The Blood of the Blunt
The Mailer Review (2012), 9–27; from the Norman Mailer Papers, Harry Ransom Center
For a long time the husband and wife had been wishing secretly that they could sleep in twin beds. As the early years of their marriage passed, and the husband became successful, the bed on which they slept passed through a metamorphosis. They had first lain upon a fold-out studio couch in a tiny one-room-and-kitchenette, they had progressed to a comfortable double bed in an agreeable apartment, and by now, the husband’s career im- pressively advanced, they lived in a seven-room apartment with a good ad- dress. In their bedroom reposed a Hollywood bed. It was custom-made, it was large, it was the equal of twin beds placed together. Yet it was not large enough for the husband and wife to sleep side by side. Under an accumulation of what was sore, apprehensive, and guilty, they were most comfortable with their backs to one another, a chill width of empty bed between them. Often they would lie awake for hours, the pressure of things unsaid attuning their nerves, until the simplest motion of one—no more than a foot rustling against the sheet—was enough to arouse the other as tensely and irritably as if a piece of chalk had squeaked upon a black- board. Each was often at the point of suggesting twin beds, each hoped such a purchase would be merely a step toward separate bedrooms, but it was dif- ficult to discuss for they were baited by memory. They were still young enough to remember how much they had been in love when they were very young. Then, with the certainty of young lovers, they had known that noth- ing could ever change.“Oh, darling,” she had said once, those years ago,“we’ll never be indifferent to each other, will we? We’ll never be bored.” They had felt the superiority of young lovers for the vast world of the middle-aged who were bored. Much had altered, much had been lost, but never so much that either was
THE M AILE R RE VIE W, VOL . , N O. , FALL . Copyright © . The Norman Mailer Society. Published by The Norman Mailer Society. Norman Mailer • 21
capable of declaring it outright. There was still the memory of early love on the studio couch in the one-room-and-kitchenette, there was still the recol- lection of the agreeable apartment with what it had signified of his develop- ing career as a young executive, there was even the irony of the Hollywood bed. It was, altogether, a subject too painful to discuss. On a given night, the husband and wife had gone to bed early, and at two in the morning, they were still awake. A quarrel had developed that evening, it had been left unfinished, and each of them was restless. Not speaking to one another, lying a yard apart in the darkness, their emotions seemed to converse, anger begetting sullenness; sullenness, hurt; hurt, contrition; with- out ever a word. There were moments when one was ready to touch the other’s hand, yet could not make the caress. A half hour later it would be the other. Through the darkness came the cries of a baby. “He’s awake,” said the wife out of the silence. “Well, the nurse will take care of him,” the husband answered. They had conceived the baby in this very bed, out of the pathetic hope that a baby would mend matters. In desperation, they had conceived an- other which the wife was carrying now. Neither the baby which was born nor the one which was to come seemed very real to the husband. The wife was stirring. “I’ve got to give him a bottle,” she said. “What about the nurse?” he repeated. She had quit her side of the bed, and was fumbling with a wrapper. “I told you at dinner this was nurse’s night off.” The husband sat up in bed and made a sound of exasperation as the baby wailed a little louder. “I don’t see what you’re annoyed about,” said the wife. “I’m the one who has to get up. Lord knows what you would do if you ever had to get up.” “I just have to get up in the morning.” When there was no answer, he added sarcastically, “That’s all.” While his wife was gone, he lay in bed and brooded about the nurse. It seemed as if she were always having her night off. There were three servants in the house, the nurse, the maid, and the cook, yet whenever he wanted something done, no one was about. Once he had become furious at the breakfast table because his eggs were wet. “I’m making a damn lot of money,” he had shrieked at his wife with a rage that was disproportionate only if one assumed he was angry about the eggs. “And out of all the money I pay out, 22 • THE MAILER REVIEW
I can’t get a simple dish of eggs made to my preference.” She had walked out of the kitchen, and he had slammed out of the apartment to eat breakfast at a drugstore counter. That evening his wife had offered him her cheek to kiss, cold as the drug- store coffee. Neither had mentioned breakfast. Their fights were now with- out climax and virtually continuous. From three rooms away he could hear his wife singing to the baby. “Sssh, go to sleep, my love,” came his wife’s voice, gentle in its concern. His baby son continued to wail, but the loud cries were no longer so terrified. Fright and loneliness ended. Now, the baby could cry with indignation, seeming to say that he had waited long indeed for his wants to be filled. “That’s right, baby, that’s right,” his wife crooned softly, until indignation ebbed into drowsy sobs, comfortable and sensuous. The husband could picture the wife holding the child to her breast, her hair down, her face soft. The baby hiccupped with the loud unconcern of a fat man finishing a meal and his wife giggled. He felt far away from both. His wife was luckier than he. In her loneliness, in their frozen loneliness, she could turn to the infant and find solace and humor in the smallest gurgle of its belly. It was not fair. It was all she had. He had the world of his business life with its concerns, its activity, the sense it could give him of being, after all, not unimportant. She had only the apartment, the servants to manage—a task she loathed—and the tepid routine of shopping, of lunch with friends, the entertaining his work demanded, so much less absorbing than the re- sults of that entertainment she could experience only at second-hand. She seemed disinterested now in almost all they did. When he would ask her what she thought of business associates they had been host to, she would shrug. “They’re all right, I suppose.” “Don’t you like them?” he would ask. “Why should I? They’re not interested in me. They’re interested in you. You’re the one who does things.” He would be tender toward her, he told himself, he would try. But when his wife came back to bed, he lay unmoving, feigning sleep. She slipped qui- etly beneath the covers, her breathing which had quickened from exposure to the cold night air, resuming a slow rhythm. He began to think she was dozing. Then his wife shifted her position, and he knew she was wide awake. It annoyed him. He had been trying to think of a woman he had seen the day before, a woman he was expecting to see again soon. His wife’s presence be- side him, restless, tense like himself, acted as a reproach. He perspired from the effort of thinking about another woman while he lay beside her. There had been so many lies, so many little preparations, so many concealments, that he was invariably uneasy with her, found himself guarding the answers to the most casual questions she might ask. “Aren’t you asleep yet?” he asked abruptly out of the darkness. “No, I’m not. Why don’t you sleep?” she asked him. He grunted some unintelligible sound to conceal how wide-awake he felt. He was really furious at her. If she would only fall asleep! Once he could allow himself to think about the girl he would be visiting again in a few days, he knew that he could compose himself, could drift into slumber with pleas- ant anticipation. In the silence of the dark bedroom, he felt certain she knew what he was thinking about. “Do go to sleep,” he muttered. They both lay on their backs, each staring at the dark ceiling. Although they did not touch, he knew her body was rigid. With indifference, with re- sentment, with—no use concealing it from himself—distaste, he could just make out the small mound her pregnant body lifted against the sheets. “Can I ask you a question?” Her voice came quietly, evenly, from the space beside him. “Go ahead,” he answered, almost certain what it would be. “Have you been having any affairs?” “Yes,” he answered, and turned toward her, as though to receive whatever she might offer him, her tears, her rage, her hurt, even disdain if it should come. “Oh, I see,” said the wife, “I didn’t know.” “Yes,” he said again. It was out. He had a kind of relief. Now, perhaps they could talk about it. “How long has it been going on?” she asked in the same even voice. “I don’t know. Two years perhaps.” “You mean even before Baby was born.” “I suppose so.” He could sense her drawing further and further away from him. He had no idea at all of what she would say next. “You must have thought I was pretty dumb,” his wife said slowly. 24 • THE MAILER REVIEW
“I didn’t think anything at all.”
“You just kept . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence. “That time you went toChicago,” she said after the pause. He was reluctant to confess to her the details of each defection. It could not help but remind her of what he had said and how he had acted upon each occasion. Those functional lies, the gestures he had employed, the words he had uttered, would all seem monstrous to her now. “Let’s not go through the files,” he said. He did not mean it cruelly, but his voice conveyed arrogance. In the darkness, he felt a flurry of ineffectual blows against his body. She was weeping as she struck him. He jammed his face into the pillow, covered his head with his hands, and suffered what she gave, wishing her fists contained more force than a ten year old child’s. Sor- row flooded him. He wished he could tell her things she would believe. She stopped, and they lay beside one another again. Her breath came quickly; to his ears it was trapped breath, expressing the fright of a penned animal. Years ago they had had fights, mock fights, not without animosity, but certainly not without excitement. They had fought only to open them- selves to each other. Now, she said, “I’m sorry. It was stupid to hit you.” Her voice came with such manifest control that he sensed the bitterness it concealed. “No, I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Yes, I’m sure of that.” She pinched his arm as if she felt his attention straying. “You could have picked another time than when I’m … like this.” In the dark, her hand might have indicated the mound beneath the cover- let. “Of course, this makes it impossible for me to act the same as you.” He made no answer. After awhile, she said, “Do I know the women?” “No,” he said quietly. “Then why don’t you tell me their names?” “Is that important?” “I want to know,” she said stubbornly. He could understand this. Years ago in the army, there had been a month or two when her letters came irregularly. They had been married only a short time, and he had suffered intense jealousy. He had been con- vinced she was unfaithful to him, and in letter after frantic letter had first accused her, and then demanded to know the names of the men she saw. Norman Mailer • 25
Somehow, to have known the name of his rival, would have made the situ- ation less unbearable. “Are you going to tell me the names?” she persisted like a child. “No, I won’t.” “Well, why?” There was everything she had denied him, or grudgingly bestowed, these past years. The anger he felt toward her as a woman could be restrained no longer. “Because if I tell you their names, I will have to stop seeing them. I’m not ready to do that yet. There’ve been some pleasant moments, you see.” She lay back on the pillow, her arms over her chest, and stared at the ceil- ing. He tried to reach her. “I’m sorry,” he said again. She made no motion. He could only turn away from her and make some wretched attempt to fall asleep. It was quite impossible. His heart was beating, his mind was in a ferment. They must have a talk, he told himself. Perhaps they could work out some sort of arrangement. They were not stupid. She could understand as well as he how complicated things had become. Was it altogether impossible for her to understand that he needed certain kinds of freedom? She would demand such freedom in return. Could he give it to her? The husband asked himself, and decided that he did not care. If she so desired, he would not stand in her way. He could offer her equality at least. Again he found himself thinking of the Army. The barracks talk of the men had unmanned him. Their descriptions of women were so detailed. Out of his love and need for his wife, out of the privacy and intensity of their passion, he had been most vulnerable. He had a loathing at the thought of her giving herself to some man who cared nothing, who would laugh about her later with a dozen others for audience. How he had admonished her in his letters, how he had accused, how he had refused to believe her, searching each line she wrote for evasion and double-meaning. It was only after he re- turned from the war that he was able to believe she had been faithful to him. He could understand such jealousy now. He had been so young at the time, he had accomplished so little—no more than college and a year of work. There had been nothing exceptional about him, nothing but her love for him. She had thought him extraordinary. His wife turned on the bed-lamp. Her eyes were puffed, the tip of her nose was red. “Maybe I have something to tell you,” she whispered. 26 • THE MAILER REVIEW
He drew within himself, on guard, aware with a kind of compassion that her need to hurt him was keen. It could be only a reflection of how he had hurt her, and he wished to protest. Why must she still be so capable of pain? Her mouth quivered as she spoke. “What would you say if I told you I’ve had … certain experiences, too?” He felt a pang which set his blood racing, but it quickly ebbed, only a re- flex of the old anxiety. “Or, that is,” she went on, as if accuracy were the sharpest sword, “I had them once.” “While I was in the Army?” “Oh, what did you know?” she burst out. “I was so miserable, and you were such a pig. Your letters were terrible.” “I’m sorry about those letters,” he managed to say. “You don’t know how they made me feel.” Diffidently, he asked, “Who was the man?” “I don’t even remember his name. That’s how different I am from you.” Her mouth was quivering, and he watched it raptly. It seemed more alive than he or she; like a laceration in his own flesh it enabled him to feel her anguish. “He made me pregnant.” “What!” Abstractedly, she nodded her head, as if answering the question for her- self. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and it was all a mess. I was such a ninny. I botched everything.” “Look, you don’t have to …” He did not know what he wanted to say, and the words lapsed. “I had to have an operation. How do you like that?” “Oh, stop.” He turned his face to the pillow, his arms covering his head, exactly as he had lain earlier when she had been striking him. “I had an operation,” she repeated, “and when I was carrying Baby, I was afraid I might not be right, and he would be born not a normal baby. That was what I was worried about.” The husband began to weep. He cried openly, crying for her and the por- tion of her frozen silence she had uncovered to him. It was all so long ago, and she had suffered so needlessly. He fumbled toward her, and held her in an embrace. Quietly, she began to cry with him. “Oh, you poor kid, you poor kid,” he repeated over and over. He was not Norman Mailer • 27
entirely unaware of his generosity, and a nuance must have appeared in his voice. After awhile, his wife stopped weeping, and sat up. “I’m so sorry for you,” he said. His wife got out of bed, and slipped the wrapper over her gown. “Good night,” she said, “I’m going to sleep in nurse’s room.” “Come back,” he said. “I mean it.” She smiled distantly, bent over, offered her cheek for him to kiss. “It’s not too bad to be a man, is it?” she asked. With the lamp on, the husband lay alone in the Hollywood bed, emo- tions spent. He was sad, but his sadness was not unpleasant. One moved from jealousy to pity, one got older, and after awhile would it matter so ter- ribly that they had been young once, just ready to marry and passionate, sin- gle-minded and single-hearted about each other. Now, there was the larger world he had entered, and if she could not follow … What must it feel like to be a wife, he wondered.