Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Married To The Business Of Buying

I kept hearing I'd got myself into an impossible marriage. No one admired me for it unless I showed them a picture of my wife. I kept hearing I was doing an impossible business and this almost everyone wondered at and approved. The wife was a wild, ambitious, story telling and story concealing Hungarian. The business was buying and selling old watches to other dealers doing the same. I tried to explain to all concerned that both impossible undertakings were possible in the same way.

When you are married you don't have to look for someone to be with. When you buy and then sell things you don't have to look for something to buy: you are married to the business of buying. With my wife, my business was keeping up with her continual changes of mind about whether she wanted to be with me. Life with whatever new sort of person she had decided to be at that moment had to be renegotiated, re-bought, this work paid for by her with the pleasure I took in her company. But I had given up buying and selling watches, and she doubted I could be depended on in this business of marriage: 

- You don't love me.
- I do.
- You don't.
- What you love about me is what makes you think I don't love you.
- What's that?
- The way I do business. The way I married you.
- How did you marry me?
- When I sold watches, though I like watches and put every watch on my wrist, I wasn't attached to any of them. I liked the business, finding them, getting rid of them as soon as I could.
- You're saying you plan to get rid of me?
- That's just it: like one watch didn't interest me, the watch business did. Because you change your mind all the time you are not one wife, but a whole wife business.
- I love you because you think of me as a business? That's a new one. Who says I love you anyway?
- You do. You love me because you see you are an occupation for me, not a possession.
- If you work for me why don't you do what I want?
- I said you were my work, not that I worked for you.
- What's the difference?
- I'm working on you, not for you.
- I'm working on you too.
- You see? 
- See what?
- As long as were both being paid we can't get tired of each other. Eternal love.
- You'll see.