The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [27]
"My friend," Goldstein said, "you don't have to tell me. I've always had a job, but some of them are not worth mentioning." He smiled deprecatingly. "What's the use of complaining?" he asked. "Taken all together, we're pretty well off." He held out his hand, palm upward. "We're married and we have kids -- you have a child, don't you?"
"Yes," said Roth. He drew out his wallet, and Goldstein peered through the evening light to discern the features of a handsome boy about two years old. "You've got a beautiful baby," he said, "and your wife is very. . . very pleasant looking." She was a plain woman with a pudgy face.
"I think so," Roth said. He looked at the pictures of Goldstein's wife and child, and returned the compliments automatically. Roth was feeling a gentle warmth as he thought of his son. He was remembering the way his son used to awaken him on Sunday mornings. His wife would put the baby in bed with him, and the child would straddle his stomach and pull feebly at the hairs on Roth's chest, cooing with delight. It gave him a pang of joy to think of it, and then, back of it, a realization that he had never enjoyed his child as much when he had lived with him. He had been annoyed and irritable at having his sleep disturbed, and it filled him with wonder that he could have missed so much happiness when he had been so close to it. It seemed to him now that he was very near a fundamental understanding of himself, and he felt a sense of mystery and discovery as if he had found unseen gulfs and bridges in all the familiar drab terrain of his life. "You know," he said, "life is funny."
Goldstein sighed. "Yes," he answered quietly.
Roth had a flush of warmth for Goldstein. There was something very sympathetic about him, he decided. These thoughts he had were the kind of things you could tell only to a man. A woman had to be concerned with her children, and with all the smaller things. "There are lots of things you can't tell a woman," Roth said.
"I don't think so," Goldstein said eagerly. "I like to discuss things with my wife. We have a wonderful companionship. She understands so much." He paused as if to find a way to phrase his next thoughts. "I don't know, when I was a kid of about eighteen, nineteen, I used to have a different idea of women. I wanted them, you know, for sex. I remember I used to go to prostitutes, and I would be disgusted, and then after a week or so I would want to go again." He gazed at the water for a moment, and then smiled wisely. "But being married made me understand a lot about women. It's so different from the way you think of it when you're just a kid. It's. . . I don't know, it isn't so important. Women," he said solemnly, "don't like it the way we do. It doesn't mean as much to them."
Roth was tempted to ask Goldstein some questions about his wife, but he hesitated. He was relieved by what Goldstein had said. The private aches, the self-doubts he had known when he heard soldiers talking about their affairs with women were a little soothed now. "That's true," he admitted gladly. "Women just aren't interested in it." He felt very close to Goldstein as if they shared a deep knowledge. There was something very nice, very kind, about Goldstein. He would never be cruel to anybody, Roth thought.
But even more, he was certain that Goldstein liked him. "It's very nice, sitting here," Roth said in his deep hollow voice. The tents had a silver color in the moonlight and the beach glistened at the water's edge. Roth was full of many things he found difficult to utter. Goldstein was a kindred soul, a friend. Roth sighed. He supposed a Jew always had to go to a fellow Jew to find understanding.
The thought depressed him. Why should things be that way? He was a college graduate, educated, far above nearly all the men here, and what good did it do him? The only man he could find who was worth talking to sounded a little like an old Jew