The 158-Pound Marriage

'I'm in love,' Utch said.

'Yes,' I said stupidly. 'So am I.'

'How could this happen?' Maisky wondered. His suit was a loud gray, if that's even possible: his tie, a shiny sort of cardboard, was gray too, and so were his hair, his once-white shirt, the tinted lenses of his glasses and even the color in his cheeks.

'Sir,' I said, 'I think it will be necessary for Utchka to say she's not a Communist anymore - or even that she never really was - so that my country won't delay her immigration. But we hope you know that this isn't personal. She has told me how you've helped her.'

'Renounce us, you mean?' Maisky cried. 'Oh Utchka, Utchka ...'

'I hoped you'd understand,' Utch said, unmoved by poor old Maisky. I was quite touched by him, actually.

'Utchka!' Maisky shouted. 'If you go to America, there can be no God!'

'There is no God anyway,' Utch said, but Maisky gazed heavenward as if he were going to summon Him. Perhaps he will call upon the Workers of the World, I thought, but he just shook his head.

Outside it was all November; Maisky regarded the weather. 'I am by everything so discouraged,' he said. 'This weather, the price of things, East-West relations - and now this.' He sighed. 'By deteriorating quality of life everywhere I am discouraged, though perhaps where you're going it will be exciting because everything deteriorates a little faster over there.' He arched his stiff back and gave out a gray groan. 'By the values I see young people abandoning I am discouraged. The sexual liberties taken, the terrible self-righteousness of children, the probability of more wars, the extravagance of having so many babies. I suppose you want to have babies too?'

I felt guilty for all the things discouraging Maisky, but Utch said, 'Of course we'll have babies. You've just gotten old.' I winced. Who was this callous young woman I wanted to take home with me? She was not sentimental; I saw her inspiring blank shock in my mother. But perhaps she would flatter my father's pessimism.

Later Utch said, 'Some things about America do bother me.'

'What?'

'The terrible poverty, the automobile accidents, the racial violence, the sexual crimes ...'

'What?'

'Does everyone cook in - what you call it? - a barbecue pit?' she asked. I tried to imagine her vision of America: a country of one vast smoldering cookout - with rapes and police skirmishes, car crashes and starving black children on the side.

We acquired the necessary papers for Utch at the American consulate. The man we talked to was discouraged by many of the same things which were discouraging to M. Maisky, but Utch and I remained cheerful. We returned to the Studentenheim on Krugerstrasse, where Utch practiced her renunciation speech. When I went to the Herrenzimmer, Willy was shaving his eyebrows. 'At this moment,' I told him, 'Utchka is practicing her entry into the United States.'

'Go practice your own entry,' he said.

Heinrich came into the Herrenzimmer bare-chested, stood at the mirror and aimed the shaving-cream can at himself as if it were an underarm deodorant; he filled both armpits with a lathery foam, turned away from the mirror and flapped his arms against his sides like some violent, awkward bird. Lather squirted on the walls, oozed over his ribs, dappled his shoes. 'I think you better marry her before you take her anywhere,' Heinrich said.

'Ja,' said Willy, eyebrowless, as startling as a newborn owl. 'That's the only decent thing to do.'

I went back to Utch's room to ask her if she agreed. We compared our philosophies on marriage. We spoke of fidelity as the only way. We considered conventional 'affairs' as double deceptions, degrading to everyone involved. We regarded 'arrangements' as callous - the kind of premeditation that is the opposite of genuine passion. How people could conceive of such things was beyond us. We speculated on the wisdom of couples 'swapping'; it hardly seemed wise. In fact, it seemed an admission of an unforgivable boredom, utterly decadent and grossly wasteful of the erotic impulse. (Philosophy is a pretty simple-minded subject when you've just fallen in love with someone.)

There were further permissions needed from and granted by the American consulate before we could get married. Since Austria is a Catholic country and I wasn't Catholic and Utch was long lapsed, the easiest thing was to be married in a nondenominational church. The American consul told us that this church was preferred by most Americans who got married in Vienna. It was called the American Church of Christ and was in a modern building; the minister was an American from Sandusky, Ohio, who said he'd been raised a Unitaria

n. 'But it doesn't matter,' he told us; he smiled a lot. He said to Utch, 'They're going to love your accent in the States, honey.'

The church itself was on the fourth floor and we took an elevator to it. 'Some young people like to use the stairs,' the minister told us. 'It gives them more time to think about it. Last year one couple changed their minds on the stairs, but no one's ever changed his mind in the elevator.'

'What's "change your mind" mean?' Utch asked.

'Isn't she charming?' the minister said. 'She's going to knock them over back home, you know.'

The form for the American consulate required the signature of a witness - in our case, the church janitor, a Greek named Golfo who had not yet learned to write his last name. He signed the form 'Golfo X.'

'You should tip him,' the minister told me; I gave Golfo twenty shillings. 'He wants to give you a present,' the minister said. 'Golfo witnesses lots of our weddings and he always gives a present.' Golfo gave us a spoon. It was not a silver spoon, but it had a tiny colored picture of St Stephen's Cathedral engraved on the handle. Perhaps we were to pretend that we had been married there.

The minister walked us around the block. 'You should expect that you'll have your little differences,' he told us. 'You can even expect some pretty good unhappiness,' he said. We nodded. 'But I'm married myself and it's just great. She's a Viennese girl, too,' he whispered to me. 'I think they make the best wives in the world.' I nodded. We all came to a halt suddenly because the minister stopped walking. 'I can't walk around that corner,' he told us. 'You'll have to go on by yourselves. You're on your own now!'

'What's around the corner?' I asked him. I assumed he'd been speaking metaphorically, but he meant the actual corner of Rennweg and Metternichgasse.

'There's a pastry shop there,' he said. 'I'm on a diet, but I can't resist the Haselnusstorte if I see it in the window.'