Munchausen Marriage - Part VI
I never stopped to think what married life would be like with Werner Forman. I really didn’t know my partner very well, and from the beginning I could sense that things were going to grow stranger and more confusing with each day.
THIS IS PART 6 of a TEN-PART STORY
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10
Franyo
Werner had two important female connections in his life who were both fourteen years older than he was. One was my mother, and the other was Trude, the blond woman the psychic had mentioned, who had been Werner’s girlfriend from the early 1950s until he met me. With Trude, whom I respected for her wit and candor, I developed an easygoing friendship; with my mother, oddly, it was more as if we were rivals for Werner’s attention. From the very beginning my mother, Franyo, had had a kind of crush on Werner. Her first remark about him had been, “I’d put my slippers under his bed any day,” a rather strange comment from a supposedly happily married woman to her daughter.
Franyo would come to visit us in London and stay for a month to six weeks at a clip. She would book into a hotel in Swiss Cottage, just down the road from us, and her days would be spent running around with Werner, visiting Portobello market and various antiques stores and art galleries. For me this was a great relief as it meant I could be free to do my own thing, which meant sequestering myself in the flat and working on whatever short story I was struggling with at the time.
Franyo would literally “doll” herself up for her jaunts with Werner, putting on lipstick and eyeshadow, a nice dress, behavior that didn't go unnoticed by friends and family.
I’ve written a lot about Franyo, including a memoir (The World of Franyo) but for those of you who don’t know, she was a German Jewish refugee who emigrated to the States in 1938, a spoiled, narcissistic and extremely good-looking woman who was also a gifted painter. My father would remain in New York while my mother traveled to London, and I believe that for him Franyo’s absences were probably a reprieve since he didn’t have to deal with her or her whims.The
Nicole’s father, Gustavo
This was an interesting setup for sure. Perhaps the most interesting part about it was how easily I accepted my mother’s crush on my husband… and that husband’s willingness to play along with her. In private, Werner would talk about Franyo’s foolishness and silly schemes, but when he was with her he’d butter her up shamelessly, siding with her against me -- the sappy daughter. True, Werner and Franyo shared a European background and culture that was closed to me. But in effect, there were three of us in the marriage and I was quickly reaching the point of wanting to find a way out.
Cover Image: From left Werner, Nicole, Franyo