Conrad Aiken - Great Circle

— I’m not surprised. Why don’t you lie down again.

— What about you, Bill? I feel damned guilty about you. Have you got lots to do tomorrow.

— Nothing that counts. This is much better. I’ve got a patient at twelve and nothing before that. So don’t worry.

— Why do I talk such tripe.

— I think there’s method in your madness.

— Madness in my method. It’s all the same. You must forgive me. I’d do the same for you, Bill. I’ve got to talk, and talk frantically. This is what I’ve been unconsciously looking for for a week. Something is broken. What is it. I don’t know. Suddenly I’m becoming, or trying to become, a child again. Now why is that — do I see it? I half see it. But, my God, Bill, how sick it makes me to mix so much that’s fraudulent with all this — at one moment what I say to you is genuine, at the next it’s almost deliberately a fake. I daresay you see through the fake with your fierce analytic eye, and so it’s all the same. A calculated fantasy or lie is as good as a dream, for your purpose.

— Just about. Your fantasies are pretty transparent. Which I perceive you’re quite aware of.

— Oh, am I, b’gosh.

— Anyway, you fit them in pretty well.

— In the pattern, you mean, the preconceived pattern.

— The preconceived role.

— Oh, Christ, yes. Isn’t it disgusting.

— Not at all. I sympathize with you. You’re all right, Andy. Why not get really drunk, and let yourself go. It won’t do you any harm.

— I’ve been drunk too much, and it does me no good.

— It’s all the path to regression. Healthy enough, too. There’s nothing wrong with regression, so long as you don’t stick in it. It’s really, in such a case as yours, a sign of creative growth. You’ll eventually come out of it with something new.

— To be sure. You mean I’ll get rid of that damned little winged pig, that revolting little symbol of disguised sensuality, that little pretence of idealism, that sweet little romance as to the facts of life.

— I didn’t say that. You said it.

— You might just as well have said it. Don’t be so niggardly. What the hell is it, Bill, that gives you such a sedentary kind of composure? I believe at bottom you’re afraid of life, and your calm is the calm of the abnegationist.

— Perhaps.

— Now you choose to be Buddhistic.

— You choose to think me so.

— I believe you’re a coward.

— Thou sayest.

— Now you’re playing at Christ.

— Well, spit on me, and become the wandering Jew.

— I hate you extraordinarily, Bill. You’re simply revolting, when you put on this superior manner, this know-it-all air, as if you were God. You think you can look right through me, don’t you. Oh, yes, you see every little shred of dirt and rot in my festering soul. And you have an unfair advantage in having known me for fifteen years or so. And in having known Bertha, too.

— Why didn’t you call up Bertha today.

— Very simple — I didn’t want to.

— Why not.

— Why the hell should I.

— But why not.

— Oh, for God’s sake, Bill — what do you think I am.

— I don’t know what you are — I merely want to know why you didn’t call up Bertha.

— I didn’t want to hear her voice.

— Oh, yes, you did.

— Well, all right, I did.

— So that’s that.

— Very clever of you. The professor is right every time. He wanted to hear his little wife’s voice, he did, but he didn’t want to either, and so he didn’t call her up. He knew she was there at the other end of any telephone, just waiting, just dying to be called up by her little husband, not daring to leave the apartment for fear he would call up in her absence, and call once only. But it suited him not to call her up. So he didn’t. He enjoyed thinking of her there, pacing restlessly from the bedroom to the hall, from the hall to the stinking, cockroach-ridden kitchenette, crying, with a wet crumpled handkerchief on the chest of drawers, another in her left hand, a third on the mantelpiece by the lacquered candlestick, a fourth on the top of the ice chest, a fifth on the edge of the gas stove, a sixth—

— Go on and be really funny, why don’t you.

— I will. Go on and be really nasty, why don’t you.

— You ought to be spanked.

— Oh, no, papa, please.

— In some respects, you’re behaving like a child — and a damned cruel spoiled one at that. I thought you knew better than to give in blindly and stupidly to a mere primitive possessiveness. It doesn’t seem to occur to you that Bertha is going through a tragic experience too — does it.

— Oh, doesn’t it, Professor. I may be a child, but I wasn’t born yesterday. What does that mean, yesterday? It means tomorrow. I shall be born tomorrow, and this time it’s going to be an immaculate contraception, by God.

— You said a mouthful when you spoke of dramatizing yourself. You’re deliberately trying to frighten Bertha with the idea that you’re going to kill yourself. She’s been ringing up every one in town to find out where you are and what you’re doing.

— Don’t I know it?

— Of course you know it. Why don’t you do something about it. Don’t be so damned selfish. Just because your pride is hurt you haven’t got to be criminally selfish and mean.

— Straight from the shoulder.… Why don’t I do something about it. For God’s sake, Andy, do something about it. Take your heart out and tie it up with baby ribbon and send it to poor little Bertha as a Berthaday present. Pretty hot, that one.… Oh, Christ, Bill. I know you’re right. You know I know all that. But it isn’t so damned easy, and it can’t be done offhand like that — you ought to see that. It isn’t only that I’m dramatizing, either. Some of it, maybe — but much more is a need for time. I want time. Good God, it would be easy enough to rush back there and cry on her perjured breast — where else do I want to go, in God’s name? To Molly? Not by a damned sight. To the Dingbat sisters, or old Mary’s? Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve been to all of them, and last night I slept with old Mary and all her lousy little pomeranians, not because I really wanted to indulge in the flesh, but simply to avoid going to Shepard Hall. Just as the three previous nights I slept in the bombproof at the Harvard Club.… Give me time. Let me suffer in my own way. I’ve got to eat the ashes and bones in my own way. If I want to die, let me want to die. I want to die.

— That’s all right — sure. Go ahead. But in the meantime it isn’t going to hurt you to say a word or two to Bertha.

— What sort of word or two would I say to Bertha.

— Anything to calm her a little. If you propose to go on staying away from her, just tell her everything is O. K., but that you just want a little time by yourself to think things over. Why not.

— I did call at Tom’s last night.

— The hell you did.

— He was out.

— Well, thank God for that.

— Oh, I don’t know.

— What did you want to do.

— I wasn’t going to kill him, or even beat him up. I couldn’t if I wanted to; he’d knock hell out of me. Bertha always did have an eye for athletes — the hairy-ape stuff. Now she’s got her refined caveman, let her keep him. Now she’s made my bed for him, let him lie in it. All I want to do is tell him what I think he is — a merd. That’s all. And I shall smile as I say it to him. Hello, Tom. I just came to tell you that you’re a merd.

— You still believe in magic, don’t you.

— I still believe in the right of the individual to do what suits him, so long as he doesn’t break the God-damned laws of this idiot society. If Bertha chooses to do what she’s done, I choose to absent myself without a word. And Christ knows we had words enough — I’ve got to laugh.