Sophie's Choice - William Styron [34]
I glared at him through leisurely narrowing pupils fogged over with rage and loathing. “Don’t call me—” I began, but the words were cut off by another racking cough.
“Haggard, that’s the word,” Nathan went on. “Too bad, for such a nice-looking guy. The haggard look comes from being slowly deprived of oxygen. You should cut out smoking, Cracker. It causes cancer of the lung. Also lousy on the heart.” (In 1947, it may be remembered, the truly pernicious effect of cigarette smoking on the health was barely surmised even by medical men, and word of its potential erosive damage, when uttered at all, was greeted by sophisticates with amused skepticism. It was an old wives’ tale of the same category as that in which it was imputed to masturbation such scourges as acne, or warts, or madness. Therefore, although Nathan’s remark was doubly infuriating at the time, piling, as I thought, imbecility on plain viciousness, I realize now how weirdly prescient it really was, how typical it was of that erratic, daft, tormented, but keenly honed and magisterial intelligence I was to get to know and find myself too often pitted against. (Fifteen years later, while in the toils of a successful battle with my addiction to cigarettes, I would recall Nathan’s admonition—for some reason especially that word haggard—like a voice from the grave.) Now, however, his words were an invitation to manslaughter.
“Don’t call me Cracker!” I cried, recovering my voice. “I’m a Phi Beta Kappa from Duke University. I don’t have to take your rotten insults. Now you get your foot out of that door and leave me alone!” I struggled vainly to dislodge his shoe from the crack. “And I don’t need any cheap advice about cigarettes,” I rasped through the clogged and inflamed flues of my larynx.
Then Nathan underwent a remarkable transformation. His manner suddenly became apologetic, civilized, almost contrite. “All right, Stingo, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I really am. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Forgive me, will you? I won’t use that word again. Sophie and I just wanted to extend a little friendly welcome on a beautiful summer day.” It was positively breathtaking, this swift change in him, and I might have felt that he was simply indulging in another form of leaden sarcasm had my instincts not told me that he was sincere. In fact, I sensed he was suffering a rather painful overreaction, as people sometimes do when after thoughtlessly teasing a child they realize they have caused real anguish. But I was not to be moved.
“Scram,” I said flatly and firmly. “I want to be alone.”
“I’m sorry, old pal, I really am. I was just kidding a little with that Cracker bit. I really didn’t mean to offend you.”
“No, Nathan really didn’t mean to offend you,” Sophie chimed in. She moved from behind Nathan to a spot where I could see her clearly. And something about her once more tugged away at my heart. Unlike the portrait of misery she had presented the night before, she was now plainly flushed with high spirits and joy at Nathan’s miraculous return. It was possible almost to feel the force of her happiness; it flowed from her body in visible little glints and tremors—in the sparkle of her eyes, and in her animated lips, and in the pink exultant glow that colored her cheeks like rouge. This happiness, together with the look of appeal on that radiant face, was something that even in my disheveled morning state I found altogether seductive—no, irresistible. “Please, Stingo,” she pleaded, “Nathan didn’t mean to offend you, to hurt your feelings. We just wanted to make friends and take you out on a beautiful summer day. Please. Please come with us!”
Nathan relaxed—I felt his foot move away from the crack—and I relaxed, not