Particionamiento del dominio

Short story written between 1942 and 1946.

SYNOPSIS

Anthony Burns is a small, pale, and timid warehouse worker. A coworker suggests Burns have a therapeu- tic massage to relieve a chronic backache. Burns becomes sexually aroused at the prospect of having a massage and privately hopes to relieve more than his back strain. One Saturday afternoon in November, Burns goes to a Turkish bath and massage parlor. He discovers that all of the masseurs are African Ameri- can, and their bodies amid the billowy white back- drops appear immense, fierce, and godlike.

Burns’s masseur commands that he remove his clothes, and he watches Burns as he fumbles out of them. The masseur instructs Burns to lie on the table and Burns eagerly obeys. The Black Masseur then pours alcohol all over Burns’s body. The stinging sensation spreads over Burns, leaving him gasping as he tries to cover his groin. The masseur begins the massage by hitting Burns hard in the stomach. After this initial violence, Burns feels pleasure in the masseur’s fists and becomes sexually aroused. The masseur is pleased at this response and continues the massage by flipping Burns over onto his belly. He pummels Burns’s shoulders and buttocks, each strike more forceful than the last.

Burns frequents the Turkish bath and remains loyal to his particular masseur, who enjoys domi- nating the small white body that lies prostrate before him. As the winter progresses, the massages become more brutal, and on several occasions Burns is severely wounded. In one instance, he limps into work with broken ribs. During his next

visit to the baths, the Black Masseur fractures his leg, and Burns cries out in anguish. His howl echoes through the building and draws the attention of the manager. When the manager discovers the numer- ous bruises on Burns’s small, willing white frame, he promptly dismisses both of them. The Black Masseur lifts Burns from the massage table and car- ries him to his lodgings. Their relationship contin- ues for several months into the spring.

There is a church in the next building, across from the Black Masseur’s room. It is now the Lenten sea- son, and a fiery sermon erupts out of the church and oozes into their room. The minister in the church bellows the Crucifixion story in gruesome and agoniz- ing detail to admonish his congregation to repent. In the masseur’s room, atonement is physically at hand as the Black Masseur administers his most violent massage yet. The minister reaches a fevered pitch and shouts, “Suffer, suffer, suffer!” (210), and his con- gregation becomes impassioned and delirious. They erupt in a frenzy and stream out of the church and into the streets, tearing their clothes in anguish and grief for Christ’s death. Burns and the Black Masseur are similarly inflamed and consumed, to the point that Burns is nearly dead. In a whisper, he reminds the Black Masseur what he must do to complete the act. The Black Masseur gathers Burns’s broken body and places him on a table and begins to feast on his flesh. This act of communion lasts 24 hours, until Burns’s bones have been picked clean. The Black Masseur places Burns’s bones in a bag, carries them to the pier, and drops them into the lake. He acquires a new position at another bathhouse and waits for his next Anthony Burns to appear.

COMMENTARY

This Poe-like tale encapsulates Williams’s view that the essence of life is “grotesque and gothic” (Brown, 264). In this and similar narratives, Williams uses an exaggerated form to capture the “true essence of life” and the “outrageousness of reality” (ibid.). Williams believed that truth was often more accessible when a writer was willing to “ignore realism” (ibid.).

This story also literally and metaphorically fea- tures the prominent Williams theme of otherness. The story’s principal characters and their relation- ship are manifestations of otherness and opposition:

white/black, powerlessness/powerfulness, rich/poor, master/servant, weak/strong, small/large, sacred/pro- fane, and pain/pleasure. However, for Williams, opposing forces are always two sides of the same coin. As he often reminds his audience, desire and death are two streetcars on the same tramline. Therefore, when opposites meet in “Desire and the Black Masseur” they not only attract, but willfully collide, and their conflict produces a blissful, sacra- mental result.

Many critics share Ren Draya’s view that this intriguing and engaging tale is not only a master- fully written work, but one of Williams’s most “carefully crafted,” a story that overwhelmingly “succeeds as serious, startling fiction” (Draya, 650).

PUBLICATION HISTORY

In his Memoirs, Williams recalled that PAUL

BOWLESwrote a short story similar to “Desire and

the Black Masseur” called “The Delicate Prey.” When Bowles asked Williams to read the story, Williams was surprisingly shocked by its content. Williams quickly advised Bowles not to publish it in America; likewise, Williams did not publish “Desire and the Black Masseur” openly. It was published in the short story collection One Arm (1948), which was issued only in private editions and was not made available to bookstores for the general public. Although it contains some of his most imaginative writing, Williams feared that its content could potentially have been damaging to his career. Now generally available, the story has received recognition as a major achievement in Williams’s fiction canon.

“Desire and the Black Masseur” was published in New Directions in Prose and Poetry 10: An Annual Exhibition Gallery of New and Divergent Trends in Literature (1948) and in Williams’s Collected Stories in 1985.

PRODUCTION HISTORY

“Desire and the Black Masseur” was adapted for the screen by the French film director Claire Dev- ers. Her adaptation Noir et blanc (Black and White) won the Camera d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988.

CHARACTERS

Black Masseur He is the masseur who falls in love with Anthony Burns. The Masseur is a dark, statuesque, godlike man, in the billowing white backdrop of the Turkish baths. He administers bru- tal sadomasochistic massages to Burns, enjoying the domination of a white body on his table. He delights in the reversal of a master-slave relation- ship. The Masseur is completely infatuated by Burns and daydreams about him when the two are apart. The Masseur is happy to consume Burns, just as Burns savors being consumed.

Burns, Anthony Anthony Burns is a small, timid, and birdlike man, who is childlike in his appearance and actions. He finds solace from the world in his relationship with a Black Masseur who works at a local Turkish bath. Burns longingly anticipates the beatings he receives during his massages from his beautiful, large, and dark masseur. Burns harbors guilty feelings about his passions—but believes his sins are atoned for in the beatings he receives. He longs for the simulta- neous pleasure and pain. Burns awakens to life through this passion; however, the massages con- sume him and ultimately lead to his death.

FURTHER READING

Brown, Cecil. “Interview with Tennessee Williams,” in

Conversations with Tennessee Williams, edited by

Albert Devlin. Jackson: University Press of Missis- sippi, 1986, pp. 251–283.

Draya, Ren. “The Fiction of Tennessee Williams,” in

Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, edited by Jac Tharpe.

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1977, pp. 647–662.