Intermezzo

, and I love you.

In a low voice Ivan answers: I love you too.

You don’t have to, he says. I would forgive you if you didn’t.

After a pause, Ivan replies: No, I do. Even though you annoy me a lot sometimes.

With a trembling laugh he looks up at the featureless sky. You annoy me too, Ivan, he says. It’s mutual

What can life be made to accommodate, what can one life hold inside itself without breaking.

Castration anxiety, Sylvia suggested. Joking or was she. Well, it’s true, I wouldn’t want to be a woman, he said. Who would? No offence, but the level of disrespect, I couldn’t take it. They were in her office then, she was sorting a batch of essays. Is that the sum total of your gender identity, she said, you’re just desperate for everyone to respect you? He said he would have to think about it. Then added: I mean, maybe.

There has never been anything about him, about his personhood, which could make the big men uncomfortable, the seniors, judges, cabinet ministers. He’s not a woman, not gay. White, able-bodied, college-educated. Foreign surname, okay, but even that minimal tension is dispersed when they hear him talking, nice newsreader accent. Isn’t that what he enjoys. Taking the side of the downtrodden, the marginalised, not out of
self-interest, nothing to do with him, but from pure conviction. To be himself unaffected, to have no skin in the game. To need, for his own part, no defence, no justification. Noblesse oblige.

There has never been anything about him, about his personhood, which could make the big men uncomfortable, the seniors, judges, cabinet ministers. He’s not a woman, not gay. White, able-bodied, college-educated. Foreign surname, okay, but even that minimal tension is dispersed when they hear him talking, nice newsreader accent. Isn’t that what he enjoys. Taking the side of the downtrodden, the marginalised, not out of
self-interest, nothing to do with him, but from pure conviction. To be himself unaffected, to have no skin in the game. To need, for his own part, no defence, no justification. Noblesse oblige.

If it were anyone else after all. He would be the first to say what harm, no one else’s business, good for them. Why should you care, what are you so insecure about. No one is taking your beloved monogamy away, don’t worry. Laughable the old-fashioned attitudes people have, think the sky is falling in because some girl has two boyfriends.

Her head she goes on shaking. Long and glossy blue her black hair. You know what you remind me of, she says. You remind me of a child. Did you ever try to play a game with a child, and they start laying all their toys out exactly where they want them. And they’re making up all these rules, and they get annoyed if you don’t follow along. That’s you. That’s actually how you treat people

Everyone he loves has had to suffer, he thinks.

I really hated being that person, she said. Scolding and giving out all the time. I felt very trapped, having to live that way. I don’t know how to describe it, being trapped inside a feeling. Like crouching into an awkward pose, and you get trapped there. Being perfect, being in the right. But I find it’s very hard to let go of that now. Even though I never wanted it. Still, I don’t know why, but it’s hard to let g

Margaret didn’t need anyone’s sympathy, she could look after herself. It was weak people who needed compassion, weak men especially, like Ricky, the unfortunate soul. Margaret was strong, everyone always said so, a fine strong woman. For that alone, how many people hated her. And would relish her humiliation now at last it had come. Indecent, sordid, making
a show of herself. No wonder that husband of hers took to the drink