Punt married Mogadoxo because he was an idiot: he mistook his own sincerity for evidence of hers. He wanted a common household, shared obligations, and a future neither partner could sell without consulting the other. Because these ambitions seemed honorable to him, he assumed they must seem equally binding to her. Thus began a marriage founded upon the dangerous proposition that wanting something badly enough supplies evidence that it exists.
Mogadoxo appreciated this arrangement. Punt supplied devotion, resources, and explanations whenever her conduct required explaining. She supplied assurances. Whenever the assurances expired, another ceremony could renew them. Punt called this perseverance, and his admirers called it loyalty. Neither description required anyone to open the accounts. For a time, therefore, everyone could consider the marriage successful, provided success was measured by its continued existence.
The husband who supplied his own blindfold
Punt’s stupidity consisted in granting trust exemption from scrutiny. He handed over the keys before agreeing who could change the locks. He accepted common obligations without establishing common control. When Mogadoxo began making decisions in their joint name, he discovered that being represented and being consulted were quite different experiences. His signature remained useful long after his opinion had become inconvenient.
The first discrepancies were small enough to explain away. Money disappeared into undertakings whose benefits he could never identify. Visitors arrived with gifts and departed with understandings he had never approved. Questions about these arrangements produced lectures on the importance of family unity. Each lecture persuaded Punt to postpone the question. Eventually, postponement became the household’s principal method of government.
He also possessed the vanity common to people who advertise their patience: he wanted his endurance to prove his superiority. Leaving would require admitting that his earlier judgments had been foolish. Remaining allowed him to describe the same foolishness as sacrifice. Mogadoxo understood the advantage. A husband determined to vindicate yesterday’s decision can be persuaded to finance tomorrow’s disappointment.
The price concealed in the promise
Punt eventually recognized the commerce beneath the ceremony. Mogadoxo’s loyalty changed with the generosity of her visitors, while her claim upon his loyalty remained absolute. She treated the household as a credential to display, an income to collect, and a name under which to negotiate. The obligations attached to that name were usually forwarded to Punt.
Calling her a prostitute gave his anger a convenient noun. It left his own error untouched. An openly declared transaction allows both parties to examine the price and refuse the terms. Mogadoxo demanded the privileges of marriage while conducting her affairs as a succession of private bargains. The scandal was a price list concealed inside a marriage certificate. Punt had supplied the certificate with a reverence that discouraged inspection.
He began insisting upon accounts, limits, and consent. Mogadoxo interpreted these requests as hostility. Her independence, apparently, included the freedom to commit their shared resources; his independence threatened the household whenever he questioned her. The distinction was admirably convenient. Punt was discovering how easily the language of unity could become a demand that he surrender judgment while continuing payment.
Reconciliation as a profession
At this point the counselors arrived. They brought solemn expressions, expensive stationery, and an inexhaustible appetite for meetings. Each conference produced a declaration affirming the marriage’s importance. Each declaration required Punt to demonstrate goodwill. Mogadoxo promised consultation, the witnesses congratulated themselves, and the accounts remained closed. The marriage accumulated agreements at roughly the rate it lost agreement.
Some counselors were sincere. Others enjoyed the invitations, allowances, and importance that reconciliation supplied. A settled dispute would have deprived them of a useful occupation. Their proposed remedies consequently favored further consultation, supported by additional consultation whenever the first consultation failed. Punt’s patience had acquired a constituency.
He finally asked what would happen if Mogadoxo ignored the next agreement. The counselors found the question unhelpful. They preferred discussing the consequences of his departure, which could be made sufficiently alarming to render her conduct almost irrelevant. He was expected to insure the household against every possible danger of separation while accepting its existing dysfunction as the natural cost of belonging.
Punt had heard enough. A settlement deserved consideration if it altered decisions, distributed obligations fairly, and made breaches consequential. Another signature beneath another declaration would merely replenish the stationery. He began asking for conditions that could survive the departure of the photographers.
Who owns the marriage?
Mogadoxo now invoked history. Their household, she said, embodied sacrifices too important to be reconsidered by an irritated husband. Relatives agreed. Influential visitors recognized her position and urged Punt to respect it. Recognition became her answer to questions about conduct, as though a place at the family table settled who should control the family purse.
The visitors had reasons for preferring one address, one signature, and one person authorized to receive their gifts. Their convenience helped explain their enthusiasm. It supplied no answer to Punt’s objection that a representative who could disregard him had become an intermediary between his resources and somebody else’s purposes.
History deserved a hearing. It supplied memories, attachments, and obligations that anger could easily undervalue. Punt had helped build the household; others depended upon arrangements he could not responsibly dismiss. Yet these considerations required an account of what should be preserved and how. Repeating the word “unity” supplied neither. A marriage defended solely through its ancestry had ceased making a convincing argument about its future.
Mogadoxo also had grievances. She accused Punt of arrogance, selective memory, and disguising ambition as injured innocence. He owed those charges examination. Betrayal had conferred no miraculous exemption from his own vanity, and separation would place responsibilities in his hands that complaint had allowed him to avoid.
That prospect sharpened his judgment. Could he manage his affairs openly? Would he accept scrutiny from those who depended upon him? Would he honor inconvenient promises? A man who leaves an unaccountable household to establish a smaller version of it has accomplished a change of address. Punt would need standards he was prepared to apply to himself.
Nor could he treat the people dependent upon his decisions as an audience for his grievance. Their lives would bear the consequences of separation. He owed them a voice in the choice and a credible account of its costs. Consent had to become a governing principle on his side of the household as well.
The divorce begins with the idiot
His first task was therefore to abandon the pleasure of imagining himself entirely innocent. He had trusted recklessly, ignored warnings, and helped sustain practices he now condemned. Acknowledging that record made his decision harder to dismiss as wounded pride. He could explain what had failed, what he had contributed to the failure, and what would have to change.
He then turned to the practical business of separation: shared property, outstanding commitments, dependents, access, and boundaries. These questions required records, negotiation, and restraint. His wish to leave settled none of them automatically. Nor did Mogadoxo’s wish to keep him justify indefinite obstruction. Both would have to confront the difference between asserting a grievance and arranging a future.
Punt also relinquished the fantasy that her humiliation would restore his dignity. He wanted control over his decisions, which revenge would keep subordinated to hers. Cooperation could continue wherever their interests met. A door could remain open for a freely negotiated arrangement without remaining open to every old demand.
The choice before him was whether he would continue treating yesterday’s credulity as tomorrow’s obligation. He had made the marriage possible by trusting without conditions. He could make another life possible by accepting responsibility for that mistake.
Before Punt could divorce Mogadoxo, he had to divorce the idiot who kept signing.