s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

of it.
Why do I hate you so?That's a laugh, a very big laugh. Just ask yourself and you'll get more answers than
you can stomach.
You've taken everything away from me my home and my friends. I gave up all my friends for you, but
did you give up even one of yours?
I drove my friends away?Now I've heard everything! It was you they were disgusted with, they couldn't
stand your egotism and your preaching and your snide digs, they didn't like the way you eyed their
preschool daughters. You drove them away.
You even drove my son away, you made him hate me. I never did anything but build you up to him and
in return you did everything you could to break down his belief in me from the start. You contradicted
everything I said in his presence, you scoffed at every fine idea I tried to plant in him, you laughed when
I tried to teach him manners, you wouldn't even let me make him wash his hands when he came to
dinner.
Shut up! It's time you heard some home truths. Now our son won't see us or write to us, he says we're
sick, but whose fault is it? Yours! who didn't have the guts to be the strong father every boy wants.
Yours! who couldn't think of anything to do for him but to make him think his mother a fool.
Even before my son was born, you took my pride away from me. You robbed me of my self-confidence,
and that's something that can never be forgiven. You sneered at my mind, you let me know from the start
that other women were better looking and more desirable, you even destroyed my little efforts at self-
expression while pretending to encourage them. I tried to act, I tried to be something in a pitiful little
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswi...20documenten/spaar/Fritz%20Leiber%20-%20Gondolier.htm (161 of 239)22-2-2006 0:44:07
TheBlackGondolierandOtherStories
amateur theater, you took that away from me, you wrecked that although you've done nothing yourself
but act all the time. And from the very beginning you plotted, under cover of your constant acting, how
to destroy me.
I'm only asking you not to take twenty more years, but get it over tonight.
Shut up, I'm not interested in your denials. I always thought that marriage was supposed to be a
partnership of two against the world. I was true to that vision nothing counted with me but what you
wanted and seeing to it that other people gave you the respect I believed you deserved. But I counted for
nothing with you, the most miserable evil bum won more of your respect, you cringe and grovel and
crawl on the floor and bump your head to everyone but me. No, don't!
Oh, but I'm forgetting how Christlike you are, aren't I? Excuse it, God.You love me, but you love other
people too, though you do me the honor of rating me a hair's breadth ahead of them? Thanks for
nothing! I don't believe in such pawky love. I scorn it. When I love I love, when I hate I hate. I don't
believe in the kind of love that can be sliced and passed around, the kind of love that undermines and
destroys while it pretends to caress.
And yet (shut up!) although you've done nothing but try to destroy me for twenty years, you refuse to
make a clean end of it and kill me tonight. Other men would get a kick out of it, they'd jump at the
chance, they'd be grateful to me. Every man wants to kill a woman, a woman in a black lace nightgown
and a fur coat it's his dream. But you haven't enough life in you even for that.
Shut up! I know everything you're going to say, about my insanity and insatiability and everything. I've
heard it all over and over again for twenty years and it means less to me than the chatter of birds.
Shut up, I've got the floor! I'm a drunk and a failure, I know that, you've told me often enough, sticking
the little knife behind the ear and twisting it. I'm ugly, so ugly it's a torment to sleep with me, I know
that too. I remember every one of the million insults you've given me. (Don't say you're sorry, if you say
you're sorry I'll scream.) And I know that you'd like to get rid of me, you'd really like to murder me, but
that you daren't because you know you couldn't do one little thing without me, you couldn't get one girl
to go to bed with you one single night.
Now talk. You have the floor. I yield it to you. Talk.
So you can't talk? You haven't a word to say? That's a surprise most of the time you have diarrhea of
the mouth. If what I say is so stupid and illogical and crazy as you claim, now's the time to prove it.
I'll tell you why you can't talk. Because I'm right about everything. I know you like a book, I know
myself too, and I don't lie, I never lie.
Well, if you won't talk, at least look at me. Don't flinch your eyes away from me as if you were a scared
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswi...20documenten/spaar/Fritz%20Leiber%20-%20Gondolier.htm (162 of 239)22-2-2006 0:44:07
TheBlackGondolierandOtherStories
child. Look, baby, at the skinny old witch in black. My arms are like pipestems, aren't they? you never
tire of reminding me of that. You can count my ribs, my breasts are old buttons. I knew you always liked
boyish girls with tiny breasts, so I starved myself for years, and my reward is that you tell me it's
alcoholism, I look like a concentration-camp corpse, face like a skull, I need vitamins, I should eat.
Well, I won't eat, I'll never eat again, but I do need to black out. Where are the sleeping pills? Where
have you hidden them? Don't worry about me taking too many I'd never kill myself, I'm leaving that
for you, it's my present to you, dear.
Thanks for nothing! No, I only took four, count and see.
You really are frightened of me, aren't you? You really do think I'm crazy or a witch. Well, that's a little
something for my pride, at least I can get that much of a rise out of you. Not as good as being killed, but
something. What should I do to improve my score? Should I turn black? Should I turn into a black
panther, a skinny, moth-eaten, half bald black panther? Or a fourteen-year-old existentialist girl stripped
to the waist in black Levi's and with a black pony tail? Should I jump into your brain and sit there
gently squeezing the gray jelly and saying  It's all right? Is that what it takes before you'll kill me? Oh,
what is the word I should say to make you do it? What is the word that will get under your thick hide?
I seem like another person, a demon?That's wonderful, dear, go on.A black furred beast? Better and
better.An irrational intrusion? Brother, that's fancy language for it!
Like something out of your unconscious mind?Brother, I'm more than that, I'm straight out of your body,
flesh of your flesh. Man and wife are one flesh, and that's more than poetry. You've waited too long, the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]