“Nothing.”

“Are you alright?”

“Oui.”

“Do you want to let me in, baby?”

“Non.”

“Why not?”

“I do not want you to see me like this. You will be angry.”

“I will not be angry. I promise.”

“Non, amour. Go away. I will call when I am feeling better.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be at the hotel.”

I heard her still crying from the other side. The neighbor remained in the hall, and I asked whether I could cross over from his balcony. He agreed and I went through his apartment with a feeling of slight embarrassment, but offered no excuses.

From the balcony I heard Etta James rising from lower down the hill, and saw Genevieve’s windows were open. I sprang over the wall separating the flats, and down along the widow’s walk. From my perch outside I could see the extent of the damage in the apartment, and my mind raced with worry. She had covered the walls with paint, and lashed string all around, with pieces of paper pinned to the string, and stacks of what looked like papier-mâché, crisscrossing the room in a maze of confusion, where she was seated on the floor amidst it all. She was still wearing the same clothes from two days earlier and obviously had not slept and was in the most awful way.

When she looked up and saw me on the balcony, she shrieked, and threw the water glass in her hand, which shattered against the window frame as I clambered inside.

“What happened? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I figured it all out, and wanted to make it before I forgot,” she said.

“What did you make?” I asked, tenderly as possible.

“It does not matter. I did not finish, and now you are angry because you think I did the wrong thing, and I have lost my concentration, so you have ruined it. I told you to leave me alone.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I did not mean to ruin it.”

“It is too late. Do you want to see what you ruined?”

“Yes, show me what you made.”

“I know you were worried, because I do not work anymore, and thought I would be like some silly princess who does not do anything and does not know anything except how to wear jewelry, and takes everything for granted. So I wanted to show you all the meaning of everything. Here, see, are the cave paintings and here is the totem pole and here is the primitive perfection, with its ancient sacred magical power, and here is the perfection of the Goyas. Here is Tintoretto, and Michelangelo with all the known universe of God, and the choirs of angels and the saints and the kings and the pilgrims and the penitent and the sinners and the demons. Here is the modernism, and one of Picasso’s crying women, because every time he don’t know what to paint he makes his woman cry and because the people they love the suffering, and here is the surreality, and here the beautiful light from Corot and the perfect life force from Manet and here is Degas looking at his girls and here is Matisse and all the immaculate colors and the object is here and the form is created and the form is destroyed here by the photo that makes realism into something else, and the abstract is here with pure consciousness and here all the pop things and cartoons for the Americans, and on the wall is Guanyin Bodhisattva and, next to it, there, you will see, is the Virgin, and the suffering the people love so much and here is the creation and it is all the meaning because if you look from here are the eyes that are not gone from the world. Okay I will take the pills again now, and now you know all before we marry but first I wanted to show you this, the entire world. It is everything, almost everything, before the pills make it stop.”

I felt knifed through the core and stood frozen with pain; afraid for her and afraid of her, and in awe of the sheer amount of energy that had poured out of her, as I navigated that divine madness, not knowing what I should do. I reached her at last, but she only bit down on her lip anxiously, and turned and went straight away to the bathroom, before emerging with a bunch of pills, which she took with water from the faucet.

“How long has it been since you stopped taking them?”

“Two weeks,” she said. “I will be fine again. You will see. But perhaps it is you no longer love me, because I do the wrong thing, the crazy thing. But the crazy thing is necessary.”

“I still love you,” I said.

“Okay, we go now.”

“Where?”

“To the hospital,” she answered, as I tried not to cry and kissed her wild, wild eyes.

I stayed with her until I felt confident she would be all right alone, before leaving one afternoon, two weeks later, to meet Davidson, whom I had not seen since dinner at the restaurant.

“How are things with Genevieve?” he asked sympathetically.

“Fine.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I know.” I was silent after that. There was nothing to say.

“You know it is impossible to be happy when you are with someone who is not well.”

“You are not suggesting I leave her when she has fallen on hard times? She will get better. She is ill, not crazy.”

“That is not what I said. I only mean sadness is contagious. You see, the educated classes can all be located on a graph, with the queen of England on one end and a renunciant monk on the other. For the creative, it goes from those willing to accommodate the world to those willing to follow art to the edge of the map. It is primarily a function of talent, but the y-axis is fear.” He took out a piece of paper and began to draw. “Genevieve is talented and unafraid. I respect my fear, which is why she dislikes me. She fears making the compromises I do. People with modest talent, and reasonable fears, stumble along the axis, there, doing what they can, according to formulas, and thinking the formulas are real. People with greater imagination and either lavish fear or lavish greed do the same, only they know better. People like her have a chance at making something brilliant and changing the world, then again they have a chance of getting lost. You I cannot plot yet, because you have not decided yourself. Worry the koan, it will help. But, what am I saying? I suppose we all fall for the wrong person once.”

“You don’t leave who you love because she is unwell. I am sure there are other ways of looking at it, but they are not ways to live.”

“You love that woman, don’t you?”

“Like a blues song I love her. Are you going to tell me to call your shaman?”

“It will not help.”

“I thought you said he was a real medicine man.”

“First class at fixing things when you get outside of yourself. For what comes to you from your own spirit, nobody can fix, only help you see.”

I did not want to discuss it further, and we talked shop instead, then had a glass of wine, but I did not have the taste for it, and went back to my hotel to rest.

The last days had been uncertain and exhausting, with me constantly checking to see she was taking her medication, which she sometimes did and sometimes resisted. She was there, but no longer present, not really, until slowly my faith that she would be well again was sapped, so I was there but not present as well.

I was responsible to her, though, and did not break with her. How could I? I had asked for a great love. They gave it to me.

When I arrived back at her place that evening, she was in a state of tranquility, and we were eating a quiet dinner, when she stared up from her plate all of a sudden. “I always knew you would leave me one day,” she said.

“Who said anything about leaving you? I care about you.”

“Do not be sorry,” she said, “and do not be a coward. Sometimes the people get married, and sometimes the people get divorced. I give you a divorce. You are free. But always remember we were married.”

“We still are.”

“We are not anymore. Non, I was not the right wife for you. It was not right.”