I Confess Read Free Page B

other things."
    "You don't love her, she doesn't love you, but you worry about her. Because she's your wife."
    I nodded.
    "And of course that's something quite different. Because she's your wife she has to be treated with consideration. Because of her I have to put up with everything. Whereas I ... what am I? I'm nothing but a common, dirty little . . .".
    "Yes."
    ''What!" She turned on me.
    "That was what fascinated me in you," T explained, "Don't be angry, Yolanda. It was meant as a compliment. I thought it would please you."
    She came up to me. "It pleases me enormously," she said. Her smile was icy. "It was the nicest compliment you could have paid me. I'm sure it's a compliment you could never have paid your wife." Now we were standing close again, both of us were smiling. "If she'd been a common little whore, you would never have been interested in me, isn't that right, Jimmy?"
    "No, Yolanda."
    "If you could let yourself go at home, you'd never have come to me."

    "Certainly not."
    'Tor that I want to thank you, darling. It was sweet of you. And now / want to say something nice too." * "Yes?"
    "Yes. I want to tell you what you are."
    "That isn't necessary. I know what I am." - "No you don't. That's why it's time somebody told you, Jimmy. It's important for your development as a writer. Perhaps you can do something with it in your next film. That is—^if they decide to let you write another film." She smiled broadly; I could see her strong, white teeth. She came closer, threw her arms around me, laid her head against my cheek. "So listen carefully. You are a poor, miserable little bourgeois, Jimmy. One of the worst kind. One of the sad ones who get everything all wrong. A phoney. A sordid Uttle phoney." , "Thanks."
    "You're welcome. But I'm not through. You're one of those poor Johns who Jook at every woman with raunchy eyes, first at her legs, and then imagine her always in the same position. Only your imagination is much stronger than your talent. Which is why you're forever on the lookout for new flesh, forever disappointed and restless. As I just said—a pitiful little bourgeois, a very, very sad specimen. In love, as in your profession—mediocre." She stroked my cheek with hers and her hands moved caressmgly down my back. "An insignificant little bourgeois with mile-wide inhibitions and complexes."
    "Quite the opposite from you."
    "Quite the opposite from me."
    "Which is why you tendered your friendly invitation."
    *T tendered my friendly invitation because at the time I still thought something could be done with you, that it might be fun "
    "... and I had lots of money."
    "... and you had lots of money."
    **But I was a disappointment."
    "Yes, Jimmy."

    "Not financially."
    "No. Not financially."
    "But in other respects."
    "In other respects. I think I shall decide to give yon up. T don't want to say that you have no talent, but I don't think you're going to change. No, I'm sure you're not. You're going to stay just the way you are. With your wife whom you don't love, with your work that you don't enjoy, with your chronic dissatisfaction, your constant searching, your waking dreams . . ."
    "Yolanda," I said, "you can stop now."
    "Why? Why should I stop, dear Jimmy?"
    "Because enough is enough."
    "But is it enough? Shouldn't I go on to tell you that you're a sap, a failure, a nothing?"
    "No."
    "I think it would do you good."
    "I don't think so."
    "But I do."
    "Yolanda," I said, smiling, "if you say it once more I'll bash your head in."
    She smiled, then she said it again.
    I struck her in the face.
    The cheek I hit turned a fiery red. T had hit hard. Yolanda was still smiling, but her cigarette had dropped out of her hand. It lay on the carpet. She toed into one of her slippers and put it out.
    "Now you can go," she said.
    "I'll say."
    "And get yourself a new secretary."
    "I'll do that."
    I walked to the door, turned around once*more, asked, "Why did it have to end like this? Wouldn't it have been simpler to just