Martha: When Dermott wants to dress up and go to the show, Freddy won't shave and he'll hang around in dirty jeans, and he'll go out into the street and talk to the whores.
Phiclass="underline" Like and like keep good company.
Martha: He won't do a thing at home. The bathroom, always messy. He'd use up the last piece of soap.
Phiclass="underline" The last piece of toilet paper.
Martha: But he'd never dream of replacing it.
Phiclass="underline" Never. You had to do it all.
Martha: What are you smiling at? Am I boring you? I guess I am boring you.
Phiclass="underline" Not in the least, Martha.
Martha: Will smiled, just before that gun went off.
Phiclass="underline" Smiled, just like that.
Martha: I sometimes think: You. Simply you. You almost did it. You died. You scared me. Don't do it again. I must be more careful. That must never happen again. Phil, I am so scared.
Phiclass="underline" How did Will and Dermott get along?
Martha: At first, famously. That is, Will adored Dermott.
Phiclass="underline" And Dermott just loves being adored.
Martha: For Will, Dermott was a real writer, and artist.
Dermott had to check every comma Will wrote.
Phiclass="underline" Poor Will. And he himself wasn't a real writer?
Martha: Just thrillers, you know. And he said he did not know any language at all.
Phiclass="underline" He must have known Hindi, as a child.
Martha: He forgot it, and English he never learned. Just picked it up from the boys in the Navy.
Phiclass="underline" And read a lot, I guess.
Martha: But it was not his language. And lately he started getting mixed up with Italian.
Phiclass="underline" He had no language.
Martha: It does something to your mind, he said.
Phiclass="underline" Huprooted. Kicked around in world and creeds and systems. So huprooted. All of us.
Martha: And did he show off in front of Dermott, spending silly amounts of money, you know, and telling him how many copies of his latest book had been sold and in how many languages it had been translated.
Phiclass="underline" Dermott couldn't care less.
Martha: And he said it read best in Persian, although there were a few minor mistakes in the translation.
Phiclass="underline" That's sheer snobbism.
Martha: I don't know why he picked up with me in the first place; whether it was because he cared for me or whether he thought it would hurt Dermott. You know, he was jealous of Dermott, at the same time.
Phiclass="underline" And you?
Martha: I don't know. I really don't know. He said he was going to get me a part in his new television play. A part written just for me. He was wonder-fully like you. Don't die any more, please don't.
Phiclass="underline" It is late, Martha, and I must go. They are getting your lunch ready. Halfway decent? What shall I bring you tomorrow? Okay, Martha, it will be marrons glares. So long, Martha.
She is not a bad girl after all. Simple, forthright, cordial, rather generous by nature, underneath. Out of place in this career. Slithered into it God knows why. What made her act so horridly with Will?
My Martha was different. Wicked right from the outset. A go-getter. At first she seemed nice enough, though, and active. Pretty tall blond she was.
Dead. Destroyed. Kaputt. Won't work no more. Slipped out of my impotent hands. And left a hard hole, hard white hole, superimposing its Martha shape, planing into its contours whoever wants to float up through.
The other girls at the office didn't like her, though. Fawning on the boss and bossy on the fawns. (That's a good one. Must tell Martha. Which Martha?) She certainly knew what she wanted. Spun her web round me in no time. And then the allergies. Never seemed to bother her till she had me. But then! Endless trouble and troubled end.
Phiclass="underline" Listen, Martha, what I made up yesterday on my way home: "Fawning on the boss and bossy on the fawns." Isn't that a good one?
Martha: Who? What?
Phiclass="underline" Any one. I mean, I was thinking of my wife, when she was still working at the office. Can you imagine. She wasn't a bit like you: all cold and calculating.
Martha: Just the name.
Phiclass="underline" That does not create any bond.
Martha: Maybe it does.
Phiclass="underline" There are many Marthas.
Martha: And one proto-Martha.
Phiclass="underline" What difference does it make?
Martha: There's something damned about all Marthas.
Phiclass="underline" Perhaps.
Martha: Parents ought to be more careful.
Phiclass="underline" It's their way, their luck, they impress with that chosen name.
Martha: I wish my name was—I can't think of a suitable name for myself; but imagine if my name was—, everything would have been different. There's something damned about all Marthas.
Phiclass="underline" About mine there was, by Jove. Hell of a life. Martha: What did she do to you?
Phiclass="underline" The allergies. The air-conditioned rooms and the oxygen tents. The fumes and the moves and the fired nurses.
Martha: if she was sick?
Phiclass="underline" I couldn't accept any invitations for dinner
Martha: or bring home any guests.
Phiclass="underline" She'd be sick, infallibly. She called me at the office and she called me at board meetings
Martha: and woe, if you didn't get home on time. Phiclass="underline" She made my life utterly impossible.
Martha: Why didn't you get rid of her?
Phiclass="underline" I did. Divorce, you know, has an ugly ring in the ear of a missionary's son
Martha: and I think you just wanted it like that. Some people just have to have hell at home. You know, Will....
Phiclass="underline" Did you run Will like that?
Martha: I don't know. I guess I was worried about him be-cause he took to drinking so heavily.
Phiclass="underline" You canceled his dinner engagements?
Martha: Because I didn't want people to see him so drunk.
Phiclass="underline" There's always some because
Martha: because he put both hands into the salad bowl at the Marchesa Marchesani's
Phiclass="underline" if he didn't do worse than that
Martha: and he would argue. Did he argue, with Dermott, when they both were drunk? He was quite unbearable.
Phiclass="underline" What did they argue about?
Martha: Politics, lots of it. Imperialism. Socialism, and all the rest.
Phiclass="underline" Well. I know where Dermott stands on all those things
Martha: and you can imagine what happened when Will said the Indians were inferior.
Phiclass="underline" Did he say that?