The Black Gondolier and Other Stories

by Fritz Reuter Leiber

  Pour me a drink, I say, or I'll throw this glass through the window! I don't care if you and your scummy friends call me a wino behind my back—wine and brandy are the drinks of civilized people and what ignorant reformers say doesn't alter it. That's better.

  Sing-song, eh? What would your best friends think if I went on to tell them about all your sing-song girls, especially the one who actually did go crazy because you wouldn't make love to her enough after I got her for you? That's right, kill me!

  So you won't kill me? You won't even do me a little favor like that? I always knew you were selfish, a cheapskate and a miser, but I never realized how much until tonight. Why I can think of any number of ways you could murder me quite safely—because that's the real reason you won't kill me, isn't it?— you're afraid you'd be found out and punished—hanged or gassed or fried. Why, you could poison me tonight after getting me drunk (there's arsenic in the basement) and blame it on stomach trouble and my alcoholism—half the people who murder with arsenic get away with it. Or you could take me on a mountain vacation and find a lonely cliff and push me off—there'd be no one but yourself to say I didn't slip. Or rent a canoe and drown me in some mountain lake—I think I could even conquer my fear of water if I were sure I was going to be given the peace of death. Or just smash my skull now and throw me down the stairs—if I'm as big an alcoholic as you say I am and if as many people know it as you say do, you'll have no trouble convincing the police that I got drunk and fell. Remember to snag the torn lining of this raggedy coat around the heel of my slipper and tear off one of my fingernails in the split of the railing.

  But you won't, will you, although I've lined it out for you as I wouldn't need to for a two-year old? You'd like to, but you haven't the nerve. You're afraid your courage would break at the sticking point. You're afraid you'd blush or babble when it came to telling a simple lie to the police afterwards and sticking to it. You know you wouldn't have the simple guts to bravely play the part of the murderer after the murder. Why? Hah! I wouldn't be there to bolster your ego.

  No, I don't want a cigarette. You can't shut me up that way. I'll say and drink and wear what I want. I'll go out and scream in the street if I want. I'll lay down in front of the first man who comes along—he'll be better than you.

  He'd be revolted at the way I look?Well, I can't say I'd blame him if he turned up his nose at these rags— torn nightdress, moth-eaten mules, black rabbit fur. Pity the poor woman whose husband can't buy her

  decent clothes to whore in.

  Still, I wouldn't be too sure. Other men aren't as dead below the belt as you are and black has its charms. Some day I'm going to have everything black, I'll have a black room with black mirrors, I'll drink black velvet and eat caviare on pumpernickel (that'll be exotic, that'll get the high school boys) and black currant jam with really burnt steak, and I'll black myself all over with shoe polish. Black blood will come out of my throat when you cut it—that'll be a surprise for you. There'll be lots of surprises for you, you'll find out then, surprises that I've been preparing for you for years. You aren't by any chance getting a little afraid of me now, are you, dear? No, I won't tell you what the surprises are, you'll have to kill me to find out. I will tell you one thing: I've left certain letters with certain people, to be opened when I die.

  I won't tell you what's in them—maybe good advice for you, the best high schools to find exotic girls in, things like that.

  I do hope you marry another woman, I really do. I'd like to be around to watch. Here's a warning: another woman won't put up with one twentieth of the things I have. And a younger woman will want even more of what you won't be able to give at all, because I won't be there to sit on the edge of the bed and pat your wrists and tell you it's all right.

  But you won't, I know. You'll never marry again. You'll just be a pansy, a mother's boy, and live with other pansies. I wish you joy of it.

  Oh, darling, what's happened to us? What's happened to the other times that were so good or seemed so good, why can't we go back to them, why can't we have them any more? Pour me another drink—no, don't come any closer, reach with the bottle. Thank you.

  What's happened to you? You used to be so gay and romantic. Now you won't even crack a joke, you're always gloomy, always serious, priding yourself that you won't take a drink. Couldn't you lighten up for one minute, one second? Couldn't you do that little thing for me? No, don't try! I forbid you to try!—it would just be pretense and I hate your pretense worst of all. Sooner than having you pretend to be gay (like a Sunday school teacher trying to say a dirty word) I'd have you sitting there like a lump on a log (a big greasy lump) reveling in the fact that you don't drink any more. Let me tell you that your friends, your real friends, have only contempt for you because you won't drink, the deepest contempt. They're bored to death with your reformation and so am I.

  You’ve become idealistic?Hah! I've news for you, dear, you've always been idealistic, as you call it, and your idealism has been the smelliest part of you because you've never had the courage to live up to it. Remember the War and how you didn't have the courage to be either a pacifistor a soldier?—you crawled out of that pretty neatly with your defense job and your idea of preserving another sane man for the future. But was it a sane man that you preserved, dear, I ask you? Remember how you refused to hitch up with the socialists and fight for equality and the underdog?—and then blamed it on me, said you were catering to my prejudices? Why, you were so idealistic that even the church wasn't good enough for you. And when you finally got up the nerve to admit to yourself that you wanted to go to bed with other women, you had to butter it up with a lot of idealism about how we were all bright big beautiful people who made their own rules and about how everyone should love everyone else.

  Well, I happen to know how deep your love for some of those other women actually went, because as soon as they started to leave their husbands for you, or have nervous breakdowns, or make demands that any normal woman would, you dropped them like hot potatoes (they were too hot for you, weren't they, in a whole lot of ways?) and left them in the messes you'd made.

  Well, make up your mind, dear. Either hit me over the head with that bottle or pour me a drink from it.

  Thank you, dear, I knew you'd take the easier way. I always know how you're going to react long before you do. You see, I know all your secrets, dear. You've told me everything for twenty years, everything. You've poured out all your miserable moods and rages, you've whispered in my ear your every last dirty little fear and desire. So that now I know exactly what makes you tick. I'm in a wonderful position to manipulate you exactly as I want to, it gets better every year, even when I'm dead I'll be able to do it. Aren't you afraid of me, dear, just a little afraid? Remember, I'm crazy too, I have DT's just for the fun 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 wa
s 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

  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

  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 graft has taken, it's too late now. You can never divorce me, you can't even get rid of me by killing me— I'll come back, I'll still be in your body after I'm dead. If you'd killed me earlier tonight, when I asked you, I'd have done you the courtesy of not coming back, I'd have stayed quiet in your body to the end of your days and never let you know I was there—torture wouldn't have made me speak. But now I'll come back from whatever hell you send me to, I'll sit forever on the edge of your bed, I'll clamor inside you skull like a thousand bells until you butt your head against the wall and scream for death.

  Don't run away. It won't do you any good. I'll be with you wherever you go. Stay and kill me.

  You feel sorry for me? Sorry? Brother, I'll make you pay for that.

  Something will save me? In spite of everything something will still save me in the end?Brother, I've got a surprise for you, listen close. No, closer than that, closer.

  Nothing will ever save you . Nothing. Ever.

  All right ... run away if you must. But another time put your socks on first. They look funny over your shoes ... as if you had elephantiasis...

  I feel tired ... Thanks, dear, you vacated the bed just in time, your virtue is intact … No, I won't sleep, I never sleep, but I'll close my eyes and think ... maybe I'll think of the word that will turn you into a murderer...

  I'll find it some day, you know ... the word that will get under the elephant hide you use for skin so that in spite of all your cowardice you'll rush ahead and kill me ... You'll know that you're putting a rope around your neck and smearing the gray jelly on your temples and stripping the last cover off your squealing pink ego, but you won't be able to stop (although you'll pray to) because I'll have found the word ... the word ... If I can think for a minute more I may be able to find it now...

  No, I'm going to sleep ... I never really sleep ... I hear everything ... I know everything ... I hear your every thought while you sleep ... We're always together, darling...

  Another time, darling ... Another time...

  SCHIZO JIMMIE

  Today witch-hunting is an unpopular occupation. Unless the witch happens to be a red, the hunter gets a very bad press. Just the same, today as in the Middle Ages, when a decent man recognizes a real witch— the modern equivalent of a witch by the best scientific standards—then he must instantly strike down the monster for the sake of the community without counting the cost to himself.

  That is why I killed my friend Jamie Bingham Walsh, the portrait painter and interior designer. He didn't commit suicide, nor did he accidentally tumble off that scenic high point of the Latigo Canyon Road in the Santa Monica Mountains. I pushed him off with my little MG.

  Oh, the car never touched him though it very well might have—that was one of the necessary chances I took. But in the end he reacted just as I'd been banking on it that he would—in a senseless panic, avoiding the closest threat to himself, the closest pain.

  I stopped the car an extra dozen feet from the verge and he got out and walked around in front to the very edge, to take one of those Godlike looks at things below that he always had to take. He remarked, “The old sculptor poked his finger pretty deep her
e into the stone, didn't he.” Then, as he was staring down at the twisting rocks like robed monsters, I silently eased the stick into low gear. Then I softly called his name and as he turned I smiled at him and gunned the car forward an exact dozen feet, thinking of my sister Alice and looking straight at his damned green necktie. I was very precise about it. Two inches more and my front wheels would have been over the edge.

  He could have frozen, in which case I'd have knocked him off and he'd have been found with some extra injuries that might have been difficult to explain, or all too easy. Or, if he had reacted instantly, he could have jumped out of the way to either side or even onto the hood of the car—a man as much of a romantic daredevil as Jamie looked might have done just that, taking his chance that I didn't intend going over with him.

  But he did none of those things. Instead he sprang backward into the great soft sweep of space above the toy valley, away from the nearest hurt. As he did so, as his nerve cracked under that final testing, it seemed to me that he instantly lost all of his black power over me, so that it was a cardboard man, a phantom, who stared wildly at me for an instant from the floorless air across the creamy hood of the MG before gravity snatched him out of sight.

  The mind is a funny thing and has curious self-willed blind spots. Mine was so full of the thought that I had destroyed Jamie utterly that it never registered at all the thud of his body hitting, though I distinctly heard the distant tinkle of a couple of pebbles as they bounced against the bulges of the rocky wall on their way down.

  I sat there calm and cold, thinking of Jamie's two wives and my sister Alice and the five other women I knew about and the half dozen of his close male friends and all his other victims whose names I would never know. I wondered if they'd have given me a round of applause from their various state mental hospitals and private sanitariums if I'd been able to tell them I had just avenged them on the man who sent them there. I couldn't answer that question—some people always love their destroyer—but I knew that now at least there wouldn't be any more unfortunates going to join them and they wouldn't have to endure any more kindly useless visits from Jamie with his vivid neckties and his patter about a person's color. That necktie jazz, you know, was one of the first things that put me on to Jamie—I remembered that he'd told Alice that green was “her color” and then he'd worn a green necktie when he went to visit her at the asylum. Later I noticed the same tie-in (ha!) with others of his victims, except the color would be different in each case. Everybody had a color, according to Jamie—something to do with what he called the atmosphere of your mind. Mine, I now remembered he'd often told me, was blue. Blue, like the cloudless sky over Latigo.