The English: A portrait of a People

In London, I stayed at a hotel in the city district of Hampstead. A twenty- year-old Englishwoman lived above my room. Every evening her lover, a fifty-year-old man, came to see her. He, immediately upon arrival, began to beat her. The noise of this fight was heard throughout the building, on all its four floors. There, the girl's screams, the sounds of broken dishes, and overturned furniture were mixed. This went on for several months. Until she left the hotel, neither the owner of the hotel nor the people who lived there complained to anyone. A week later, in the basement, in the kitchen, I asked a black man what was going on? Maybe we should call the police and end it all, free this unfortunate girl from the hands of her cruel lover? The guy grinned and said, apparently you arrived here recently, and do not know the situation here. Then he explained to me, this man was beating her at her request. For the girl, this beating, this mistreatment, is a pleasure. That is, her lover beats her out of pity for her, out of compassion. At the end of the conversation, the African said, if you live in England longer, you will see a lot of this. When I moved to a hotel on the other side of the city, I saw the same thing there. A young Negro and his partner, a young Englishwoman, stayed in the next room. This black man also beat her severely every night. They made a terrible noise. And in the morning they greeted me, smiling as if nothing special had happened last night. Throughout the day, they were very courteous to each other. It was evident that the guy was beating her at her request to please her. I realized that this is an English disease. And it is widespread among the British.