Murder/Suicide as Catharsis: Why?

Main Entry: ca·thar·sis

Function: noun
Pronunciation: k&-'thär-s&s
Inflected Form(s): plural ca·thar·ses
/-"sez/
Etymology: New Latin, from Greek katharsis, from kathairein to cleanse, purge, from katharos
1 : PURGATION
2 a : purification or purgation of the emotions (as pity and fear) primarily through art b : a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual renewal or release from tension
3 : elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it expression

Murder on stage has been popular entertainment for about 2600 years give or take a century. Murder off-stage, of course, is another story, with many guises and always a hideous waste of everything worthwhile, leaving aside warfare which hopefully is less frequently murder than it has been through history.

On stage one of the most moving murders, I like to imagine, was a production of Othello with Paul Robeson playing the Moor.** His operatic voice makes it easy for me to imagine him in the role.

( ** He played the role on Broadway; Uta Hagen played opposite him as Desdemona.)

There has been a real life murder in the apartment building in which we live, all six of us.  I casually know the victim, and the killer. Both are African American. Only a few days ago I found  the killer leaning against my car. At that time I thought of him as dangerous, but not murderous. I knew he was a drug addict, often apparently sober. I stopped dead in my tracks. "Wat's you lookin' at Nigger?" he asked. I was used to his belligerent tone, but wary anyway. In his spiel of some kind of cover up he must have called me a "Nigger" ten times. I was curiously flattered. That he found we had ANYTHING in common was kinda nice. He's a magnificent looking, tall figure of a man with a commanding voice, cheapened by using it too often and for nothing.  I said, "Well, you are leaning against my car.... " and by then he was slowly walking away still muttering "Nigger" over and over.  

A few days earlier I'd waited while his Black girl friend moved their (his, but probably with her money) car so I could exit to the street. This was the same young woman who had, perhaps a year ago, asked me to call 911 as he was threatening her with a knife. I did so. That time he hastily exited the premises apparently not holding anything against me.  But this time he screamed at her for moving the car so I could squeeze by en route to the street, as if she had humiliated him by accomodating me so meekly. She was by temperament timid, sweet, and obedient. She could, however, on occasion be fiery, loud, and operatic just like her crazed boyfriend. Many times we had heard their domestic arguments carried on at the top of their lungs night and day.  

He was always driving different cars, the most recent a Mazda sportscar, and two years ago he had stashed in the building parking lot, where more than likely he paid no rent, two 40 year old Cadillac sedans each yards long; his fantasy maybe was to recondition them, ha ha ha. The police ordered them removed. The cars, not the humans.

Last night long after midnight we could hear them in angry, operatic high dudgeon. I expected the building manager to step in. He did not. While it was still dark I went early to retrieve my recently-missing, morning LA Times. Shockingly I found the driveway taped off with yellow 'crime scene' tape. In the street light the yellow looked white which disarmed me; yellow tape would have stopped me in my tracks. I went downstairs and crossed the driveway curious about a huge coil of 'white' tape on the low wall separating us from the house next door. "That's ours" said a soft-spoken, blonde police woman. She was standing with three other police officers, two males and another woman.  I meekly went back upstairs.

We knew something really bad had happened but I simply assumed that #1 "Nigger" had beat up his girlfriend. No surprise there I told myself.

Toward midday I planned to go swimming and wondered if I'd be confined to the building while an investigation continued. I asked anyway. I was given a green light. Almost immediately I came back to the police car window and asked without preamble, "Is it drugs, or murder?" He replied "Murder; well, she's dead," and motioned toward their upstairs apartment. That's what I'd finally deduced by the fact there were still so many patrol cars present. "No surprise there," I said. Oops, he then asked me if I would give a statement. I said I would, and I did.

Three hours later when I returned from swimming my son told me that she had shot herself through the mouth. Neither my son, nor myself, and apparently not the police, believed it was suicide.

Time will unfold the facts no doubt. I cannot explain my disappointment that he has apparently tried to not only kill, but pull a fast one. I hope he hangs. Mind you, that's just one nigger to another Nigger.

Barry

(To be continued, I guess....)

((I swam 1,700 meters and felt like a million...))

(((My wife is somewhat po'd that I spoke to the police at all.)))