Sophie's Choice - William Styron [207]
Riding back to Brooklyn in the mortuary limousine, Blackstock slumped against Sophie and wept hopelessly, telling her in Polish once again how much she meant to him, as if she were the daughter whom he and Sylvia never had. There was no approximation of a Jewish wake. Blackstock preferred solitude. Sophie went with him to the St. Albans house and helped him straighten out a few things. It was early evening when—over her protests that she should take the subway—he drove her to Brooklyn in his bargelike Fleetwood, depositing her at the door of the Pink Palace just as a hazy autumnal dusk fell over Prospect Park. He seemed much more composed now and had even allowed himself a mild joke or two. He had also downed one or two weak Scotches, although he was not much of a drinking man. But standing with her outside the house he broke into pieces again, and there in the shadowy twilight he embraced her convulsively, nuzzling her neck, muttering distraught words in Yiddish and giving forth the loneliest sobbing sounds she had ever heard. So involved and stricken was this embrace, so total, that Sophie did begin to wonder whether in his desolation he was not groping for something more than comfort and daughterly assurance; she felt a midriff pressure and an urgency that was almost sexual. But she thrust the idea from her mind. He was such a puritan. And if during the long time of her job with him he had never made a pass at her, it seemed unlikely that he would do so now, drowned as he was in his misery. This assumption would later prove to be correct, although she would have reason to regret that lengthy, moist and rather uncomfortable enfoldment. For by the sheerest chance Nathan had been watching from above.
She was bone-tired from the ordeal of serving as handmaiden to the doctor’s grief, and looked forward to an early bedtime. Another reason to go to bed early, she reflected with rising excitement, was that the next morning, a Saturday, she and Nathan had to get a fresh start for their trip to Connecticut. Sophie had looked forward to their excursion for days. Although even as a child in Poland she had heard of the blazing marvel of the New England foliage in October, Nathan had fueled her expectation, describing the landscape she was about to see in his delicious, extravagant way and telling her that this singularly American spectacle, this amok flambeau unique in all Nature, was simply an aesthetic encounter that must not be missed. He had managed once again to borrow Larry’s car for the weekend, and he had reserved a room in a well-known country inn. All this alone would have been enough to whet Sophie’s appetite for the adventure, but in addition, except for the funeral and a single summer afternoon at Montauk with Nathan, she had never been outside the confines of New York City. And so this fresh American experience with its hint of bucolic beguilements gave her a thrill of joy and anticipation keener than any of its kind since those childhood summers when the train chuffed out from the Cracow station toward Vienna and the Alto Adige and the swirling mists of the Dolomites.
Climbing to the second floor, she began to wonder what she would wear; the weather had become brisk and she contemplated which item among their elaborate “costumery” might be appropriate for the October woodlands, then suddenly she remembered