«You’re in love with her. You don’t need to answer—I know it’s so.»
«Yes, that’s true—I am in love. I found some one I really love.»
«Maybe you’ll treat her better than you did me.»
«I hope so,» I said, still calm, still hoping she’d hear me through to the end. «We never really loved each other, Maude, that’s the truth, isn’t it?»
«You never had any respect for me—as a human being,» she replied. «You insult me in front of your friends; you run around with other women; you don’t even show any interest in your child.»
«Maude. I wish just for once that you wouldn’t talk that way. I wish we could talk about it without bitterness.»
«You can—because you’re happy. You’ve found a new toy.»
«It isn’t that, Maude. Listen, supposing all the things you say are true—what difference does it make now? Supposing we were on a boat and it was sinking…»
«I don’t see why we have to suppose things. You’re going to take up with some one else and I’m going to be left with all the drudgery, all the responsibilities.»
«I know,» I said, looking at her with genuine tenderness. «I want you to try to forgive me for that—can you? What good would it do to stay? We wouldn’t ever learn to love each other. Can’t we part friends? I don’t mean to leave you in the lurch. I’m going to try to do my share—I mean it.»
«That’s easy to say. You’re always promising things you can’t fulfill. You’ll forget us the moment you walk out of this house. I know you. I can’t afford to be generous with you. You deceived me bitterly, from the very beginning. You’ve been selfish, utterly selfish. I never thought it possible for a human being to become so cruel, so callous, so thoroughly inhuman. Why, I hardly recognize you now. It’s the first time you’ve acted like a…»
«Maude, it’s cruel what I’m going to say, but I have to say it. I want you to understand something. Maybe I had to go through this with you in order to learn how to treat a woman. It isn’t altogether my fault—fate had something to do with it too. You see, the moment I set eyes on her I knew…»
«Where did you meet her?» said Maude, her feminine curiosity suddenly getting the better of her.
«In a dance hall. She’s a taxi girl. Sounds bad, I know. But if you saw her…»
«I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to hear anything more about her. I just wondered.» She gave me a quick pitying look. «And you think she’s the woman who will make you happy?»
«You call her a woman—she’s not, she’s just a young girl.»
«So much the worse. Oh. what a fool you are!»
«Maude, it’s not like you think, not at all. You mustn’t judge, really. How can you pretend to know? And in any case I don’t care. I’ve made up my mind.»
At this she hung her head. She looked indescribably sad and weary, like a human wreck hanging from a meat hook. I looked down at the floor, unable to bear the sight of her face.
We sat like that a full few minutes, neither of us daring to look up. I heard a sniffle and as I looked up I saw her face quivering with pain. She put her rams forward on the table and, weeping and sobbing, she flung her head down, pressing her face against the table. I had watched her weep many times but this was the most ghastly, unresisting sort of surrender. It unnerved me. I stood over her and put my hand on her shoulder. I tried to say something but the words stuck in my throat. Not knowing what to do I rubbed my hand over her hair, caressed it sadly, and distantly too, as thought it were the head of a strange, wounded animal I had come upon in the dark.
«Come, come,» I managed to gurgle, «this won’t do any good.»
Her sobs redoubled. I knew I had said the wrong thing. I couldn’t help myself. No matter what she were to do—even if she were to kill herself—I couldn’t change the situation. I had expected tears. I had also half expected to do this very thing— stroke her hair as she wept and say the wrong thing. My mind was on the goal. Is she would get through with it and go to bed I could sit down and finish the letter. I could add a postscript about cauterizing the wound. I could say with honest joy and Sorrow mixed—«It’s over.»
That’s what was going on in my mind as I stroked her hair. I was never further from her. While I felt the quivering gasps of her body I also felt pleasure at thinking how serene she would be a week hence when I had gone. «You will be feeling like a new woman,» I thought to myself. «And now you are going through all this anguish—it’s right and natural, of course, and I don’t blame you for it— only get done with it!» I must have given her a shake to punctuate the thought, for at that instant she suddenly sat erect and, looking at me with wild, hopeless, tear-stained eyes, she flung her arms around me and pulled me to her in a frantic, maudlin embrace. «You won’t leave me yet, will you?» she sobbed, kissing me with salty, hungry lips. «Put your arms around me, please. Hold me tight. God, I feel so lost!» She was kissing me with a passion I had never felt in her before. She was putting body and soul into it—and all the sorrow that stood between us. I slid my hands under her arms-pits and raised her gently to her feet. We were as close as lovers could be, swaying as only the human animal can sway when he is given utterly to another. Her kimono slipped pone and she was naked underneath. I slid my hand down the small of her back, over her plump buttocks, wedged my fingers deep into the big crack, pressing her against me, chewing her lips, biting her ear lobes, her neck, licking her eyes, the roots of her hair. She got limp and heavy, closing her eyes, closing her mind. She sagged as though she were going to drop to the floor. I caught her up and carried her through the hall, up the flight of stairs, threw her on the bed. I fell over her, as if stupefied, and let her rip my things off. I lay on my back like a dead man, the only thing alive being my prick. I felt her mouth closing over it and the sock on my left foot slowly slipping off. I ran my fingers through her long hair, slid them round under her breast, moulded her bread basket which was soft and rubbery like. She was making some sort of wheeling motion in the dark. Her legs came down over my shoulders and her crotch was up against my lips. I slid her ass over my head, like you’d raise a pail of milk to slake a lazy thirst, and I drank and chewed and guzzled like a buzzard. She was so deep in heat that her teeth were clamped dangerously around the head of my cock. In that frantic, teary passion she had worked herself up to I had a fear that she might sink her teeth in deep, bite the end of it clean off. I had to tickle her to make her relax her jaws. It was fast, clean work after that—no tears, no love business, no promise me this and that. Put me on the fucking block and fuck! that’s what she was asking for. I went at it with cold-blooded fury. This might be the very last fuck. Already she was a stranger to me. We were committing adultery, the passionate, incestuous kind which the Bible loves to talk about. Abraham went into Sarah or Leander and he knew her. (Strange italicizations in the English Bible.) But the way those horny old patriarchs tackled their young and old wives, sisters, cows and sheep, was very knowing. They must have gone in head first, with all the cunning and skill of aged lechers. I felt like Isaac fornicating with a rabbit in the temple. She was a white rabbit with long ears. She had Easter eggs inside her and she would drop them one by one in a basket. I took a long think inside her, studying every crevice, every slit and tear, every soft, round bump that had swollen to the size of a shrivelled oyster. She moved over and took a rest, reading it like Braille (New York Point) with her inquisitive fingers. She crouched on all fours bike a she animal, quivering and whinnying with undisguised pleasure. Not a human word out of her, not a sign that she knew any language except this block-and-tackle-subgum-one-ton-blow-the-whistle sort. The gentleman from Mississippi had completely faded out; he had slipped back into the swampy
