My Husband

Translated by Paul Lewis

Let every man give his wife what is her due: and every woman do the same by her husband.

(I Corinthians 7:3)

I was twenty-five years old when I got married. I had always wanted to get married but had often thought, with a sort of gloomy resignation, that there was not much prospect of it happening. I was orphaned as a child and lived with an elderly aunt and my sister in the country. Our existence was monotonous; besides keeping the house clean and embroidering large tablecloths, which we didn’t know what to do with once they were finished, we didn’t have much to keep us occupied. Ladies would come to visit us sometimes and we would all talk all day about those tablecloths.

The man who wanted to marry me came to our house by chance. He had come to buy a farm which my aunt owned. I don’t know how he came to know about this farm. He was just a local district doctor for a little village out in the country, but he was fairly well off as he had private means. He came in his car, and as it was raining, my aunt told him to stay for lunch. He came a few more times and in the end asked me to marry him. It was pointed out to him that I was not rich, but he said this did not matter.

My husband was thirty-seven years old. He was tall and quite smart, his hair was going a little grey, and he wore gold-rimmed glasses. He had a stern, reserved and efficient manner; one could recognize in him a man accustomed to prescribing treatments for his patients. He was incredibly self-assured. He liked to stand motionless in a room, his hand resting underneath his jacket collar, silently surveying everything around him.

I had barely spoken to him at all when we got married. He had never kissed me or brought me flowers; indeed he had done none of the things which fiancés usually do. All I knew was that he lived in the country with a rough young male servant and an elderly female one called Felicetta in a very old big house surrounded by a large garden. Whether something in my personality had attracted or interested him or whether he had suddenly fallen in love with me, I had no idea. After we had taken leave of my aunt, he helped me into his car, which was covered in mud, and started to drive. The level road, flanked by trees, would take us to our home. I took the opportunity to study him. I looked at him for a long time with some curiosity, and perhaps even a certain impertinence, my eyes wide open underneath my felt hat. Then he turned towards me and smiled. He squeezed my bare, cold hand and said, ‘We’ll have to get to know each other a little.’

We spent our first wedding night in a hotel in a village not very far from our own. We were to continue on the following morning. I went up to the room while my husband took care of the petrol. I took off my hat and looked at myself in the big mirror which reflected everything. I was not beautiful – I knew that – but I did have a bright, lively expression and a tall, pleasant figure in my tailored dress. I felt ready to love that man, if he would only help me. He had to help me. I had to make him do this.