The Collected Stories

barely saved her. We have a neighbor here, a Mr. Porter, who is a friend, and he found some medicine that another doctor had once prescribed. She’s asleep now. I want you to know that my wife is a sick woman, both physically and spiritually. She has tried to commit suicide twice. The second time she took so many sleeping pills she had to be kept three days in an iron lung. She has an enormously high opinion of you and is in love with you in her own fashion, but I want to warn you not to encourage her. Our marriage is extremely unhappy, but I’m like a father to her because her own father deserted her and her mother when Elizabeth was only a child. Her father’s indifference instilled in her a puritanism that has made our existence a nightmare. Don’t promise her anything, because she lives entirely in a world of illusions. She needs psychiatric care, but she refuses it. I’m sure that you understand and that you will act like a responsible person.”
    “You may be completely sure.”
    “She exists on tranquillizers. I used to be a philosophy professor, but after we married I could no longer hold my position. Fortunately, I have wealthy parents, who help us. I’ve suffered so much from her that my own health has deteriorated. This is the type of woman who robs a man of his potency. If, heaven forbid, you became involved with her, your talent would be the first casualty. If she lived in the sixteenth century, she would have been surely burned at the stake as a witch. In the years I’ve known her, I’ve come to believe in black magic—as a psychological phenomenon, naturally.”
    “I hear you’re writing a book on astrology.”
    “Is that what she told you? Nonsense! I’m doing work on Newton’s last thirty years and his religious convictions. You undoubtedly know that Newton considered gravity a divine force—the purest expression of godly will. The greatest scientist of all times was also a great mystic. Since gravity controls the universe, it follows that the celestial bodies influence the organic and spiritual world in every manner and form. This is aeons removed from the usual astrology with its horoscopes and other folderol.”
    “Shall I get your wife?”
    “No. Don’t tell her I called. She is capable of causing me terrible scandals. She once attacked me with a knife …”
    During the time Oliver Leslie had been talking to me, Elizabeth didn’t appear. I wondered why it was taking her so long to dry two plates and glasses, but I assumed that she hadn’t wanted to disturb my conversation. The moment I hung up I went into the kitchen, but Elizabeth wasn’t there. I guessed what had happened. A narrow passage led from the kitchen to my bedroom, where an extension telephone stood on a night table. I opened the door to the passage and Elizabeth was standing on the threshold.
    She said, “I had to go to the bathroom.”
    From the manner in which she said this—quickly, guiltily, in a defensive tone—I knew that she was lying. She might have been on the way to the bathroom (although how could she know that this door led to it?) and spied the extension phone. Her eyes reflected a blend of anger and mockery. So that’s the kind of baggage you are, I thought. Every trace of restraint I might have felt toward her vanished. I put my hands on her shoulders. She trembled, and her face assumed the mischievous expression of a little girl caught stealing or dressing up in her mother’s clothes.
    “For a virgin, you’re a shrewd piece,” I said.
    “Yes, I heard everything, and I’ll never go back to him,” she said in a voice grown firmer and younger as well. It was as if she had thrown off a mask she had worn a long time and in that split second become someone else—someone youthful and frolicsome. She pursed her lips as if about to kiss me. I was overcome with desire for her, but I remembered Oliver Leslie’s warning. I bent toward her and our eyes came so close I saw only a blueness like that within a grotto. Our lips touched but didn’t kiss. My knees pressed against hers and she began to move backward. While I pushed her slightly and playfully, a solemn voice admonished me: “Beware! You’re falling into a trap!”
    At that moment the phone rang again. I lurched with such force that I nearly knocked her over. A ringing telephone evokes a reaction of wild expectations in me—I often compare myself to Pavlov’s dogs. For a moment I wavered between hurrying forward into the bedroom or