A Love Not Earned

We live in a world that tends to promote one kind of love--the grasping kind that doesn't understand how to put the needs of someone else first. But what might it look like to have these conniving cobwebs cast aside? Is it possible to love selflessly with no invested interest? Could this love ever be natural?

The following story is inspired by Shakespeare's Othello.

“Emilia, my sweet,” Iago strode forward and kissed me on the forehead.

I closed my eyes, treasuring this rare moment of affection. “My husband?” I replied. As much as I hated to acknowledge it, Iago rarely showed kindness to me unless he wanted something.

“I have a new job for you,” he said, kissing my neck. He kept planting his dry lips on my bare skin. His touch sent a chill through me—oh, how I wished this was genuine!

“A job?” I tried to sound playful and keep my body from stiffening.

“Yes, my pet. You will be attending the Lady Desdemona. She is the wife of that Othello.”

I tried to remember Othello. He was a little older, dark-skinned, and barrel-chested. He looked like an oaf next to my slim and suave Iago, but he also possessed that kind of ego that makes people take notice. He also, unfortunately, had been in more battles than Iago, and he supposedly demonstrated valiant conduct in them, which helped him leap up the command ladder faster than his intelligence deserved. Poor Iago had been forced to watch Othello rise above him as Iago’s brains went unappreciated, and I could feel the shadow it left on him. And now he wanted me to share in his humiliation by employing me to Othello’s wife? I thought we had suffered enough.

“Must I?” I sighed, trying to play the part of the languishing lady.

“Yes, Emilia, you must. But you won’t regret it, I assure you. In fact, I have a feeling that you could be the key to moving both of us up in the world.”
My eyes narrowed on his face. What is he up to? I love Iago, but he is like every other man I know when it comes to women: he chews them up so he can get something out of them and then spit them back out.

“Don’t give me that look,” Iago said. “I know you suspect me of being underhanded, but I mean that together, no one can keep us from the power we both want. Don’t deny it,” he said as I was about to protest. “I know you want it as much as I do. You really could be our key, my pet. As I always say, ‘If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit, The one’s for use, the other useth it.' You are pretty and you have brains to use that prettiness if you choose to use them.”

“So you’re not just going to use me for your own ends again?” I asked, trying to pierce through his flattery.

“Good heavens, child! You really are a foolish wife, aren’t you? What is good for me is good for you! If you would—” he stopped himself. “Forget I said that, my sweet.” His arms reached out and encircled my waist, folding me towards him. This was what I wanted. Every tongue lashing, every night spent alone and ignored, every chilly stare that stripped me down and found me wanting—all this could be forgotten when he held me like this. All I really wanted was his love. Why then did I feel like I was being embraced by a spider who wrapped me in a cocoon of death? I didn't care. At least this spider’s poison left me feeling numb; no pain could reach me here.


“By the way,” Iago said the next morning as I sat brushing my hair, “I want you to get Desdemona’s handkerchief for me.”

I barely heard him. My numbness from the night had left me feeling light and giddy, but I nodded.

“Tell me what you are going to get from Lady Desdemona,” Iago commanded; his voice was brittle. I stopped brushing and looked at him, my eyebrows raised. I had hoped, briefly, that maybe he loved me now and that last night had softened him toward me forever.

“Tell me,” Iago repeated.

I was wrong.

I laid down the hairbrush and tried to hold my hands in my lap to keep them from trembling. “I will get Lady Desdemona’s handkerchief for you,” I answered, my eyes lowered.

“Very good,” his voice was syrupy again.

My eyes sought his. His handsome features swam as I observed his oily smile. “But why?” I said.

“Don’t trouble with ‘why,’” Iago replied, his voice now icy. A smile spread across his face again like butter, and he added more softly, “It’s just a little trinket that would please me. I know how you aim to please me.”

Yes, he knew. Ever since I had met him, I had aimed to please him. Yet it seemed like each deed I did only served as another link to the chain he kept fastened to me. But maybe this time it would be different.
          
“Lady Desdemona,” my husband said, bowing, “allow me to present to you my wife, Emilia. I hope she may serve you well.”
         
I curtsied, keeping my eyes trained on the floor. Iago had taught me that sometimes the only way to gain power was to let those in power think that they have the upper hand.
          
“Honest Iago,” a warm voice said—a lady’s voice, rich as honey, “for as my husband calls you, so I’m sure you are. And thus, I’m sure that your wife is more than a suitable companion. You may leave us, then, and allow us to get better acquainted as women.”
          
My husband bowed again and brushed by me, leaving a cold breeze in his wake. Honest Iago: that was what she had called him. Many people called him that. The appellation was fitting, was it not? Yet I wondered if any of those people had ever felt his dry kisses.
          
“There, dear, we’re alone now,” Desdemona said. “Aren’t you going to look at me?”
          
I had nearly forgotten the lady whose confidence I was supposed to gain. I forced my eyes up slowly so as not to seem impudent, and then I really saw her for the first time. Fresh eyes sparkled back at me, and vibrancy radiated from them as well as her smiling mouth. The sun lit the edges of her thick, strawberry-blond hair like a halo. Looking at her was like looking at a misty field on an autumn morning as the sun burns the air-cobwebs away.
          
“Well? Are you satisfied?” Desdemona laughed softly. “I hope it isn’t my ugliness that makes you stare so.”
           
I blushed. “No, mistress,” I murmured. “Only I was surprised that my lord, Othello, had married one such as you.”
          
“You mean that you are surprised that one such as I married him, a Moor?”
          
I coughed and nodded almost imperceptibly. This was not a good beginning.
          
“Never fear, Emilia, I am not angry. Everyone else has been wondering the same thing.”
          
“Then,” I said, feeling bolder, “what do you see in him? Why do you love him?”
          
“Why do you love your own husband?” she asked.
          
“That is easy enough,” I said. “Iago is handsome, and he has the finest brains of anyone I know. And he makes me feel—loved, sometimes.” I thought of last night in my spider’s arms and my snug, unfeeling cocoon, and I hoped my words did not sound as hollow as they felt.
          
“My husband makes me feel loved, too,” Desdemona laughed, “but that is not why I love him. I might not be able to hold on to my love for him if it were based upon his. No, I love him even when he is surly and frowns at me, although I haven’t seen him that way very much yet.”
          
“Then why?” I asked. “Why do you love him?” Surely you don’t love his ego.
          
She looked at me thoughtfully. “I love him because he is true. But if that does not make sense to you, then I love him because loving him is like breathing. I’d sooner be smothered than stop breathing out my love for him.”
          
Her clear eyes shone as she said this, and my own eyes bent to the floor. This was not the kind of self-serving love I was used to experiencing. This was a love I never even knew existed—a love not earned but breathed. And I wondered if I, too, could love like she did. Could I love Iago as devoutly as she loved Othello? I looked at Desdemona’s cloudless countenance, devoid of all cobwebs of deceit. She was like truth itself. And I thought of Iago, handsome and honest Iago, shadow-faced and constantly spinning a web of his own designs. If I had to choose which to love, would I choose Iago or truth?
          
Perhaps I will never know.