<em>Nice guys finish last. </em>
If my Christ-like ideals were inspired by a book, my sense of their limitations started to emerge from real-life experience. If the book that inspired me to try the ethic of the spirit of love was a study of the murder of a less-than-admirable father --the old man Karamazov-- the blow that renewed my moral search came from another, somewhat ruthless father, the father of my college fiancée. I'll call her Mary.
We were both young. In her case, "young" meant that Mary's father was not yet reconciled to the idea that his daughter would not forever be under his control. Long before her family met me, there were rumblings of thunder from her father, the head of the European operations of a major American corporation. The more he got wind of her serious involvement with a young man, the more Mary could feel the tugs of the strings from her family off in Spain, where her father was based.
Mary's father started yanking at her purse strings, too. Until then, she had received a regular allowance, with no evident strings attached. She managed this money responsibly, even frugally. The way she and I spent time together in no way altered the prudence of her fiscal management, but as her father got word that there was another man in her life, and one she evidently loved in a serious way, Mary was suddenly beset by demands for a close accounting. And the checks that had arrived like clockwork became late and unpredictable. "Here's a reminder, kid," the message seemed to be, "that you're not independent. You'd better stick with me-- I'll keep you writing me letters to explain yourself, make you do what I say. If you don't, I'll teach you the meaning of 'He who pays the piper calls the tune.'"
Mary dealt with all this as well as she could, but it was a great strain on a loyal young woman of eighteen or nineteen years.
The love between us was strong, and we were reliably caring with one another.
After spending a lot of time together for the better part of a year, we became engaged to be married. My family embraced Mary. But her family, i.e. her father, was trying to pull her away from me. Only her grandfather had actually met me. He was an Old World gentleman who evidently had reported with disapproval that I had worn a sweater and tie, rather than a jacket and tie, when she and I came to his New York apartment for dinner. The fact that my background is Jewish had also been reported and that, along with my apparent lack of proper manners, seemed to become levers in the effort to keep this first-born daughter within the paternal family.
My sweetheart stood by me, but she was being pulled apart. Building a marriage and trying to keep peace with a powerful and angry father were, together, a huge assignment. She, and therefore also I, felt constant strain.
That summer, I received an invitation to visit Mary's family in Spain. They would pay my airfare, which was important in making such a trip possible. I had some trepidation about what kind of situation I would be walking into. But I talked it over with my family, and we concluded that I should go. Perhaps the personal contact, perhaps my showing that I was prepared to be a good member of the family, would make the idea of our marriage less troubling than it apparently was in abstract. Goodwill and extending a loving heart should go a long way to calming fears and making peace. And in any event, not to go might be regarded as itself a strong statement that could undermine our long-term future. So I went.
I had been in Madrid for about two hours, when I grasped what was going on. The "old man" --thinking in terms of the patriarch of Freud's Totem and Taboo-- had wound up the family like a music box, and now sat back while the women of the family spun around the house making strange music. Mary explained how her father had accomplished this. During the week or two prior to my arrival, he had stormed around in a foul mood, complaining to her mother about domestic arrangements that had long been accepted as right. For Mary's mother, keeping things smooth and peaceful was part of the job description, but for a time it had become impossible, and the nerves of this high-strung woman had become ragged. Then, as my visit was about to begin, the father calmed down and conveyed, somehow, to Mary's mother, "OK, you take care of this." Take care, it seemed, meaning bring back peace and contentment to the family, meaning, I would surmise, get things back to how they used to be, when this guy wasn't in the picture.
I realized that --at the same time that, on the level of appearances, I was a welcome guest in the home of my fiancée's family—underneath, I had been set up for the kill. That night I lay in bed and thought about one of the most vivid images from my childhood of movie-going: when the Mexican rebel Zapata, played by Marlon Brando, goes into a stadium to be given back his horse, walking into an ambush from hundreds of Mexican soldiers hidden behind the ramparts. I was five or six when I saw Zapata slaughtered in that ambush, and it moved me to tears.
My visit, apparently, had been all the father's idea, a set up to intensify the strain on Mary, bringing the two sets of forces pulling on her into the same immediate space in order to force a rupture, and I could feel that, emotionally, she was bleeding inside. Signs of stress were everywhere, and I thought of something that Mary had told me her father was wont to say with pride: "I don't get ulcers, I give them."
Mary's bond with me had infuriated her father and, thanks to his machinations, was making life miserable for her mother. What was a faithful lover and dutiful daughter to do?
What was I to do? Charm seemed unavailing. By the second day, I sensed that no amount of goodwill on my part was going to turn that situation around. My other main social asset --forthrightness-- felt impossible to employ. As the family assembled for meals, the code of decorum was strong, and the pressure of it was directed against acknowledging, much less dealing with, the real drama that was being enacted. To have breached that code would have been regarded as an aggressive act. On that second afternoon, I contemplated my options.
Something un-Alyosha-like was rising in me. It seemed to me that it was time for some kind of a showdown. Time to call the old man out into the street for a shoot-out, in this case taking the form of speaking the impolite truth about the situation. "This is what's going on. This is what I feel about it. Either treat us right or I'm leaving." That's what the warrior would have done, I thought. But not Alyosha. The voice of Alyosha told me it was too aggressive, too confrontational. My visit was supposed to last for a week. Packing my bag and heading back to the airport if my terms were not met --in so high-stakes a showdown-- would have been far and away the boldest thing I had ever done. I was twenty years old. And I was a nice guy. Besides, Mary's father had paid for my ticket: did I have the right to abort the visit without buying that ticket back (presumably with money I didn't have)? And the intolerable circumstances were all below the surface, easily deniable, the way some skillful police can administer beatings that leave no marks.
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