— You were talking about your childhood.
— So I was.
— It made me homesick.
— You don’t mean to say you had a childhood, Bill.
— You’d be astonished.
— Why have you never mentioned it.
— Why should I.
— Well, anyway, it’s still snowing, isn’t it.
— I note the interrogative touch, and congratulate you.
— Yes.… Mum’s the word.… This snow on the wrist feels good. Try it.
— Do you remember—
— What.
— No.
— Christ. I see disasters, and I bring them back. The whole world fills with fecal madness. I am a — I am here, in Cambridge, Mass. You offered me a nickel to jump out of the window. I didn’t jump, because you showed me up. So I’m quite properly ashamed. Evidently I don’t want to die, which is what you wanted to prove, isn’t it? If I want to live; what do I want to live for. What. Rhetorical question. For hot dogs and western sandwiches. The feel of walking, which is a matter of always keeping the left foot going. The sound of the clock. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the fellow who lives with his left eye on the almighty clock. It’s all a matter of keeping the hand going. Har har.
— The right hand.
— Voi credete che si muove, ma non è vero.
— From Venice as far as Belmont.
— Farther, if you like. I’ll ask no questions, and I’ll tell no lies.
— For God’s sake, Andy, settle down. This gets us nowhere.
— Don’t I know it?
— Well, it’s late.
— Where? Lateness is relative.
— For one thing, it’s late in Shepard Hall. I mean, to be brutally frank, it’s late for Bertha.
— Too damned late, if you ask me! But I’m sorry, Bill. You know how it is. How can I say it. I can’t. There’s all this — there’s all that. The heres, the theres, the unders, the overs. The pasts, the futures. The dirty stockings, and the dirty sinks. Peeled potatoes. Beds, here and there. One after another. The clipped fingernails on the floor. Coffee grounds, Brattle Hall dances, lemon peels, the Dramatic Club, muddy galoshes in the front hall, and bills from the cleaner. Just ordinary human dirt and effluvia, you know. One night after another. Sweat under the arms, gouts of pink toothpaste clotted on the toothbrush that hangs on the wall. The little crinkled hairs left in the bathtub, too — so telltale. Intimacy! Why the hell do we want it?… Don’t tell me.
— That’s the question to begin with, perhaps.
— Or end with.… I’ll close the window. The snow seems to be coming in.
— Thanks.
— That’s the question to begin with. It can’t be done. Not permanently. Everything against it. So beautiful, too, so beautiful, so bloody beautiful — but is it possible? No, I don’t think it is.
— Not for you, perhaps. Why not.
— Why not.… The exquisite beginning, in mystery always — the subtleties of the approach — the sunrise wonder — Alpenglow on the Jungfrau — joke, Bill, joke. But when you’ve spent a night on the Jungfrau, that’s another matter, by God. A different kettle of fish, a nightmare of another color. Now don’t open your mouth with that supercilious arch — I know what you’re going to say — you’re going to quote Stekel about Don Juan and Casanova, or something like that. Oh, yes, indeed. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the juvenile don Giovanni. Why, the poor fellow’s lost his mother, he has, and that’s why he smokes and drinks. But old Mary’s as good a mother as you could want. You ought to see her in her bath. Marvelous, the aplomb with which she sponges that enormous pink and white area, and the candor of it, the absence of shame — she’s a good child of nature, and clean as a sea-cloud. Yes. Yale always barks beside the tub, and Mary scatters water at him and laughs. And the equipment of that bathroom, Bill!.. What the hell am I talking about.
— Intimacy, I believe!
— So I was.… Intimacy.… That’s where marriages break down. That’s just where they break down. That’s why Shakespeare left home, and Michelangelo never had one, or Beethoven either. That’s why Melville tried to wring his wife’s neck. Good jumping Jehosaphat, isn’t it plain as day? Do I need to say another word? Why don’t you go to bed.
— I’m wide awake. I may close my eyes, to rest them, but I’ll be awake, you can go on talking.… So you’ve got the horrors.
— The horrors, yes. And don’t misunderstand me. But what the hell do I mean, I wonder. What horrors. Why the horrors. What’s wrong with it. Why can’t it last. There are the obsessions, as when one is gardening. You kill aphids, millions of them, day after day — squashing them against the rose stalks between your thumb and finger, green juices, green pulp, tiny clots, one rosebud after another, and finally you get an obsession — at all times of the day or night you see the swarms of little green insects, feel them thickly under your fingers, you even begin dreaming about them, a foul clotting of them occurs in your dreams, you have them under your fingernails, they fall in solid green coagulations from behind your ears, they are in your hair — that’s the way it is. That’s the way it is with sex, I mean. I must have a small drink. Do you see what I mean. It’s the endless repetition of what should very seldom be repeated. Is that it? I don’t know. I’ve thought about this a lot. It’s very baffling. By god, no matter how much you love a woman, the time comes when you don’t want to sleep with her. For a while, anyway. Or at any rate one wants holidays. But how are you going to manage it. You can’t say to your wife, Darling, I’m fed up with you — I know your body too well — the toes, the knees, the flanks, the moles, the hollows under the clavicles, the median line, the asymmetrical arrangement of your breasts, the pelvis, the pink patch of eczema on your side, your perfumes and undergarments and brushes and combs, your toilet habits, every one, the faint bubble of caught breath with which you fall asleep — but just the same I love you, will always love you. If only you’ll be tactful and not too exacting about this. Don’t ask questions, darling, whatever you do. Don’t say a word. Sing cheerfully as you go about the house, greet me with the happiness of the lark when I come home, be busy, have lots of things to do, put no pressure upon me, don’t betray by so much as the flicker of an eyelash that you’re aware of the fact that I’ve abandoned you (but not geographically) — and who knows, one fine night, or one night when it’s raining cats and dogs, or snowing like this, or we’re both a little tight after a party — who knows, who knows? Everything might suddenly become beautiful and strange once more. You would be a stranger to me, and I to you; we would commit a joyful infidelity with each other; each of us would be new. Hell’s delight, that’s only the beginning of it. The fringe.
— You’ve said it.
— What do you know about it, you’re not married.
— I don’t need to be.
— How many times have you told me that if you hadn’t been analyzed, you couldn’t know anything about analysis. Woops, my dear. I’ve been hit with a hammer. My head’s ringing.
— Go on with this idea — this might be helpful.
— Ask me an easier one, old chap. Would you like to see my spleen? It’s a nice little spleen, never yet broken, either. Bertha never understood that. No. Nor cleanliness either. The strange things she did. I read a short story once about this. Yes. Very good. A husband who had left his wife and his best friend fell in love with her. You see. They were quite amiable about it, they were still good friends, and the other fellow decided to marry her. You see. But he was damned inquisitive about the husband’s reasons, and one night when they’d dined together, he asked him, point blank, why it was. The husband merely said that it was something absolutely unmentionable, that it would be a terrible injustice to his wife to speak of it. Result — can you guess it? The friend went off by himself to Bermuda, and the wife was left high and dry.… Zingoids! I’ve got rings like Saturn. Can you see them.