The Crapulent Major's killing and haunting

The Crapulent Major's killing and haunting presents the major’s death not as a finished act but as a burden that follows the unnamed narrator into exile. The narrator acknowledges having devised the plot that led to the major’s fate, visits the widow with money he intends as an appeal for forgiveness, and later experiences the dead man watching and addressing him from the seat beside him. The killing’s precise circumstances remain unstated; what the narrative makes unmistakable is the narrator’s sense of responsibility and the persistence of its consequences.

Responsibility for the Major’s Fate

Back in California, the narrator cashes a check, deposits half in his previously empty bank account, and keeps the other half in an envelope. After visiting The General and Madame, he drives to Monterey Park to see the crapulent major’s widow. He intends to give her the money, though he recognizes it could have gone toward revolutionary purposes. His reasoning turns that choice into a moral test: helping the family of an enemy may itself be revolutionary, and forgiveness may be more radical than political retaliation.

The narrator is not simply asking the widow to forgive the major. He admits that he is seeking forgiveness for what he did to her husband. The distinction makes his visit an acknowledgment of personal responsibility, even though the evidence does not specify how the major was killed or exactly what part the narrator played in the mechanics of the death. The narrator does say that he devised the plot that led to the major’s fate, while denying that he drilled the hole in the major’s head. The account leaves the boundaries between planning, action, and culpability unsettled rather than resolving them into a clean confession.

The Visit to the Widow

The narrator approaches the apartment expecting the possibility of a haunting. He sees no sign of what he did in the carport and senses no disturbance in the building, but that apparent calm does not reassure him. Although he does not believe in God, he believes in ghosts, because he fears the latter and expects no appearance from the former. When the door opens, he holds his breath, afraid the hand on the knob might belong to the dead major; instead, the widow greets him.

The widow receives him warmly and invites him into her apartment. Her bereavement has, in the narrator’s description, made her heavier rather than thinner. On the coffee table are Chinese tea and French ladyfingers, which she presses on him. The biscuits recall the same brand his mother favored in childhood, linking the uncomfortable attempt at reconciliation with an older memory of his mother and The narrator’s father. The visit therefore carries more than the immediate burden of the major’s death: familiar food and family memory enter the scene without easing the narrator’s guilt.

The Major’s Return

The major reappears during a drive when the narrator is chauffeuring The General. The General is unusually quiet and asks for the music to be turned off, while the exiled community is circulating rumors about Sonny’s article on the Fraternity and the Movement. In that atmosphere of accusation and hearsay, the narrator senses the major’s fat body spilling over the edge of the seat beside him. He does not turn to look directly, but sees the major facing him from the corner of his eye, the hole in his head figured as a third eye that lets the dead man keep watching.

The narrator recognizes his own part in the major’s fate: he says he did not make the hole, but did create the plot that brought the major to it. The dead man speaks as a spectator who already knows how the story will end. The General asks whether the narrator said something; the narrator denies it, and later the General tells him to stop talking to himself. No one else confirms the apparition, leaving the encounter suspended between ghost story and an inward reckoning the narrator cannot silence.

An Unfinished Reckoning

The major’s taunts extend beyond the drive. The narrator describes the dead man as an intrusive conversational partner who ignores every cue to leave, and recalls the major’s insistence that a plot acquires a life of its own: its creator is now the only one who can kill it. The narrator holds his tongue, though he imagines words he wants to say, and wishes the major would disappear from his life. The haunting thus turns the original conspiracy into a continuing obligation: the narrator cannot treat the major’s death as a completed political maneuver while its author still feels answerable for it.

That desire for disappearance echoes an earlier wish concerning The narrator’s father. After receiving news of The narrator’s mother’s death, the narrator had written to Man that he wished his father dead; the father did die after the narrator returned, but his death brought no satisfaction. This parallel does not equate the two deaths, but it places the major’s haunting within the narrator’s broader recognition that a death does not necessarily end a relationship or settle its grievance. The widow’s visit offers an attempted act of repair, while the major’s return makes clear that forgiveness, responsibility, and the fate of the plot remain unresolved.