Conrad Aiken - Great Circle

— There’s no use discussing anything, if you’re going to be merely abusive.

— There you go. If I state facts, I’m abusive.

— I think you might at least have tried to see my point of view. I’ve been starved—

— Yes, for Christ’s sake drag that up again, starved for love! You don’t know what love is. You’re a thirteen-year-old romantic, a bleached little Cantabrigian Madame Bovary. I want love , she cries, and pulls on a pair of tarpaulin knickers.

— Shut up!

She turned suddenly and glared at him, her mouth dreadfully relaxed, the tears starting quickly from her eyes. He was looking at her quite coldly, with the familiar hatred, the familiar deep ferocity and need to injure. She was beginning to suffer. Pursue the advantage. Grind it in, beat her down. Give her the works. Analyze the whole marriage, drag it all up by the roots, reveal her to herself for once and all, all the piecemeal horrors laid out like entrails on a bloody platter. Bumwad, bumwad, bumwad, bumwad. The whole prolonged obscene and fecal grapple in steadily deepening darkness, year after year of it, the burden upon his consciousness becoming hourly more foul and more frightful. The history of a bathroom. Dirty water. Dirty clothes. Dirty habits. The upright soul indifferent to filth. Jesus, angel of grief, come down to me: give us a speech as pure as ocean. A tumbler of neat gin, fiery strangulation, a cough, tears on his marble eye which might be misinterpreted, a sudden impulse to make them real. The awful contraction of the belly which precedes weeping. A new red edge provided for anger.

— All right — I’ll play the piano.… No, I won’t, either.

He played two bars of a Bach gavotte, then stopped.

— Isn’t it ridiculous. Why do we make such a fuss about it? Especially as we all flatter ourselves that we saw it coming. Or did we? I must confess though—

— What.

Bertha’s face was averted, her voice flat.

— I hadn’t really expected you to go through with it. I thought Brattle Street would be too much for you.

— I see. You thought as usual that I wasn’t quite human.

— Not at all. Don’t be in a hurry. I thought you were too damned moral. Or loyal.

— Loyal to what, exactly? I’d like to know.

— Oh, me, for instance.

— Yes! After you’d flaunted Molly—

— Don’t be more of a fool than you have to be.

— Besides, if you admit withdrawing from me, what difference does it make. You know our marriage hasn’t been a marriage for almost a year—

Of course. There was that. There was that, which he had forgotten. But how explain it to her? There was no explaining it. The problem of rhythm: the inevitable succession of approaches and retreats: love, indifference, hate — then over again, love, indifference, hate. Disgust, then renewed curiosity. Exploration, then renewed retreat. Soiled clothes, then sunlight, a concert, a few drinks, an evening of witty conversation, psychological discussion — and all of a sudden the divine recapitulation. Would this have occurred again? Had he really wanted it, or hoped for it, to occur again? Or had he at the bottom of his heart desired this precise consummation, this disaster? The sacrifice of everything. And in that case, why make a fuss about it: how could it hurt him? How, indeed. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the unwoundable pig.

— Oh, God, what’s the use.

— I meant to tell you that I thought I was falling in love with him. And that he was in love with me. He meant to tell you too.

— How long have these discussions been going on?

— I meant to tell you before anything happened. But you see—

— I suppose you want me to believe that tonight is the first time?

— No.

Well, by God, that opens up a nice vista into the past, doesn’t it.

To ask or not to ask. To pry or not to pry. He stared at the carpet, pushed a cigarette end with the toe of his muddy shoe, felt the blind agony beginning to contract his whole body. One night, or two. One week, or three. Before he left for New York, or after. In Tom’s flat, or here. To think this was sickness, madness, disruption. Drunken and maudlin disruption. What was Bertha, then, that even now he should suffer? This pale oval of female face, with the speckled gray eyes and the always too-innocent mouth? A mere face. A mere idea. A mere history, now finished. Or was it finished?

He picked up his glass and crossed to the table. Bewilderment. The empty glass in his right hand meaningless.

— Yes, a lovely little vista into the past. The past suddenly becomes the present, doesn’t it? And a damned pretty future.

— Well, you’ve always preached psychological freedom and honesty—

— Christ!

— Why not practice it?

— I can safely leave that to you!

— That’s not fair!

— That’s the coolest defense of whoredom—

A curious singing began in his right ear. He put down his glass very hard on the red table, which was unexpectedly near, then walked quickly, with Bertha’s glare still fixed upon him, across the corridor to the bathroom. The door closed, he stared at his reflection in the greenish mirror. White as a sheet. First stage of drunkenness. Boy, you ain’t seen the half of it. This is going to be a souse in a million. He watched himself swaying, rested his hands on the marble basin, and saw his face beginning to cry. The mouth curled itself grotesquely, like a child’s, like the wound in a tragic mask, his eyes closed themselves to slits, the white face began absurdly jiggling up and down, in time with the rapid soundless convulsions of his chest. He turned on the two taps in the basin, to drown out the extraordinary noise Andrew Cather had begun to make. A sound like a swift departure of wings, pigeon’s wings, whe-whe-whe-whe-whe-whe-whe-whe — then a shudder of breath quickly indrawn, and another hissing flight of wingbeats, and a long oooooooooooooo — subsiding to caught calm, as the tears fell into the steaming water. Grates me. Is this the face that launched a thousand quips? Is that you, One-eye Cather? Wash your bloody, driveling little map. If, the last time your mother spanked you, when you were seven, you refused to cry, why cry now? What is there to cry about? Is it manly to cry? Disgusting. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the weeping pig: the pig with wings, the pig with a glass eye. Look at the little red veins in his nose, heritage of six months’ drunkenness, the whiteness of the white of his left eye, the redness of the white of the right. Wash your face with cold water, as you have often seen Bertha do after a midnight quarrel. Observe yourself from a great distance, as if you were an ant crawling over the toe of your shoe. Isn’t he a funny little thing? Does he know where he’s going? Has he a god? Does he distinguish right from wrong? Has he sexual appetites, loves, hates, despairs? Has he an ideal? A secret richness of soul, tenderness of heart, susceptibility to injury? Have you lost your wife, your friend, or is it only an egg? Tu pupila es azul; y quando lloras —the world is a lost egg. A mislaid egg. It will hatch, out of season, in a universe of intemperate weather, an absolute zero, and the god it contains will be born dead.

You are not angry: you don’t want to be angry: you are hurt.

His face washed, the temples cold and transparent over the brain, he returned to the sitting-room. It was now Bertha’s turn to cry. She lay huddled at one end of the couch, her back turned, her cheek on a green pillow, a handkerchief held over her eyes. One of her pianissimos, a soft whispering sound, persistent, uninterruptible, the kind that could go on for hours, for all night. She looked small and pathetic, but also absurd. He felt a profound detachment and irony towards her, watched the slight shaking of her body, the irregular lift and fall of the blue mandarin jacket on her left shoulder, the movement of the blue elbow, noted the heaviness of the upper arm: she was getting old.