by Bruce Duffy
But darling, said D.D., wringing her hands. First you said it has promise, now you say potential. Sucking the chewed end of her pencil, D.D. thought a moment, then said hopelessly, It’s the ending, isn’t it? I’m just too subtle. That’s my whole problem. The white poodle, for instance — did you get the symbol of the paschal lamb? And the fact that there were three trees — that doomed feeling of Calvary. I thought of having Charlie nail his hand to the tree with an iron spike. Would you have liked that better?
Frowning, Russell said in a hush, I think not. The ending’s best left as it is, I think, though the language might stand a little, ah … toning down. Not much, he added gently. But a bit. A bit.
D.D.’s bangs gently slapped her face. You don’t like it! Oh, God, I knew it, I knew it!
But I do like it, he protested.
Thank God, she said, rushing into his arms. I could never love a man who didn’t love my work, never.
Russell saw another story that was somewhat better than the first, but in his heart he knew where the girl’s best talents lay. Nevertheless, she was something new for him — someone modern, rather. Unlike Ottoline, D.D. was always open to his advances, even hungry for him, bouncing and panting, with her eyes rolled back into her head. Even after two weeks, her lust for him hadn’t diminished; she said he was a better lover than men half his age, a compliment he didn’t entirely believe but was nonetheless pleased to entertain. Indeed, his opinion of D.D. and her writing, though certainly qualified, grew in more or less direct proportion to her desire for him.
As for his letters to Ottoline, they continued, albeit with increasingly fictionalized accounts of his activities. But then after two weeks, burdened by conscience, he came clean — half clean, anyhow. He told his mistress that he had just met a young American woman named Doris Dudley. And lest Ottoline think this was just a dalliance or that he was seeing just anyone, Russell said that the young woman was a writer and was actually somewhat talented. Being totally aboveboard, if not provocative, Russell even said he had slept with Miss Dudley and was really quite fond of her. Yet here he was quick to assure his unappreciative and, he hoped, now jealous mistress that the girl would never displace Ottoline in his affections, much less occupy that innermost spiritual sanctum that he reserved strictly for her.
He was no less candid with D.D. When she asked if he was seeing any women in England, he said, Just one at present. But she’s married and we are merely very warm friends. I’d call it a spiritual friendship, actually.
They had just finished making love. Looking at him jealously, D.D. said, But that’s what I must have with you! We must be one flesh! You must know me, you must!
But I do know you, said Russell evasively.
No, you don’t! No man has ever known me. But before we finish, we must know each other completely — I mean the way Keats said, with our souls fusing — D.D. clapped her hands together dramatically — solution sweet!
Russell groaned. I’ve always hated that line. Much too mushy.
But, damn it, said D.D., reaching between her legs and then smearing the goo on his chest. Sex is oozy and mushy!
Russell recoiled as if he’d been doused with scalding coffee. The towel — hand me that towel! You’re behaving like a savage.
D.D. pounced down beside him. And you’re acting like a damned prude. My being bloody and oozy last week didn’t stop you from poking it in. And quit staring at me like that. You look like some nasty old lizard.
Never in his life had a woman spoken to him in this way. I did not poke it in, he protested. Certainly I did not smear you with it.
He thought that was the end of it, but a moment later, as he was sponging himself off over the little basin by the dresser, he glanced up at the mirror and saw her behind him. Hissing, D.D. had her tongue between her teeth and her thumbs plugged in her ears, her fingers wriggling like gills.
Doris! he demanded. What —
But then, before he could say another word, she had him locked round the neck, panting as she fired her agile tongue into his mouth. And then, just as suddenly, she stopped, gravely serious as she asked:
Do you believe God is watching us?
You mean, Do I think God is a voyeur?
Don’t you dare profane him! D.D. was more than just vehement — she looked as if she would strike him. Covering her breasts, she continued:
He is watching, you know. If you were more alive, you would see that — you’d feel far more than you do. You think I’m just a whore, don’t you! You think I was just put here for your amusement!
D.D., he said, moving toward her. I certainly didn’t mean to offend you.
But she pushed him away. I won’t have your blasphemy and condescension. I know what you’re after, and the free lunch is closed.
They lurched back and forth through good days and bad, with Russell hungrily following her sex, half conscious, like a bird bobbing along a trail of crumbs. He had hardly known her a month when his lectures ended, and she invited him to come with her for a week’s visit to her parents’ home near Chicago. D.D. made it all seem very casual. In view of the short time they had known each other, Russell saw no danger that the Dudleys would feel their daughter was “bringing him home.” Besides, he had a paper to deliver at the University of Chicago, and he was curious about the Middle West.
A few days later, after a stopover in Chicago, they arrived by train in Wazooka, Illinois, D.D.’s hometown, where her father was waiting in his fire-engine-red Pierce-Arrow. Portly Dr. Dudley, a well-to-do dentist, councilman and booster, was a mustached man of massive good health who immediately took charge of his daughter and her foreign guest.
Don’t you dare, he said with comic gruffness, poking his cocked finger like a pistol into Russell’s ribs when he attempted to tip the colored porter bringing up their luggage. You just keep your hands out of your pockets while you’re here, Mr. Russell. Here go, Jimmy.
Dr. Dudley then insisted on giving his guest the “cook’s tour” of Wazooka. Honking and waving to everyone they passed, he pointed out the new school, the meat-packing plant and the town characters, sitting on crates and busted-out chairs by the ice house and garage. Friendly sorts, rather, only Russell noticed that they all seemed to have the most extraordinarily deformed ears — either too big or too small, and all oddly crumpled. With their lips fat with snuff or cheeks bugged out with chaws of tobacco, they waved and called out things he couldn’t understand over the flat plains wind and the noise of the engine.
Big fish in that little backwater, the Dudleys lived in a lofty, white-turreted house that presided over a quiet street of hedge-bound bungalows. A stone wall bristling with a fence of iron arrows surrounded their property, and every morning Dr. Dudley raised a flag into the boundless Midwestern sky with that absurd and flabby American optimism which, to Russell’s English soul, was like staring into the void. Mrs. Dudley was a handsome woman, far more reserved than her husband, but active nonetheless in their church and various civic organizations. She was always on the telephone, one of two that seemed to never stop ringing. Gadabout Dr. Dudley, meanwhile, seemed to always be off to another meeting. Scarcely had they finished supper that first night than Dr. Dudley, Grand Mugwump of the Aragolak Oddfellows, came down attired in an oversnug tuxedo and wearing on his head a whole hollowed-out beaver, complete with teeth, tail and clawed feet.
Try this on for size, he said, his laughter like air wheezing from a tire as the hat slid down over Russell’s aristocratic ears. Dr. Dudley was showing his guest the Oddfellows’ mystic handshake when D.D. groaned, Daddy …
Now, daughter, countered Dr. Dudley tolerantly, feigning ebullient surprise. I’m just trying to show your English friend how we are here in Wazooka.
Russell went along with these rites with the hapless bonhomie of an explorer among aborigines, eating corn on the cob and bloody steaks that “still mooed,” rocking on the porch, drinking beer and pitching horseshoes. And without any particular effort on Russell’s part, the ind
efatigable Dr. Dudley took right to him, bringing him downstairs the second night to show him his weapons collection — rifles, swords, Indian war clubs and a scalp of fine red hair that Russell politely declined to handle.
Oh, dearest darling, said D.D., waylaying him afterward, Daddy really likes you. He’s never shown that junk to anybody I’ve brought home before.
Conscious of his age, Russell was rather surprised by this warm reception, but he needn’t have been: the prominent Wazooka Dudleys thought he was rich and, best of all, titled, having been told by their daughter that he was next in line for an earldom. The third day, Dr. Dudley dressed Russell in cape and goggles and took him for a long and dusty drive. Presumed heir of all creation, supremely confident, even reckless in his driving, Dr. Dudley showed the greenhorn “God’s country” — so many flat and snoring miles of corn, swine, rail depots and cattle. Yet this rich land that Russell found so bleak and unpromising spoke eloquently to Dr. Dudley, who in the sonorous tones of an auctioneer gabbed about endless “deals” involving options, liens, deaths, deeds and probate sales. Lurching to a stop in a cloud of dust, he made a grand sweep of his arm, as if to tell the suitor that if he played his cards right all this and more might be his one day.
Giving him a conspiratorial little goose on the shoulder the fourth day, Dr. Dudley confided, I’ll tell you the truth, Mr. Russell. She’s stubborn, our D.D. Gets something in her head and won’t turn it loose. Guess it’s partly me. Wanted a son, got me a tomboy. Well, I raised her to be independent, but, heck, I’ll be frank. Her mother and I were kinda worried about her for a while. She was just a little confused, I guess, but I’m glad — darned glad she’s straightened out and found herself a nice fella like you. Just wanted you to know that. You’re all right in my book.
Russell didn’t know how to react to the “glad” part and was sorely tempted to ask Dr. Dudley just what he meant by the “confused” part. But before he could get a word in, the jocular doctor, uneasy after this moment of male intimacy, deftly changed the subject.
That afternoon, though, Mrs. Dudley piqued Russell’s curiosity again. As they walked in the garden, she confided her daughter’s great admiration for him, telling him how happy she was that Doris had finally brought home someone respectable.
I want to get to know her again, ventured Mrs. Dudley cryptically. For a while I’m afraid we didn’t know our daughter.
Really? said Russell diplomatically. When was this?
Stopping to pick a weed their elderly gardener had missed, Mrs. Dudley considered a moment, then said, Oh, after she left the convent, I guess. Or before. But then, seeing this was news to him, Mrs. Dudley got all fluttery, saying, Goodness! I forgot all about the roast.
Grasping, Russell hastily said, You used the word “convent,” Mrs. Dudley. I thought you and Dr. Dudley were Presbyterians?
Oh, said Mrs. Dudley, flinching. Well, of course, this was after Doris converted. Much against our wishes, I might add.
To which he, ever the gentleman, replied, Oh, and smiled politely as the mother cheerfully added, But it’s all over, quite as if it was, then hurried off to check her loin of pork.
I refuse to discuss it! insisted D.D. when he questioned her later. Then, spitefully, she said, I told you that you don’t know me! But you know what I really hate? You never even asked!
But hearing this, the suitor didn’t want to ask. That night, Friday, Dr. Dudley departed for his Shriners meeting in a tassled maroon fez on which ABDUL was written in rhinestones. Upstairs, D.D. and Mrs. Dudley, who, on second glance, seemed to Russell rather cold toward her only child, had a brief screaming match. Hurried feet and slamming doors. Then, with a transfigured look, D.D. ran down the stairs, saying in a vicious tone, Don’t worry about her. She urgently led him by the hand to the closetlike back stairs, where she bolted the door and lit a candle.
I’ll bet you never had a nun before, did you? she said. That’s Sister John Christopher to you — bride of Christ. Do you know how hard I prayed not to be tempted? Do you think for a second it worked? They shaved my head and screamed at me. I thought I was nuts. D.D.’s eyes glowed as she pressed closer to him. I’ve had visions, you know — at night there, under the covers, I was on fire. They were all lesbians. They used to tie me up in wet sheets.
In her open palm, he saw a rolled condom. Her knees wobbled as she hiked up her dress and guided his trembling hands, saying, Do you love me? Do you? A nun doesn’t come cheaply, you know. For this, you can say ten thousand Hail Marys! Two hundred thousand Our Fathers …
In the flickering darkness, her powerful vagina gobbled him in like a Chinese handcuff as a floorboard creaked. And like a loose egg he was cooked — two minutes, done.
Oddly, they got along better after that, both imagining they had come to an understanding, though each had a different notion of just where things stood.
Russell could afford to be kind now that his stint in the alien corn was over. Two days later, he was off for Boston to tie up some loose ends, then bound for England. In the meantime, he didn’t want to upset these nice people by telling them that their bohemian daughter and he had not the slightest intention of getting hitched. D.D. understood him, he thought — that was what mattered. And again, the next day, when the Dudleys were outside, D.D. made love to him with impressive speed and ingenuity, reducing him to a gibbering, moaning ninny as she bounced atop him, preening her breasts and lean young stomach before his hot, watery eyes. Russell, in rut, said impulsively, You must come to England sometime!
Bertie, dearest darling! cried D.D. I’d follow you anywhere!
War Trophy
STEAMING across the Atlantic on the Northumberland a week later, Russell found himself wondering if D.D. might have taken his overheated words to heart. After all, it was one thing for her to visit him in England (and several weeks together might be rather agreeable, he thought with a grin), but surely, even D.D., in all her wild imagination, could not possibly think that he meant for her to come and stay — certainly not to live or marry.
No, he thought, she couldn’t possibly be that naive — they were not even remotely suited to each other. He promised himself that he would write her a long letter when he arrived in England, a warm, appreciative letter that would boost her spirits while gently cutting her loose, leaving her a few fond memories and a good deal the wiser. Still, in his anxious moments, he was tempted to send a telegram flatly telling her not to come. But each time he ruled it out as being too cruel — cruel and probably unnecessary, since by now she surely realized that it was only a passing fancy.
With this, then, he put D.D. out of mind, instead absorbing himself in the news of Austria’s escalating dispute with Serbia, a dispute that increasingly threatened to involve the other European powers. Russell found the news depressing, but even more depressing was the delight his fellow English passengers took in it. It sickened and amazed him how fierce and irrational, how clannish and thick, they could be, these bland, tweedy salesmen and cottagers and their pale wives — how people who would be morally repelled at the thought of blood sports could, in the next breath, declare their high-minded willingness to pack their sons off to slaughter Germans. Once or twice a day some bilious old fool would come huffing back from the wireless room with the latest news, setting the whole ship astir. Afternoons in the ship’s lounge, between darts and quaffs of black and tan, the old poppycocks would prognosticate, matching the French army against the German and England’s dreadnoughts against all comers. As for the ship’s fifteen German passengers, they were treated with the disdainful correctitude accorded to people about to be deported. The Germans kept to themselves, dining together at two tables at the far end of the dining room and rarely speaking above urgent whispers.
The passage was generally chilly and overcast, with gray girders of light that sheared off into the ocean’s gray-black deeps. Russell generally held his distance from the other passengers, working every morning on an article for the philosophical journal Mind, then w
alking the decks in the afternoons, when the ship’s lackluster amateur band could be heard practicing The Turkey Trot and Rose in the Bud. He was gloomy about his prospects in England, unsure what he wanted from Ottoline and even more hesitant about his work. America, in that sense, had been a vacation where he could coast on brilliance and reputation without doing the brutal work that had made him famous — work that, after the blows Wittgenstein had given him, he wondered if he would ever do again. He now had more offers for lectures and books than he could possibly handle, but nothing that seemed to him especially vital or important. Back in Cambridge, he would find waiting for him the notes on logic that Wittgenstein had dictated to Moore in Norway — a Pandora’s box that he was almost afraid to open. And for all Russell knew, Wittgenstein was charging off to enlist. Knowing Wittgenstein’s recklessness, Russell felt almost sure he would never survive a war, and so Russell found himself faced with the equally depressing prospect of holding a box without a key.
Often in those days just before the war, Russell felt like a fraud. Because for all his expressions of principle and humanity, he saw there was also a nihilistic side of him that was as eager for war as anybody, eager that, for better or worse, life might change. The news, meanwhile, grew worse. Returning to his cabin after breakfast one morning, Russell saw his first iceberg, a glowing, white-hot hull whose heights it seemed he could never scale as he watched it slip by, smoking white against the fog and alive with the cries of birds he could not see.
Three days later, on July 21 — two days before Austria delivered her ultimatum to Serbia — Russell arrived in London. Ottoline sounded cool when he rang her up but finally agreed to meet him that afternoon at Mrs. Dood’s flat. After D.D. and almost three months apart, neither of them knew what to do once Ottoline finally arrived, late as usual. Wanting to make himself desire her more than he did, Russell kissed her passionately, but she felt limp and bony. Her mouth fell open, loose and and pulpy, and as he drew away, he noticed new wrinkles around her lips.