Chapter 20
A month before their departure for England, Jonathan stopped going to his office at the newspaper and made himself an improvised office at home in one of the unused rooms. Like a wind-up toy continuing to move even after the mechanism has fully unwound, he kept sending communiques to the newspapers. Talia heard him on the phone, grumbling, shouting, losing his self-control. Once in a while he would growl, “This is extortion! I’ll report you to the police!” When he came out of the room, he had regained his composure and looked as cool and collected as ever, but behind his attempt to retain a tranquil exterior, for his family’s sake, Talia could sense, almost visibly, the giant arms of tension and stress squeezing him like a vise.
A new voice began to sound inside her: what does he think? That she is stupid, that she is unworthy, incapable of sharing his trials and tribulation? He had relegated her to the role of the beautiful little wife, the one put on a pedestal, on display; here, meet my wife, Talia, the mother of my two children. He wanted to keep her in an aquarium, whereas she wanted to swim with him in the deepest oceans, where sharks, piranhas and barracudas lurked for him.
She asked him to tell her his affairs, but he stuck to his usual formula, “No, lambkin, why do you need to know? It will only get you in trouble. Why stick your beautiful little head in such a nasty business. Isn’t it enough that I have to rack my brains? Here, I have a suggestion,” he added with the smile of days gone by, “you do your work, and I’ll do mine.”
Talia was insistent, she even burst out crying. He could never resist her tears. “This is a crisis, you know,” he started explaining, reluctantly, but once he started, he got carried away. “I told you that Manfred Goldberg has freaked out; he wants me to surrender all my companies to him.
But I haven’t lost my mind. Why should I give him all these expensive toys? I worked very hard to get where I am. I made all this capital for him in this country and, according to our agreement, we are equal partners, so why should I take a loss? Why should you and the children be deprived of what by right should belong to us?”
“But do you have documentation, written agreements, for all the deals you made for him?”
“Oh, lambkin, you ask such difficult questions. Maybe you’re not such an innocent, impractical little lamb as you seem. Well, this is the trouble, precisely. Most of our deals were sealed with a handshake, sometimes not even that. We trusted each other completely, without any reservation. At the time, I thought, who needs contracts signatures, and lawyers who only interfere and skim off a large percentage of the profits. This is the trouble. Perhaps I was too naive.”
After two weeks at home, Jonathan seemed to have lost his identity. He walked around the house in a crumpled shirt, having lolled on the couch for hours with the remote control in his hands. There were fewer phone calls, and those that came roused him at once from his indolence. Did all this tarnish his image in her eyes? Not at all; she loved him as ever. Their nights were still intoxicating in their tender loving, but she missed the days when he left the house each morning, impeccably dressed in his elegant suit and tie, smoothly shaved. She missed his Samsonite briefcase and the enticing fragrance of his aftershave that enveloped him like incense. In London, he’ll have a chance to be himself again, she consoled herself. He’ll find work, and then, as a token of his return to normal, they will once more resume their ritual of kissing before he leaves the house and when he comes back.