know,â she said. âItâs hard to discern, these days, why you do the things you do. I like to think I know you better than most, but lately, I find you opaque. Your behavior is not driven by motivations I can understand.â
âAnd yet, despite the inadequacies of your own faculties of reason, your utmost concern is my educational standing,â I said.
âI canât tell if youâre trying to be clever, or if youâre evading the question.â
âNo, Violet, I was not expelled. When one is possessed of my potent charm and noble birth, one gets a lot of second chances.â
âNot so many chances as you might think. The Fellows are concerned about you. Your manner has become steadily more erratic since Edleston left, and since those poor reviews came in for Hours of Idleness. â
I swore so loudly that Violet recoiled a bit. I needed no reminder that my emergence into the pantheon of great Western poets had been met with less than universal acclaim. The Edinburgh Review, a periodical unfit for use as arse-wipe, had published a vicious attack upon my person disguised as a criticism of my poetry. They had dismissed my precocity by noting that it was unsurprising and unimpressive âthat very poor verses were written by a youth,â and suggested that I âforthwith abandon poetry, and turn [my] talents ⦠to better account.â
âMy poetry has elevated me to literary celebrity, to immortality, despite the barbed quips and puerile protests of that syphilitic crowd of ewe-fuckers who call themselves the critical establishment,â I said. âTheyâll get theirs soon enough; Iâm working on an answer, a satire. I will eviscerate them.â
âDo you really think you should be talking about eviscerating people in light of recent local events?â she asked. Everyone in town had heard about the murder by now.
Instead of responding, I crossed my arms and sank into the pillows.
She reached for me and caressed my neck. âI worry about you. Youâve become so thin, and you appear frail and sickly to me sometimes.â
âAnd yet I find that few women complain.â
She sighed and rolled onto her back. Even with my carnal needs thoroughly sated, I couldnât help staring at her breasts or, indeed, at any breasts available to be gazed upon at any time, ever. âIt vexes me that I must share you with others,â she said.
âAnd, I suspect, if you asked your husband, heâd express similar sentiments.â
âYouâre suddenly a moralist as well as an ascetic, Byron. I am not sure your charms benefit from your embrace of puritanical impulses.â
For some reason, I decided then to tell her about my visit to the womenâs rooming house, and what Iâd seen there. I told her about the smell of the ripening corpse, and about how the fingers of the girlâs bloodless hands had been slightly curled, on account of their tendons drying and tightening.
As I spoke, Violet drew herself up from her post-coital sprawl and gathered the sheets around her body.
âIâd always thought your preoccupation with the macabre was a hobby or some kind of affectation,â she said. âYou drink your opiates and write your poems, and you collect those grotesque trinkets, and you traipse about in monkâs robes in that grand, ruined church you own. Iâve come to enjoy the way your postures become your identity. But youâre taking this too far. To walk into that room with that corpse is a choice I cannot comprehend. This is a familyâs very real tragedy. Itâs not a story for you to tell about yourself. Darling, I fear you are descending into madness.â
âMurderers ought to be punished for their crimes.â
âBut they are punished routinely, all over Europe, without your participation. Why does this demand your involvement? What is at stake for you here?â
âHow can you