The Actress and the Writer. Part II
Nila was gifted with language, but she didn’t share Joseph’s faith in the redemptive quality of words. Significance, she believed, lay in the way the mouth moved, not in the things it had to say. The performative aspect of human interaction intrigued her. She would accompany Joseph to his sporting events, and while he struggled to translate gestures into sentences, she sat absorbed for hours in the aesthetics of human aggression.
“Love and football adhere to the law of entropy,” Joseph once wrote. “Those who participate are compelled to a state of disorder and destruction, emotions and limbs tending toward violent collision. Yet beauty finds a seam. Tiny miracles occur, in the midst of chaos splendour breaks through somehow, despite all odds. Johnny Malone carries for 117 yards; Giants win. Final score, New York 28 Jacksonville 17.”
Joseph observed in Nila’s acting a similar compulsion to disaster. Her performances, like his writing, tended toward botched melodrama, as though imperfection were the natural state of her gestures and his words. And yet somehow she managed to accomplish tiny miracles, the achievement of perfect moments that could transcend the stage and send shivers down Joseph’s spine. It was a reaction no other woman could induce, at once a reminder of her beauty and his disappointments as a writer. He adored her radiance, but resented the success it slowly brought.
Nila was quickly becoming the star of her shows. With every particular role a new set of possibilities came into focus. For seven weeks she arrived home from work having suffered rape by a clown.
“I want a more sinister absurdity!” Joseph teased as Nila chopped cantaloupe.
She returned home tipsy after opening night; Joseph waited in bed in a clown suit. During those weeks his sarcasm was unbearable, her sense of infirmity pushed to its limit. Then the script changed and he became an inadequate and naive husband, unaware that she was sleeping with a Spanish matador. Matadors were in short supply in the West Village; she fucked the Argentine mechanic instead.
“Love and football adhere to the law of entropy,” Joseph once wrote. “Those who participate are compelled to a state of disorder and destruction, emotions and limbs tending toward violent collision. Yet beauty finds a seam. Tiny miracles occur, in the midst of chaos splendour breaks through somehow, despite all odds. Johnny Malone carries for 117 yards; Giants win. Final score, New York 28 Jacksonville 17.”
Joseph observed in Nila’s acting a similar compulsion to disaster. Her performances, like his writing, tended toward botched melodrama, as though imperfection were the natural state of her gestures and his words. And yet somehow she managed to accomplish tiny miracles, the achievement of perfect moments that could transcend the stage and send shivers down Joseph’s spine. It was a reaction no other woman could induce, at once a reminder of her beauty and his disappointments as a writer. He adored her radiance, but resented the success it slowly brought.
Nila was quickly becoming the star of her shows. With every particular role a new set of possibilities came into focus. For seven weeks she arrived home from work having suffered rape by a clown.
“I want a more sinister absurdity!” Joseph teased as Nila chopped cantaloupe.
She returned home tipsy after opening night; Joseph waited in bed in a clown suit. During those weeks his sarcasm was unbearable, her sense of infirmity pushed to its limit. Then the script changed and he became an inadequate and naive husband, unaware that she was sleeping with a Spanish matador. Matadors were in short supply in the West Village; she fucked the Argentine mechanic instead.
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