Sophie's Choice - William Styron [37]
“While she’s lying there?” I put in. I had begun to wish that Morris had not felt the need to tell me this story. My stomach stirred with queasy sickishness; though a man of nonviolence, I was nearly overwhelmed by the impulse to rush upstairs, where, accompanied by the Water Music’s sprightly bourrée, I would somehow exorcise the golem by battering its brains out with a chair. “You mean he actually hit that girl while she was lying there like that?”
“Yeah, he kept slappin’ her. Hard, too. Right in the fuckin’ chops he kept slappin’ her.”
“Why didn’t you do something?” I demanded.
He hesitated, cleared his throat, then said, “Well, if you want to know, I’m a physical coward. I’m five foot five and that Nathan—he’s a big motherfucker. But I’ll tell you one thing. I did think about callin’ the police. Sophie was beginnin’ to groan, those clouts in the face must have hurt like a bastard. So I decided to come down here and call the police on the phone. I didn’t have anything on, I don’t wear anything sleepin’. So I went to my closet and put on a bathrobe and slippers—tryin’ to move fast, see? Who knows, I thought he might kill her. I guess I was gone about a minute, at first I couldn’t find my fuckin’ slippers. Then when I got back to the door... Guess what?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“This time it’s the other way around. Like it’s opposite, see? This time Sophie’s sittin’ up on the floor with her legs crossed, and Nathan’s sort of crouched down and he’s got his head buried right in her crotch. I don’t mean he’s eatin’ her. He’s cryin’! He’s got his face right down in there and he’s cryin’ away like a baby. And all this time Sophie’s strokin’ that black hair of his and whisperin’, ‘That’s all right, that’s all right.’ And I hear Nathan say, ‘Oh God, how could I do it to you? How could I hurt you?’ Things like that. Then, ‘I love you, Sophie, I love you.’ And she just sayin’, ‘That’s all right,’ and makin’ little cluckin’ noises, and him with his nose in her crotch, cryin’ and sayin’ over and over again, ‘Oh, Sophie, I love you so.’ Ach, I almost heaved up my breakfast.”
“And what then?”
“I couldn’t take any more of it. When they finished all this crap and got up off the floor, I went out and got a Sunday paper and walked over to the park and read for an hour. I didn’t want to have anything more to do with either of them. But see what I mean? I mean...” He paused and his eyes morosely probed me for some interpretation of this evil masque. I had none. Then Morris said decisively, “A golem, if you ask me. A fuckin’ golem.”
I made my way upstairs in a black squall of gusty, shifting emotion. I kept saying to myself that I couldn’t get involved with these sick characters. Despite the grip that Sophie had laid upon my imagination, and despite my loneliness, I was certain that it would be foolhardy to seek their friendship. I felt this not only because I was afraid of getting sucked toward the epicenter of such a volatile, destructive relationship, but because I had to confront the hard fact that I, Stingo, had other fish to fry. I had come to Brooklyn ostensibly “to write my guts out,” as dear old Farrell had put it, not to play the hapless supernumerary in some tortured melodrama. I resolved to tell them that I would not go with them to Coney Island, after all; that done, I would politely but decisively nudge them out of my life, making it plain that I was a solitary spirit who was not to be disturbed, ever.
I knocked and entered as the last record ceased playing, and the great barge with