Research. David has not yet told Jacob of his morning’s research. In anticipation of Jacob’s visit, David spent the morning at the library, searching for facts about the history of the game. After two hours of failure, he was in the Fine Arts section sullenly and half curiously turning the pages of an illustrated book about British board games when he made his triumphant discovery. Clue was not an American game at all. It was a British game exported to the USA in 1949 and sold in the States by Parker Brothers, who had introduced small changes in design. The British game was called Cluedo, a bewildering name that David decided was intended to allude to another British board game, Ludo. The book showed a color photograph of the board, which was strikingly like the Clue board with one notable difference: the rooms were without furniture. Other differences between the two versions emerged: the mansion of Cluedo was owned by Dr. Black, not the embarrassing Mr. Boddy of Clue; the colored border running around the ground plan of the mansion was light red, not green; the backs of the cards bore no illustration. The suspects were the same, except that Mr. Green was the Reverend Green: Jacob would enjoy that, he would spin some wild theory to account for the change from Reverend to Mister when the game crossed the Atlantic. The British murder weapons were the same, but three of them had different names: the Wrench was called the Spanner, the Knife was called the Dagger, and the Lead Pipe was called Lead Piping. David is so eager to reveal the results of his research to Jacob, who will know how to appreciate each detail, that the thought of an obstacle is intolerable to him, and he suddenly imagines Marian seizing Susan by the hair and plunging the Knife into her throat. He is shocked at the thought, and glances guiltily at Susan, startled to see her staring directly at him.
Feminine stratagems. The Colonel reflects that Miss Scarlet is the kind of woman who, by primness of temperament and propriety of upbringing, cannot confess to herself a crude desire for sexual adventure, and in particular a desire for sexual adventure with a coarse womanizer like Colonel Mustard. It is therefore necessary for her to disguise from herself the fact of her craving, while at the same time arranging for its satisfaction. This problem she has solved instinctively and brilliantly by the tactic of striking scornful attitudes whenever she finds herself in the Colonel’s presence. Her attitudes serve the double purpose of affirming her sense of decorum and drawing continual sexual attention to herself. She has in effect pursued him relentlessly through deliberate demonstrations of indifference. Miss Scarlet, the Colonel surmises, can permit herself to be seduced only if she persuades herself that she feels contempt for her seducer, thereby removing responsibility from herself while inviting his attentions through disdainful poses tinged with erotic display. The little game, rich in nuances, holds specific but limited charms for the Colonel. It is always of course a pleasure to observe the unfolding of feminine stratagems however transparent, but the Colonel cannot find indefinitely stimulating the two-dimensional role created for him by the charming Miss Scarlet. From the very beginning she has produced in him an odd and distinctly unpleasant sense of constriction. In her continual flight from herself, her relentless assumption of attitudes, her striving to become nothing but an object, she diminishes him: he becomes a cartoon villain in her gallery of pornography (The Disdainful Maiden and The Aging Lecher). Her provocative little pose, on the velvet window seat, in the mauve light, appears to be an invitation to pleasure, but in fact it is an invitation to death: its intention is to confirm the Colonel’s mediocrity, to divest him of imagination and thereby turn him to stone. It is to evade this divestiture that the Colonel prolongs his refusal.
Words. The nine names of the rooms, in black capital letters, constitute eleven words: the seven single-name rooms and the two double-name rooms, BILLIARD ROOM and DINING ROOM. Five additional words appear in the center of the board: beneath the word CLUE, in large white capital letters with black shadows, appears the word THE, in small black capital letters, and beneath the word THE appear the words GREAT DETECTIVE GAME. When we observe the board so that the word CLUE is right-side up, then we see, in the lower left-hand corner of the playing board, in the green border that runs around all nine rooms, the words © 1949 JOHN WADDINGTON, LTD. In the same green border, in the lower right, we see four lines of print: PARKER BROTHERS, INC./SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS/NEW YORK SAN FRANCISCO CHICAGO/MADE IN U.S.A. Still other words appear on the board. The four rooms with secret passages all contain words: in a corner of the STUDY are the words SECRET PASSAGE/TO/KITCHEN/(ONE MOVE), in a corner of the LOUNGE are the words SECRET PASSAGE/TO/CONSERVATORY/(ONE MOVE), in a corner of the KITCHEN are the words SECRET PASSAGE/TO/STUDY/(ONE MOVE), and in a corner of the CONSERVATORY are the words SECRET PASSAGE/TO/LOUNGE/(ONE MOVE). Finally, six of the yellow squares adjacent to the green border contain the word START, with the name of a different suspect under each one: MISS SCARLET, COL. MUSTARD, MRS. WHITE, MR. GREEN, MRS. PEACOCK, PROF. PLUM. If we consider the date 1949 to be a single word, the abbreviations U.S.A., LTD, and INC. to be single words, and combinations such as NEW YORK, PARKER BROTHERS, and MR. GREEN each to be two words, and if we ignore the symbol ©, then on the Clue board we find seventy-five words.
Jacob did it. Susan lowers her eyes, ashamed to have been caught staring at David. Now he too will dislike her: the outsider, crasher of birthday parties, Jacob’s shikse, insolent starer. She cannot look at Jacob, who has insisted that she come with him and now is drinking too much wine and shutting her out. She cannot look at Marian, who resents her presence and wants her dead. She cannot look at David, who has caught her staring at him, spying on him. She can look only at her hateful horrible cards: the HALL, the LOUNGE, Colonel Mustard, the Lead Pipe, the Knife. Oh, Jacob did it. On the porch. With his cold, cold eye.
Mr. Green’s dilemma. Mr. Green stands in the corridor near another door of the BALLROOM, not far from the DINING ROOM, paralyzed with uncertainty and chagrin. He has left the BALLROOM in a manner so awkward, sudden, and inexplicable that he feels it only proper to return and proffer an apology. At the same time, the thought of entering the BALLROOM again after his disgraceful exit is so painful that as he imagines it he draws an audible sharp breath. Besides, how can he possibly explain to Miss Scarlet, whose gasp was caused not simply by the Colonel’s sudden words in the silence but by the shocking revelation of Mr. Green’s presence, that he had been standing in a corner during her entrance into the room and had remained there without a word during her long walk across the echoing floor? The thought of entering the room again is itself unspeakably painful to Mr. Green, but in addition to entering the room he will be obliged to walk across the long, loud floor, carefully observed not only by Miss Scarlet, whose initial surprise at finding him in the corner will have had time to darken to indignation, but also by the Colonel, in whose presence, under the best of circumstances, Mr. Green feels uncomfortable and anxious, and who now, as witness to Mr. Green’s inglorious retreat and as a probable confidant and champion of the injured Miss Scarlet, will await Mr. Green in the manner of a stern father barely willing to listen to an excuse already dismissed as contemptible. Mr. Green will not know where to look; he will not know what to say; the entire purpose of his return, which should be to clarify a possible misunderstanding and render him less foolish or odious in their eyes, will be undermined by his undoubted inability to utter a single word and the general impossibility, even if he were not at a loss for words, of explaining his shameful behavior. Despite these extremely compelling reasons for evasion there remain, nevertheless, equally decisive arguments for confrontation. It is too much to hope, for example, that he can avoid either or both of them during the remainder of his visit. It might therefore prove even more painful in the long run if he does not, immediately, face up to the inevitable. Besides, he has left behind his book, a clumsily written but learned study which he took with him from the LIBRARY with the express intent of finishing it before dinner. Mr. Green takes a deep breath, raises his right foot, and does not move.
Sprechen Sie Englisch? “How’s Dad be
en?” Jacob asks out of the blue, looking up abruptly from his cards. David is startled and exhilarated: things are going to be all right after all, the family is sticking together, everything’s bound to be all right. “Oh, he’s been all right,” David answers. He knows that Mrs. Peacock did it, with either the Revolver or the Candlestick; his father is slumped in an armchair, a revolver at his feet, a red hole in his temple. “Actually there was one, I don’t know, episode.” Marian turns her head sharply. “What episode, Davey?” “Episode,” Jacob says, frowning thoughtfully and pulling at his chin. “Episode, episode.” His face assumes a hopeful expression. “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” “Well,” David says, “you know how he likes to park as close to his classroom as possible? So he doesn’t have to carry his briefcase too far? Well, last month someone took his space, so Dad had to walk across the whole parking lot with a load of books. He told Mom he was so short of breath he had to sit down. Now he’s bought an extra copy of every book for the course and he keeps one copy in his office and one at home.” “You never told me that,” Marian says. “Davey, you promised to tell me, no matter what.” “Mom made me promise not to tell. You know how Dad is.” “And he won’t see Hershatter?” Jacob asks. “No way. He tells Mom, but she’s not allowed to tell me. But she does, sometimes. He gets furious if she tells him to see Hershatter.” “Am I living in a bad novel?” Jacob says, flinging up an arm. “What is this crap? Can’t Mom get him to see Hershatter?” “You try getting him to see Hershatter. Mom says he gets too angry. She doesn’t want to upset him.” “She doesn’t want to upset him? He can’t walk across a parking lot and nobody’s allowed to know?” “He’s been better lately,” David says, “really.” Jacob stares at David; for a moment his arm is suspended in the air. He lowers his elbow to the table and leans his forehead into the heel of his hand. His long fingers are thrust into his hair and his eyes are heavy-lidded. “Dad is sick,” he says slowly. “He needs to see a doctor. If he keeps on like this, he’s going to die.” “Jake,” Marian says, placing a hand on his forearm. “It’s David’s birthday.”
Professor Plum makes a discovery. As he advances once again along the SECRET PASSAGE toward the KITCHEN, or is it the CONSERVATORY, Professor Plum notices, around a darkening bend in the path, a narrow fissure in the rough stone wall. He has noticed it before. In the half-darkness lit only by the distant flame of a kerosene lantern, he stops for a moment to give it his close attention. The fissure rises from the floor to the height of his forehead; it is wide enough to admit a man sideways. The Professor is in no great hurry to arrive at the CONSERVATORY, or is it the KITCHEN—indeed, his supreme pleasure is to traverse the passages—and on a sudden impulse he steps sideways from the path into the fissure, bending his head awkwardly and protecting his spectacles with a hand. Behind the entrance the fissure widens and admits the Professor to another dim-lit passage. It is much like the one he has left but covered with a strip of carpet and lined with shelves containing a variety of amusing objects: small colorful glass jars, faded magic-lantern slides, pipe racks filled with pipes of many shapes, lacquered wooden boxes. The Professor advances by slow steps, looking back at the receding fissure, which closes into darkness. He plans to follow the new passage only a short distance, before turning back and continuing on his way.
Cards (2). The backs of the cards show a magnifying glass in whose lens is pictured, in blue-black and white, the posts of a gate, a curving walk, and a gabled mansion with four chimneys. Each chimney is crowned by three chimney pots. A large blue-black tree with bushy blue-black foliage, situated between the gate and the mansion, spreads a curving branch above part of the roof. Each gatepost is surmounted by a finial composed of a cone with concave sides topped by a sphere. Each sphere, in the foreground, is large enough to contain the door of the mansion, in the background. On the handle of the magnifying glass are long parallel blue-black lines, suggestive of palpable ridges like those on the circumference of a coin.
Love and death. Jacob crushes down a reply and, with Marian’s hand still on his arm, remembers suddenly the new baby home from the hospital: he and Marian standing on both sides of the cradle looking down at David. He thought: he looks like me, in the album. The unexpected resemblance gave him the sense that he was the father, that he was peculiarly responsible for this child: his child. He sees his father’s grave face, hears the solemn words: Jacob, Marian, I want you to love your brother always, do you understand, you’re all he’ll have when your mother and I are no longer here. Jacob tried to understand, but the words frightened him; he wondered why they were no longer going to be there.
A deeper significance. Miss Scarlet, fixed by the Colonel’s mediocre imagination in an attitude of banal surrender, senses that matters are not proceeding quite as they should be. The smooth revolting precision of the Colonel’s advance upon her has suffered interruption, indeed breakdown. At first Miss Scarlet imagines some merely masculine trouble, but gradually she divines a deeper significance. The Colonel, in order to enjoy himself, requires a small pleasure she has failed to provide. Her stylized offer of herself, which perfectly expresses his vulgar and trivializing fantasy of conquest, nevertheless irks him because it deprives him of a pleasure still more banal: the overcoming of an obstacle. Miss Scarlet does not cease to marvel at the fascinating depths of the Colonel’s inexhaustible banality. It is in order to provoke in her a show of titillating resistance that the Colonel lingers on the threshold of seduction, and it is in order to prolong his hesitation, and postpone the degradation of his touch, that Miss Scarlet remains motionless on the window seat in an attitude of erotic invitation.
The two Mr. Greens. Slowly, very slowly, Mr. Green advances toward the BALLROOM door. He has not made up his mind to enter, but he has made up his mind to advance slowly in the direction of the door, in the hope that forward motion, with its apparent decisiveness, will demonstrate to his doubting mind that decision is possible. But with every step forward there rises, in Mr. Green’s mind, a new reason for retreat. It is as if the fact of forward physical motion has released his mind from the need to find reasons to advance, thereby permitting it to exercise its full powers in producing evidence for retreat. Mr. Green is therefore moving in two direction: forward, physically; backward, mentally. A diagram would show twin figures back to back, each with its foot raised, each with its head turned over its shoulder.
Is that all? David, frightened by Jacob’s words, glances over his cards at the board and sees a square of cardboard with yellow and gray plane figures on it. The flatness of the board startles him: it is a depthless world, devoid of shadow. There are no rooms, no doors, no secret passages, only the glare of the overhead light on the black lines, the yellow spaces. For a moment he wants to shout: is that all? is that all?
A new life. Marian removes her hand from Jacob’s arm but continues to think about her father. He is sicker than she knew; the signs are there, she has been deceiving herself. The thought of her father’s death is so disturbing that she feels a ripple of panic pass across her stomach; she looks up guiltily, as if she has been detected in a crime. Her father’s absence from her life, a life that hasn’t even begun yet, is not possible. She will speak to her mother in the morning. She will call more often. She will begin her life. She will change her life. She will meet someone. She will do something. Marian thinks: stop. You are growing morbid. Stop. You are being selfish. It is David’s birthday, a day of celebration.
Go back. Professor Plum has not advanced far along the carpeted passage when he comes to an open place from which three other passages stretch away. In the open place sit several old armchairs and couches. The Professor is a cautious man. He is perfectly aware that he must not lose his way, must under no circumstances permit himself to yield to the temptation of unknown passageways; but it is precisely this awareness that frees him from the constraints of caution, and permits him to continue his exploration of the unknown, for he knows that he is not the sort of man who takes foolish and unnecessary risks. Even as he
admonishes himself to return to the SECRET PASSAGE before he loses his way, he is deciding among the new, alluring passages. One is hung with paintings; one is lined with writing desks, highboys, and wing chairs; one contains two rows of closed red doors. The Professor hesitates a moment before choosing the passage of red doors. After walking a short way he tries a door and is admitted to a flight of carpeted steps going down. Go back, the Professor reminds himself, as he descends the stairs.
A lack of imagination. The Colonel, paralyzed in a pose of suspended seduction, is beginning to grow a little bored. He has no intention of sparing Miss Scarlet, but her inept imitation of whorish abandon cannot sustain his indefinite interest. He would like to get on with it and repair to the BILLIARD ROOM for a whiskey and soda before dinner, but every possible advance is fated to confirm Miss Scarlet’s crude imagining of him. To act is to become her fantasy, to assent to his inexistence. The Colonel feels himself dissolving into an imaginary Colonel with a trim mustache, pulled-back shoulders, and reddish cheekbones. Utterly unimagined, devoid of detail, he is beginning to fade away.
The Barnum Museum: Stories (American Literature Series) Page 4