Sophie's Choice - William Styron [213]
“Most of the people were from B.C., graduate students, teachers, et cetera, but a lot of other people too, from all over, a very mixed group. Some quite beautiful girls from Manhattan who were models, many musicians, quite a few Negroes. I had never seen so many Negroes so close before, they were very exotic to me and I loved to hear them laugh. Everyone was drinking and having a good time. Also, there was this strange-smelling smoke I could smell, the first time I ever have such a smell in my nose, and Nathan told me it was marijuana; he called it tea. Most of the people seemed so happy and at first the party was not so bad, it was good, I didn’t feel the terrible thing coming yet. We saw Morty at the door when we come in. The very first thing Nathan told him about was his experiment, he was practically shouting the news. I heard him say, ‘Morty, Morty, we broke through! We busted that serum enzyme problem wide open!’ Morty had heard all about this—as I say, he teached biology—and he patted Nathan hard on the back and they had a few toasts with beer and a group of other people come up and congratulated him. I remember how wonderfully happy I felt, being so close, I mean being so much loved by this wonderful man who was going to live forever in the history of medical research. And then, Stingo, I could have fainted dead on the spot. Because just then he put his arm around me and squeezed me tight and he said to everyone, ‘It is all due to the devotion and companionship of this lovely lady, the finest woman Poland has produced since Marie Sklodowska Curie, who is going to honor me forever by becoming my bride.’
“Stingo, I wish I could describe how I felt. Imagine! To be married! I was in a daze. It was nothing I could really believe, yet it was happening. Nathan kissing me and the people all coming up with smiles to congratulate us. I thought I was dreaming this. Because, you see, it was so completely sudden. Oh, he had talked about us getting married before but always in this light way, sort of joking, and although it always excited me, this idea, I had never taken it seriously. So now I am in this daze, this dream which I couldn’t believe.”
Sophie paused. When in the process of anatomizing the past or her relationship with Nathan, and the mystery of Nathan himself, she often had the habit of thrusting her face into her hands, as if to seek for an answer or a clue in the encompassing darkness of her cupped palms. She did this now, and only after many seconds raised her head and resumed, saying, “Now it is so easy to see that this... this announcement was only a part of his being on the pills, this stuff, this high that was taking him farther and farther out into space like some eagle. But at that time I just couldn’t make such a connection. I thought it was real, all this about our being married sometime, and I couldn’t remember being so happy. I begun to drink a little wine and the party got all wonderfully jumbled. Nathan finally walked off somewhere and I talked to some of his friends. They were still congratulating me. There was one Negro friend of Nathan’s I had always liked, a painter named Ronnie Something. I went out on the roof with Ronnie and a very sexy Oriental girl, I’ve forgotten her name, and Ronnie asked me if I wanted some tea. I didn’t quite realize what at first. Naturally, at the moment I thought he meant, you know, the drink you put sugar and lemon in, but he make this