The Black Gondolier and Other Stories

BLACK HAS ITS CHARMS

Hello, Dear, I've got something I want to tell you, a really brilliant idea. No, don't get out of bed, I'm unused to such courtesies and it's too late for you to start them now. Just stay tucked in there like a cozy little infant and I'll sit here on the edge. You wouldn't deny me the edge of your bed, would you?

Yes, I've been wandering around the house in the dark, creeping around it noiselessly like a maniac. I know you didn't say “maniac” but you thought it, I know everything you think. Well, it simply happens that I enjoy silence and darkness, like any sensitive person, and I can't stand the bright lights you surround yourself with like a boulevard. I know that to preserve your mental health you have to read in bed, but—that's better, dear, thank you, that's almost soothing, though I'm sure you didn't mean to be considerate. The world should end first!

No, I'm not drinking. I'm just taking a little wine, a tiny sip now and then, for my raw throat. You wouldn't deny me a little wine, would you, the beverage of civilization? You wouldn't deny me a little gaiety and laughter? Of course you would. You stamp on every spark of gaiety that ever comes to a feeble glow in me. The whole twenty years of our marriage you've done nothing but deny me things.

You lie awake nights figuring them out. I could be dying of pneumonia and you wouldn't give me the corner of your blanket. No, I wouldn't get in bed with you if you were the last man on earth. And don't plead, it ill becomes you.

Cold? Of course it's cold and of course I'm chilly! That's why I put on this coat—haven't you any brains in your head at all? Though why I should expect this miserable, worn, ink-dabbed rabbit skin to keep me warm I don't know—you've got a point there, you really have.

Another man might find me attractive, of course. Black lace nightgown (ripped a little in front—you once had some spirit), black-feathered high-heeled mules, and a black panther coat (another man mightn't know it was lapin)—why, it's the high school boy's dream. They wouldn't mind that I was older than some of their mothers. I've learned a lot about their tastes from your son's friends.

So I look like the vampire lady in the Charles Addams cartoons.?Thank you dear, it shows there's at least some romance left in you, I mean imagination—romance died in you long ago, you're an old man before your time. No, don't start making approaches designed to soothe me and to square your own guilty conscience. I'm on to those and they mean less to me than a leer from a fat dirty janitor. Besides, I have this brilliant idea I want to tell you about, though I can sense already that you don't want to hear it. But you're going to, so dig the wax out of your ears (I won't be shocked, I have to watch you pick your nose) and listen very carefully because I'm only going to tell you once, I don't like having to cast my pearls before swine.

This is it: why don't you kill me? Why don't you murder me in some subtle way that the police will never suspect? It's really the best solution for you, dear—at one stroke you'll be rid of your biggest problem and able to marry a younger, more attractive woman, a high school girl if you like, some elfin child. And I'd appreciate it, I truly would, I'd be eternally grateful.

No, I'm being purely logical and coldly rational about it, the way you always pretend to be but never are. You and Bertrand Russell. You hate me, to you I'm an ugly old witch, you want to get rid of me. And I want to die, it would be the most wonderful thing that could ever happen to me now. You forever prate about logic, why not practice it for once?

So you won't even kill me, you won't even do that one little thing for me?

It isn't practical?How like you to return me such a cold answer, how like your frightened, gutless, old- maid mind. The scientist—excuse me, dear, I mean the technical editor, I forgot your modesty and your worship of accuracy. You kill all romance but you're scared to kill me. Yet you always know exactly what to say to kill my soul. You know how to quench every good idea I get, every least little inspiration.

I'm crazy, am I?No, you didn't, but your lips started to form the word. Or am I merely disgustingly drunk, is that the explanation of my behavior you've picked for tonight? Or drunkand crazy?

Yes, I'm pouring myself some brandy, it's nothing but simmered-down wine. Watch your tongue and your looks too or I'll pour myself a tumblerful and drink it straight down and then your blood will be on your own head. I have to give myself a little brandy, you won't give me anything.

Yet when I think of the things I've given you, the love, the devotion, the loyalty, the backing-up, the opportunities (that you muffed or passed up) for better jobs and money and advancement—

You didn't know that I was responsible for those, that they were my doing?Who else but me brought into your life and our home those men who tried to help you and whom you scorned? Your sainted mother? The scummy friends you had before I knew you? It is to laugh. Listen, dear, I've got more news for you: it was your ego that got flattered, but it wasn't you those men were interested in, it was me—I was the reason they came so eagerly—I, the skinny old witch in a black lace nightgown, the high school boy's dream of a whore. Now I wish I'd slept with them all, like they wanted me to. But no, I guarded your honor in those days, how well you'll never know. I might have had to sleep with a couple of them if you'd accepted their generous offers, but you didn't. You saved my virtue, dear; isn't your smug little Midwestern conscience pleased with itself to discover that after all these years?

Just the same I should have slept with them, it would have been little enough recompense for the women I've got for you. That's right, hit me! Or threaten to hit me—you've lost courage for the act itself.

But whether you hit me or just threaten to hit me (you make a brave sight, you know, you only outweigh me by a hundred and forty pounds) you can't change the facts. I got you women. I surrounded you with lots of young beautiful women. My best friends told me I was crazy, but I did. And why?—go ahead, hit me, I dare you!—simply because you came to me and in so many words asked me to get them for you so your ego would be built up and you wouldn't go crazy or kill yourself at your own lack of courage and virility and success. Well, I “made life more interesting” for you, all right. I got you dozens of women and then you didn't have the courage to take most of them after I'd got them for you. (Be very careful when you hit me, be careful to kill me, make sure in your own mind first that you're going through with it to the bitter end, because if you hit me and don't kill me I'll scream the house down.) What did you want me to do about those women you couldn't take for the asking, undress them for you? As it was, I practically pushed them into your bed.

I was too crude about it, was I, too obvious?Well, that's a big laugh. What do you think sex is, a tea party, a breathless jolly little reception for the new minister? I got you the women, that was enough, I left you to furnish the music—and the manhood. It was disgusting enough having to do it without having to paint the whole thing over with a lot of glossy nobility and pink salve for your guilt—no, in all conscience you couldn't have expected me to do that.

I misunderstood you? You actually never wanted me to get you other women? How you have the nerve to even fumble with such a lie after all these years I'll never know. Brother, you should have seen yourself in the old days pleading with me for “excitement” (you called it), I really wished I had some way of making you see it. I knew your every thought then, expressed or unexpressed, as well as I do now. You wanted other women. You wanted me to get them for you.

But you don't want them anymore, eh? You'd like me to “change" and “get nice" again? You've reformed so why don't I? Brother, you can't force a woman to become a procuress and then turn her back into a wife again just by wishing. There are some changes in human nature that even a sainted rationalist like you can't reverse. Did you know—you, who know everything—that once a man's been made a priest, even the Pope can't take it away from him, that no matter what sins he commits, what enormous crimes, he's a priest for life? Well, it's the same with a woman after she's been made a whore and procuress, a scrawny old madam in feathered black mules and a ratty old black fur coat. What's done cannot be undone. It's too late for me to get nice, much too late.

Still, I suppose I should have gone ahead and done it, I did everything else. I suppose I should have stayed at your side after I got you into bed with them, sat on the edge of your bed and patted your wrist as you made love to them and told you every five minutes that it was “all right.” Or maybe I should have made love to them for you, maybe I should have crawled into the bed and made love to them while you watched, maybe that's what you wanted.

No, I won't lower my voice and I won't stop pacing either! I've listened attentively to your ranting and watched you pacing night after endless night—now you can put up with mine for a change. Don't try to stop me or I'll shout it from the housetops and I'll stamp on the roof!

Yes, that's what I should have done, I can see it now. I saved you from mental breakdown in a thousand other ways, shoring up your ego so you wouldn't take a knife and cut your throat (I wish I'd let you), so I should have gone on saving your sanity even when you were in the act of fouling your nest. Here's a girl, dear. It's all right. Put your arms around her. It's all right. Kiss her, no really kiss her. It's all right. Climb into bed. It's all right—I'll tuck you both in. It's all right, it's all right, it's all right!

Chanting and pacing are signs of insanity? Only maniacs make with sing-song?Be careful, be very careful, or I'll start telling people a few of the symptoms of insanity I've observed in you. No, I won't tell you what they are, that's my secret, one of my secrets, but wouldn't your best friends agree that you were insane, evilly insane, if I told them half of what I've been telling you now about your past behavior? Sing-song, eh? Why ... Pour me a drink, my throat's raw.

Pour me a drink, I say, or I'll throw this glass through the window! I don't care if you and your scummy friends call me a wino behind my back—wine and brandy are the drinks of civilized people and what ignorant reformers say doesn't alter it. That's better.

Sing-song, eh? What would your best friends think if I went on to tell them about all your sing-song girls, especially the one who actually did go crazy because you wouldn't make love to her enough after I got her for you? That's right, kill me!

So you won't kill me? You won't even do me a little favor like that? I always knew you were selfish, a cheapskate and a miser, but I never realized how much until tonight. Why I can think of any number of ways you could murder me quite safely—because that's the real reason you won't kill me, isn't it?— you're afraid you'd be found out and punished—hanged or gassed or fried. Why, you could poison me tonight after getting me drunk (there's arsenic in the basement) and blame it on stomach trouble and my alcoholism—half the people who murder with arsenic get away with it. Or you could take me on a mountain vacation and find a lonely cliff and push me off—there'd be no one but yourself to say I didn't slip. Or rent a canoe and drown me in some mountain lake—I think I could even conquer my fear of water if I were sure I was going to be given the peace of death. Or just smash my skull now and throw me down the stairs—if I'm as big an alcoholic as you say I am and if as many people know it as you say do, you'll have no trouble convincing the police that I got drunk and fell. Remember to snag the torn lining of this raggedy coat around the heel of my slipper and tear off one of my fingernails in the split of the railing.

But you won't, will you, although I've lined it out for you as I wouldn't need to for a two-year old? You'd like to, but you haven't the nerve. You're afraid your courage would break at the sticking point. You're afraid you'd blush or babble when it came to telling a simple lie to the police afterwards and sticking to it. You know you wouldn't have the simple guts to bravely play the part of the murderer after the murder. Why? Hah! I wouldn't be there to bolster your ego.

No, I don't want a cigarette. You can't shut me up that way. I'll say and drink and wear what I want. I'll go out and scream in the street if I want. I'll lay down in front of the first man who comes along—he'll be better than you.

He'd be revolted at the way I look?Well, I can't say I'd blame him if he turned up his nose at these rags— torn nightdress, moth-eaten mules, black rabbit fur. Pity the poor woman whose husband can't buy her

decent clothes to whore in.

Still, I wouldn't be too sure. Other men aren't as dead below the belt as you are and black has its charms. Some day I'm going to have everything black, I'll have a black room with black mirrors, I'll drink black velvet and eat caviare on pumpernickel (that'll be exotic, that'll get the high school boys) and black currant jam with really burnt steak, and I'll black myself all over with shoe polish. Black blood will come out of my throat when you cut it—that'll be a surprise for you. There'll be lots of surprises for you, you'll find out then, surprises that I've been preparing for you for years. You aren't by any chance getting a little afraid of me now, are you, dear? No, I won't tell you what the surprises are, you'll have to kill me to find out. I will tell you one thing: I've left certain letters with certain people, to be opened when I die.

I won't tell you what's in them—maybe good advice for you, the best high schools to find exotic girls in, things like that.

I do hope you marry another woman, I really do. I'd like to be around to watch. Here's a warning: another woman won't put up with one twentieth of the things I have. And a younger woman will want even more of what you won't be able to give at all, because I won't be there to sit on the edge of the bed and pat your wrists and tell you it's all right.

But you won't, I know. You'll never marry again. You'll just be a pansy, a mother's boy, and live with other pansies. I wish you joy of it.

Oh, darling, what's happened to us? What's happened to the other times that were so good or seemed so good, why can't we go back to them, why can't we have them any more? Pour me another drink—no, don't come any closer, reach with the bottle. Thank you.

What's happened to you? You used to be so gay and romantic. Now you won't even crack a joke, you're always gloomy, always serious, priding yourself that you won't take a drink. Couldn't you lighten up for one minute, one second? Couldn't you do that little thing for me? No, don't try! I forbid you to try!—it would just be pretense and I hate your pretense worst of all. Sooner than having you pretend to be gay (like a Sunday school teacher trying to say a dirty word) I'd have you sitting there like a lump on a log (a big greasy lump) reveling in the fact that you don't drink any more. Let me tell you that your friends, your real friends, have only contempt for you because you won't drink, the deepest contempt. They're bored to death with your reformation and so am I.

You’ve become idealistic?Hah! I've news for you, dear, you've always been idealistic, as you call it, and your idealism has been the smelliest part of you because you've never had the courage to live up to it. Remember the War and how you didn't have the courage to be either a pacifistor a soldier?—you crawled out of that pretty neatly with your defense job and your idea of preserving another sane man for the future. But was it a sane man that you preserved, dear, I ask you? Remember how you refused to hitch up with the socialists and fight for equality and the underdog?—and then blamed it on me, said you were catering to my prejudices? Why, you were so idealistic that even the church wasn't good enough for you. And when you finally got up the nerve to admit to yourself that you wanted to go to bed with other women, you had to butter it up with a lot of idealism about how we were all bright big beautiful people who made their own rules and about how everyone should love everyone else.

Well, I happen to know how deep your love for some of those other women actually went, because as soon as they started to leave their husbands for you, or have nervous breakdowns, or make demands that any normal woman would, you dropped them like hot potatoes (they were too hot for you, weren't they, in a whole lot of ways?) and left them in the messes you'd made.

Well, make up your mind, dear. Either hit me over the head with that bottle or pour me a drink from it.

Thank you, dear, I knew you'd take the easier way. I always know how you're going to react long before you do. You see, I know all your secrets, dear. You've told me everything for twenty years, everything. You've poured out all your miserable moods and rages, you've whispered in my ear your every last dirty little fear and desire. So that now I know exactly what makes you tick. I'm in a wonderful position to manipulate you exactly as I want to, it gets better every year, even when I'm dead I'll be able to do it. Aren't you afraid of me, dear, just a little afraid? Remember, I'm crazy too, I have DT's just for the fun of it.

Why do I hate you so/That's a laugh, a very big laugh. Just ask yourself and you'll get more answers than you can stomach.

You've taken everything away from me—my home and my friends. I gave up all my friends for you, but did you give up even one of yours?

I drove my friends away/Now I've heard everything! It was you they were disgusted with, they couldn't stand your egotism and your preaching and your snide digs, they didn't like the way you eyed their preschool daughters. You drove them away.

You even drove my son away, you made him hate me. I never did anything but build you up to him and in return you did everything you could to break down his belief in me from the start. You contradicted everything I said in his presence, you scoffed at every fine idea I tried to plant in him, you laughed when I tried to teach him manners, you wouldn't even let me make him wash his hands when he came to dinner.

Shut up! It's time you heard some home truths. Now our son won't see us or write to us, he says we're sick, but whose fault is it? Yours!—who didn't have the guts to be the strong father every boy wants. Yours!—who couldn't think of anything to do for him but to make him think his mother a fool.

Even before my son was born, you took my pride away from me. You robbed me of my self-confidence, and that's something that can never be forgiven. You sneered at my mind, you let me know from the start that other women were better looking and more desirable, you even destroyed my little efforts at self-expression while pretending to encourage them. I tried to act, I tried to be something in a pitiful little

amateur theater, you took that away from me, you wrecked that although you've done nothing yourself but act all the time. And from the very beginning you plotted, under cover of your constant acting, how to destroy me.

I'm only asking you not to take twenty more years, but get it over tonight.

Shut up, I'm not interested in your denials. I always thought that marriage was supposed to be a partnership of two against the world. I was true to that vision—nothing counted with me but what you wanted and seeing to it that other people gave you the respect I believed you deserved. But I counted for nothing with you, the most miserable evil bum won more of your respect, you cringe and grovel and crawl on the floor and bump your head to everyone but me. No, don't!

Oh, but I'm forgetting how Christlike you are, aren't I? Excuse it, God. You love me, but you love other people too, though you do me the honor of rating me a hair's breadth ahead of them? Thanks for nothing! I don't believe in such pawky love. I scorn it. When I love I love, when I hate I hate. I don't believe in the kind of love that can be sliced and passed around, the kind of love that undermines and destroys while it pretends to caress.

And yet (shut up!) although you've done nothing but try to destroy me for twenty years, you refuse to make a clean end of it and kill me tonight. Other men would get a kick out of it, they'd jump at the chance, they'd be grateful to me. Every man wants to kill a woman, a woman in a black lace nightgown and a fur coat—it's his dream. But you haven't enough life in you even for that.

Shut up! I know everything you're going to say, about my insanity and insatiability and everything. I've heard it all over and over again for twenty years and it means less to me than the chatter of birds.

Shut up, I've got the floor! I'm a drunk and a failure, I know that, you've told me often enough, sticking the little knife behind the ear and twisting it. I'm ugly, so ugly it's a torment to sleep with me, I know that too. I remember every one of the million insults you've given me. (Don't say you're sorry, if you say you're sorry I'll scream.) And I know that you'd like to get rid of me, you'd really like to murder me, but that you daren't because you know you couldn't do one little thing without me, you couldn't get one girl to go to bed with you one single night.

Now talk. You have the floor. I yield it to you. Talk.

So you can't talk? You haven't a word to say? That's a surprise—most of the time you have diarrhea of the mouth. If what I say is so stupid and illogical and crazy as you claim, now's the time to prove it.

I'll tell you why you can't talk. Because I'm right about everything. I know you like a book, I know myself too, and I don't lie, I never lie.

Well, if you won't talk, at least look at me. Don't flinch your eyes away from me as if you were a scared

child. Look, baby, at the skinny old witch in black. My arms are like pipestems, aren't they?—you never tire of reminding me of that. You can count my ribs, my breasts are old buttons. I knew you always liked boyish girls with tiny breasts, so I starved myself for years, and my reward is that you tell me it's alcoholism, I look like a concentration-camp corpse, face like a skull, I need vitamins, I should eat.

Well, I won't eat, I'll never eat again, but I do need to black out. Where are the sleeping pills? Where have you hidden them? Don't worry about me taking too many—I'd never kill myself, I'm leaving that for you, it's my present to you, dear.

Thanks for nothing! No, I only took four, count and see.

You really are frightened of me, aren't you? You really do think I'm crazy or a witch. Well, that's a little something for my pride, at least I can get that much of a rise out of you. Not as good as being killed, but something. What should I do to improve my score? Should I turn black? Should I turn into a black panther, a skinny, moth-eaten, half bald black panther? Or a fourteen-year-old existentialist girl stripped to the waist—in black Levi's and with a black pony tail? Should I jump into your brain and sit there gently squeezing the gray jelly and saying “It's all right?” Is that what it takes before you'll kill me? Oh, what is the word I should say to make you do it? What is the word that will get under your thick hide?

I seem like another person, a demon? That's wonderful, dear, go on. A black furred beast? Better and better. An irrational intrusion?Brother, that's fancy language for it!

Like something out of your unconscious mind?Brother, I'm more than that, I'm straight out of your body, flesh of your flesh. Man and wife are one flesh, and that's more than poetry. You've waited too long, the graft has taken, it's too late now. You can never divorce me, you can't even get rid of me by killing me— I'll come back, I'll still be in your body after I'm dead. If you'd killed me earlier tonight, when I asked you, I'd have done you the courtesy of not coming back, I'd have stayed quiet in your body to the end of your days and never let you know I was there—torture wouldn't have made me speak. But now I'll come back from whatever hell you send me to, I'll sit forever on the edge of your bed, I'll clamor inside you skull like a thousand bells until you butt your head against the wall and scream for death.

Don't run away. It won't do you any good. I'll be with you wherever you go. Stay and kill me.

You feel sorry for me? Sorry? Brother, I'll make you pay for that.

Something will save me? In spite of everything something will still save me in the end?Brother, I've got a surprise for you, listen close. No, closer than that, closer.

Nothing will ever save you . Nothing. Ever.

All right ... run away if you must. But another time put your socks on first. They look funny over your shoes ... as if you had elephantiasis...

I feel tired ... Thanks, dear, you vacated the bed just in time, your virtue is intact … No, I won't sleep, I never sleep, but I'll close my eyes and think ... maybe I'll think of the word that will turn you into a murderer...

I'll find it some day, you know ... the word that will get under the elephant hide you use for skin so that in spite of all your cowardice you'll rush ahead and kill me ... You'll know that you're putting a rope around your neck and smearing the gray jelly on your temples and stripping the last cover off your squealing pink ego, but you won't be able to stop (although you'll pray to) because I'll have found the word ... the word ... If I can think for a minute more I may be able to find it now...

No, I'm going to sleep ... I never really sleep ... I hear everything ... I know everything ... I hear your every thought while you sleep ... We're always together, darling...

Another time, darling ... Another time...