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was tiny and black and her eyes stung. I still hear the click of her clogs and she kept
hissing at me ammazzalo, you should kill him."
"Sicilians are quick at that."
"Between Will's own obessions and that Sicilian's con-stant whispers I gradually
got quite used to the idea." "Did you really want to kill him?"
"I guess I did not really want anything at all. One evening I said I wished I had
died like Licky. And he said: But Licky was a good bitch. At that moment I picked
up that pistol from his desk I was sitting near his desk and pointed it at him. I did
not know whether it was loaded, and I don't know how to fire a gun anyway. I just
kept pointing it at him. And he grabbed a hunting knife and leapt forward and spat
like a cat: So you are going to kill me, no, you aren't. And he smiled. Now I don't
understand whether it was because he wasn't as tough as he thought he was, or
because he had the knife in his right hand you know, he was left-handed at any
rate, I dropped the pistol and tried to wrestle the knife from him. He was so
awkward and so weak, come to think of it, he practically slashed his cheek the left
one with his own hand, and then the knife slipped and stuck in his left arm. He
yelled and stepped back to pull it out and I picked up the pistol again and pointed it
against him, just in case he attacked again. But, I don't know how, the pistol fired.
And that was the end."
"
Oh, Martha, poor poor girl. Don't cry now. It is all too terrible for words. It is
even more terrible than you think it is. But now it's all over. Poor, poor Martha, it is
not your fault, and it will be plain for every one to see. Look at the scar on my cheek
. . . right check ... my right arm was badly mangled too. You asked me the first day
what it was. Now I'll tell you. It's weird. Martha, my wife, she got pregnant too. But
she did not want it at all. If you want to breast-feed him you can have him, she said
to me. Her lips were pale, her cheeks drawn, her eyes shot venom."
"Maybe she was really ill."
"With the kind of service you've got to put up with here, she said, I'd lose years
playing nursemaid. Farewell to social life. Farewell to lectures and studies. And as
sick and delicate as I am, she said. The allergies. Just shut up at home. That's what
you wanted, I know, she said. There was no way of stopping her."
"But if she was really sick ..."
"
She said, and how do you know it is your child? She said it out of sheer
meanness. There was absolutely no reason for supposing that it was not my child. I
guess she was much too selfish to plunge into the sea of trouble, to go through all
the fluster and gripes it takes to have a lover."
"Couldn't it be that she was too nice?"
"Why are you trying to defend her?"
"She's dead."
"I remember, I remember: She hustled in her dressing gown and kicked up the
kind of smell nasty ladies have on them in the morning. You know. Mixed up
perfumes and powders and greases and sleep and some coffee in it . . ."
"You too go in for smells?"
"Are you trying to be funny? It is strange. I never thought of that. Anyway, what
would you have told her?"
"I'd let her go to hell. I mean, I suppose, you should have comforted her,
encouraged her, told her it would be a fine baby."
"Oh, come on now."
"What did you tell her then?"
"I felt so disgusted by that time hapless creature, I thought so I merely said:
You're your own boss, darling. It's your problem. You solve it."
"And she?"
"
I never saw anybody turning so green. I suppose she expected me to fall on my
knees and beg her not to do it. But I simply didn't feel like it."
"And so she got it fixed?"
"I didn't see her until after it was all over. She felt lousy and she hated me for it. I
guess it was all my fault."
"What do you mean, your fault, if the same thing hap-pened to Will just about at
the same time?"
"Wasn't it his fault? Didn't he act simply beastly?"
"How could it have been his fault, if it happened to you too?"
"Whose fault is it then?"
"I guess fault isn't the right word here"
"Well. Now you are getting nearer to where I want you to get. Because surely it
was not your fault "
"Go on with your story."
"I am nearly at the end. We did not see much of each other after that. And we
didn't see anybody else. Only once I accepted an invitation for lunch, at the
Wilcoxes at Winnetka. Martha said she was glad to go to the Wil-coxes. It was a
Sunday, and so foggy you couldn't see your own hand at an arm's length, and we
took the Outer Drive."
"You were living on the South Side?"
"Yes. And just after the underpass at 53rd Street . .. a crazy car, passing another
one in that fog. He came up against us, at full speed. I saw him coming when he was
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