— You amuse me. That shoe seems to fit you.
— Not at all.
— Sure it does. Look at it.
— I’m looking. But I never did think the sexes were reversible in this regard. A woman can share a man, but a man can’t share a woman. And that’s all there is to it.
— Oh, for the love of mud.
— Thank you, I’m not very fond of mud.
— Anyway, I’m glad to see you’re calming down.
— Don’t fool yourself.
— Oh, yes, you are.
— Are you trying to annoy me? Don’t bully me. When I want to be calm, I’ll be calm. I’m not calm. I’m quiet, but I’m not calm. I’m so full of hate you could poison New York with me. Is it hate? No, it isn’t hate. Yes, it is, too. I wouldn’t at all mind killing Bertha and Tom. If mere feelings could kill them, they’d be dead. The damned incestuous—
— That’s the keynote, all right.
— What is.
— Incest. Don’t you see what you’re doing?
— Your conversational manners are very insinuating.
— Don’t you?
— Well, tell me, don’t badger me, tell me.
— In every one of your love affairs, you’ve tried to make your sweetheart your mother. That’s why they’ve all been unsuccessful. Why do you want to do it? — that’s the question. It won’t work. That’s why sooner or later you reject or abandon them all, or they abandon you — they have to. You force them to. Bertha is no exception.
— You make me sick. Do you mean to say I’ve abandoned Bertha? Don’t be a fool. Or don’t try to be a fool.
— I don’t mean you left in the sense of moving from Cambridge to Reno — that’s immaterial. Abandonment needn’t be geographical.
— God, that’s funny. Abandonment needn’t be geographical! You’ll be the death of me. Was Casanova geographically abandoned?
— You may not have left her board — but you left her bed. Or so you told me.
— You’re damned unpleasant. Let’s talk about something else.
— You mean the subject is unpleasant. I thought you wanted to talk it out.
— What a hell of a lot of books you have, Bill. How did you ever pick them all up. Aren’t the Japanese a wonderful little people? And the ants too. I once thought what a good satire on man could be written with the ant as the subject. You see? Everything would reduce itself to terms of ant. In short, one would reduce everything to the anthropocentric — pretty good, that. Naturally, from the ant’s point of view, all the characteristics of the ant would be considered virtues. The highest praise of an ant would be that he was, as you would expect, antly. Statues, of heroic size, would be erected to the great ant heroes — warriors, builders, or what not — inscribed with phrases like, “He was the antliest ant of all time.” … And of course there would be an anthropomorphic god.
— Resistance.
— What the hell do you mean.
— All this is just your evasion of what is for you a painful subject — something you don’t dare look in the eye. Yourself.
— Yes, indeed. There are many things I don’t look in the eye, my dear Bill. Why should I. Most, if not all, aspects of existence are disagreeable. The art of living is the art of the exclusion or mitigation of the disagreeable. Why go about deliberately rubbing one’s snout in the mud? Not by a damned sight. What the hell is whisky for? What the hell is music for, or painting, or poetry, or psychoanalysis? All of them escapes. Don’t tell me analysis is an abstract pure science — good God no. It’s an anodyne, both for the analyst and the patient, and they both enjoy it thoroughly. It’s a debauch at one remove. You can’t fool me. No. There you are, in your God-damned Morris chair — I hate that chair — goggling at me and leering and having a hell of a good time ferreting out my secrets — why? Disinterested service to mankind? Not by a hell of a way. You’re a paltry little voyeur. Afraid to live yourself, you take it out by digging into other peoples’ little filths and disasters. Yes, by God. That’s what it is. Vicarious sexperience! What a dirty little thrill you get in reminding me that I stopped sleeping with Bertha! And in suspecting all sort of dirty little reasons for it! I drink to you, Bill, old boy — you have a swell time, don’t you. You wrap yourself in all the dirty sheets of the world. The world is your soiled-clothes basket. What’s them spots on the sheet, Miranda? Oh, them’s the maculate conception, them is.
— Ha, ha. There’s a hell of a lot in what you say.
— Of course there is. Have a drink.
— Why do you hate this chair.
— Oh, pitiful little Bill.
— You’re fond of the word little, and the word dirty, aren’t you.
— Dirty little.
— Equals fecal infantine.
— Look at the snow, Bill — it must be six inches deep.
— No, I think it’s seven.
— We are seven. Against Thebes. Did you ever read the Anabasis? Do you remember the Arabian sparrows?
— You mentioned them before. Why do you mention them again.
— Damned if I know. Rather funny.
— Why don’t you sit down, instead of pacing around the room. That’s the second time you’ve knocked over that ash stand. Give it a rest.
— Perhaps I’d better. Whoooof.
— Do you feel sick.
— No. I’m all right. A little bewildered all of a sudden, that’s all.
— Eat some crackers.
— No, I’m all right. I’m all right. But what a whirl. I thought I was unhappy. What a whirl, what a joke. You know the feeling. Delirious, delicious. Clutching the inevitable. The postage-stamp going for a ride on the back of the ant. What did I say to her? Ma non è vero. Voi credete che si muove — ma non è vero. And she laughed like hell.… Christ, what a breeze.