From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [197]
“Then for a while he stopped altogether. It seemed natural enough to me; I supposed he was getting all he wanted elsewhere; how was I to know he was being treated for gonorrhea? Respectable women arent even supposed to know what gonorrhea is, are they? So I didn’t think much about it when he came around this one particular night, a little drunker than usual.
“Of course, a little later on I realized. Well, maybe he was just too drunk to remember. Or maybe he just was so worked up that he forgot. You know how those things are.”
“Jesus!” Warden said. He had long ago set the bottle down. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “Jesus Jesus Christ!”
Karen smiled at him lividly.
“I’m almost finished now,” she said. “Just a little more. I want to tell you about Stark.
“You see, Dana had taken me to his doctor, the one who was treating him. In town, of course. He would have been kicked out of course, if he had gone to the Post Hospital. I don’t think the doctor liked him very well over it, but then he was a very scientific little man. Bald and scientific and very objective, like all true scientists, and quite rich, lately. I never knew where Dana got his name, some fellow sufferer on the Post, I imagine. Anyway, the doctor did a thriving business; Texas always was a bad place for gonorrhea. Too near the border, you know.”
“Listen,” Warden said tensely. “Listen. Please.”
“No, no, let me finish. I’m almost through. Stark was after I came back. I had to go away on a trip, you see. Its harder to cure in women than in men. Almost always it entails a hysterectomy. I was gone quite a while. While I was gone Stark came in as a recruit. He was only a kid, I suppose. A regular bragging kid who made a pass at me as a matter of pride. I think he was scared half to death when I took him up on it, me being the Lieutenant’s wife. But I had to do something. I had to clean myself out. I was dirty. I had been dirty for so very long and I had been trying so hard to convince myself I wasnt dirty, that it was like what all women had to go through. But quite suddenly I no longer gave a damn what other women went through or didnt go through. I knew I was dirty. Maybe they could kid themselves. I couldnt any longer. I knew. You can see what I mean, cant you?”
“Listen,” Warden said.
“Stark was the instrument I used to clean myself, the first one that came to hand after I got back. Any instrument would have done as well. It only happened once, and it hurt me physically, and I loathed it. But afterwards I was clean. You can see, cant you, how I had to be clean?”
“Yes,” Warden said, “I can see how. But listen.”
“Thats all,” Karen smiled lividly. “I’m through now. Now I’ll go.”
She sat and looked at him and the livid smile gradually, very gradually, faded off her face and then she was just looking at him, sheer absolute nothingness that was too tired to give a damn on her face. She collapsed kind of sickly down on the bed and lay there sickly, not unconscious, not fainted, not crying, not vomiting, not anything. She was like a recently pregnant woman who has for a long time felt this thing growing and growing in her, this man-made tumor that has to be got out of her but that she is afraid of getting out of her, and then finally does get it out of her, and collapses kind of sickly with relief into sheer nothingness for a while.
Warden got the bottle and took it over to her. “Listen,” he said urgently. “Listen to me.”
“You want me to go now, dont you?” she said hollowly. “You want to get this rottenness out of your sight, dont you?” She hoisted herself up. “Well, I’ll go in a minute. I