5-48
PARTISAN REVIEW
and a pride that would be appropriate if the Spaniard had
been one of his ancestors.
Let me tell you about that play, Marianne. The title of it is
Physician
to His Own Dishonor,
and it tells how a Spanish nobleman acted
when he began to think that his wife was deceiving him or just think–
ing of deceiving him, or merely regretting her marriage to him. Mind
you, Marianne, he suspected her of nothing more than that.
It
didn't
even occur to him that she might have deceived him.... That couldn't
have happened, not to him. But he did have reason to think that
she did have some feeling for another man. Now what do you think
Calderon's hero did? He murdered his wife, had her murdered, that
is. But notice this, Marianne, the murder had to be accomplished in
such a way that there would not be the slightest suspicion of jealousy
on his part, or of her having given him cause for jealousy. So he had
a doctor come to the house to bleed his wife, on the pretense that
she was ailing; he instructed the doctor to bleed her till she died. So
the whole thing would seem an accident. And when she lay dead he
dipped his hand in her blood and flattened it on the wall outside
his house, explaining the mark as follows: "All professional people
have signs to indicate their professions. I am physician to my own
dishonor...."
MARIAN NE:
'Vhat are you going to do to me, Jesse? Are you going to
cut me up in little pieces?
JESSE:
I don't know what I'm going to do yet ... but it will come
to me.... The important thing for you to know, Marianne, is that
my sense of honor is as high and pure-and savage-as that Spanish
nobleman's, as that of any man, no matter how highly placed. This is
what you didn't know about me, I guess, or you wouldn't have dared
tell me that story.
MARIANNE:
But if you're like you say I couldn't have kept it a secret
from you ...
(pause)
... and I think I could have easily....
JESSE:
So you think I don't mean what I say. You think I'm pre–
tending....
MARIANNE:
I hope you're not pretending.
JESSE:
You'd better hope I am.... You know what I'm going to do
after all, Marianne?
(A pause.)
It's very simple. I'm going to do
what almost any white man in this state would do if his wife were
raped by a nigger.... I'm going to get some of the boys and we'll
drive over tonight to Young Williams's place and take him out and
hang him. That's what I'm going to do, Marianne. Don't you see now
that you should have been afraid to tell me?
