Authors: Paul Ableman
It was accumulating guilt; that’s what drove me out of affluence. There was a time in the thirties when I had the idea that I was responsible for everything bad that happened around me. If my goddamm chauffeur shot his aunt in the belly I figured there was something I could have done to prevent it. What I mean is: I could
not rid myself of the idea I’d done it—that the ultimate
responsibility
was mine. I had Pony Roach on my conscience. I’d been cruel to Austin. But the main thing, of course, was my terrible cruelty to Nat and her dying.
Not that I didn’t try not to hurt her. I tried like hell and for about two years—maybe more—I held out. Sometimes I’d sit in my office, in a Chicago spring, with all the musk of the mating world drifting in the window, and try and keep my thoughts off my secretary. I’d check down a column of figures and when I’d reached the bottom I couldn’t remember the total. What I’d have in my mind would be my secretary. I’d gaze at the intervening door so hard I sometimes thought it would begin to smoke and flake away. Just beyond it sat Letty. I swear I gripped the seat of my chair to anchor me, because it seemed I’d risen like a balloon and was floating helplessly towards her.
If I paused to kid with her on the way in, I’d have to rehearse the patter in my mind because once I’d begun, with a boss’s big grin, I lost control over, and even contact with, my voice. Dimly, I’d hear it punching wise-cracks, and faintly I’d see Letty’s
nervous
, obliging face because it was hard to focus through the roar of my huge desire. From behind her severe, blue blouse, her
pointed
breasts called like sirens. The plaid skirt, grooved and hollowed from her sitting posture, mimicked the white flow of her limbs and sometimes I’d ask myself: has it happened? Have I started?—uncertain whether my hands had not already begun to fumble at the buttons of her blouse.
But I held out for two years, because I really intended to be faithful to Nat.
Then there was an incident which scared me. I always
wondered
why it should have been the colonel’s wife that triggered it but now I see it was probably just because she was no doll. What I mean is, with the slim and enticing ones I was on my guard, putting up screens the moment I came near them but Mrs
Lombroso
, whose husband was in command of catering for the whole Middle West, was maybe forty, plump and none too gorgeous. Yeah, that was probably it. Probably, I just let down my guard.
It happened at a cocktail party and, apart from Letty, whom I’d taken along in case I needed any shorthand, I doubt if there was a good-looking female in the place. They were all customers or business contacts. I’d heard that the way to Colonel Lombroso’s favour was through his wife—and not like that, wise guy! Just that he took her advice. So I spent half an hour soft-soaping Mrs
Lombroso who was pleasant to talk to. Then we were easing down a crowded staircase that led from the exhibition hall to the main boozing room and conversing lightly about the fascination of Mexico. Mrs Lombroso was ahead of me and at some point she turned to offer me some titbit about the Aztecs and I got a glimpse of her breasts. She was wearing a low-cut dress and she was two steps down from me and I had visual access to practically all her bosom. Hell, Horace, it was like a body blow before you’ve tensed, the way they got Houdini. I quickly swung my glance up to her beaming face and held it there like a compass needle to a magnet. But I could still perceive the white blur of her breasts and the roar of the whirlpool of desire in my brain totally obliterated the words issuing from the lady’s mouth. Just for an instant, I thought I was going to sway dizzily forwards onto her and I had a vision of us thumping entwined into the midst of the crowd at the bottom of the stairs. Then my stomach heaved and I felt I was about to spew all over the heedless lady. I muttered:
“Excuse me.”
And I whirled and bolted up the stairs. I hastened to the john and there I leaned over the bowl for a couple of minutes, wretching feebly. But I didn’t actually puke so after a while I put down the seat and then sat down on the john, lit a cigarette, and had a long, sad think.
It seemed I wasn’t going to make it. Hell, I’d suspected, even in my early courting days, that I wasn’t going to be one hundred per cent satisfied with one woman for the rest of my life. I’d had a powerful feeling that I’d always have a wandering eye and I’d even guiltily found myself speculating, even before Nat and I were formally hitched, if there might not be any chance of philandering a little afterwards. But I had never anticipated having to face
anything
as stupendous as this. It was like going for a sail on a windy day and finding yourself bucking a hurricane.
I was sad, Horace, because I loved Nat with all my heart and I knew then I was going to hurt her. Personally, I had never seen much point in fidelity. I didn’t believe, as my ma and pa had, that God gets very uptight at promiscuous behaviour. It seemed to me, at the least, kind of trivial and demeaning for a deity, if there was any deity, to get worked up about that kind of thing. But Nat, unlike most of her generation of Englishmen, had pretty traditional views about marriage and so monogamy had been tacitly accepted as our way of life.
That night, I said to Nat:
“Hey, this is crazy. You know what happened today? Well, Letty was up on a ladder getting down some files and I happened to glance up and I made some kind of crack—”
“What kind of crack?”
“Oh, something like: I never knew you had showgirl’s legs—something like that. But you know what Letty did?”
“What?”
“I mean—hell—she’s always seemed to me—modest as a bum’s legacy—I mean, she comes from Hicksville some place and—sure, she’s a great secretary but I never thought of her as much more feminine than a—a typewriter. But when I made that crack, she turned on the ladder, posing like a burlesque queen, and hitched her skirt even higher. I mean—I could see her panties, for God’s sake!”
“How nice for you.”
“Well, I have to admit she’s pretty well stacked but all I felt was astonishment. She said something like: are they good enough for Broadway? Her legs, she meant. I pretended not to hear—just got on with my work. You know, I’ve noticed it before. Authority does that to some women. They just can’t resist authority. I could sure as hell see from the way Letty looked at me that—well—”
“That what?”
“That she wouldn’t have fought too hard—I mean, if I’d made a play—”
“But you didn’t?”
“Hell, no. You know that.”
“Did you want to?”
“Definitely not—never. I mean—I am human. Maybe for a split second—what I mean is, it’s natural, isn’t it? It’s an
instinctive
reaction. You could practically say it was a conditioned reflex. You know that, honey. Men are so fixed that they respond to erotic signals from dames. Naturally, I didn’t want to feel anything but I guess maybe with the instinctual part of my nature I responded. That’s okay, isn’t it, honey? I guess you’d be pretty disappointed if you had a man who wasn’t a man—who didn’t respond like a man, right?”
“Then you’re saying that—you wanted to seduce Letty?”
“Just with the instinctual part of me. What I mean is, if
everything
had been equal—say if I’d have known that you wouldn’t have been mad—maybe then I would have done.”
Nat was staring at me hard, Horace, and I felt slight anxiety.
But then she smiled and I figured she understood. I put out my arm to draw her towards me and she punched me on the cheek. For an instant, I was bewildered. The blow hadn’t hurt me but it had been too fierce to mistake for a caress. Then why was she smiling? I urged:
“Hey, take it easy—”
And she punched me on the other cheek with the other fist. She screamed:
“You rotten, faithless man—”
And I realized that I’d mistaken the contraction of rage and hurt on her face for a smile. She was quivering with passion and I experienced a kind of awe at the intensity of it. I pleaded:
“Nat! What the hell! I haven’t done anything.”
But she again surprised me by making a tiny, uncontrolled lunge as if she was only just able to keep from pounding me with both hands. I hopped back, symbolically raising my hands to ward off the attack.
“Honey, you couldn’t think seriously that I’d ever be unfaithful to you or even want to be?”
But she’d expended the force of her rage and now sagged down into the mud of despair. She wept and sobbed. I comforted her for quarter of an hour—more—reiterating my utter, intact,
unbreachable
devotion, deriding scornfully the idea that any woman that lived could deflect my glance for one instant from my love, invoking our years of seamless happiness, lacing the whole with ardent compliments and tender protestations.
The fact is, Horace, she’d scared me. Nat had put the fear of God into me. I’d suddenly realized that she was capable of
maniacal
jealousy in which she might do anything. Hell, I don’t mean I was scared she’d hurt me. I was scared she might hurt herself. Worse, I was scared she might hurt our marriage which was the most real and mellow thing in the world for me. So, all the time I drenched her in loving words, part of me was busy with panicky contingency plans. I was thinking: Christ, the mood she’s in, she’s capable of going to see Letty and then she’ll find out it never happened and—Christ!—she’ll despise me!
More than in any tricky business deal, more than in any bar, brothel or casino play, it seemed to me vital that Nat never find out the truth, which was that I’d made the whole thing up, Letty and the goddamm ladder and her goddamm legs which I’d never seen higher than the goddamm knee.
And I marvelled at how I could have made such a dumb move.
I’d done it more or less on impulse when I’d suddenly recalled the incident with Mrs Lombroso and my feeling that I’d go crazy if I couldn’t get a little relief from monogamy. So I’d lightly spun that little yarn to test Nat and, in my smug stupidity, I’d imagined Nat’s response would be to nod ruefully and admit that she’d noticed my slight restlessness. She’d then declare that she wanted me to be happy and, if I promised to be considerate about it, why I could take off with another chick now and then. And I’d protest:
“Gee, honey, I couldn’t do that.”
And she’d say:
“Yes, you can, Tornado. With my blessings. I’m not saying it won’t hurt but I am saying that it won’t hurt too much. I can take it and it’ll be worth it to me.”
“How do you mean, honey?”
“I mean that when you’re with me at least I’ll have all of you. This way, there’s always a part of you elsewhere, helplessly trailing some woman.”
And I’d grin sheepishly and reverently call her an angel and—yowee!—dive mentally into the muff of Rhoda, or Wanda or Gladys or—any one of the hundred other Chicago dazzlers who’d go plumb crazy with delight at the chance to slip down their panties for Tornado Pratt!
Did I really believe that? Seems incredible. The only
explanation
is that I was so used to getting anything I just had a yen for that when I began to want something as badly as I wanted
extramural
pussy why I just couldn’t accept that it was
streng
verboten.
But I really knew, Horace. That’s the truth, boy. We know everything. I sometimes think that. We mask off this or that part of our knowledge, just so we can act, so we can take another step through the morass of life, but later, if we comb out the mites of warning, screen out the particles of prediction from our memory, why—we knew it all along.
Sure, some part of me knew that Nat would respond as she did. But if I knew, then it must follow that I wanted her to respond as she did or at least wanted what flowed from her response. And that was mess and misery. How can I have wanted that when I hated it? What you hate, booms Uncle Sigmund from the deep, you really love. Who does? The
you
that you don’t know. But that’s not really I! How can it be? I am tired, Horace, and I am old and I beg to be excused. I admit I was never a scholar but I was never dumb and since the day I contracted reading from a captain of marines many books have fluttered in my grasp. I have
ranged the prairies and the hills of thought, Horace, and plunged into the loathsome depths of the inky pool to inspect the monsters that flap beneath consciousness and culture. But leave me be, now, boy. Don’t make me face the worst again—here, in Acapulco—is this Acapulco?—wherever the hell it is—when I’m about to flip the table and bounce out of the game. Because I’ve examined it before, Horace, so often, the “I”—my proud “I”, Horace—the grandeur of Tornado Pratt—the rock of my personality—perceived as a leaf in a storm, swooping and soaring, spiralling amongst trees and towers, then scooped up by a gust into a new frenzy in the sky. That is my mind, Horace, the utter me—not a boulder or pyramid—but a wisp in a whirlwind.
Well, I have tried to harness that feather to the task of charting its own course and purpose—and failed. And that has generated anguish. And I’ve known that many times, Horace. Nor am I claiming anything unique in the perception. All good men, whose brains buzz high, range through all the puzzles and paradoxes of being. And, like me, when baffled beyond bearing, seek solace in a bottle. But now, Horace, it’s too late. Where can I get a drink? Here on the margins of the world there are no bars. So don’t pester me, boy, to confront the grimy truth again—not now!
For six months after the Letty incident, I minded my Ps and Qs. Whenever some doll at a party would start beaming her appeal at me, I’d switch off fast. Hell, I even had a sprinkler system going. Hint of tit or pussy, hip even, belly, knee—any sex-lure start flashing anywhere in my neighbourhood, doting thoughts of Nat would flood through my mind and sluice out the irritant. You see, Horace, I wouldn’t have jeopardized my marriage for anything. If I could, I’d have stayed out of mischief, which in this context means other women’s bodies, for the rest of my life to please Nat. But I couldn’t make it, boy, not in the lying world we’ve built. Because that’s what it is, boy.