228
PARTISAN REVIEW
can't get away. Write down this address carefully: 115 Hillside Drive.
If
you come to get her, okay; otherwise there's a can of kerosene in the
basement and a charge of plastic attached to a timer. In half an hour
this house will go up in flames .... "
"But I'm not-" I begin
to
answer.
They have already hung up.
Now what do I do? Of course I could call the police, the fire
department, on this same telephone, but how can I explain, how can I
justify the fact that I, in other words how can I who have nothing to do
with it have anything to do with it? I start running again, I circle the
house once more, then I resume my way.
I am sorry for this Marjorie, but if she has got herself into such a
jam she must be mixed up in God knows what things, and if I step
forward
to
save her nobody will believe that I do not know her, there
would be a great scandal, I am a professor at another university invited
here as visiting professor, the prestige of both universities would
suffer....
To be sure when a life is in the balance these considerations should
take a back seat. ... I slow down. I cou ld enter anyone of these houses,
ask them if they will let me call the police, say first of all quite clearly
that I do not know this Marjorie, I do not know any Marjorie....
To tell the truth here at the University there is a student named
Marjorie, Marjorie Stubbs: I noticed her immediately among the girls
attending my classes. She is a girl who you might say appealed to me a
lot, too bad that the time I invited her to my house to lend her some
books an embarrassing situation may have been created. It was a
mistake to invite her: those were my first days of teaching, here they did
not yet know the sort I am, she could misunderstand my intentions,
that misunderstanding took place, an unpleasant misunderstanding,
certainly even now very hard
to
clarify because she has that ironic way
of looking at me, and I am unable to addr.ess a word to her without
u
stammering, the other girls also look at me with an ironic smile....
Yes, I would not want this uneasiness now reawakened in me by
the name Marjorie to prevent me from intervening to help another
I
Marjorie whose life is in danger. ... Un less it is the same Marjorie....
Unless that telephone call was aimed personally at me.... A very
powerful band of gangsters is keeping an eye on me, they know that
-..
every morning I go jogging along that road, maybe they have a look-
out on the hill with a telescope to follow my steps, when I approach
that deserted house they call on the telephone, it is me they are calling,
because they know the unfortunate impression I made on Marjorie that
day at my house and they are blackmailing me....
