fragment

from an unfinished work

We were standing at the bar when Nicky turned quite suddenly; he had been courting a new face, he turned and rested his voice on the smoke that filled the room. "Did you hear," he asked, "that B. is dead? That he jumped from a window in New York?" Did you know, he did not add, that Rome is fallen, Achilles wounded, the laurels cut down.

Yes, I knew, and we spoke for a few minutes of the B. we had known and we thought of the love we had felt for him, and we looked again about the marketplace, making our bids for the evening, indulging whims for the courtesy of the gentlemen strangers:-we might never forgive Tennessee Williams for that remark. And B. lay in his grave decaying.

He had tried to kill me once. Or perhaps himself; I don't know, I'm not an analyst. We had been to the theatre and had driven to the beach later. We sat in the car, I remember, and talked of our friends with just enough malice to show how much we cared for them. We talked and we talked, on and on for hours. Then we went home. He would read, he thought, for a little while before he came to bed. I remember waking in the cool evening to find him making love to me and I feel again the surprise I felt then for though we loved each other we were never lovers. But afterwards he felt he would read more. But everything went back to its regular routine while I slept; he read, he went to the liquor closet, he drank, He drank steadily and with purpose if he drank at all. He did not, as others we knew did, drink regularly from rising, hiding vodka bottles in the laundry hamper and in the file cabinets at work; no, he drank with the knowledge that he would be over-taken sooner or later by unconsciousness. He did not drink like this always or even every day or every week. But he drank this way often enough for it to be expected and even accepted a little by his friends. He read, he drank, eventually he came to bed. I remember stirring, turning over and seeing him undress, murmuring and drifting off to sleep again. Then he tried to kill me and I woke.

I know now that it must be very simple to be choked to death while one sleeps: the hands placed firmly around the throat, the compression growing, it is more than possible that life would vanish before consciousness returned. I remember waking to a choking sensation and the feeling of somewhat damp hands on my throat and a feeling of pity on my part. I lifted my hands to those around my throat and with less effort than it takes to breathe I brushed his hands away. "Go to sleep," I said, and he stretched out and went to sleep.

As there had been no strength in his hands, there was no awareness anywhere in him: his eyes had been glazed and far-away looking; he was childlike and

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