Корнелл Вулрич - Manhattan Love Song

“Your defendant,” Berenson said dismally, the minute I had stopped speaking.

“You admit you killed her, Mr. Wade?” Westman said as soon as he stood up. The “Mr. Wade” was my reward, I guess, for being the admirable defendant I was.

“I’m no doctor, Mr. Prosecuting Attorney,” I said. “I choked her, and she didn’t move any more. I guess she died then.”

“Would you like us to believe.” he sneered, “that you didn’t intend her to die? That the strangulation was unpremeditated?”

Something blew up inside me, and I sprang to my feet with smarting eyes that blurred out all the faces before me. “You don’t think I wanted to kill her, do you!” I shouted in the direction I’d last seen his face a moment ago. “That much I’ll never admit! How could I want to kill her, damn you, when she was the only thing I had!” And I flopped back in the chair again and brushed my sleeve across my face.

A few minutes later I was out of the box, back where I always sat. I can’t remember if he asked me any more questions after that or not. The deepening fog that had begun to settle over me from that point on didn’t lift any more. All I knew was, she was gone! gone! gone! Why did they keep this up, months afterward, week in and week out? Why didn’t they let me go too!

Maxine came up to me for a minute when I was being led out that day. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done?” I forced my mind to come back to where I was standing, looking at her. “Wade, if they do this thing to you, I want to go too.”

I felt my mouth smiling the way I told it to, and said to her: “Isn’t one of us being here better than none of us being here?”

And I was even going to reach out and touch her on the face to try to make her feel better, but while I was thinking about it, she and the courtroom moved slowly away and I discovered I was back in the cell again holding a thick mug of milk and coffee to my mouth. So I knew I couldn’t do it any more because she was no longer with me.

The next day, I think it was, they both summed up their cases — Westman and Berenson — so I knew it must at last be about over. Oh, God, I was sick of having loved her, of having killed her or not killed her, of having known her at all! I wanted the nothingness that was coming to come even quicker — when there would be no Bernice, no Wade, no New York.

Right after those thirteen that had been there all along went out, I was taken out too. And when I was brought in again, they filed in too. And when the one on the end stood up, I cared less than any one in the room what he was going to say. Then the word “Guilty” came floating toward me like a golden balloon in the air, the reward for all I had been through.

And it grew dark, and it grew light again, and it grew dark and light again. Maybe six times, or maybe sixteen times or maybe sixty. And they kept bringing me back to that place, and bringing me back to that place, and bringing me back to that place. And the last time they brought me back, the judge spoke for a long time, and ended up by saying, “and may God have mercy on your soul.” Then I heard a loud cry in a corner of the room, and turned that way, and saw Maxine lying on the floor. And while the world rolled on without her, I wondered if she had died then or was still living. But some day soon, soon now, the world won’t have to wonder that about me.