«Dr. Kronski,» I said, giving him the bland and amiable smile, «I think we’ll be taking leave of you now. This has been a most pleasant and instructive evening, I assure you. When Mara gets her first dose of syphilis I’ll be sure to call on you for your expert services. I think you’ve solved all our problems with admirable finesse. When you send your wife to the asylum come and spend a little time with us—it will be jolly to have you around, you’re inspiring and entertaining, to say the least.»
«Don’t go yet,» he begged, «I want to talk to you seriously.» He turned to Mara. «Just how much do you need immediately? I could lend you three hundred dollars, if that would help. I’d have to have it back in six months, because it isn’t mine. Listen, don’t run off now. Let him go—I want to tell you a few things.»
Mara looked at me as if to ask whether this was just talk on his part.
«Don’t ask his advice,» said Kronski. «I’m sincere with you. I like you and I want to do something for you.» He turned round on me gruffly: «Go on, go home, will you? I’m not going to rape her.»
«Shall I go?» I asked.
«Yes, please do,» said Mara. «Only why did the idiot wait so long to tell me this?»
I had my doubts about, the three hundred dollars but I left anyway. In the subway, faced with the broken-down night riders of the big city, I fell into a deep introspection, such as comes over the hero in modern novels. Like them, I asked myself useless questions, posed problems that didn’t exist, made plans for the future which would never materialize, doubted everything, including my own existence. For the modern hero thought leads nowhere; his brain is a collender in which he washes the soggy vegetables of the mind. He says to himself that he is in love and he sits in the moving underground trying to run like a sewer. He beguiles himself with pleasant thoughts. For example this one: he is probably kneeling on the floor, stroking her knees: he is working his sweaty ham-like paw slowly upwards over the cool flesh: he is telling her in glutinous language how unique she is; there never was any three hundred dollars but if he can get it in, if he can get her to open her legs a little more, he’ll try to raise something; while she is sliding her twat closer and closer, hoping that he’ll just be satisfied to suck her off and not make her go the whole hog, she tells herself that it’s no betrayal because she warned all and sundry with explicit frankness that if she had to do it she’d do it and she must do something. God help her, it’s very real and very urgent: she can get away with this easily enough because nobody knows how many times she’s let herself be fucked for a little loose change; she’s got a good excuse, not wanting her father to die like a dog; he’s got his head between her legs now, his tongue is hot; she slips down lower and puts a leg around his neck; the juice is flowing and she feels hornier than she ever felt; is he going to tantalize her all night? She takes his head in her hands and runs her fingers through his greasy hair; she presses her cunt against his mouth; she feels it coming, she squirms and wriggles, she gasps, she pulls his hair. Where are you? she screams to herself. Give me that fat prick! She pulls frantically at his collar, yanks him off his knees; in the dark her hand slips like an eel into the bulging fly, cups the fat swollen balls, traces with thumb and finger the stiff chicken neck of the penis where it dives into the unknown; he’s slow and heavy and he pants like a walrus; she raises her legs high, slings them round his neck. Get it in, you fuss-pot! Not there—here! She puts her fist around it and leads it to the stable. Oh, that’s good. Oh! Oh! Oh God, it’s good this way, keep it in, hold it, hold it. Get it in deeper, push it in all the way… there, that’s it, that’s it. Oh, Oh! He’s trying to hold it. He’s trying to think of two things at once. Three hundred dollars… three greenbacks. Who’ll give it to me? Jesus, that feels marvelous. Jesus, hold that now! Hold it! He’s feeling and thinking at the same time. He feels a little clam without a shell opening and closing, a thirsty flower clamping the end of his prick. Don’t move now, he says to himself. Just watch it with closed eyes. Count one two three four. Don’t move, you bastard, or I’ll spill it. Do that again! Jesus, what a cunt! He feels for her boobies, rips the dress open, laps a nipple greedily. Don’t move now, just suck, that’s it, like that. Easy now, easy! Jesus, if we could only lie like this all night. Oh Jesus, it’s coming. Move, you bitch! Give it to me… faster, faster. Oh, Ah, Sis, Boom, Blam!
Our hero opens his eyes and becomes himself again —that is to say, the man known herein as myself, who refuses to believe what his mind tells him. They are probably having a long talk, I say to myself, drawing a curtain over the pleasant substitution. She wouldn’t think of letting a greasy, sweaty incubus like that touch her. He probably tried to kiss her but she knows how to take care of herself all right. Wonder if Maude’s still awake? Feeling horny myself. Walking towards the house I open my fly and let my pecker out. Maude’s cunt. She can certainly fuck when she’s a mind to. Get her half asleep, her blinders off. Just lay there quiet like, snuggle up spoon fashion. I put the key in the lock and shove the iron gate. Cold iron against a quivering prick. Must sneak up on her, slip it to her while she’s dreaming. I slip quietly upstairs and shuffle out of my clothes. I can hear her turning over, getting ready in her sleep to turn her warm ass on me. I slide gently into bed and cup myself around her. She’s pretending to be out, dead to the world. Not too fast or she’ll wake up. Must do it in my sleep like or she’ll be insulted. I’ve got the tip of it in the loose hairs. She’s lying terribly still. She wants it, the bitch, but she won’t let on. All right, play dead dog! I move her a little, just a wee bit. She responds like a water-soaked log. She’s going to lie heavy like that and pretend she’s asleep. Yes, I’ve got it half in. I have to move her around like a hoist, but she’s movable and everything’s smoothly oiled. It’s wonderful to fuck your own wife as if she were a dead horse. You know every ripple in the silken lining; you can take your time and think about anything you like. The body is hers but the cunt’s yours. The cunt and the prick, they’re married, by crikey, no matter if the bodies are going different ways. In the morning the two bodies will face each other and make small change; they will act as if they were independent, as if the penis and the other thing were only to make water with. Being sound asleep she doesn’t mind how I joggle her. I’ve got one of those dumb, senseless hard-ons, like my prick was just a rubber hose and no nozzle to it. With the tips of my fingers I can move her at will. I shoot a load into her and leave it in, the thick rubber hose, I mean. She’s opening and closing like a flower. It’s agony, but the right kind of agony. Flower says: Stay there, sonny boy! Flower talks like a drunken sponge. Flower says: I do take this piece of meat to cherish until I wake. And what says the body, the independent hoist moving on ball-bearings? Body is wounded and humiliated. Body lost its name and address temporarily. Body would like to cut prick off and keep it like a kangaroo, forever. Maude is not this body lying ass skyward, the helpless victim of a rubber hose. Maude, if the author were God and not her husband, sees herself standing prissily on a green lawn, holding a beautiful red parasol. There are beautiful gray doves pecking at her shoes. These lovely doves, as she thinks them to be, are saying in their koochkoo way, what a gracious, bountiful creature you are. They make white shit all the while, but being doves sent from heaven above, the white part is only angel cake and shit is a bad word which man invented when he put on clothes and civilized himself. If she should squint her eye while saying benediction over God’s little pigeons she would see a shameless hussy offering a naked man the hind part of her body, just like a cow or a mare in the field. She doesn’t want to think of this woman, especially in such a disgraceful posture. She tries to keep the green grass around her and the parasol open. How lovely to stand naked in
