Kafka's Curse

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In the end, Anna left her husband Oscar because he breathed down her neck. At Wrst his breathing had been his most endearing quality. Through many years of unconscious practice, Oscar had developed the perfect breathing technique: breath in through the nose, breath out through the mouth. He did this with such serenity that he seemed to Anna the most sensitive and reWned man she had known. Even more so than her father. She loved Oscar for his gentleness, his ability to smile when aVronted, his understanding of her need to rage at life's many and inevitable little agonies. Even when he was the cause and object of Anna's anger. Oscar's strength lay in his reticence: the hesitancy that in others seemed like a vice or a weakness became in Oscar a thoughtful virtue. All of this Anna attributed to Oscar's capacity to fill his lungs with invigorating oxygen, his finely structured, somewhat hooked nose quivering like that of a thoroughbred horse. Then Oscar was struck by an illness that reversed the whole natural order of his being. It began with a headache which the doctor put down to an infection in his sinus cavity. At first his breathing acquired a hoarseness associated with chest colds or the flu and did not unduly disturb their bedtime tranquillity. But gradually Oscar's condition worsened, his breathing became irregular and his struggling lungs began to make harsh, anguished noises. Suddenly he was overcome, each night, by coughing spasms that shook his body, his eyes bulging as if he were near to madness. Because of their devotion to each other, Anna endured without complaint the long sleepless nights, observing her husband's pain with a helplessness that brought tears to her eyes. Despite many consultations with a number of doctors, and a desperate prescription of different drugs, Oscar's health continued to deteriorate until Anna saw in his face a gauntness which told her that he had reconciled himself to death. One measure of their unquestionable devotion to each other was the fact that they had not had sex before they married, that they had both come to the wedding bed as virgins, to the best of their totally trusting knowledge of each other. Anna recalled this bond of celibacy with quiet pride when some of her women friends boasted about the surreptitious premarital fumbling sessions they had had with their future husbands. And even with other men. Anna was not in any way prudish though and enjoyed making love to Oscar. He, always aware of the nuances of meaning that words created, corrected her:We make love with each other, not to each other.And Oscar never demanded anything more than the caresses that Anna permitted. He stopped kissing her and pressing up against her body as soon as she felt his passion was becoming too fierce and asked him to stop. There arose in her an inexplicable discomfort when Oscar's sexual desires became too intense. In the midst of their normally courteous lovemaking, a sudden wave of pure lust would surge through him. He would close his eyes as if to contain some unbearable pain within himself, his penis swelled, became huge and vividly veined like volcanic rock. But he always subsided the moment Anna whispered,Oscar, no please. In the beginning of their marriage this distressed Anna, who feared that she could not satisfy Oscar's sexual needs. She remembered someone telling her that the key to a good marriage was sexual compatibility, that her father had taken a mistress because her mother was unresponsive and saw sex as no more than a duty to which all women coldly submitted. But Oscar showed great understanding and patience, sensing her struggle with the image of a placid Oscar transformed into someone fierce by his sexual desires. She loved him with great tenderness in those moments, as he kneeled on the bed before her, his head bowed, ashamed of the extraordinary appetite for sex he had displayed. He would only lie down beside her when his erection