To the Artist's Page               To our home page

To Sam Vaknin's previous piece     To Sam Vaknin's next piece

Here You Are, Madam

I was detained for questioning in 1990. I remember the sweaty excitement of the movie-like setting, the "bad cop, good cop" routines and all the time I kept saying to myself "another adventure" and shivering even though it was pretty hot.

When I exited their headquarters after 8 days of 13 hours interrogations, my world was no more. I went back to our office and stared at the theatrical chaos left behind by the police search. The new computers were papered over. Disembowelled drawers lay all over the wall to wall carpets criss-crossed by sun rays and shades. My partners and I sifted through the paper ruins and burned the incriminating evidence on a big stake. After that we calculated the damage, split it between us equally, as we always did and said polite and hushed goodbyes. The company was closed.

It took me three years of social leprosy, rejection and economic malaise to recover. In the absence of sufficient money for a bus fare I walked huge distances to business meetings. People used to stare at the torn and worn soles of my shoes, at the big armpitted salt stains, at my crumpled, badly odd fashioned suits. They said no. They refused to do business with me. I had a bad name which got only worse by the day. Gradually, I learned to stay at home and read the broadsheets. My wife studied photography and music. Her friends were buoyant and vivacious and creative. They all looked so young and ready. I envied her and them and in my envy, I withdrew further until I almost was no more, a fuzzy stain on our shabby leather loveseat, off focus, a bad piece of motion picture, only without the motion.

Then, I established a firm and found myself an office in a low ceilinged attic above a manpower agency. People came and went below. Phones rang and I occupied myself in holding the shreds of my grandiose fantasies together. It was a miracle, an awesome sight, this ability of mine to lie even to myself.

In total denial, cooped there in the shadows of the damp and smelly attic, I was planning my revenge, my comeback, the nightmare that will be my dream.

In 1993 my wife had an affair. I overheard her hesitantly enquiring about a suggested venue. I loved her the way only a narcissist knows how to, the way a junkie loves his drugs. I was attached to her, I idealized and adored her and, sure enough, she lost weight, became a stunningly beautiful woman, mature, talented. I felt as though I invented her, as though she were my creation now desecrated by another. I knew that I lost her long before I found out. I detached myself from the pain that she was, from the envy that she provoked, from the life that she exuded. I was dead and in the manner of the Pharaohs, I wanted her to die with me in my self constructed tomb.

That night, we had a cold analysis (she crying, I opinionating), an even colder glass of wine each and some decisions reached, to stay together. And we did until I went to jail, two years later. There, in prison, she found the courage to abandon me or to free herself, depending on who tells the story.

In prison, I wrote a book of short stories, mostly about her and about my mother. It is a very painful book, it won awards, very unlike something a narcissist would ever write. It is the closest I ever got to feeling human or alive - and it very nearly killed me.

Propelled by the rude awakening, by blinding pain, that week I teamed up with a former business partner of mine and others and we embarked on a ferocious road which led us to riches in one year. I found an investor and we bought a company owned by the state in a privatization deal. I went on to buy factories, companies. In 12 months I owned my "empire" with an annual turnover of 10 million USD. Business journals were now reporting my activities daily. I felt empty, vacuous.

One weekend, in a luxurious hotel in Eilat, the southern sea resort in Israel, naked, glistening with sweat and ointments, we agreed to give it all away. I came back and gave it all away, as gifts, to my business partners, no questions asked, no money changing hands. I felt free, they felt rich, that was it.

The last company I stayed involved with was the computer firm. Our original investor, a prominent and wealthy Jew, succeeded to get the Chairman of a huge conglomerate interested in our firm. They sent a team over to talk to me. I was not consulted regarding the timetables. I went on a vacation, to attend a film festival. They came, were unable to meet me and went back furious. I never turned back. That was the end of that company as well.

I was again in debt. I re-invented my life. I began to publish a capital markets fax-zine. But this is yet another story and not sufficiently different to warrant writing it.

It was all meaningless, it still is. A series of automatic gestures performed by another man, not me. I bought, I sold, I gave away, I heard her planning he romance over the phone, I poured a glass of deep red wine, I read the paper, glossing uncomprehending over the lines, the words, the syllables. A dreamy quality. Psychologists would say I acted out but I can't remember acting out - or in. I can't remember being at all. Definitely no emotions, perhaps the odd rage. It was so very unreal I never grieved. I let go as we politely give our place in a queue to an old lady and smile and say: "Here you are, Madam".

To the top of this page