My Husband

by Maud Ventura

My husband has no name; he is my husband, he belongs to me.

Deep down, I know my tears have no reason to exist. Phaedra’s tears are limpid as crystal; mine are monstrous.

Despite our differences, Phaedra and I have at least one thing in common: our rejection of love. Both of us would have preferred not to love. We suffer the consequences of an overly intense and inappropriate love. We feel no complacency about being a woman in love.

That man died in a car accident the following year, so I was never able to ask for his version of events. A part of the narrative of our origins, an essential aspect of our romantic cosmogony, was stolen from me.

“I am the happiest man to have met the most beautiful woman in the world”: I would have appreciated not being reduced to my physical appearance and instead complimented on my personality or the sharpness of my intellect. Everyone knows that beauty doesn’t last a lifetime, unlike the bonds of marriage.

I change rooms for him. Because of him, I am always the last to leave the table. I turn off the lights, I follow him up the stairs, I move behind him, remaining in his shadow. My husband, on the other hand, is not influenced by my comings and goings. My gravitational force is never sufficiently powerful to make him deviate from his course.

After some research on the Internet, I discover that its place on the color spectrum corresponds to the wavelength 525 nanometers. Of course. I grew up at number 52 on rue Victor-Basch and I was born in Doubs, department 25. 525. Sometimes the best explanations are the most rational ones.

knew I was cheating on my husband for the right reasons (having a lover makes me even more inaccessible and mysterious).

I love too intensely and I’m consumed by my own love (analysis, jealousy, doubt)—so much so that when I’m in love, I always end up slightly extinguished and saddened. When I love, I become harsh, serious, intolerant. A heavy shadow settles over my relationships. I love and want to be loved with so much gravitas that it quickly becomes exhausting (for me, for the other person). It’s always an unhappy kind of love.

Above all, the receipt of a man who loves his wife and is not planning to leave her next week, since he bought enough cheese for ten days.

I prefer his words to mine because I have more confidence in his interpretation of events; he is often more objective than me. And I’ve noticed that he has a tendency to erase from his narrative the hassles, the arguments, the yawns, and the sighs, which in my world often take up so much space that they eclipse the rest.