Portraits of a Marriage by Sándor Márai

life.
    Or to be more exact, I did know something about it.
    My husband was neither an oversensitive youth nor a pathetic, aging lecher. He was a mature man, so his actions were rational and comprehensible. He was not the sort to carry a woman’s lilac ribbon around in his wallet in secret without having a reason for it—that much I understood. If that was the secret, I understood it as perfectly as we do the secrets of our own lives.
    So if he does something like this, if he carries a sentimental trifle around for years, there must be a serious, proper reason for it. In which case the person to whom this little rag once belonged must be of supreme importance to him.
    More important than I was, for sure. He didn’t carry my photograph around. You might say—I can see you are about to say it even though you’re keeping quiet—that he didn’t need a photograph of me because he saw quite enough of me, day and night. Yes, but that’s never enough. He should see me even if he is not there beside me. And should he reach for his wallet, it should be to take out my photograph rather than some other woman’s lilac ribbon. Don’t you think? … There you are, you see. It’s the least a man can do.
    There I was, smoldering, as though someone had set fire to my quiet family home with a careless match. Because whatever lay there behindthe façade of our lives, whatever might have happened, it was still a solid and substantial thing, a genuinely mutual form of life, complete with roof and foundation … It was the roof that single burning match had landed on.
    He didn’t come home for lunch. We had a dinner invitation. I dressed to kill that night, straining every sinew to be beautiful. I wore a white dress, the one I kept for grand occasions. It was made of silk, like a wedding dress. It was ceremonial and dignified. I spent a whole two hours at the hairdresser in the afternoon. And even then I did not sit on my laurels but went into town to buy a rosette made of lilac ribbon, a ribbon in the shape of a violet, a sweet, idiotic little trifle of the kind quite fashionable that year. You could get it in various shapes and sizes. I pinned the ribbon, the color of which was precisely the same shade as the ribbon my husband carried around in his wallet, to the white dress, just where it opened. I took such care dressing for the evening I might have been an actress at a premiere. By the time my husband arrived home I was in my fur stole. He changed quickly, because he was late. Just this once it was I waiting patiently for him.
    We sat in the car without speaking. I could see he was tired, his mind elsewhere. My heart was beating fast but at the same time I felt a terrifying, solemn calm. All I knew was that that evening would decide the course of my life. I sat beside him graciously, my hair beautifully arranged, in my blue-fox fur and white silk dress, scented and deathly serious, the bunch of lilac ribbon right above my heart. It was a grand house we were visiting, with the Swiss guard at the gate and footmen down the hall. Having taken off his coat and handed it to the valet, he glanced at the mirror, saw me there, and smiled.
    I was so beautiful that evening that even he noticed.
    He threw off his undercoat and adjusted his tie in the mirror with a distracted, slightly nervous movement, as though he were disturbed by the solemn-looking valet’s presence. Men who dress quickly and don’t particularly care about clothes tend to fiddle with their bow ties, because they are forever slipping to one side or another. He gave me a smile in the mirror, a very sweet, courteous smile, as if to say, “Yes, I know you are very beautiful. Maybe the loveliest of all women. The trouble is that that doesn’t help. The problem lies elsewhere.”
    But he didn’t say anything. I, for my part, was wondering whether Iwas more beautiful than that other woman, the one whose ribbon he so carefully looked after. Then we entered the grand hall,