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A LIFE EVENT: The Schoolhouse Theater will stage The Color of Light in Westchester next year, but Bram Lewis and Janice Maffei have created “Schoolhouse in the City” readings of upcoming productions, and last week they invited 30 friends to a reading of my play. To watch what New York actors could do, just sitting in chairs, was a revelation. Austin Pendleton, powerful and vulnerable as Matisse, suddenly slumping at the end… Ginger Grace, precise and only seemingly chilly, as his assistant…Tom Mardirosian, all testosterone, as Picasso… Carole Monferdini, a brilliant opponent as the Mother Superior… Ken Schatz, preening and anxious as a young architect… Vincent Trani, an authoritative narrator… and Dominique Salerno, weak at the beginning and wonderfully strengthened by Matisse’s belief in her, as the nurse/nun — they took my words into the Streeposphere. And to have them do this with many of the people I love best in the audience… as my daughter would say, “lit.”
After, a friend had another dramatic experience: “I went to sit for a bit in the Church of the Holy Cross on 42nd between 8th and 9th. Its doors were open, it is huge and quiet within. And there I saw her. Young, maybe 28, one row ahead of me, motionless, her woolen hat pulled down. When she stood to leave, she paused at the end of the row and stood facing the altar, again motionless. She crossed herself, and after a bit, turned to leave. And then… her upper body was twisted toward the front door, but the rest of her remained turned towards the altar in this amazing, almost yearning tropism. Slow motion leave taking. I wish you could have seen it.”
And that led me to….
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Have you ever been madly in love — and then had the romance suddenly crash and burn?
That once happened to me twice in a single year. Made me crazy. I retreated to my head, reliving the key events, rewriting them to produce different outcomes, and, mostly, having imaginary conversations with the departed lovers.
“The End of the Affair” reads like that kind of interior monologue. Some of it may feel familiar to you. Much won’t, because Graham Greene is telling a story here about a married woman, her lover and the lover who drives him mad with jealousy and hatred — God.
Greene was one of the masters of 20th century fiction, and “The End of the Affair” is one of his best novels. Almost everyone I know who has read it — or seen the movie with Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore — has found it unforgettable. As a psychological portrait of an affair. As an exploration of Greene’ untraditional brand of Catholicism. And as a clever plot: Sarah’s cheating on her husband, and her lover is convinced she’s also cheating on him. [To buy the paperback — there is no Kindle — from Amazon, click here. To buy the audio book, click here.]
Let’s meet the players.
The narrator is Maurice Bendrix, known mostly by his last name. In the London literary scene just before World War II, he’s an up-and-coming novelist, with twitches that are often the lot of novelists: a high sex drive and low self-esteem. As he writes, “It’s a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.” And his view of sex spells trouble for any lover: “I have always found it hard to feel sexual desire without some sense of superiority, mental or physical.”
Bendrix has a character in his new novel who is a civil servant. This sends him away from his desk for some research. He meets Henry Miles, who’s just boring enough for his book, and Henry’s wife Sarah. He notices her because she seems happy, because she says she’s read his books without going on to gush about them, and because she’s far too beautiful for Henry. They begin an affair. “I have never, never loved a man as I love you,” she tells him, “and I never shall again.”
Can Bendrix be content with so much love? At the start of the war, he can. Ironic, he notes: the war brought him peace. But he knows just how to ruin everything:
“I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn’t settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.”
For an interior book, “The End of the Affair” has a major event: the German bombing of London. In 1944, Bendrix and Sarah are in bed together when the bomb hits his building. He dresses quickly, hurries out of the room to help, and, when a second bomb hits, is trapped under a door. Sarah sees his arm, not moving. And although she hasn’t been a believer, she makes a deal with God: Spare my lover, and I’ll give him up.
For Bendrix, it’s not a good deal. It leads to longing, bad behavior, private detectives, hideous treatment of Sarah’s husband, and the kind of torment that can only be called spiritual.
It’s also a bad deal for Sarah:
“I’m not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I’m tired and I don’t want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don’t want it now. Take it away for a while and give it to me another time.”
Why does Sarah honor the deal? What happens after love ends? And when it does, where does love go? Two of these three questions may be familiar to you. The spiritual component of romance — maybe that too.
Because the narrator is a writer, you may wonder if Bendrix is a stand-in for Greene. Glad you asked. The book is dedicated “to Catherine, with love.” This was Catherine Crompton, who became Greene’s mistress in 1946. She was married. And Greene was her godfather. Did the dedication of this book to her in 1951 cause a scandal? In America, it would have. In England? The publication caused Catherine’s husband to demand that she end the affair. She did — 15 years later.
BONUS VIDEO
The film brilliantly captures the book, the war and a remarkable affair.
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Previously published on The Head Butler.
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