Sophie's Choice - William Styron [43]
But Nathan was not to be deflected. “What about Bobby Weed?” he demanded of me.
“Well, what about him, for Christ’s sake?” I groaned, and pulled myself upward out of his grasp. I had begun to eye the door and the intervening furniture, and quickly schemed out the best way of immediate exit. “Thanks for the beer,” I muttered.
“I’ll tell you what about Bobby Weed,” Nathan persisted. He was not about to allow me off the hook, and dumped more foaming beer into the glass which he pressed into my hand. His expression still seemed calm enough but was betrayed by inner excitement in the form of a waggling, hairy, didactic forefinger which he thrust into my face. “I’ll tell you something about Bobby Weed, Stingo my friend. And that is this! You Southern white people have a lot to answer for when it comes to such bestiality. You deny that? Then listen. I say this as one whose people have suffered the death camps. I say this as a man who is deeply in love with one who survived them.” He reached up and surrounded Sophie’s wrist with his hand while the forefinger of his other hand still made its vermiform scrawl in the air above my cheekbone. “But mainly I say this as Nathan Landau, common citizen, research biologist, human being, witness to man’s inhumanity to man. I say that the fate of Bobby Weed at the hands of white Southern Americans is as bottomlessly barbaric as any act performed by the Nazis during the rule of Adolf Hitler! Do you agree with me?”
I bit the inside of my mouth in an effort to keep my composure. “What happened to Bobby Weed, Nathan,” I replied, “was horrible. Unspeakable! But I don’t see any point in trying to equate one evil with another, or to assign some stupid scale of values. They’re both awful! Would you mind taking your finger out of my face?” I felt my brow growing moist and feverish. “And I damn well question this big net you’re trying to throw out to catch all of what you call you Southern white people. Goddamnit, I’m not going to swallow that line! I’m Southern and I’m proud of it, but I’m not one of those pigs—those troglodytes who did what they did to Bobby Weed! I was born in Tidewater Virginia, and if you’ll pardon the expression, I regard myself as a gentleman! Also, if you’ll pardon me, this simplistic nonsense of yours, this ignorance coming from somebody so obviously intelligent as yourself truly nauseates me!” I heard my voice climb, quavering, cracked and no longer under control, and I feared another disastrous coughing fit as I watched Nathan calmly rising to his full height, so that in effect we were confronting each other. Despite the now rather threatful forward-thrusting nature of his stance and the fact that he outmanned me in bulk and stature, I had the powerful urge to punch him in the jaw. “Nathan, let me tell you something. You are now dealing in the cheapest kind of New York-liberal, hypocritical horseshit! What gives you the right to pass judgment on millions of people, most of whom would die before they’d harm a Negro!”
“Ha!” he replied. “See, it’s even in your speech pattern’ Nig-ro! I find that so offensive.”
“It’s the way we say it down there. It’s not meant to offend. All right—Knee-grow. Anyway,” I went on impatiently, “what gives you the right to pass judgment? I find that so offensive.”
“As a Jew, I regard myself as an authority on anguish and suffering.” He paused and as he gazed at me now I thought I saw for the first time contempt in his look, and mounting disgust. “As for this ‘New York-liberal’ evasion, this ‘hypocritical horseshit’—I consider that a laughably feeble, insubstantial comeback to an honest accusation. Aren’t you able to perceive the simple truth? Aren’t you able to discern