All the Colors of Darkness

“Certainly not.” Banks bent over and kissed her. A taste of things to come.

Sophia held her glass out. “I’ll have one more glass of that spectacular Amarone before you sit down,” she said, “then I think it’ll be bedtime.”

Banks poured the wine from the bottle on the low table and passed her the glass. “Hungry?” he asked.

“For what? Leftover chicken chow mein?”

“I’ve got some nice Brie,” said Banks. “And a slab of farmhouse cheddar. Extra old.”

“No, thanks. It’s a bit late for me to start eating cheese.” Sophia pushed back a stray lock of hair from her cheek. “Actually, I was thinking about the play.”

“What about it?” Banks asked, filling his own glass and sitting beside her.

Sophia turned to face him. “Well, what do you think it’s about?”

“Othello? Oh, jealousy, betrayal, envy, ambition, greed, lust, revenge.

The usual stuff of Shakespearean tragedies. All the colors of darkness.”

Sophia shook her head. “No. I mean, well, yes, it is about all those themes, but there’s something else, a subtext, if you like, another level.”

“Too deep for me.”

Sophia slapped his knee. “No, it’s not. Listen. Do you remember at the very beginning, when Iago and Rodrigo wake up Desdemona’s father and tell him what’s going on?”

“Yes,” said Banks.

“Well, did you notice anything about the language Iago uses?”

“It’s very crude, what you might expect from a soldier, and a racist, something about a black ram tupping a white ewe and making the beast with two backs. Which, by the way—”

“Stop it.” She brushed his hand away from her knee. “It’s also very powerful language, very visual. It plants images in the hearer’s imagination. Remember, he also talks about Desdemona being covered by a Barbary horse. That’s the language of the stud farm. Just imagine what sort of images it must have put into her father’s mind, how unbearable 1 3 2

P E T E R R O B I N S O N

it must have been to think of, to see, his daughter that way.”

“That’s how Iago works,” said Banks. “He plants ideas, pictures, lets them grow, bides his time.” Banks thought of Sophia saying, “So I’ve been told,” and the images it created in his mind.

“Exactly. And why?”

“Because he feels slighted in his career and he thinks Othello has slept with his wife.”

“So most of the poison comes from within himself. Thwarted ambition, cuckoldry?”

“Yes, but he spews it out on others.”

“How?”

“Mostly in words.”

“Exactly.”

“I know what you mean,” Banks said, “but I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“Just what we’ve been saying. That it’s a play about the power of language, about the power of words and images to make people see, and what they see can drive them insane. Iago uses exactly the same technique on Othello later as he did on Desdemona’s father. He presents him with unbearable images of Desdemona’s sexual activities with another man. Not just the idea of it, but images of it, too. He paints pictures in Othello’s mind of Cassio fucking Desdemona. I mean, what real evidence does Othello have of his wife’s unfaithfulness?”

“There’s the handkerchief,” said Banks. “But that was fabricated, planted evidence. Verdi made rather a lot of it, too, mind you. And Scarpio does the same thing with the fan in Tosca.”

Sophia gave him a look. Verdi and Puccini were out of her pur-view. “Other than the damn handkerchief ?”

“Iago tells him that Cassio had a dream about Desdemona, said things in his sleep. Did things.”

“Yes, and that in this dream, he—Cassio—tried to kiss Iago, and get his leg over, thought he was Desdemona. Othello’s already half-crazed with jealousy by then, and bit by bit Iago feeds him even more unbearable images until he’s over the edge. And he kills her.”

“Of course,” Banks said, “you could also argue that Othello did the same thing with Desdemona, too. He even admits to winning her over A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S

1 3 3

by telling her stories of battles and exotic places and creatures. Putting pictures in her mind. Cannibals. Anthropophagi. Those things with their heads below their shoulders. Real life and soul of the party.”

Sophia laughed. “It worked, though, didn’t it? It got Desdemona all steamed up. And you’re right. Othello benefited by the same technique. As chat-up lines go it can’t have been such a bad one. It works both ways. Language can impress and it can inf lame the passions. In this case jealousy. Othello must have been a man who was used to possessing things. Even women. It’s a play about the power of stories, language, imagery.”

“For good or for evil.”