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By Root 12409 0

from which the dejected group of analysands had now departed, leaving behind them a half-buried copy of Partisan Review, squeezed-out tubes of nose balm and a litter of Coke bottles. So, lingering there together in the heat of our charm-bound affinity, we spent another hour or so tying up the loose ends of our conversation, both of us very much aware that we had taken this afternoon the first step of what had to be a journey together into wild and uncharted territory. We lay side by side, bellies down. As I gently traced oval patterns against her pulsing neck with my fingertips she reached up to stroke my hand, and I heard her say, “My analyst said that mankind will forever be the enemy of itself until it learns that each human being only needs, enfin, a fantastic fucking.” I heard my own voice, haltingly distant but sincere, reply, “Your analyst must be a very wise person.” For a long while she was silent, and then she turned to gaze at me full in the face and uttered finally, with unfeigned desire, that languid yet straightforward invitation which made my heart stop and so unbalanced my mind and senses: “I’ll bet you could give a girl a fantastic fucking.” And it was then that we somehow made a date for the following Thursday night.

Thursday morning arrived, as I have said, with its sense of approaching bliss, of almost unendurable promise. Sitting there at my pink writing table, I managed, however, to ignore my sickishness and fever and to master my fantasies long enough to get two or three more hours of serious writing done. A few minutes past noon I was aware of a yawning sensation at the pit of my stomach. I had not heard a sound from Sophie all morning. Doubtless she would have spent most of her time with her nose in a book, assiduously continuing her self-education. Her ability at reading English, while still far from perfect, had improved immeasurably in the year since she had met Nathan; in general she no longer resorted to Polish translations and was now deeply engrossed in Malcolm Cowley’s Portable Faulkner, which I knew both captured and perplexed her. “Those sentences,” she had said, “that go on and on like a crazy snake!” But she was an adept enough reader to marvel at Faulkner’s intricacy of narrative and his turbulent power. I had practically memorized that Portable, which in college had catapulted me into all of Faulkner’s work, and it had been upon my recommendation—on the subway or somewhere else on that memorable Sunday of our first encounter—that Nathan had bought a copy and given it to Sophie early in the week. At our several get-togethers since then it had given me great pleasure to help interpret Faulkner for Sophie, not only by way of explaining parts of the occult Mississippi vernacular but in showing her some of the right pathways as she penetrated the wonderful groves and canebrakes of his rhetoric.

With all the difficulty, she was moved and impressed by the stormy assault that this prose made upon her mind. “He writes like someone, you know, possessed!” she said to me, then added, “It’s very plain that he never was psychoanalyzed.” Her nose crinkled up in distaste as she made this observation, obviously alluding to the group of sunbathers who had so offended her the previous Sunday. I hadn’t completely realized it at the time, but that same Freudian colloquy which had fascinated and, at the most, amused me had been downright odious to Sophie and had caused her to flee with Nathan from the beach. “Those strange creepy people, all picking at their little... scabs,” she had complained to me when Nathan was not around. “I hate this type of—and here I thought she used a lovely gem of a phrase—“unearned unhappiness!” Although I saw exactly what she meant, I was surprised at the fervor of her hostility and I wondered—even as I climbed the steps to take her out on our picnic—if it might not be due only to some irreconcilable discord left over from that stern religion which I knew she had abandoned.

I had not meant to take Sophie by surprise but the door to the room was partly open, and since I could