she would say to her husband.And, careful not to show his own disappointment, he would reply in a kindly way, “Yes, for sure.”Because that husband of hers had been such a nice man.In their life together he’d given her full latitude to become that desperately taut string that resonated with every emotion, and he’d surrounded her with kindness, always speaking to her with prudence and tact, exactly as if, busy with creating a new life, she needed to be surrounded by an atmosphere of silent deference in order to be able to perfect her art and give form to her obsession.Never once had he complained about the overwhelming presence in their life of the baby that never got conceived.He’d played his part rather selflessly, she said to herself later.Wouldn’t he have been within his rights to complain about the inconsiderate way she pulled him toward her or pushed him away at night, depending on whether she thought her husband’s semen would be of any use at that moment, about the way, during her non-ovulating period, she made no bones about not wanting to make love, as if the expenditure of useless energy could damage the only project she then cared about, as if her husband’s seed constituted a unique, precious resource of which she was the keeper and which should never be squandered in the pursuit of mere pleasure?He’d never complained.At the time she hadn’t seen how noble his behavior was because she wouldn’t have understood that he could have complained about—or even simply rejected the legitimacy, necessity, and nobility of—the asceticism (ascetic only in a sense, since their tally of sexual encounters was impressive) that this mania to have a child subjected them.No, for sure, she wouldn’t have understood that at the time.It was only after the death of her husband, of the peaceable, kindly man she’d been married to for three years, that she was able to appreciate his forbearance.
