all like nothing Sophie has ever seen or imagined—the pent-up muttering which she cannot comprehend becomes vocal, unleashed in a new spasm of paranoia. And in its encompassing fury it terrifies her as completely as if he had set loose in the car a cage full of savage rats. Poland. Anti-Semitism. And what did you do, baby, when they burned the ghettos down? Did you hear the line about what one Polish bishop said to the other Polish bishop? “If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a kike!” Harharhar! Nathan, don’t, she thinks, don’t make me suffer so! Don’t make me remember! The tears are rolling down her face when she plucks at his sleeve. “I’ve never told you! I’ve never told you!” she cries. “In 1939 my father risked his life to save Jews! He hided Jews under the floor of his office at the university when the Gestapo came, he was a good man, he died because he saved these... ” On the sticky bolus of her own distress, rising in her gorge like the lie she has just uttered, she strangles, then hears her voice crack. “Nathan! Nathan! Believe me, darling, believe me!” DANBURY CITY LIMITS. “Baked a kike!” Harharhar! “I mean not hided, darling, hid...” Talktalktalk—She half listens now, thinking: If I could get him to stop and eat somewhere, I could steal away and make a phone call to Morty or Larry, get them to come... And she hears herself say, “Darling, I’m so hungry, could we stop...” Only to hear amid the talktalktalk: “Irma my pet, Irma Liebchen, I couldn’t eat a single Saltine cracker if you paid me a thousand dollars, oh shit Irma I’m flying, oh Christ I’m in the sky, never so high never so high and gotta big itch for youu-u-u, you little goy Fascist nafka, hey feel this...” He reaches over and places her hand on the outside of his trousers, presses her fingers against the stiff bulge of his prick; she feels it throb then contract then throb again. “A blowjob, that’s what I need, one of your five hundred gold zloty Polack blowjobs, hey Irma how many SS pricks did you suck to get out of there, how much master race come swallowed for Freiheit? Listen, all kidding aside Irma I’ve gotta get sucked, oh I’ve never flown this high, Jesus to get those sweet little gobbling lips to work right now, I mean somewhere under the blue sky and the burning maple leaves of autumn, fair autumn, and you’ll suck my seed, suck my seed as thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa, that’s John Milton...”
...Naked, he padded back to the bed and lightly, carefully lay down beside her. The two capsules still glistened in the ashtray, and she wondered drowsily if he had forgotten them, wondered if he again would flirt and tantalize her with their pink menace. The Nembutal, washing her downward toward sleep, pulled at her legs like the warm undertow of a gentle sea. “Sophielove,” he said, his voice drowsy too, “Sophielove, I regret only two things.” She said, “What, darling?” When he failed to answer, she said again, “What?” “Just this,” he said finally, “that all that hard work at the lab, all the research, that I’ll never see the fruits of it.” Strange, she thought as he spoke, his voice almost for the first time that day had lost its hysteric threat, its mania, its cruelty, had become edged instead with the tenderness, familiar, soothing, which was so naturally a part of him and which all day long she had been certain was past recapture. Had he, too, been rescued at the last instant, was he being borne backward serenely into his salvaging barbiturate harbor? Would he in fact simply forget death and drift off to sleep?
There was a creak on the stairway outside, again the unctuous female voice. “Mr. and Mrs. Landau, excuse me, please. But my husband wants to know if you would care for a drink before dinner. We have everything. But my husband does make a wonderful hot rum punch.” After a moment Nathan said, “Yeah, thanks, a rum punch. Two.” And she thought: It sounds like the other Nathan. But then she heard him murmur softly, “The other thing, the other thing is that you and I never had any children.” She gazed into the glimmering