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Deception (Feuilly): January, 1831
I told him it was all right that he came back to me after making love to someone else and didn't confess it until I already knew what had happened. I lied. And then he wanted to embrace me, wanted to make everything better with a kiss and a caress, as if that has ever helped anything. I was furious with him, furious with myself for trusting him not to try to deceive me, and sick at heart. And I let him draw me into his arms, I let him kiss me though he still tasted of Christophe, I let him make love to me. The truth is that I am too much in love with him and I could not refuse him even though he betrayed my trust. If I had said it wasn't all right, if I had told him how much it hurt that he needed someone else after everything I've tried to do, we would have argued, and it is an argument without resolution. I want him to be faithful; he is apparently incapable of it. If I had argued, I would have wanted to go home. Fool that I was, I had no home that night but his bed and no place in the world but his arms. I did not want his hands on me then, for there was an ache in my chest from everything I could not say. But I have spent enough time learning to want him despite discomforts that I could please him, even while I wanted to leave. He had what he wanted of me, and if I seemed less enthusiastic than usual, he did not complain of it. I slept beside him and woke with tears in my eyes, for even in my dreams I knew that he could never have been what I need him to be. That evening I took my possessions out of his room again as though they had never been there or belonged there and explained to my former landlord that I thought I had found somewhere better with lower rent, but it turned out to be a trick. He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder sympathetically, saying, "Isn't that the way it always is," then gave me back my old keys. I could not have explained to him or anyone else that the price for staying with Aimery was my self-respect. I haven't told him how upset he'd made me, but he should have known. I don't know why he couldn't see how happy I was when I believed he wouldn't leave, why he didn't realize that my happiness was based on one very simple thing: my ability to trust him. I need him far more than he needs me. What am I to him but another friend, another lover, another person to hold? He is fond of me, yes, but no more than he is of the rest, no matter what he's said. If he knew me as well as he ought to, if he loved me as much as I love him, he would understand, and he would change. I need him to love me, and I need to know that he does not forget me when he is with someone else. That is why I painted his portrait. That was something no one else could or would do, something of him that is only mine. There is nothing else he gives me that he has not given to another, words of love or caresses or devotion. All I have of him is that I gave him fragile immortality, oil on canvas that would burn in a minute if someone decided to do that. I was more than a little tempted to do it myself that night, if only so that I would not be reminded of the impossibility of what I wanted. I did everything I knew how to do to make him happy, everything he would tell me that he needed or wanted. I have changed to please him in ways he asked and ways he did not ask. I wanted to be everything he needed in the way that he is everything that I need: my friend, my brother, my lover. If it were only the first, it would not matter whom he kissed; only the second and I would be content. But with the third, everything changes. I trust him still as a friend and as a brother. If he had broken either of those bonds, I could never have stayed with him that night. As a lover, however, I must relearn to mistrust him. He has my devotion, though he would rather not have it, and it is not enough. I am not enough for him, no matter how it hurts that that is so. He needs liberté in this. And he will have both liberty and me, though it nauseates me to think of it, because I love him for everything good that he is more than I hate him for the bad things. I can't imagine being apart from him for long even now, because he is more to me than any lover could -- and perhaps should -- be. I don't have the force of will to resist him and never did. He must know that I am angry with him; even he cannot be so optimistic that he thinks I have forgiven him already. If I started to tell him that I am angry with him and why, I would not be able to stop. Why must he ask the only thing that I cannot do? Why is the thing I need most from him impossible? I cannot forgive this and I cannot be comfortable with it. I can only pretend it does not exist and find some brief peace in denial.
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