“A FEW NIGHTS AGO,” I began, “Emilia was not feeling well, and did not want me near her lest I catch her illness. So I stayed in Cassio’s room overnight. I had a terrible toothache and I could not sleep. Cassio was dead to the world, but he was also talking in his sleep.” This was not the best story to tell, since Emilia could so easily gainsay it, but nothing else came to mind. However skilled I was turning out to be at deception, I was not actually a very able liar.
“Get to the point,” Othello said with dull misery.
“Yes. So. In his sleep, I heard him say, Desdemona, darling, we must be wary and hide our love.” I said it without any inflection, a dutiful recitation. Othello started; I ignored him. “And then he grabbed my hand in the bed, and said, sweetheart, and then he kissed me—” Othello scrambled to his feet and stared at me, horrified. I continued, as if oblivious. “And then he put his leg over mine, and sighed, and kissed me again, and said, Damn that Moor.”
Othello looked as if he had been stabbed. He wrapped his thick arms around his middle and turned again to vomit over the parapet. This time it was dry heaves.
“Othello, it was but his dream,” I said. That part of me that still loved him wanted to chastise and counsel him: You fool, why do you believe so easily? When did you become so pathetically credulous?
“I’ll tear her to pieces!” he shrieked abruptly toward the sea.
“No, you will not,” I said, shocked. “Do not be rash. It’s just a dream—dreamers often lie. And it was his dream, General, not hers. We have seen nothing. Desdemona herself is honest, I am sure.” Could I use the handkerchief to damn Cassio but not Desdemona? I had no choice but to hazard it. “Do you recall that strawberry handkerchief you gave your wife?”
“Of course.”
“That handkerchief—or something very similar to it, but I’m sure it was your wife’s—I saw Cassio wipe his face with it this morning.”
Something terrible happened to Othello then. His face went slack, and all the light went out of his eyes. He stopped breathing for a long moment, and then gasped, without energy, to take in air. His eyelids drooped, as if they would close without permission.
“If it’s that handkerchief—” he said, his voice like gravel, and he could not continue.
The miscalculation on my part had been in thinking Othello’s passion would rush through the same channels as mine. But mine was bent on Cassio, and his, on Desdemona. No matter how this enterprise might have unfurled, Desdemona would always have been Othello’s target. I could only get to Cassio through Desdemona. Well then, so be it. I sent a passing plea to the patron saint of defenseless women—but I was proving capable of anything, so I could certainly redress the damage later. Somehow. Surely.
“If it’s that handkerchief,” I said somberly, “it speaks against her.”
Othello stood bolt upright and shrieked toward the blue sky. “That whore! That bitch!” I looked around warily—the wind blew his words away, but the guards around the parapet could see that he was raging about something.
“General, please,” I said, holding out a steadying arm.
He brushed it aside furiously. “Iago, watch me! All the love I ever felt for her: gone!” He blew into the air. “Blown to heaven! That’s it, it’s gone!” He pounded the flats of his hands against his chest. “Hate! That’s all that is in here now is hate and vengeance! I will be avenged!”
“Calm yourself, General,” I pleaded, even as I realized where this was going. A wave of dizziness almost knocked me over: that words, mere words, my words, could wreak such havoc . . . had I ever known another man with more power than I had right now?
“I want blood!” Othello shouted to the sky. “Blood, do you hear me? Blood!”
“I beg you, be calm,” I said. “You’ll change your mind when you are calmer.”
“Never, Iago!” he declared furiously. “I am unbendable: no looking back, to find a love that has been mocking me from the beginning. There will be blood shed in punishment for this!”
He dropped to his knees on the parapet, as a sudden, terrifying calm washed over him. His placed his right hand over his heart and intoned:
“As the stars are fire, I hereby take a sacred vow to honor the words I have just spoken.”
He began to rise as panic poked my gut. I could not believe how quickly this was happening, but it was happening, and I had to stay abreast of it. Seeing him in his full rage, I realized: the best way to steer this ship now was to make Othello captain of it. He was more engaged in it than I had ever expected either of us to be. He would not stay this angry—nobody could. And he would repent of this vow when he had calmed. But in the moment, the heady satisfaction of playing Aeolus and putting the winds into those sails . . .
As he began to rise, I pressed down on his shoulder. “Do not rise yet,” I said solemnly. I knelt beside him, and took his hands in mine. “As the sun does move, let it witness here that Iago gives up his will, his wit, his hands, and heart, into Othello’s service. Let my general command me, and I will obey without remorse, no matter how bloody the business.” I said this looking down, as if in prayer. Now I glanced up to see him, and found tears in his eyes. He embraced me with the fervent warmth of an ally and friend. I had not felt so close to him since before Desdemona had plucked him by the sleeve in Brabantio’s tile-plated room.
“Iago, do you mean that?” he said quietly.
“Of course I do.”
His voice dropped to a whisper. “Then let me hear you say, within three days, that Cassio is not alive.”
I knew I would not do it; I knew I would not have to. I knew he would rescind the order later, and so, there was no harm in agreeing to it now—but oh, was there great satisfaction to hear him ask it.
“My friend is dead,” I said at once. “It’s done at your request.” A hesitation, a prick of conscience. Just to be safe: “But let her live.”
Othello stood up abruptly and spat to one side. “Damn her, the harlot! Damn her!”
“Damn her, but don’t kill her,” I pressed.
Othello looked back at me, and held out a hand to help me rise. “Come inside with me, help me decide how to kill her.”
“General—” I began, fighting real panic now.
He did not mean this, he did not really mean this, this was insanely irrational, he would calm down. But just as I had brought him so skillfully to this state, it was now my challenge to ease him back to reason—which surely I could do, as slyly as I’d led him here. I had total power over this man, and he had none at all over me.
“General, listen to me when I say—”
“Iago,” Othello interrupted passionately, “you are my lieutenant now.”
“I am yours forever,” I said immediately.