Sophie's Choice - William Styron [113]
(Oh, André Gide, prie pour moi! This telling becomes well-nigh intolerable. How do I make sense of, make credible—much less human—the miseries of the next few hours? Upon whose shoulders rests the blame for this gratuitous torture—mine, Leslie’s, the Zeitgeist’s? Leslie’s analyst’s? Certainly someone has a lot to account for in turning poor Les out upon her cold and bleak plateau. For that is exactly what she calls it—a plateau—this forlorn limbo where she wanders solitary and freezing.)
We get started again at about midnight on a couch underneath the Degas. There is a clock somewhere in the house, striking the hour, and at two o’clock I am no further advanced than I was in the taxi. We have fallen into a pretty desperate but generally silent tug of war by now, and I have been working on every tactic in the book—trying to grope tit, thigh, crotch. No go. Except for that gaping oral cavity of hers and that prodigiously active tongue, she might as well be clad in breastplates, full armor. The martial image is apt in another way because soon after I begin making my more aggressive forays there in the semi-dark, fingering the arch of her thigh or trying to get my paw tucked in between her clamped knees, she yanks that flailing tongue out of my mouth and mutters things like: “Whoa there, Colonel Mosby!” Or: “Back up there, Johnny Reb!” All spoken in an attempt to approximate my Confederate accent, and in a light-hearted, giggly but Nonetheless I Mean Business voice that sweeps over me like icewater. Again, throughout this entire charade I really can hardly believe the actuality of what is happening, simply cannot accept the fact that after her absolutely breath-taking overture, all those unequivocal invitations and blazing come-hithers, she is falling back on this outrageous flimflam. Sometime after two o’clock, driven to the brink of madness, I resort to doing something which even while I am in the process of doing it I know will provoke a drastic reaction from Les—though how drastic I can scarcely predict. Still embroiled in our oceanic wrestle, I’m sure she is going to choke both of us on the gagged scream she gives as she realizes what she has got hold of. (This is after I silently unzip my fly and place her hand on my cock.) She sails off the sofa as if someone has lit a fire beneath her and at that moment the evening and all my wretched fantasies and dreams turn to a pile of straw.
(Oh, André Gide, comme toi, je crois que je deviendrai pédéraste!)
Later she bawls like a little baby as she sits beside me, trying to explain herself. For some reason her awful sweetness, her helplessness, her crestfallen and remorseful manner all help me to control my wild rage. Whereas at first I wanted to belt the living shit out of her—take that priceless Degas and ram it down around her neck—now I could almost cry with her, crying out of my own chagrin and frustration but also for Leslie too and for her psychoanalysis, which has so helped create her own gross imposture. I learn about all this as the clock ticks onward toward dawn and after I get my several querulous complaints and objections out of the way. “I don’t want to be nasty or unreasonable,” I whisper to her in the shadows, holding her hand, “but you led me to believe something else. You said, and I quote you exactly, ‘I’ll bet you could give a girl a fantastic fucking.’ ” I pause for a long moment, blowing blue smoke through the gloom. Then I say, “Well, I could. And I wanted to.” I halt. “That’s all.” Then after another long pause and a lot of snuffled sobs, she replies, “I know I said that, and if I led you on I’m sorry, Stingo;” Snuffle, snuffle. I give her a Kleenex. “But I didn’t say I wanted you to do it.” More snuffles. “Also I said ‘a girl.’ I didn’t say me.” At this instant the groan I give would stir the souls of the dead. We are both silent for an endlessly long time. At some moment between three and four o’clock I hear a ship‘s