The Dead of August by Panayotis Cacoyannis

Author:Panayotis Cacoyannis [Cacoyannis, Panayotis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: uploadable
Published: 2013-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

Two

There was no actual striptease. There was actually no sex, no final consummation. There was only a relentless progression of tantalizingly exponential foreplay, naturally with the women always completely in charge. The twelve chapters of the book were named after articles of clothing, and they followed the order in which these articles would be discarded in a striptease. Like consecutive episodes in a tense psychological thriller, the chapters (or stories) were steeped in a darkening mood, and running through all of them, binding the book together, was the thread of a menacing build-up: tenuous at first, it was marked in the early chapters by an infinitesimal but steady progression. The pace then quickened abruptly, until in the end it accelerated out of control, with Ray, the single male protagonist, being subjected to a barrage of intensifying cruelties by a succession of anonymous sadistically withholding women (referred to throughout as She). As from story to story he became increasingly emotionally attached (and correspondingly unhinged), it was precisely this cumulative burden of all the stories that finally drove him insane. When in vain this handsome and likeable man pleaded for mercy with the woman he had fallen head over heels in love with in Thong (Chapter 12), She laughed with contempt in his face: “You’re pathetic,” She told him. “A typical man!”

So who was this pathetic and typical man? The sketchy description given by June (as the narrator) was if anything quite sympathetic - what Ray himself might have included in a short personal ad: he was a genuine and good-looking man in his thirties, of average height, with light brown hair and light brown eyes. He worked in the media, had a good sense of humour, and he enjoyed watching foreign films. ‘She’, however, had not been so kind. While simultaneously leading him on, her various guises had steadily chipped away at his manhood with insidious abuse, until it fell on (who else but) his favourite ‘She’ to deliver the venomous coup de grâce. “Soft like jelly to the core,” I was this pathetic and typical man: all that June’s generic Ray was missing to be me was a generic foreskin. A foreskin, after all, might have justified the women’s aversion; as though to drive the point home that their cruelty was utterly gratuitous and senseless, Ray had been generously endowed by my wife with “the perfect penis: both circumcised and large.” So now I knew.

“What’s the matter, James? You’ve barely touched your food, is my chicken too plain for you? Mrs Dixon is a hard act to follow, I know.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m not very hungry.”

Strip-Tease Cholera hadn’t been the best hors d’oeuvre. I had finished it on Sunday just before dinner, and it had made me feel nauseous, suddenly neither phlegmatic nor laissez-faire.

“Is something wrong?”

Wiltshire was not about me, but I couldn’t help shrugging my shoulders.

“My dear James, I do hope you think of me as a friend. Or is that too presumptuous?”

“No, of course not,” I said, “but I’m not here to talk about myself.

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