Sophie's Choice - William Styron [219]
and get one last wet feel, poking that revolting chiropractic tongue down your throat—oh, my little Polish tart, it is more than I can bear.” Unable to speak, she fixes her gaze on the speedometer: 70, 75, 80... It is not so bad, she thinks, thinking in kilometers, then in swift adjustment says to herself: Miles! We are going to go out of control! Thinks: It is beyond madness, this jealousy, that I am sleeping with Blackstock. Far behind them there is the dim sound of a siren, she is somehow aware of a flashing red light, its reflection like a tiny raspberry winking on and off against the windshield. She opens her mouth, poises her tongue for speech (“Darling!” she is trying to say), cannot utter the word. Talktalktalktalktalk... It is like the sound track of a movie pieced together by a chimpanzee, in part coherent but creating no design, making no final sense; its paranoia causes her to feel weak and ill. “Schoenthal is one hundred percent right, it is pure sentimental rubbish embedded in the Judeo-Christian ethos that makes suicide morally wrong, after the Third Reich suicide should become the legitimate option of any sane human being on earth, isn’t that right, Irma?” (Why was he suddenly calling her Irma?) “But I shouldn’t be surprised at your hankering to spread your legs for any joint that comes your way, to be quite honest and I haven’t said this before, much of you has been a mystery since first we met, I might have suspected you were a fucking goy kurveh, but what else—what else?—ohmyohmy, did some weird self-inflicted Schadenfreude cause me to be attracted to such a perfect replica of Irma Griese? She was some looker, according to the people at the trial in Lunenberg, even the prosecutors tipped their hats to that, oh shit, my beloved mama always said I was fatally attracted to blond shiksas, why can’t you be a decent Jewish boy, Nathan, and marry a nice girl like Shirley Mirmelstein who’s so beautiful and has got a father that’s made a killing in foundation garments with a summer place in Lake Placid yet.” (The siren still trails them, faintly screaming. “Nathan,” she says, “there’s a policeman.”) “The Brahmans revere suicide, many Orientals, like what’s so big about death anyway, rienada fucking nothing, so upon reconsideration not too long ago I said to myself okay, beautiful Irma Griese got the rope for personally killing x-thousands of Jews at Auschwitz but didn’t logic dictate a lot of little Irma Grieses getting away, I mean what about this funny little Polish nafka I’m shacked up with, that is, could she truly be one hundred percent true-blue Polack, she looks Polack in many ways but also echt-Nordic like some Kraut movie star masquerading as the murderous Countess of Cracow, also I might add that absolutely flawless Deutsch I have heard emerge with such precision from your lovely Rhine maiden’s lips. A Polack! Ah me! Das machst du andern weismachen! Why don’t you admit it, Irma! You played footsie with the SS, didn’t you? Isn’t that how you got out of Auschwitz, Irma? Admit it!” (She has stopped up her ears with both hands, sobbing “No! No!” She feels the car decelerate abruptly. The siren’s scream becomes a dragon’s growl, diminuendo. The police car pulls abreast.) “Admit it, you Fascist cunt!”...
...As she lay in the dusk watching the leaves dim and fade, she heard the sound of his urine in steady noisy collision with the water in the toilet. She remembered. Amid the fantastic leaves earlier, in the deep woods, standing above her, he had tried to piss into her mouth, had failed; it had been the commencement of his downward slide. She stirred on the bed, smelling the steamy rising fumes of cabbage, her eyes lighting drowsily on the two capsules he had deposited gently in the ashtray. BOAR’S HEAD INN, read the Old English letters around the china rim, AN AMERICAN LANDMARK. She yawned, thinking how strange it was. How strange it was that she should not fear death, if he was truly going to force death upon her, but that she should fear simply death taking him and him alone, leaving her behind. That through