Sophie's Choice - William Styron [135]
My heart fairly shriveled away at these words. “What do you mean?” I said, my voice close to a wail. “I thought you liked—”
“You have a pretty snappy talent in the traditional Southern mode. But you also have all the old clichés. I guess I didn’t want to bruise your feelings. But that old Negro woman in the beginning of the book, the one waiting with the others for the train. She’s a caricature, right out of Amos ’n’ Andy. I thought I was reading a novel by someone brought up writing old-time minstrel shows. It would be funny—that travesty of a Negro—if it weren’t so despicable. You may be writing the first Southern comic book.”
God, how vulnerable I was! I was engulfed by swift despair. If anyone but Nathan had said that! But with those words he had totally undermined the buoyant joy and confidence about my work which his earlier encouragement had implanted within me. It was so unutterably crushing, this sudden brutal brush-off, that I began to feel certain crucial underpinnings of my very soul shudder and disintegrate. I gulpingly struggled for a reply, which would not, strive as I might, get past my lips.
“You’ve been badly infected by that degeneracy,” he continued. “It’s something you can’t help. It doesn’t make you or your book any more attractive but at least it’s possible to feel that you’re more of a passive vessel for the poison rather than a willing—how would you describe it?—a willing disseminator. Like, say, Bilbo.” Now his voice abruptly lost the faint throaty Negroid quality with which it had been touched; in moist metamorphosis the Southern accent faded and died, replaced by thorny Polish diphthongs that were in almost exact mimicry of Sophie’s own speech. And it was here, as I say, that his punishing callousness turned into outright persecution. “Peut-être after all dese mawnths,” he said, leveling his gaze on Sophie, “you kin explain de mystewy of why you are here, you off all people, walking dese stweets, dwenched in enticing perfumery, engaged in suwweptitious venery wiff not wan but two—count dem, ladies and gentlemen—two chiropractors. In short, making hay while de sun shine, to employ an old bwomide, while at Auschwitz de ghosts off de millions off de dead still seek an answer.” Suddenly he dropped the parody. “Tell me why it is, oh beauteous Zawistowska, that you inhabit the land of the living. Did splendid little tricks and stratagems spring from that lovely head of yours to allow you to breathe the clear Polish air while the multitudes at Auschwitz choked slowly on the gas? A reply to this would be most welcome.”
A terrible drawn-out groan escaped Sophie then, so loud and tormented that only the frenzied squalling of the Andrews Sisters prevented it from being heard throughout the entire bar. Mary in her anguish on Calvary could not have made a more wretched noise. I turned to look at Sophie. She had thrust her face downward so that it was buried and out of sight, and had clapped her whiteknuckled fists futilely over her ears. Her tears were trickling down onto the speckled Formica. I thought I heard her muffled words: “No! No! Menteur! Lies!”
“Not so many months ago,” he persisted, “in the depths of the war in Poland, several hundred Jews who escaped from one of the death camps sought refuge at the homes of some fine Polish citizens like yourself. These darling people refused them shelter. Not only this. They murdered practically all the rest they could get their hands on. I have brought this to your attention before. So please answer again. Did the same anti-Semitism for which Poland has gained such world-wide renown—did a similar anti-Semitism guide your own destiny, help you along, protect you, in a manner of speaking, so that you became one of the minuscule handful of people who lived while the millions died?” His voice became harsh, cutting, cruel. “Explanation, please!”
“No! No! No! No!” Sophie sobbed.