Sophie's Choice - William Styron [281]
I stirred restlessly in my chair, suddenly so unutterably depressed that I felt I was bearing on my back the weight of all the universe. How could I tell Larry that I had just seen his brother, my beloved friend, as close to the brink as he had ever been? Throughout my life I had heard about madness, and considering it an unspeakable condition possessed by poor devils raving in remote padded cells, had thought it safely beyond my concern. Now madness was squatting in my lap. “What is it that you think I can do?” I asked. “I mean, why did you—”
“Why did I ask you here?” he interrupted gently. “I’m not quite sure that I know myself. I think it’s because I have an idea that you could be useful in helping him stay off the drugs. That’s the most treacherous problem for Nathan now. If he stays away from that Benzedrine, he might have a fair chance to straighten himself out. I can’t do much. We’re very close in many ways—whether I like it or not, I am a kind of model for Nathan—but I also realize that I am an authority figure that he’s apt to resent. Besides, I don’t see him that frequently. But you—you’re really close to him and he respects you, too. I’m just wondering if there isn’t some way in which you might be able to persuade him—no, that’s too strong a word—to influence him so that he lays off that stuff that might kill him. Also—and I wouldn’t ask you to be a spy if Nathan weren’t in such a perilous condition—also, you could simply keep tabs on him and report back to me by phone from time to time, letting me know how he’s getting on. I’ve felt completely out of touch so often, and rather helpless, but if I could just hear from you now and then, you’d be doing all of us a great service. Does any of this seem unreasonable?”
“No,” I said, “of course not. I’d be glad to help. Help Nathan. And Sophie too. They’re very close to me.” Somehow I felt it was time to go, and I rose to shake Larry’s hand. “I think things might get better,” I murmured with what could only seem, in the innermost part of my conscience, despairing optimism.
“I certainly hope so,” said Larry, but the look on his face, forlorn despite his twisted effort at a smile, made me feel that his optimism was as bleak and troubled as my own.
I’m afraid that soon after my meeting with Larry, I was guilty of a grave dereliction. Larry’s brief conference with me had been in the nature of an appeal on his part, an appeal to me to keep an eye on Nathan and to act as liaison between the Pink Palace and himself—to serve both as sentinel and as a kind of benign watchdog who might be able to gently nip at Nathan’s heels and keep him under control. Plainly, Larry thought that during this delicate hiatus in Nathan’s period of drug addiction I might be able to calm him, settle him down, and perhaps even work some lasting, worthwhile effect. After all, wasn’t this what good friends were for? But I copped out (a phrase not then in use, but perfectly descriptive of my negligence, or, to be more exact, my abandonment). I have sometimes wondered whether if I had stayed on the scene during those crucial days I might not have been able to exercise some control over Nathan, preventing him from going on his last slide toward ruin, and too often the answer to myself has been a desolating “yes” or “probably.” And shouldn’t I have tried to tell Sophie of the grim matters I had learned from Larry? But since, of course, I cannot ever be perfectly certain of what would have happened, I have tended always to reassure myself through the flimsy excuse that Nathan was in the process of a furious, unalterable and predetermined plunge toward disaster—a plunge in which Sophie’s destiny was welded indissolubly to his own.
One of the odd things about this was that I was gone for a short time—less than ten days. Except for my Saturday jaunt with Sophie to Jones Beach, it was my only journey outside the confines of New York City since my arrival