I must try, for I know now that it’s that or find myself once again, perhaps permanently, locked in that hellish, nighted — place? — of black oblivion and insensate silence. In the dead and rotting body of my Uncle George, already buried three weeks when Aunt Hester put her mind in his body—the body she’s now trying to vacate in favour of mine!
A PENTAGRAM FOR CENAIDE
by Eddy C. Bertin
JACK MORGAN WAS a painter, or at least that was what he always said, and his close friends — those whose judgment he cared about — agreed with him on that point, so it hardly mattered what the critics said about his work, whenever they did take the trouble to say something. His life had always been a very calm and peaceful one, he liked drinking, but not much more than anyone else, and he had tried a few mild drugs too, and had stayed away from them after a severe headache. He had an exceptional ear for music, and always claimed that he could get high on hearing music, so why spend hard cash for ersatz? He had known, and loved, and hated a few women in. his life, and had left them all behind, or they had left him behind depending on what viewpoint one takes. Time had come for a marriage, which never realized, and time had gone past that point too. Jack also liked laughing, and simple fun as well as enjoy reading Sartre. He had many friends who liked him very much until he needed them, when they always seemed to be just out of reach, but always eager to return when he didn’t need, or didn’t want their help anymore.
He read a lot, from crime novels to Wodehouse, and from the classics to science-fiction, and had a healthy distaste for ladies’ novels, until he fell right into one himself, and gradually discovered that there was no way out. The newly arisen dilemma, which had been there for a long time already if he had only seen it, embittered him at first, and angered him. It came in the way of his work, and in his own way he was a straightforward man who hated dilemmas, which couldn’t be solved, but he also prided himself in this fact, and that was what made him unable to solve his particular predicament. That was when he discovered, surprising himself most of all, that he was in love with his best friend’s wife.
Paul and his wife Cenaide were long time friends of Jack, who used to drop in on him at the weirdest hours of day and night, and he was always ready for them, for a drink, and a chat; besides, he used to visit them quite a lot himself. Cenaide wasn’t exactly a classic beauty, and neither was she a very intelligent woman, but one evening when they had gone to a dance, the three of them, and he took her in his arms, felt the softness of her cheek and the tickling of her hair against his face, the suppleness of her body against his, he suddenly realized that he loved her. He had known love before, and he still remembered how it felt and tasted and then hurt afterwards, so this surprised him, then he found it rather funny, and then it angered him. He had no business being in love with this girl, he told himself. Her hair was too short, he had always liked long hair, and the colour wasn’t right either. Her manner of speech was rude and she spoke with a strong cheap dialect, which she never was able to hide. No doubt she had lots of personal, annoying habits, and she couldn’t even talk about things on his own level of understanding. Above all she was married to his friend, whom she loved very much, of that he was certain. But he loved her with a sudden furious passion, which must have been smoldering in the depths of his mind for some time already, unnoticed. When he began thinking seriously about it later, when he was alone in his room, he recalled the fun they had had just by being together, talking about a lot of stupid unimportant things. He began to remember the peace he had felt, just sitting there and talking to her, knowing that she was near. He began to recall many things, small silly things, but they all added up as he brought them out of their hiding places in his mind, the tingle in his fingers when he touched her hand as she passed him his drink, and the warmth he had felt one evening when she had drunk a few glasses too much of the bottle of wine he had brought with him and had fallen asleep on the couch, and he had looked down upon her relaxed, resting face. He remembered now the sudden flare of anger he had felt one day when Paul had been shouting at her for some unimportant stupidity, and his uneasiness when he had visited them one evening, and she hadn’t been home, arriving very late.
He tried the shortest way out of this silly situation, and stopped visiting them without giving a reason, but they came to him, bewildered, and he never let someone stand before a closed door. He tried to be rude, and only succeeded in surprising and hurting them, but they came back nevertheless, and he couldn’t keep on being rude to her. Then the pain began, and the uneasiness, standing before his window in his empty room, looking out over the rain-shrouded city roofs, smoking a cigarette, the smoke biting in his eyes. He took to taking solitary walks through the empty night streets, alone with his brooding thoughts, and this insane love for a woman who wasn’t his, and who would never be his. But the darkness never gives an answer, and if there were an answer to it, it would have to come out of himself.
He couldn’t work anymore with the accuracy so typical for his fingers, starting three paintings, leaving the first one unfinished, tearing the second apart with his knife, and throwing the third against the wall with such a force that it split. He tried looking at it logically, but refused to come into agreement with himself. At first he viewed it as a friendship’s dilemma, until he discovered that he couldn’t care less. He knew how his friend felt about his wife, a superficial love which had drifted into habit through the years. Paul was no real obstacle, Jack wouldn’t stop because of him. But the real barrier was lying inside Jack himself, and in his guesswork concerning her feelings. He knew for certain that she cared for him only as a good friend, and nothing more, and there wasn’t the slightest chance of a step out of line, because her narrow mindedness on such matters had often before surprised him. Especially as he knew that Paul was far from a faithful husband, and sometimes it was so eye piercing that it seemed almost impossible for Cenaide not to notice it. She didn’t however, or else plainly refused to see things in their true light. She cared a lot for her husband, and would never let him go. Along those lines she also didn’t give a damn for Jack Morgan.
As time passed, Jack’s mind slowly turned into a chaotic labyrinth through which he walked without Ariadne’s thread; there were nights when he drank too much just trying to set his mind at peace and have a clear look at things, because contrary to most people, an intoxicated state sometimes did give him a better insight into himself and other people’s behaviour; but not this time. Reality was turning into a nightmare, his thoughts swarmed through his skull as dark night moths, he couldn’t grasp them or bring any order in them, they kept on escaping him, leaving him in his confusion. They went out together more often, but though he danced many times with the girl, there never was a real contact between them though their bodies touched. Her back always seemed rigid against his hands as a strained spring; her goodnight kisses cold, hurried and impersonal.
He often desperately thought of simply telling her he loved her, but he didn’t dare risk their friendship. He was practically certain that she’d refuse him, maybe even be horrified at his feelings, and in any case he would never see her again then. He couldn’t risk that, but neither was he able to reject his own feelings. Of course there were always other ways out, but Jack didn’t want to take those. He had never been a violent man, and murder just didn’t appeal to him. Not counting the fact that it would all have to be worked out in elaborate detail and executed in cold blood, something which he wasn’t sure he was capable of, there was always the chance that Cenaide was one of that type of women who prefers to remain a suffering widow for the rest of her life. So Jack tried the other way out.