Star of Stars

ELISABETH MANN BORGESE Twin's Wail

Star in its history was able to draw on the services of a clear majority of the best writers in the science fiction field; but there were, too, a sizable number of first-rate contributions by "mainstream" writers, drawn to science fiction because they had something to say that could not be said elsewhere. There were half a dozen of these—Gerald Kersh, Jessamyn West, one or two who elected the protection of pen names—and there is Mrs. Borgese, who is not only the daugh­ter of one of the greatest writers of all, but in her own right a talented artist with words. Have no doubt of this; discover it for yourself in—

When he first said, "It is not Martha's fault, why, any Martha would have done it; he got her to be that way; I too had a Martha like that," people simply thought he was crazy. But after he had pieced the facts together, patiently and humbly, they made sense. People began to wonder about the sense they made and wanted to hope for the best, wish them well, Phil and Martha, whoever they were. Somehow it seemed the toll was paid; what for, no one could quite discern, but a toll was paid. They could go ahead now, Phil and Martha.

Vanyambadi, April 24, 1918.

Today James christened them. Willoughby and Theophil. Willoughby, after Dad. "Willy" just suits him, the cute thing. And if one is Willy, it is nice that the other be Philly. We thought of Philip, too; but, come to think of it, it doesn't make much sense, in our family. "Theo­phil" augurs well. Let him be dear to God.

June 6.

Will always has to be on the left side, Phil always on the right, in the crib and in the buggy too. If you put them the other way, they'll cry. It's really easier that way to tell them apart. Dr. Edgecomb says to separate them. They would grow better, he says. But it can't be done. They'll cry: Will keeps his left arm under his head, Phil the right one. And when people stare at them—they have never seen a pair of twins here; they stare at them as if they were monsters—they both start crying at the same time. And when I rock the buggy they are quiet and begin to suck their thumbs: Will the right one, Phil the left. It's always like that. One is always the mirror image of the other.

July 24.

The kind of service you've got to put up with! I am frankly scared of Yoshi, but if I fire her the next one may be worse yet. Yoshi says they want to be two but the dasus prevent it. Chewing a parrot feather for a toothpick, she says if they cannot be two they'll bring on the earthquake, a terrible earthquake.

November 11.

They both spat out their spinach. They have the same likes and the same dislikes. They wet their diapers at the same time. Woe, if I changed Phil without changing Will! And Will must always be first.

May 1.

Yoshi says, and she wears an old stocking of mine on her head for a turban, help them be two. She says: Do shave Will's hair and sacrifice it to Shiva-with-the-Four-Arms that he sever them into two times two. Burn Will's hair. But Phil's hair should be done up with cow dung. That will help them be two.

November 9.

Will's cold is hanging on. We still kept him indoors today. He's rather cross and a bit run down. Got himself badly scratched up, along the left leg, while playing in his play-pen with some train tracks. When Phil came home I'll be darned if he hadn't his leg scratched up too. The right one. He had crawled off towards the garden fence and fallen against the barbed wire.

December 13.

Yoshi said, in a magical singsong voice not her own: Don't bathe them in water, which makes for sameness. Will should be rubbed with the fat of a hilsa, but for Phil you should get the twice-chewed hay of a sacred cow and boil it in palm oil, with leaves of sandalwood and minusops. That you should rub on Phil. It will make them different.

February 12.

There is a Peter Toledo and a Peter MacGregor among the boys down at the Mission Nursery. Peter Toledo is small and dark and flabby, and Peter MacGregor is tall and blond and springy. They haven't got a thing in common but their name. And that Phil is picking on Peter Toledo and Will is bothering Peter MacGregor. Today Phil took Peter Toledo's cookies, up in the dining room, and bit him when he cried, while Will kicked Peter MacGregor off the swing, down in the backyard, and rocked himself wildly and burst with laughter when he saw that Peter had got hurt.

Christmas.

It seems so strange, these two children who are really only one. And you don't know where one ends and the other begins. Will is for Phil, Phil is for Will, and there seems to be no room for anybody else. The space between them seems different from the space around, permeated by invisible communications. I've looked it up in the books, and it seems to be all perfectly normal the way it is. James says each one has a soul, each one of them is alone before God. But sometimes I wonder.

May 5.

Phil has grown faster than Will. He is almost an inch taller now. But Will is getting so bossy. Phil—"My Phil"—he has to do everything just the way Will wants him to. Phil is such a good boy. He does not mind. This morning Will wetted Phil's bed. I know he did, because Phil's bed was dry when I picked him up for his bath. But Will said: "Phil made wettywetty in his beddy. Bad Phil." And Phil looked at us so sorrowfully with guilty eyes. I really think he believed he did it.

Halloween.

Yoshi said: Their karmas are two. They are two. She sat on a stool by the bead curtain front door, spreading her shawl over Will and Phil on her sides, and she held their hands—Will's left, Phil's right joined on her lap. The heart and the head line will never meet on Will's palm; he's going to be an impulsive boy. Phil will be pensive. See, where they join, the head and the heart line, in one. This swelling shows fortune and foresight. The life line is long but the mountain of love is shrivelled; dimpled and broken his pride and reliance. Will too shows good fortune but is reckless and wild. The field of Dishnana augurs abundance, but the mountain of love is like Phil's, just like Phil's, and his life line is cut through by Asuras. Their karmas are two, said Yoshi.

Palm Sunday.

I gave Phil a bunny with floppy ears, but he cried till Will got one just like it. I gave Willy a set of jinglebells but he broke them in two, half for him, half for Philly. I gave them a team of galloping horses hitched to a covered wagon. They cried they did not want one but two. But there wasn't another one, not in all of Vanyambadi. So they cried and they said: We are scared of it, take it away!

This is as far as she got. Poor mother. Here her hand was halted.

Had she listened to Yoshi, perhaps the earth would have tarried. And we were to leave anyway, for Dad had been called to the Christ Church in Chicago. But the earth did not wait. God knows why it was sore at me and my Will.

There is not much I can remember. A sulky day of frightening colors. The kitten vomited and mewed, and the sheep dog had his tail between his legs. Yoshi was off to the village. Rice wine, too much rice wine, 1 remem­ber they said. Has anybody ever seen a sunset like this, they said. A cloud with a golden rim was hovering over the horizon like a monster. Then I felt dizzy, trying to hold myself on all fours, and sick to my stomach. When it was over, the house had crumbled and the yard was gaping and smoking and the sheep dog was howling at the ruins and Dad took me in his arms and kissed me and carried me away. Mother had gone to Heaven, he said, and Will had gone with her so she wouldn't be lonely, but Philly and Daddy would go to Chicago. The stars had long tails and swirled over the sky through the ship's bull's eye.

Poor father. Had he listened to me, we might have found Will, for he was not in Heaven. I heard his voice calling in the night and wept to the nurse who came to soothe me. "My Will is crying, my Will wants me." I heard him often and knew him to be sick and looking for us. Phil is missing Will so, they said.

There was a mirror in the dressing room at the Nursery School in Chicago. I looked at it, while the teacher but-toned up my snowsuit, and called, overjoyed, "There is my Will." The other children too began to point at their selves in the mirror and shouted names and jumped and laughed. There is another Dick. Where is the other Helen? My Tommy! Many a one fancied a twin. It was a game like another. Thus my Will faded to fantasy and then was forgotten. He was put away with the old toys for new ones.

That was thirty years ago.

"Did you see that, Phil?" Robby McNutting said over the luncheon table. "It's this morning's Trib. He looked just exactly like you. My word, I've never seen such a likeness in all my life. Look at the forehead, generous like yours; the short cropped hair, the questioning eyes. Must be dark, like yours. The long straight nose, and the folds down the mouth, deeper on one side. Look, he even draws one shoulder up like you. Your mirror image." And he handed the page to Phil.

The paper trembled in Phil's hand so he put it down before him on the table and wiped over it with the back of his spoon as though to flatten it, or to see whether it was really there. Jim Wilder pushed his chair round the corner of the table, to look at the picture too, and Ted Con­nally, on the opposite side, got up, walked round, leaned his arms on the back of Phil's chair, and looked over his shoulder.

"Boy," Jim Wilder said, "it's almost uncanny."

"Phil, old fellow," Ted Connally guffawed, slapping him on the shoulder, "how does it feel to have been murdered?"

"Oh, come on," Robby McNutting said helpfully, "you can't tell from a telephoto. Maybe the man looked altogether different."

Phil kept staring at the picture and the story. "And I knew it, I knew it, I knew it all the time," he mumbled. Then he poured down his Martini, and McNutting's and Wilder's and what was left of Ted Connally's second, and staggered out of the Club.

They certainly had explained my coming. But probably she had not listened. She was easily distracted. When I opened the door she seemed utterly unprepared.

She stared at me, buried her face in her hands, then stared again, forlorn. She jerked up from the red uphol­stered armchair in which she had been resting and retreated towards the red-framed window, groping blindly backwards with her arms, always staring at me, through me, at the red rousing wall. She leaned against the window, her palms cooling on the glass pane. Her black open hair fell over her black shoulders. Her face was pale and contorted. A witch condemned to the stake, a poor sick suffering girl. "Go away," she hissed, "please go away and leave me alone."

"How do you do, Martha." The calm swing of a trained business voice sounded utterly out of place, even to me. "I am Will's brother Phil Thorndike. From Chi­cago. Didn't they tell you?" There was not another sound to be gotten out of her. She stood there black and twisted, her arms spread out, a barren tree against the darkling sky. A quarter of an hour, perhaps half an hour, and night fell. I stole towards the door and slipped out.

The next morning he brought her roses and candies.

"Hello, Martha, you look fine today. Had a good rest? It was cold in Chicago when I left, you know; the wings of the plane were heavy with ice. We had a hard time tak­ing off. Didn't he ever tell you he had a brother? He probably didn't remember. I couldn't either, but then I knew it even though he ceased to be real long ago, in a certain way. Dad kept talking about him and mother, and there were pictures and the baby book. I'll show them to you. Look, I bought a copy of No Home for Strangers. Started reading it. He must have been a tough guy. You know, I wanted to be a writer, too. Took a couple of courses in creative writing at college. But then, I met—Martha—my wife's name was Martha too—and then I got a job at the Morris Trust Company and went to Lass School. I guess that didn't leave much time for anything else. Why don't you try these candies? You smoke? You know, I don't know a soul here in Rome. It's funny. But there are American bars all over the place. Hot dogs deluxe—the Romans take them so seriously and they're terribly fashionable. But I don't like it here. People star­ing at me. `That must be William Sailor's brother'—do I really look so much like Will?"

"Why don't you shut up?"

"Hello Martha. Feeling better today?"

"Say, how long are you going to hang around here?"

"Oh, Martha, I want to stay as long as necessary. I want to help you.... I've finished Will's book. Do you like it, Martha?"

"I hate it. And I hate Will. I hate both of you. Oh, don't go! Please don't go away."

Martha wept, fitfully and fearfully. Her face on her arm on the red polished hospital table. Her back shaking. Tears clogging her nose and choking her throat. The world, coming to an end with each long pressed sob, vanished trembling behind the wall of tears. The void closed in, tightening on her deluged temples, her squeezed lungs. She wept on Phil's hand stretched to stroke soothingly her jerking shoulders. "Poor girl," he said. "I know it. I know it all. Cry it out. Cry it all out of your system."

She stroked his face, blindly, gratefully.

"The scar," she said, and had suddenly stopped weep­ing. "The scar on your cheek, on your right cheek." She looked at him in new horror.

"Nothing. An accident. A crash. Three months ago. It's all healed now."

Martha: Good morning Phil. How nice of you to come so early.

Phil: Had a good rest?

Martha: Just fine. Thanks. And you?

Phil: I got up early and took a walk in the city.

Martha: It's a wonderful city.

Phil: People sitting outdoors in the caf6s.

Martha: In Via Veneto.

Phil: In December. In Chicago it's blizzards.

Martha: And here the light is lambent on the red stones.

Phil: You just walk for hours, just walk and get lost.

Martha: One discovery opening into another.

Phil: Don't you love it?

Martha: I loved it.

Phil: How long have you been living here, Martha?

Martha: Seven, almost eight years. It's almost eight years.

Phil: Met Will in Rome?

Martha: At Dermott McDermott's.

Phil: You know Dermott?

Martha. Of course I do. I was staying with him, and you know Freddy.

Phil: Freddy? It's years and years.

Martha: He pays him ninety dollars a month.

Phil: Just for the fun of sleeping with him.

Martha: Freddy is a terrible mess.

Phil: I don't see what Dermott finds in him.

Martha: Sometimes he won't speak to Dermott all day.

Phil: I think he hates Dermott. I think he will kill Dermott some day.

Martha: When Dermott wants to dress up and go to the show, Freddy won't shave and he'll hang around in dirty jeans, and he'll go out into the street and talk to the whores.

Phil: Like and like keep good company.

Martha: He won't do a thing at home. The bathroom, always messy. He'd use up the last piece of soap.

Phil: The last piece of toilet paper.

Martha: But he'd never dream of replacing it.

Phil: Never. You had to do it all.

Martha: What are you smiling at? Am I boring you? I guess I am boring you.

Phil: Not in the least, Martha.

Martha: Will smiled, just before that gun went off.

Phil: Smiled, just like that.

Martha: I sometimes think: You. Simply you. You almost did it. You died. You scared me. Don't do it again. I must be more careful. That must never happen again. Phil, I am so scared.

Phil: How did Will and Dermott get along?

Martha: At first, famously. That is, Will adored Dermott.

Phil: And Dermott just loves being adored.

Martha: For Will, Dermott was a real writer, and artist.

Dermott had to check every comma Will wrote.

Phil: Poor Will. And he himself wasn't a real writer?

Martha: Just thrillers, you know. And he said he did not know any language at all.

Phil: He must have known Hindi, as a child.

Martha: He forgot it, and English he never learned. Just picked it up from the boys in the Navy.

Phil: And read a lot, I guess.

Martha: But it was not his language. And lately he started getting mixed up with Italian.

Phil: He had no language.

Martha: It does something to your mind, he said.

Phil: Huprooted. Kicked around in world and creeds and systems. So huprooted. All of us.

Martha: And did he show off in front of Dermott, spend­ing silly amounts of money, you know, and telling him how many copies of his latest book had been sold and in how many languages it had been translated.

Phil: Dermott couldn't care less.

Martha: And he said it read best in Persian, although there were a few minor mistakes in the trans­lation.

Phil: That's sheer snobbism.

Martha: I don't know why he picked up with me in the first place; whether it was because he cared for me or whether he thought it would hurt Dermott. You know, he was jealous of Dermott, at the same time.

Phil: And you?

Martha: I don't know. I really don't know. He said he was going to get me a part in his new television play. A part written just for me. He was wonder-fully like you. Don't die any more, please don't.

Phil: It is late, Martha, and I must go. They are getting your lunch ready. Halfway decent? What shall I bring you tomorrow? Okay, Martha, it will be marrons glares. So long, Martha.

She is not a bad girl after all. Simple, forthright, cordial, rather generous by nature, underneath. Out of place in this career. Slithered into it God knows why. What made her act so horridly with Will?

My Martha was different. Wicked right from the outset. A go-getter. At first she seemed nice enough, though, and active. Pretty tall blond she was.

Dead. Destroyed. Kaputt. Won't work no more. Slipped out of my impotent hands. And left a hard hole, hard white hole, superimposing its Martha shape, planing into its contours whoever wants to float up through.

The other girls at the office didn't like her, though. Fawning on the boss and bossy on the fawns. (That's a good one. Must tell Martha. Which Martha?) She cer­tainly knew what she wanted. Spun her web round me in no time. And then the allergies. Never seemed to bother her till she had me. But then! Endless trouble and troubled end.

Phil: Listen, Martha, what I made up yesterday on my way home: "Fawning on the boss and bossy on the fawns." Isn't that a good one?

Martha: Who? What?

Phil: Any one. I mean, I was thinking of my wife, when she was still working at the office. Can you imagine. She wasn't a bit like you: all cold and calculating.

Martha: Just the name.

Phil: That does not create any bond.

Martha: Maybe it does.

Phil: There are many Marthas.

Martha: And one proto-Martha.

Phil: What difference does it make?

Martha: There's something damned about all Marthas.

Phil: Perhaps.

Martha: Parents ought to be more careful.

Phil: It's their way, their luck, they impress with that chosen name.

Martha: I wish my name was—I can't think of a suitable name for myself; but imagine if my name was—, everything would have been different. There's something damned about all Marthas.

Phil: About mine there was, by Jove. Hell of a life. Martha: What did she do to you?

Phil: The allergies. The air-conditioned rooms and the oxygen tents. The fumes and the moves and the fired nurses.

Martha: if she was sick?

Phil: I couldn't accept any invitations for dinner

Martha: or bring home any guests.

Phil: She'd be sick, infallibly. She called me at the office and she called me at board meetings

Martha: and woe, if you didn't get home on time. Phil: She made my life utterly impossible.

Martha: Why didn't you get rid of her?

Phil: I did. Divorce, you know, has an ugly ring in the ear of a missionary's son

Martha: and I think you just wanted it like that. Some people just have to have hell at home. You know, Will....

Phil: Did you run Will like that?

Martha: I don't know. I guess I was worried about him be-cause he took to drinking so heavily.

Phil: You canceled his dinner engagements?

Martha: Because I didn't want people to see him so drunk.

Phil: There's always some because

Martha: because he put both hands into the salad bowl at the Marchesa Marchesani's

Phil: if he didn't do worse than that

Martha: and he would argue. Did he argue, with Dermott, when they both were drunk? He was quite un­bearable.

Phil: What did they argue about?

Martha: Politics, lots of it. Imperialism. Socialism, and all the rest.

Phil: Well. I know where Dermott stands on all those things

Martha: and you can imagine what happened when Will said the Indians were inferior.

Phil: Did he say that?

Martha: And the children there get blind because they are too lazy to drive the flies off their eyes. He said they just sit there and let the flies eat their eyes.

Phil: Maybe it's true. 1 heard it too.

Martha: You know, he lived with them, street urchins, for years, after he got lost during the earthquake —a girl named Maharata picked him up and mothered him as best she could—and he said, if he didn't turn out to be a mess like them it was because he had the stuff it takes to be a man.

Phil: it's the same stuff I am made of. I can assure you.

Martha: It hasn't got anything to do with the "social order" he said. And the British officers in India did a wonderful job

Phil: they tried to bring the natives up to their stand­ards: didn't he say that?

Martha: Why, they even left their personal silver to the Indian Officers Mess, when they quit, just to show them

Phil: that was undoubtedly generous on their part.

Martha: But the Labour Government was terrible

Phil: that wasn't exactly what Dermott thought.

Martha: But Will, he turned literally green when you as much as mentioned one of them. Which, after all, is rather strange because he knew nothing about politics in the first place.

Phil: What did he think was wrong?

Martha: The way they betrayed the Empire, he said, was terrible and they killed initiative at home and produced soft characters, whereas, what you need to get along is to be tough, he said

Phil: come to think about it, that's just the way I used to feel

Martha: you've got to be tough

Phil: it was because I was so tough that I became president of the Morris Trust Co. at thirty years of age

Martha: you thought the real way to start a business was to sell apples from an apple cart

Phil: I even tried to write a book about these things, you know, how tough and self-made you've got to be

Martha: and that the New Deal was terrible

Phil: and that the government should keep off my affairs and yours

Martha: and stuff like that.

Phil: It was to be called: Keep Going West, Young Man, but I guess it was so badly written no one wanted to publish it, thank goodness.

Martha: Why did you change your mind about these things?

Phil: it's all stuff and nonsense: I and I and I. Did you ever hear about a fellow named Plato?

Martha: Vaguely.

Phil: My favored author at the Great Books class.

Martha: Your mind is wandering, Phil.

Phil: At the beginning, he said, there were neither men nor women

Martha: but some kind of funny beings

Phil: male and female at once.

Martha: I guess they must have had four arms

Phil: and four legs and so on

Martha: I wonder whether they were happy that way

Phil: until, one day, a certain rude deity split them asunder

Martha: severing boy and girl

Phil: and they have been looking for one another ever since.

Martha: What are you driving at, Phil?

Phil: It's the story of Will and me.

Martha: Split asunder, one day, by a certain rude deity?

Phil: A quirk of fate.

Martha: You should have been one, are one. Don't die any more, please don't die again.

Phil: One case of 86 works out like that: Twins. One out of every 862, makes triplets; one of every 863, quadruplets. The dickens knows why. But that's the way it is

Martha: and it had to be you

Phil: or else it might have been one of 87

Martha: the law upset

Phil: a false interval, a dissonant chord: it hurts my ear to think of it

Martha: it could not happen

Phil: the name of the new Platonic God is Statistics.

Martha: You are mad, Phil,

Phil: and all that he-man stuff just to hide the half-man, you know

Martha: and you were lonely and little and scared under­neath.

It had gotten dark in the room.

"Martha, dear, Doctor Rosselli says the trial has been set for a month from now. He is very confident it will go all right. He says he can drop the plea for temporary insanity—your nervous breakdown came after the fact—and base your case on self-defense. Accidental killing in self-defense. He says the only trouble is that there are no witnesses, and the fact that you were doped, but he hopes to get around that. But now you should tell me everything. The whole story. That may be very, very helpful. Are you strong enough to tell me everything?"

"I'll try. But it's a long story. I'll try to piece it to­gether. Well, Will was getting worse all the time. He drank terribly. For a certain time, he grew a beard, and he was wearing dark glasses. The light hurt his eyes, he said. What are you fumbling with in your pocket. Now look there, for God's sake, dark glasses! You too! He looked terribly sick. I wanted to take him to a doctor, but he said he knew I wanted to murder him. He said that all the time. He whispered it into my ear at night. He devel­oped the strangest notions."

"What notions?"

"For awhile he always thought that he ... stank. That was before he grew the beard. Later he didn't care any more. At that time, he would constantly change his underwear, order that it be boiled, sniff at his shirts and jackets and pillow cases. He would constantly get new mouth waters and tooth pastes. When there was some bad smell somewhere—for instance, at the post office—he would say with a very loud voice, the puzzo, what a stink! And everybody would look at him—which is just what he wanted—for he wanted them all to know that it wasn't he. At the restaurant he would order the waiter to open the windows—I smell the smell of sour feet, he would an­nounce—and when the lady at the next table protested against the draught, he said, Lady, if I were in your shoes --and I mean what 1 say, he added—1 would not pro-test against a little fresh air. But some people don't seem to notice when they ... because the smell goes away: it doesn't go up into your own nose. He had often noticed that, he said. It was quite embarrassing."

"What's there to giggle about, Martha? Poor Will."

"And when I opened the door to his room, he said, why don't you come in, does it stink here? But, as I said, it got worse and worse. He stayed up all night, trying to work. And then he would sleep for days on end. He hollered at me, even when there were other people, and he threw things at me. The telephone. He kept it unplugged most of the time. And if I forgot to unplug it and it rang, he picked it up and cooed `googlegooglegoo' into it, and then he hit me over the head with it."

"He would go to any length to get you to be what you were not."

"Well, I guess, I got mean too. It's contagious, you know. I smashed his bottles, and then I watched him lapping the whiskey off the ground."

"How ghastly, Martha."

"And then came the affair with Freddy. And that was the end."

"What do you mean, affair?"

"I mean I had an affair with Freddy."

"Didn't you say you couldn't stand him?"

"I'll tell you in a minute. But first I must tell you about Licky. Poor Licky. She was so cute."

"Who was Licky?"

"A little Dalmatian. The cutest dog you ever saw. Dermott's wedding present. Well, Licky was in heat. And we kept her locked up in my bedroom. She could open all the doors, if you didn't lock them with the key. She was so smart. And I would take her down, three, four times a day, on the leash, of course, and never letting go of her for a minute. When she was in her third week—which is, of course, the worst possible moment—I came home one evening and saw Licky, loose, racing around like crazy, panting, her tongue out, and Will, going his way as if there was nothing to it. I said, for Christ's sake, Will, are you out of your mind? He said—he was so drunk—now don't start fussing. The mutt got her too, I saw it, he said, but so what. To hell with it all. I'll fix her up, he said. Don't start fussing. Then he got a shot from the vet—Ergotinina —I guess he gave it the wrong way, or, at any rate, much too much of it—he should have given her 3 cc and he gave her about 10—and poor Licky, her heart was not strong ever since she had had distemper. What we went through with that dog, sitting up days and nights, and I won't tell you what we spent on medicines and vet bills —that distemper had left her with a weak heart. And, what with that wrong shot, she beastly died."

"That's terrible."

"I am telling you all that, because he did exactly the same thing to me. He practically arranged it. He always managed to get the two of us together."

"But why?"

"I guess it wasn't enough for him to have taken me away from Derrnott. He wanted to take away Freddy too."

"Sheer wickedness."

"And jealousy. Anyway. One evening Dermott and Freddy came over, and Will said, and he was all dressed up, even with a hat, he said, Dermott and he had to go to a PEN Club meeting which was terribly important. He said he was arranging for some sumptuous prize to be awarded to Dermott—but Freddy and I couldn't come along, he said, because we were not members, and we should wait at home, and there was a new bottle of Scotch, and we should play some records. After we were half through with the Scotch, I assure you I felt so bored and so drunk, and there was nothing we had to say to each other, and I guess so I started making love to Freddy. Freddy was puzzled; he'd never done it with a girl before. But before we knew it."

"Goodness gracious."

"When we found out that I was pregnant, Will got so disgusting it's hard to describe. You know, he didn't get angry or passionate about it, just cold and cynical. Quite disgusting. He said, either you pull out of here or 1'll see to it that you get fixed up all right. He said he didn't want a child of Freddy's in his house. As a matter of fact he didn't want any child at all. I felt so sick and nauseated I told him it was all the same to me, just so long as he took care of everything. And he did. But I kept having pains afterwards, and then he would get me dope but I felt just terrible, terrible. And that Sicilian woman who came in to clean up, she knew all about it. She 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 con­stant 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 hap­pened 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 Wil­coxes. 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 practically crashing into us. All three cars, smashed. Four people, badly cut up. Only Martha was dead."

"And you felt that you killed her."

"I certainly did. And I still don't understand how. Look, it was she or I. if the car had swerved to the right—as it should—I would have been killed; she wounded. But it swerved to the left. God knows how. I think, when she saw what was going on, she herself grabbed the wheel and pushed it over. Or perhaps I did it, I really don't know."

"Just like the fight between Will and me. And that mo­ment of indecision."

"Indecision on things long since decided."

"It was he or I. And I don't know, still don't know, how it was that it was he ..."

"And his left side cut up and my right, in the process."

"That is the way it had to be. Wait a moment: Can you explain to me why?"

"Karma. It all was there. Nothing to be done about it. And one half and one half made one."

"You know, I think it does something to your mind, the mere fact of having been born in the Orient."

"Sure does. Just look at Harry Luce."

"Thank you, Doctor Rosselli, Martha is getting much much better. And I am so glad that you think the material at our disposal is shaping up so promisingly."

"I think Mr. McDermott's statement will be very useful. After all, he has known Martha for a long long time and seen her practically until the day of the ... accident."

"And the maid is ready to testify."

"That'll be helpful too."

"I, myself, have prepared a little statement, avvocato. I don't know whether it will be of any use to you. Just some thoughts I had on the whole thing—the way I see it. And so I put them down. Here, at any rate, avvocato, here it is."

"Oh, Phil, dear, the news is a little bit too good."

"It never can be too good, Martha. Why, what did he say, Doctor Comedger?"

"He said I was fine. General condition, excellent. Blood count, satisfactory. Weight, satisfactory. But, Phil, brace yourself for the good news ... "

"Well, what could it be?"

"Phil, it's twins."