Samuel seemed to take the story in stride, enjoying the plot and the complex Shakespearean prose. The play was not overly long, and by the end of the week we were in Act V, Scene 2. Samuel was reading the scene intently, and I was listening to his fluid voice relay the intricate tale without a single stumble or trip. I would have enjoyed just listening to his melodic cadence if it weren’t for poor Desdemona’s impending doom. I tried to hold my tongue and listen patiently, but found myself continually interrupting.
“She is innocent! Why is it so easy to believe she would betray him?” I was truly appalled.
Samuel looked up at me calmly and replied, “Because it’s always easier to believe the worst.”
I looked at him in disbelief. “It is not!” I sputtered. “I can’t believe you would say that! Wouldn’t you give the benefit of the doubt to someone you claimed to love?” The ease in which Othello accepted her betrayal was completely foreign to me. “And why would Othello believe Iago over Desdemona? I don’t care how honest they think Iago is! Emilia even told Othello she thought he was being manipulated and tricked!”
Samuel sighed and tried to read to the end of the scene. I jumped in again. I couldn’t help it. My sense of outrage was on overdrive.
“But he said, ‘I loved not wisely, but too well!’” I was dismayed. “He had it totally backwards! He did love wisely-she was worthy of his love…she was a wise choice! But he didn’t love well enough! If he had loved Desdemona more, trusted her more, Iago wouldn’t have been able to divide them.” I longed once again for Jane Eyre, where righteousness and principle won out in the end. Jane got her man, and she did it with style. Desdemona got her man, and he smothered her.
Samuel closed the book, slid it in to his backpack, and looked at me affectionately. “It’s over and done Josie, you never have to read it again.”
“But....I want to understand why....why would he kill her? The one he is supposed to honor, protect, and defend.” I was honestly devastated by the whole play. I felt a lump rising in my throat. To make matters worse, Samuel seemed outrageously unperturbed. I dug through my bag, looking for my Walkman. I shoved my earphones on and pushed the play button savagely. Then I sat back, squeezed my eyes shut, and tried to concentrate on the music. Chopin’s ‘Berceuse in D-flat’ floated out of the earphones. After a few moments, I groaned in despair as the lovely melody seemed to underline the horror of innocent Desdemona’s fate.
Samuel plucked the earphones off of my head, causing my eyelids to flutter open, and I stared at him stonily.
“What?” I mumbled.
“You are taking this too seriously,” He said simply.
I jumped right back in with both feet. “Othello was so proud, and he was so accomplished! Yet he was so easy to manipulate!” I argued passionately.
Samuel deliberated for a minute. “Othello was a man who’d had to fight and scrape to get where he was. He probably felt like at any moment his ship could spring a leak, and if it did? He would be the first one thrown overboard, even though it was his ship.”
“So Othello was an easy target?” I muttered. “Easy because his pride was really a front for his insecurity?”
“Insecurity...past experience... life…who knows? His pride demanded that he seek justice. He had worked too hard to be mocked by those closest to him.”
“But then . . . he was cuckolded by his pride - not Desdemona.”
“Ahhh, irony.” Samuel smirked at me then and cuffed me lightly on the chin.
He handed me back my earphones, twisting his side outward so we could share Chopin. I studied the strong lines of his face, his black eyes growing unfocused as he zoned into the music. He was so striking, and his face grew serene as he listened. I felt increasingly bereft as the music played on, and I continued to watch his face, a face that had become so precious to me.
The bus chugged violently and jerked to a stop. Being the last ones on in the morning meant we were the first ones off every afternoon, as Mr. Walker worked backwards through his route. Samuel pulled his earphone off, handed the headset to me, and picked up my bag so that I could shove them inside. We swayed on unsteady legs down the vibrating aisle and down the steep steps into the late March sun. It bounced blindingly off the melting snow, and as Samuel started on his way I called after him, squinting against its brightness. He turned, eyebrows raised, swinging his backpack over one shoulder.
“Is love really so complicated?” I asked desperately. “Is it really so hard to trust? I don’t understand.” My mind flickered back to 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13. “Did Othello even love Desdemona to begin with?”
Samuel looked at me then, and there was a wisdom and understanding in his gaze that made me feel incredibly naive.
He closed the few steps between us. “Othello loved Desdemona; he was crazy about her. That was never the problem. Othello’s problem was that he never felt worthy of Desdemona in the first place. He was the ‘black Moor’ - she was the ‘fair Desdemona.’” Samuel’s tone was conversational, but there was a certain wistfulness in his face. “It was too good to be true, too sweet to be reality for too long, so when someone set out to destroy his belief in her, it made more sense to doubt her than to believe that she had truly loved him in the first place.”
“But she did!”
Samuel shrugged his shoulders a little, dismissing this. He turned away again.