Sophie's Choice - William Styron [277]
“Nat Turner!” I said.
“Nat Turner?” Nathan replied with a puzzled look. “Who in hell is Nat Turner?”
“Nat Turner,” I said, “was a Negro slave who in the year 1831 killed about sixty white people—none of them, I might add, Jewish boys. He lived not far from my hometown on the James River. My father’s farm is right in the middle of the country where he led this bloody revolt of his.” And then I began to tell Nathan of the little I knew about this prodigious black figure, whose life and deeds were shrouded in such mystery that his very existence was scarcely remembered by the people of that backwater region, much less the rest of the world. As I spoke, Sophie entered the room, looking scrubbed and fresh and pink and utterly beautiful, and seated herself on the arm of Nathan’s chair. She began to listen too, her face sweet and absorbed as she negligently stroked his shoulder. But I was soon finished, for I realized that there was very little I could tell about this man; he had appeared out of the mists of history to commit his gigantic deed in one blinding cataclysmic explosion, then faded as enigmatically as he had come, leaving no explanation for himself, no identity, no after-image, nothing but his name. He had to be discovered anew, and that afternoon, trying to explain him to Nathan and Sophie in my half-drunken excitement and enthusiasm, I realized for the first time that I would have to write about him and make him mine, and re-create him for the world.
“Fantastic!” I heard myself cry in beery joy. “You know something, Nathan, I just began to see. I’m going to make a book out of that slave. And the timing is absolutely perfect for our trip. I’ll be at a point in this novel where I can feel free to break off—I’ll have a whole solid chunk of it down. And so when we get down to Southampton we can ride all over Nat Turner country, talk to people, look at all the old houses. I’ll be able to soak up a lot of the atmosphere and also make a lot of notes, collect information. It’ll be my next book, a novel about old Nat. Meanwhile, you and Sophie will be adding something very valuable to your education. It’ll be one of the most fascinating parts of our trip...”
Nathan put his arm around Sophie and gave her an enormous squeeze. “Stingo,” he said, “I can’t wait. We’ll be heading in October for Dixieland.” Then he glanced up into Sophie’s face. The look of love they exchanged—the merest instant of eyes meeting then melting together, but marvelously intense—was so embarrassingly intimate that I turned briefly away. “Shall I tell him?” he said to Sophie.
“Why not?” she replied. “Stingo’s our best friend, isn’t he?”
“And also our best man, I hope. We’re going to get married in October!” he said gaily. “So this trip will also be our honeymoon.”
“God Almighty!” I yelled. “Congratulations!” And I strode over to the chair and kissed them both—Sophie next to her ear, where I was stung by a fragrance of gardenia, and Nathan on his noble blade of a nose. “That’s perfectly wonderful,” I murmured, and I meant it, having totally forgotten how in the recent past such ecstatic moments with their premonitions of even greater delight had almost always been a brightness that blinded the eyes to onrushing disaster.
It must have been ten days or so after this, during the last week of September, that I received a telephone call from Nathan’s brother, Larry. I was surprised when one morning Morris Fink summoned me to the greasy pay phone in the hallway—surprised to get any call at all, but especially from a person whom I had so often heard about but never met. The voice was warm and likable—it sounded almost the same as Nathan’s with its distinctly