THE FEAR OF INNOCENCE
817
answer such questions. I can't even dignify them by hearing them.
It would shame
you!"
"Oh crap! That you forgot him, so completely, unbelievably
forgot the whole thing: that's evidence enough!"
"I suppose it was in part willful. You're so odd about such
things. But the boy I knew was so different from the myth you've
always talked about. Even now it's hard for me to think of him as
the same. He was just a boy- goodlooking-"
"Goodlooking!" I welcomed the trivial, offensive word. "Good–
looking. That's your excuse. Justifies all. Explains all. He was 'cute,'
too, no doubt. How did you ever miss that word? Would you go so
far, Madame Roundheels, as to say that he was 'cute'?"
"You're impossible,
impossible,"
she said, crying at last, too late.
"All this disgustingness because for a minute I frustrated you-you
spoiled brat!"
"Goddam it, discuss the subject."
"This is the subject. The rest
is
camouflage and nastiness. Spoiled
brat. Didn't get what he wanted."
"Stick to the point for Christ's sake, the point!"
"You're shouting."
"Sure I'm shouting and it never gave me so much pleasure."
"Scream and kick the floor, spoiled brat!"
One can never get quite so lost in the voluptuousness of abuse,
the abdication of reason and the surrender to childhood, that he does
not see somewhere, miniscule, unblinkable, the absurd shame and
waste of his predicament; but he cannot stop.
"Stop it!" I cried, "Please stop it! Repeat that damned name
once more and I swear I shall hit you." It was all clear then and
unredeemable. She would say those two words, deliberately and with
knowledge, as she had to, and my hand would fall without rage or
guilt. I had told her.
"Oh, good," she cried, "noblest of animals, the poet as wife–
beater. Spoiled brat, spoiled brat."
I punched her in the mouth hard, and she hit the floor before
she believed it; a little blood showed between her teeth and she was
still saying "Spoiled brat," stupidly. Then a deep sobbing took her,
jerking her body that did not resist the dry spasms but danced fan–
tastically on the green carpet.
