The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith Page B

obviously they can’t.”
    She looked stunned, and he wondered if she were remembering the time before. They had reached the same point exactly, and Clara had threatened to take the veronal she had upstairs. Walter had made a batch of martinis, and had forced her to drink one to pull herself together. He had sat down beside her on the sofa where she was now, and she had broken down and cried and told him that she adored him, and the evening had ended very differently from the way Walter had anticipated.
    â€œIt isn’t enough any more to be in love with you—physically—because mentally I despise you,” Walter said quietly. He felt that he was uttering the accumulation of the thousand days and nights when he had never dared say these things, not from lack of courage, but because it was so horrible and so fatal for Clara. He watched her now as he would watch a still-alive thing to which he had just given a death blow, because he could see that she was believing him, gradually.
    â€œBut maybe I can change,” she said with a tremor of tears in her voice. “I can go to an analyst—”
    â€œI don’t think that’ll change you, Clara.” He knew her contempt for psychiatry. He had tried to get her to go to a psychiatrist. She never had.
    Her eyes were fixed on him, wide and empty-looking and wet with tears, and it seemed to Walter that even in this breakdown she was in the grip of a fit more frenzied than the times when she had shrieked at him like a harpy. Jeff, restive at their quareling voices, pranced about Clara, licking her hand, but Clara did not show by the movement of a finger that she knew he was there.
    â€œIt’s that girl, isn’t it?” Clara asked suddenly.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDon’t pretend. I know. Why don’t you admit it? You want to divorce me so you can have her. You’re infatuated with her silly, cowlike smiles at you!”
    Walter frowned. “ What girl?”
    â€œEllie Briess!”
    â€œEllie Briess?” Walter repeated in an incredulous whisper. “Good God, Clara, you’re out of your head!”
    â€œDo you deny it?” Clara demanded.
    â€œIt’s not worth denying!”
    â€œIt’s true, isn’t it? At least admit it. Tell the truth for once!”
    Walter felt a shiver down his spine. His mind shifted, trying to adjust to quite a different situation, the handling of someone mentally deranged. “Clara, I’ve seen the girl only twice. She’s got absolutely nothing to do with us.”
    â€œI don’t believe you. You’ve been seeing her on the sly—evenings when you don’t come home at six-thirty.”
    â€œWhat evenings? Last Monday? That’s the only day I went to work since I’ve met her.”
    â€œSunday!”
    Walter swallowed. He remembered he had taken a long walk Sunday morning, the morning after he met the girl. “Haven’t we got reason enough to end this without dragging in fantasies?”
    Clara’s mouth trembled. “You won’t give me another chance?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen I’ll take that veronal tonight,” Clara said in a suddenly calm voice.
    â€œNo, you won’t,” Walter went to the bar, poured a brandy for her and brought it to her.
    She took it in her shaking fingers and drained it at once, not even looking to see what it was. “You think I’m joking, don’t you, because I didn’t the other time. But I will now!”
    â€œThat’s a threat, darling.”
    â€œDon’t call me ‘darling,’ you despise me.” She stood up. “Leave me alone! At least give me some privacy!”
    Walter felt another start of alarm. She did look insane now with her brown eyes hard and bright as stone, her figure rigid as if an epileptic seizure had caught her and left her standing balanced like a column of rock. “Privacy for what?”
    â€œTo kill