Mr Cassini

by Lloyd Jones

  I cannot describe these people to you because their company merged into a whole which was a feeling, an emotion rather than a physical presence. We all became aware that they could make us either supremely happy or utterly miserable. There is a brief description of them in The Green Book, found in a drawer by the little girl who narrates the story of The White People:

  But a wonderful thing happened when I was about five. My nurse was carrying me on her shoulder; there was a field of yellow corn, and we went through it, it was very hot. Then we came to a path through a wood, and a tall man came after us, and went with us till we came to a place where there was a deep pool, and it was very dark and shady. Nurse put me down on the soft moss under a tree, and she said: “She can’t get to the pond now.” So they left me there, and I sat quite still and watched, and out of the water and out of the wood came two wonderful white people, and they began to play and dance and sing. They were a kind of creamy white like the old ivory figure in the drawing-room; one was a beautiful lady with kind dark eyes, and a grave face, and long black hair, and she smiled such a strange sad smile at the other, who laughed and came to her. They played together, and danced round and round the pool, and they sang a song till I fell asleep. Nurse woke me up when she came back, and she was looking something like the lady had looked, so I told her all about it, and asked her why she had looked like that. At first she cried, and then she looked very frightened, and turned quite pale. She put me down on the grass and stared at me, and I could see that she was shaking all over. Then she said I had been dreaming, but I knew I hadn’t. Then she made me promise not to say a word about it to anybody, and if I did I should be thrown into the black pit.

  I looked at the White People around us, and they fitted this description perfectly. After calling for silence, Arthur Machen addressed Mr Cassini with the following words: ‘Mr Cassini, do you know that the British Government defines domestic violence as any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse – psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional – between adults who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality?’

  Mr Cassini: Yes, that sounds about right.

  Arthur Machen: I’m sure that you are fully aware, also, that domestic violence is rarely a one-off incident. Almost always it’s part of a pattern of abusive and controlling behaviour. The abuser seeks power over the victim. In some cases he has been heavily dependent on his mother and he transfers this dependency to his wife; there is a conflict, often, between hostility towards his wife and dependency on her. The hostility is kept in check while the wife satisfies him; but when he no longer receives her full attention – when a child is born, for instance, or when his wife looks at another man – he can become violent.

  Mr Cassini: Yes, you’re quite right. And domestic violence occurs across the whole of society – regardless of age, gender, race, sexuality, wealth or geography. Mostly the violence is by men against women. As long ago as 1427 Bernard of Sienna was suggesting to his male parishioners that they should exercise restraint and treat their wives with as much mercy as they would their hens and their pigs.

  Arthur Machen: Children are also affected. Many are traumatised by what they witness, and there is also a strong connection between domestic violence and child abuse. One in three girls hit by her parents goes on to be abused by her boyfriends. In a way, poor behaviour by parents is adopted as a model by their children in much the same way as good parenting is adopted by children in safe homes. True?

  Mr Cassini: Yes, that’s correct. I believe a recent NSPCC survey revealed that one in four teenage girls believe it’s acceptable for a boyfriend to hit them under certain circumstances. A third of the girls had witnessed violence in the home. A woman dies every three days at the hands of her current or former partner. One in ten mothers is sexually abused in front of her children; 33 per cent of children try to intervene during attacks on their mother. 90 per cent of children are in the same room or the next room during attacks on their mother; nearly 27,000 incidents are reported to the police in Wales every year – that’s a quarter of all recorded violent crimes; there are more than 500,000 assaults on women in the home every year in Britain.’

  Arthur Machen: And predatory men target vulnerable girls, don’t they?

  Mr Cassini: Yes, I can spot one a mile away. Insecure, quiet, damaged. They come from families of secrets and lies. They’re often desperate to leave home and they’re attracted to men who have a protective image. My motto is, keep them pregnant.

  Arthur Machen: I want to concentrate on emotional and psychological abuse. Have you ever told someone they’re worthless, that no one else wants them?

  Mr Cassini: Frequently. My late wife was trapped by fear, paralysed by it. She’d been abused herself and she was a compulsive carer – she’d forgive me anything because she couldn’t imagine herself surviving alone.

  Arthur Machen: Did you force her to do things at exactly the same time or in exactly the same way?

  Mr Cassini: Yes, and I kept her financially dependent – she had to come to me for every penny.

  Arthur Machen: Did you try to make her believe she was mad?

  Mr Cassini: Yes. Mrs Cassini actually went mad because of it. Now that’s what I call a result.

  Arthur Machen: No doubt you told her that the violence and abuse were her fault?

  Mr Cassini: How did you guess. You’ve made your own bed, now lie in it, I’d say. Don’t go bleating to your family – they warned you against me right from the start.

  Arthur Machen: You turned away her visitors, controlled her friendships?

  Mr Cassini: Too right I did.

  Arthur Machen: You didn’t allow her to go out, or to see her family and friends... you didn’t allow her to be alone with other people, or to use the phone, or to send letters?

  Mr Cassini: Worse than that mate. I sometimes locked her in a room. I told her she was a bad mother, I encouraged the children to upset her. I kicked her cat, I broke her belongings, I accused her of lying...

  Arthur Machen: Every trick in the book. You disgust me. And you continued to belittle her?

  Mr Cassini: I told her she was fat, I told her she was ugly and useless, I made her believe that no one else liked her.

  Arthur Machen: Did you threaten to abuse her in front of the children if she didn’t obey your every whim?

  Mr Cassini: I took it all to the absolute limits, Arthur. I even told her I’d find her and kill her if she left me. I’m a tyrant, after all. Tyranny begins in the home. I have to act the part of a domestic despot, isn’t that right?

  Arthur Machen: Is that how you see yourself?

  Mr Cassini: Too right. Once you’ve taken that first step – slapped your first slap, threatened your first threat, a force greater than gravity itself takes hold of you, pulls you, drags you into the role. You become an actor. And some people actually encourage it. Let me give you an example. When Eisaku Sato, a former prime minister of Japan and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was revealed as a wife-beater, his popularity rocketed. His wife commented ‘Yes, he’s a good husband, he only beats me once a week’.

  Arthur Machen: But you could have changed. You could have rewritten the script.

  Mr Cassini: It’s not as easy as that. There are forces beyond our control. Many husbands who batter their wives are extremely weak men who have suffered great insecurity as young children – they are emotional people, who tend to act first and think later. The more powerless a person is, the more likely he is to compensate for his weakness by sadism. He may even risk his life for a moment of absolute power. In the final analysis, domestic violence is an advanced form of attention-seeking. Traditionally, society has colluded with men by giving them the right to do as they wish in their own home.

  Arthur Machen: Excuses, excuses.

  Mr Cassini: No, I’ll give you an example. Take the A55, running along the North Wales coast. It’s merely a strip of tarmac, yet it has a profound influence on the
region, and that’s because it brings things in and takes things out. New things travel inwards from the New World, old things travel out from the Old World. The road is a rent in the fabric of time, so to speak. Likewise with domestic abuse: once you’ve torn the fabric of reason and compassion you can move in and out of it. A prolapse has been created, a hernia... a weakness.

  Arthur Machen: But you could have taken physic, you could have cured the sickness.

  Mr Cassini: It’s not as simple as that. Once you’re cast in a new role it isn’t easy to dive in and out of the two parts you’re playing, the old and the new. It becomes easier to stay in the same costume. You don’t find Cassius changing his part in mid-play, do you? That’s because it’s easier to keep the frown than to change your expression all the time. And the gravity pulls and pulls... it talks to you, it says just how far can you go with this? It says to you now they all fear you anyway, you might as well do the job properly. And they all look at you so accusingly, so bloody hurt, and you feel like doing it all over again just to fulfil their expectations. I raged against the world. I hated seeing others happy when I couldn’t be happy.’

  There was a sticky pause while Arthur Machen mopped his brow with an old red silk handkerchief which had large yellow spots all over it. He looked pale: this had become an ordeal for him, and Merlin spotted that too – he ambled over to him and put his arm gently around his shoulder.

  ‘That’s fine Arthur,’ he said. ‘Take a rest now – you deserve it.’ And Arthur was only too glad to rest his body on a cairn. He kept his eyes on Mr Cassini throughout; I could see the revulsion growing in him, that a man could carry on hurting people whilst recognising so well the forces which impelled him.

  Now Merlin himself took a stance in front of Mr Cassini, closer than anyone else had stood. He studied the seated man. Under normal circumstances a man such as he might be stewing in his own guilt, but Mr Cassini showed no signs of remorse. He relit his crumpled rollie, pinching the stub between thumb and index finger.

  Merlin addressed him thus:

  ‘Mr Cassini, are you aware of the Welsh term angel penffordd, cythraul pentan?’

  Mr Cassini: Indeed I am.

  Merlin: Could you give me a rough translation?

  Mr Cassini: Something like an angel on the highway, a devil in the home?

  Merlin: Yes, it’s used quite often to describe men who act impeccably in public yet behave appallingly in their own homes. And there are many such men, are there not?

  Mr Cassini: Millions, I should think.

  Merlin: Are you such a man?

  Mr Cassini: Yes.

  Merlin: And do you believe that alcohol played a part in your behaviour – did it act as an agent when you abused your wife and children?

  Mr Cassini: Indubitably. I think it played a major part. As you well know Merlin, alcohol suppresses your inhibitions, encouraging you to take the brakes off and career in any direction you wish. Basically, it comes down to this: alcohol makes nice people nicer, nasty people nastier. You can split heavy drinkers quite neatly down the middle, into benign alcoholics and malign alcoholics. Unfortunately for my family, I turned nasty with it.

  Merlin: Do you regret that now?

  Mr Cassini: It’s a bit late for regret, isn’t it? There was a time, right at the beginning, certainly, when I had regrets. But a vicious circle kicks in pretty soon. You beat your wife, you loathe yourself, you get drunk, you beat your wife. The vicious circle becomes self-fulfilling; in the end it’s a comfort blanket for the abuser. We all like routine.

  Merlin: And would you have acted differently, do you think, if she’d done something as soon as you started abusing her?

  Mr Cassini: Yes, that’s a possibility. But the daft cow loved me. She just took it.

  The clouds drooped onto the hilltops around us. Soon they would lactate a soft fall of snow onto this region around us. I looked to the North and to the South; I tried to eradicate from my mind all the hurt which had been wrought by men like Mr Cassini.

  And then I saw a corpse candle hovering in the air above us, and said to everyone that death was near. We all looked up at the mysterious red flame of the Jack O’Lantern and studied it for size, for we all knew that its dimensions would indicate the age and size of the victim. It was a tall rush light, foretelling the death of a man. We looked towards Mr Cassini, but he merely laughed.

  ‘You can never kill me off,’ he said dismissively. ‘None of you can do that. Imprison me perhaps, but kill me? No, you can’t do that. You haven’t got the power.’

  ‘We’ll see, Cassini,’ said Arthur Machen, who evidently hated the man by now.

  The time had come for us to wind up the interrogation. We were all tired. A flock of huge impasto clouds had spread themselves over the western horizon, and we knew that snow was near. It was Merlin, running out of patience by now, who brought the proceedings to an end. He questioned Mr Cassini one last time:

  Merlin: Did Mrs Cassini do anything in response to your actions?

  Mr Cassini: She left a couple of times, but I wheedled, I begged... she always came back. And then I used the children. She was truly frightened then.

  Merlin: You were beyond help by now?

  Mr Cassini: On a weird, out-of-control carousel. It was burlesque... I was a painted villain with a blacked-up face. Life became fundamentally unintelligible; I was an excess to others and myself. If there are such things as yin and yang, black and white, good and evil, then I was being polarised... my whole being was being reconfigured along the magnetic lines of yin, and black, and evil. I was being sucked into a black hole. The prophesy of the past became self-fulfilling.

  Merlin: How do you mean?

  Mr Cassini: Evil, sin, call it what you will, uses a system of echoes and photocopies.

  Merlin: You’re about to blame your past, I can see that. You’re going to bleat about your own childhood, aren’t you? Mr Cassini shrugged his shoulders and looked at the ground wearily. I almost felt sorry for him.

  Mr Cassini: The slaps of history echo down the years, that’s all I’m saying.

  Merlin: And each generation memorises the sound, repeats it as faithfully as it can like a nursery rhyme – a clapping song in the playground. Is that the angle you’re going to take?

  Mr Cassini: Possibly. I’m looking for causes. There do have to be causes, don’t there? I wasn’t created in a vacuum, was I?

  Merlin: No, you’ve got a point there, but I don’t want any feeble excuses.

  Mr Cassini: I’m past looking for excuses. I wouldn’t mind knowing the causes myself. We’re just photocopiers, I know that. We photocopy the past, we photocopy our parents.

  And we photocopy all the mistakes too. History keeps the misspellings. It’s something to do with colour, also. You can photocopy for so long with a black and white cartridge, but there comes a time when you’ve got to work in colour.

  Merlin: Go on...

  Mr Cassini: You’ve got to have a colour cartridge in there too. My own childhood wasn’t particularly happy either, you know. It was all black and white, no colour.

  Merlin: OK. We’re getting somewhere now.

  Mr Cassini: There were five of us. My father was drunk a lot of the time. But he wasn’t that bad, looking back. Not as bad as me, certainly. But he beat me. None of the others – just me, if I was naughty.

  Merlin: And you felt a sense of injustice?

  Mr Cassini: Yes, very much so. I had a deep resentment burning inside me for most of my childhood.

  Merlin: And you carried it with you into adulthood?

  Mr Cassini: Yes, there’s little doubt of that. It smouldered inside me. Pain is a form of energy – you can’t dispel it, only displace it... pass it on to someone else perhaps.

  Merlin: If you were asked to use one word to describe the cause of your behaviour, what would it be?

  Mr Cassini had a long hard think at this point. He flicked his cigarette end into the heather and began rolling another. He also looked longingly at
the picnic basket.

  Mr Cassini: Any grog in there?

  Merlin: Quite possibly, but you’ll have to wait.

  Mr Cassini: (angrily) Listen, pal, don’t come the high and mighty with me. You were a bloody lunatic yourself once, remember?

  Merlin: Calm yourself, man.

  Mr Cassini: Fuck you, pal. Just because you’ve reinvented yourself as Captain Bloody Marvellous, don’t think you can lord it over me OK? Don’t think for one bloody second that I’ve been taken in by all that tosh about you, the Mark Twain and Hollywood bullshit... I know all about your own past mate. Mad as a bloody hatter. I talk to the trees... and the social services wouldn’t swallow that shite about your friendship with the pig either. Got one of my own. You can have a lot of fun with a pig, can’t you Merlin...

  Merlin: How dare you.

  Mr Cassini: Well shut the fuck up then.

  (Merlin makes an almost imperceptible movement, and Mr Cassini’s newly rolled fag is dashed out of his hands in a yellow, sulphurous flash.)

  Mr Cassini: Ow! What did you do that for? Bastard!

  Merlin: I asked you a question. I’m still waiting for an answer. (Mr Cassini looks confused.)

  Merlin: I asked you for one word to describe the cause of your behaviour.

  Mr Cassini: OK, OK. Just wait a moment – you’ve burnt my fingers (he rubs some of his digits in the cooling dew of the heather). Right. (slowly) I think that word would be frustration. Yes, the word that comes to mind is frustration.

  Merlin: Yes, go on...

  Mr Cassini: I was never what I wanted to be. I could see it all out there – money, fame, people doing what they wanted to do. I read about it, I watched it happening in films. But it never arrived. It was always a fingertip away, just beyond reach. Do you understand?

  Merlin: But you’ve got to make things happen.

  Mr Cassini: I never knew how. That was the problem. I could see what I wanted. I wanted to be successful, I wanted to be loved. I wanted magic but I didn’t know how to use the wand, which words to use. Abracadabra didn’t work. When I tried to get the things I wanted I always messed it up somehow. And the further it all went away from me the angrier I got. I lashed out at everything, everyone. It was just bad luck for my family that they were the closest to hand. Also, I was appearing in two plays at the same time: I was Mr Good and Mr Bad in two separate productions and I didn’t want to leave either stage; I wanted to see how both plays ended.