Sophie's Choice - William Styron [220]
She thought of Poland. Her mother’s hands. She had so seldom thought of her mother, that sweet dim self-effacing soul, and now for a moment she could only think of her mother’s elegant expressive pianist’s hands, strong-fingered, at once supple and gentle, like one of the Chopin nocturnes she played, the ivory skin reminding her of the muted white of lilacs. So remarkably white indeed that Sophie only in retrospect ever connected the lovely blanched bloodlessness with the consumption that was devouring her mother even then, and which finally stilled those hands. Mama, Mama, she thought. So often those hands had stroked her brow when as a little girl she spoke the bedtime prayer that every Polish child knows by heart, embedded in the soul more firmly than any nursery rhyme: Angel of God, my guardian angel, stay always by my side; in the morning, during the day, and in the night, come always to my aid. Amen. On one of her mother’s fingers was a slender golden band in the entwined form of a cobra, the eye of the serpent made of a tiny ruby. Professor Biegański had bought the ring in Aden on his voyage back from Madagascar, where he had gone to reconnoiter the geography of his earliest dream: the relocation of the Polish Jews. His utter vulgarity. Had he shopped long for such a monstrosity? Sophie knew her mother detested the ring but wore it out of her constant deference to Papa. Nathan stopped pissing. She thought of her father and his luxuriant blond hair, beaded with sweat in the bazaars of Arabia...
...“They got Daytona Beach for car races,” says the cop, “this here’s the Merritt Parkway, for what we call motorists, now what’s the big hurry?” He is fair-haired, youngish, freckle-faced, not unpleasant-looking. He wears a Texas sheriff’s hat. Nathan says nothing, staring straight ahead, but Sophie senses him muttering rapidly beneath his breath. Still talktalktalktalktalk but sotto voce. “You want to make you and that nice girl into a statistic?” The cop wears a nameplate: S. GREZEMKOWSKI. Sophie says “Przepraszam...” (“If you please...”) Grzemkowski beams, answers, “Czy jesteś Polakiem?” “Yes, I’m Polish,” Sophie returns, encouraged, continuing her native spiel, but the cop interrupts, “I just understand a few words. My people are Polish, up in New Britain. Listen, what’s wrong here?” Sophie says, “This is my husband. He is very upset. His mother’s dying in...” She frantically tries to think of a Connecticut place, is able to blurt, “In Boston. That’s why we were speeding.” Sophie stares at the cop’s face, eyes innocent violets, the slablike plane faintly bucolic, the countenance of a peasant. She thinks: He could be tending cows in some Carpathian valley. “Please,” she cajoles, leaning forward over Nathan, pouting her prettiest, “please, sir, do understand about his mother. We promise to go slow now.” The Grzemkowski presence reverts to stolid business, the voice becomes police-gruff. “I’m givin’ you a warning this time. Now slow down.” Nathan says, “Merci beaucoup, mon chef.” He gazes directly ahead into infinity. His lips work wordlessly, without cease, as if speaking to some helpless auditor lodged within his breast. He has begun to sweat in glycerine streams. The cop is suddenly gone. Sophie hears Nathan whispering to himself as the car moves once more. It is almost noon. They drive north (more sedately) through bowers and overhanging clouds and raging storms of multichrome leaves in aerial frenzy—here belching color like blazing lava, there like exploding stars,