I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You  

(This one is based on the plot of SB; the time of action is when Mason is married to Victoria, and Julia and Victoria are both pregnant)

Mason looked at Julia who was so awkward with her big belly, and suddenly choked with tenderness. The mother of his baby.
“I think our baby needs a rest, and so does the baby’s mother,” he suggested in a gentle voice.
Julia gaped at him. After all his acid, all the snide remarks on her intelligence, or lack of one; on her competence – or rather her incompetence, all the invectives he had flung at her the last seven hours! And just as she was getting used to such treatment--
“Awww Mason Capwell, you must have taken up the hobby of taking care of ALL the women you impregnated, haven’t you?”
Julia had thought – hoped – he’d come back to his previous mood and snap out after this, but he only laughed. “All the women I--? …Fortunately for me, they are not too many.”
Julia was infinitely funny when she did not know what she was talking about, Mason thought.
“Not too many and still not too many, until you start forgetting the names of some, right?” she said sarcastically.
“Julia, it’s not true; I have never been that lecherous…” he paused, and Julia shivered inwardly: there definitely had been no unseemliness about the conception of their baby…
No, of HER baby, of HER baby.
And of course he was married to Victoria; so if there was any indecency at all involved, it concerned only their, Mason and Julia’s, relationship. Or lack of one, at this stage. She hurt so much.
“I represent no threat to your self-sufficiency, I hope you know that?” Mason inquired, having for a moment considered what he thought might have been Julia’s feelings.
She shot an angry glance at him.
“Just because I was trying to be well-mannered… well, civil… ok, human to you, for one short second, – must you crush me for this?”
“You have never been civil in your entire life, and well, well-mannered you might have been once or twice, to people you were extremely interested in.”
Julia couldn’t bear it if he decided to be sweet. It was good when he was impossible; it was impossible if he was good to her! It was a hundred times better to want to hurl a heavy volume of laws and regulations at him, than to look into his eyes that would express genuine concern (at least this he did feel for her) and yearn to lean on him, to be held by him, to be kissed by him…
She felt tears well into her eyes and hastily turned away. Too late: Mason had noticed. He got up and approached her cautiously.
Mason had always had an eye for her sudden changes of mood, but he definitely had absolutely no ability to decipher them. Or no wish to, any more, - no wish to, at this stage. The thought bit so hard in Julia’s heart she could not keep herself in hand any longer. She burst out crying.
Mason was staring at her, at a nonplus. Now, what on earth had he said to provoke such a reaction? She had been tolerating his tantrums so admirably, and just when he gave her a break and for once tried to be considerate… Oh, who can understand those women?! Mason, for one, was giving up.
“You are tired,” he concluded. “You’re tired, and our baby must be tired, and I have been an unreasonable tyrant, I know.”
“Worse,” Julia sobbed.
“A terrible boor,” he conceded.
“Worse.”
“A merciless butcher?”
“Worse.”
“Now, do YOU know any words other than this ‘worse’?” Mason said in exasperation. “A brainless imbecile, which, by the way, I do feel I am being at the moment?”
“Worse,” she managed, a gleam of a smile already on her face.
“Okay, okay, you win. I have been WORSE, - your choice word, your most powerful invective I might as well add to my vocabulary… No hard feelings? Friends?”
Julia shook her head. She was having a very hard time with her feelings, and Mason was not a friend for her. But of course it was only her problem.
Mason looked at her. He was still holding out his hand she wouldn’t shake, and suddenly he had to stifle an urge to reach out and hold her in his arms. He turned round on his heel and went back to his desk.
“So much for hysterics,” he said brusquely. “Someone here must do the work, Counsellor.”
Julia’s tears dried up immediately. “Now what do you think I have been doing all along, while you…” she started pertly.

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You
(By Pablo Neruda)
I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you,
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it''s you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

Olga Lisenkova


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