to explain it, this mysterious and almost total absence, and I was not yet willing to admit that what I was seeing was nothing more unusual than another end to another love affair. I suppose I had ended so many of them myself, the sudden cooling of the flame, the awkward period afterwards when one tries to rekindle what has died forever, the petty arguments and the ultimate escape, that I refused to believe that it could happen to me in reverse.

Besides, I was convinced even then, even in my confusion and anxiety, that Paul had not stopped loving me. Something else was going on, I was sure, something that had nothing to do with me. Paul's withdrawal was not a sign of lack of love, but of some interior struggle that I could not understand without some kind of information from him, and he was simply not talking.

I think it was the long stays away from home that convinced me more than anything else that I had very little to do with what was happening to Paul. Within a very few weeks he was staying away for days at a time, and soon those days were stretching into weeks. Although part of me knew there was a special, concrete explanation for this, another part of me was growing wild with yearning for him. For the Paul I knew was still alive inside this tough new shell.

Probably the worst aspect of this for me was the fact that I no longer could count on any comfort whatsoever from Paul's body. His withdrawal from me was absolute, total, so that even on the few nights that he deigned to sleep with me in the apartment, he simply flopped himself into bed and rolled over to face the wall. Nothing I did could revive or encourage him in any way, when I touched him, I could feel his body turn to stone, a rigidity so complete as to be positively frightening. After a few nights of this, interspersed with those terrifying long absences, I even found myself wishing that he were the type of man who could simply objectify women, take advantage of them, use them for their bodies alone, and that he would coldly ravage me, impale me on the sword of his mysterious anger.

Never have I come so dangerously close to losing my integrity, the pride and confidence that have kept me alive and triumphant even in life and death situations. Never before had I been so willing to submit myself to a man and his needs, never been so desperate to have a man's interest and sexual reassurance. When I realized this, realized how close I had come to total surrender, some kind of alarm bell went off deep inside me, and I knew that I would have to take the bull by the horns.

Finally I confronted him. He had come home from one of his weeks away, had given me the same offhand 'hello' with the same unreadable expression that I had now become accustomed to, and had brushed past me to flop exhausted on to the couch. I wondered briefly, as I had wondered many times before, if Paul had simply found some new woman to keep him happy and was staying with me for reasons that neither of us could fathom. But as before, I again found that possibility unlikely, since absolutely none of the telltale signs of infidelity were there.

Still, I had reached the end of my rope. Something was going to get settled right then and there, or I would be on my way. I walked over to the couch and sat down next to him, feeling him stiffen as I did. But I was simply not going to be put off this time.

"Paul," I said, "let's stop this. Please tell me what's going on with you."

He turned to me with the face of an actor, as if he were trying to convince me that he was taken entirely by surprise by a bizarre and unreasonable question. "What are you talking about?" he said.

"Paul, don't do that to me," I said, honestly saddened by the childish weakness of his ploy." Don't hide that way, it makes me feel ridiculous."

He didn't answer, only turned his face to the wall once more.

For some reason it infuriated me this time. I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around to face me. The look of surprise on his face was so comical that I could hardly keep from laughing.

But I managed to control myself. "Look, Paul," I said firmly, "if you want to go on staying with me, you're going to have to put a little effort into it. You're going to have to do some communicating."

His face, that marvelous, eternal face, now seemed to melt before my eyes, and his expression changed from one of surprise to one of sheer terror. The fear I saw nearly took my breath away, and I wanted to reach out to him, to hold his face between my hands and comfort him. If only he'd let me....

"First," he said, "I'm going to tell you what I can. It might not be the explanation you want, but it's all I can do right now."

Then he stopped. I waited for a moment, and then said, "well?"

He took a breath. "I'm under contract," he said.

"To who?" I asked when he showed no signs of continuing. "For what?" this petty mystery was beginning to annoy me, and I could hardly keep the tone of irritation out of my voice.

"That's all I can say," he said. "Please don't ask me anything else." with that he turned on his heel and walked into the bedroom.

I could control myself no longer. My reaction to these months of neglect and sullenness poured out of me, and I could not have stopped myself even if I had wanted to. I screamed, "Paul! Stop this, dammit! What's happened to you? Can't you see what you're doing to us?"

When he didn't respond I followed him into the bedroom. To my great shock, he had a suitcase open on the bed and was packing. Furiously.

"Paul," I said, "what in hell are you doing?"

"This isn't fair to you," he said, continuing to throw shirts into the suitcase. "I've taken your life away from you, and I'm not giving you anything in return." he closed the suitcase and locked it. "And now I've told you too much."

"Too much?" I shouted. "You haven't told me anything, except that you're under contract for something. Well, I want to know. What contract? What something?"

"I'm sorry, Christina," he said, picking up the suitcase and brushing past me. "I just can't tell you."

"And now you're leaving?" I said. I could scarcely believe it myself. "Just like that?" I followed him in to the living room and toward the front door.

"For you, Christina," he said over his shoulder. "I'm only doing it for you." with that he opened the door, walked through, and then closed it ever so gently. But the slight click the door made in closing thundered through my nervous system like the clashing of cymbals.

I went cold and numb. As usual in tense situations, my emotions immediately receded, allowing my intelligence all the room it needed to make quick sense of things. It is probably a defense, this characteristic of mine, but it is one that has served me in good stead when life itself was on the line.

Instantly I began to think. I had little information to go on other than Paul's cryptic statement about being under contract. Had he become a criminal, then? Had he signed a contract to undertake some menial job, or to donate his brain to science? I simply couldn't tell.

One thing I did know, though. That fear I had seen in his face was absolutely genuine. For some reason or other, Paul was in danger, either that, or afraid that some danger might befall me. Well, I decided, he was not going to walk out on me, on our love, and into this unknown danger and expect me to sit back and meekly accept it. That simply was not my style. I would do something about this, whatever it was, would get to the root of it and make it right no matter what the cost. And there was absolutely nothing anyone could do to stop me.

As usual, having made a decision made me feel better, for the moment at least. I walked toward the bedroom feeling somewhat relieved. But when I looked down at the bed, at the wrinkled bedspread where Paul had packed his clothes, some emotional sluice gate in me raised, and all the feelings I had held back came out in a great, flowing gush.

I collapsed in tears on the bed, and for the first time since the death of my father I cried myself to sleep.