He told me, just the other day: "You have to assimilate into this culture. You have to learn. You must change. There’s no other way to survive". He stroked my hair as he said this, and his hazel eyes flickered with a warmth that could not be faked. I held still, like a swallow with her wings outstretched and waiting for her next heartbeat as the signal to take flight.
I don’t want to become like them. The more I burrowed—or was it “sank”?—into this village, this society I’d joined to be by his side, the more facets I saw of its nature: the deceit, the trickery, the narrow-mindedness, the backwards notions of an un-enriched, disenchanted community. There was, too, the other face of the coin; as in any small tight-knit community, there was generosity to match the gossip, warm-heartedness to match the weaseling, and empathy to balance the ignorance. The shiny pretty warm-hearted face was usually the face that smiled back up at you when the euro coin fell out of your pocket. But in stormy weather the winds battered against the coin and flipped it over; and there you had it, the ugly darker side scowling up into your eyes.
"You have to know how they are", my husband encouraged me. "You can’t deal with them if you don’t get them. You don’t have to—you shouldn’t—become them".
"I won’t. I refuse to". I gazed at him levelly. "You aren’t one of them", I added decisively.
I have to pretend, sometimes. He nodded like a man who had seen more lifetimes than he had lived—and so he had. "It’s like a shield you must put up, to protect yourself. It’s not really you, but you must blend in to survive. It’s like a mask".
"It’s dangerous to put on a mask", I replied. I don’t like such games. I was never that good of an actor.
"A mask", he repeated, "that you will learn to put on and take off. With them, you are one of them. With me, you are always the woman I know and love and admire, so exotic and naïve and idealistic that you are almost otherworldly. And yet that is why I fell in love with you. You must not to change".
The paradoxes in this conversation unsettled me. But much more disturbing was the offering of the mask. I hesitated, my mind balking at the thought of such a covering. "I do not like the mask", I warned. "You put it on and take it off, time and time again; one day, my love, perhaps that mask will not come off. One day it may get stuck". My hand stroked his face, and beneath his rugged shadow of a beard, above the webbing of nerves and veins, I fancied that my fingers brushed against the strings of a mask.
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