hate
all
of you, absolutely.”
“Do you hear music?” Bech asked, passing the pipe directly across to Wendell.
“Look at the windows, everybody people,” Beatrice said. “They’re coming into the room!”
“
Stop
pretending,” Norma told her. “You
always
played up to Mother. I’d rather be nobby Norma than bland Bea.”
“She’s beautiful,” Wendell said, to Norma, of Beatrice. “But so are you. The Lord Krishna bestows blessings with a lavish hand.”
Norma turned to him and grinned. Her tropism to the phony like a flower’s to the sun, Bech thought. Wide warm mouth wherein memories of pleasure have become poisonous words.
Carefully Bech asked the other man, “Why does your face resemble the underside of a colander in which wet lettuce is heaped?” The image seemed both elegant and precise, cruel yet just. But the thought of lettuce troubled his digestion. Grass. All men. Things grow in circles. Stop the circles.
“I sweat easily,” Wendell confessed freely. The easy shamelessness purchased for an ingrate generation by decades of poverty and war.
“And write badly,” Bech said.
Wendell was unabashed. He said, “You haven’t seen mynew stuff. It’s really terrifically controlled. I’m letting the things dominate the emotions instead of vice versa. Don’t you think, since the
Wake
, emotions have about had it in prose?”
“Talk to me,” Norma said. “
He’s
absolutely self-obsessed.”
Wendell told her simply, “He’s my god.”
Beatrice was asking, “Whose turn is it? Isn’t anybody else worried about the windows?” Wendell gave her the pipe. She smoked and said, “It tastes like dregs.”
When she offered the pipe to Bech, he gingerly waved it away. He felt that the summit of his apotheosis had slipped by, replaced by a widespread sliding. His perceptions were clear, he felt them all trying to get through to him, Norma seeking love, Wendell praise, Beatrice a few more days of free vacation; but these arrows of demand were directed at an object in metamorphosis. Bech’s chest was sloping upward, trying to lift his head into steadiness, as when, thirty years ago, carsick on the long subway ride to his Brooklyn uncles, he would fix his eyes in a death grip on his own reflection in the shuddering black glass. The funny wool Buster Brown cap his mother made him wear, his pale small face, old for his age. The ultimate deliverance of the final stomach-wrenching stop. In the lower edge of his vision Norma leaped up and grabbed the pipe from Beatrice. Something fell. Sparks. Both women scrambled on the floor. Norma arose in her shimmering kimono and majestically complained, “It’s out. It’s all gone. Damn you, greedy Bea!”
“Back to Mexico,” Bech called. His own voice came from afar, through blankets of a gathering expectancy, the expanding motionlessness of nausea. But he did not know for a certainty that he was going to be sick until Norma’s voice, a few feet away in the sliding obfuscation, as sharp and small as something seen in reversed binoculars, announced, “Henry, you’re absolutely yellow!”
In the bathroom mirror he saw that she was right. The blood had drained from his face, leaving like a scum the tallow of his summer tan, and a mauve blotch of sunburn on his melancholy nose. Face he had glimpsed at a thousand junctures, in barbershops and barrooms, in subways and airplane windows above the Black Sea, before shaving and after lovemaking, it witlessly smiled, the eyes very tired. Bech kneeled and submitted to the dark ecstasy of being eclipsed, his brain shouldered into nothingness by the violence of the inversion whereby his stomach emptied itself, repeatedly, until a satisfying pain scraped tears from his eyes, and he was clean.
Beatrice sat alone in the living room, beside the dead fireplace. Bech asked her, “Where is everybody?”
She said, unmoving, uncomplaining, “They went outside and about two minutes ago I heard his car motor
all
of you, absolutely.”
“Do you hear music?” Bech asked, passing the pipe directly across to Wendell.
“Look at the windows, everybody people,” Beatrice said. “They’re coming into the room!”
“
Stop
pretending,” Norma told her. “You
always
played up to Mother. I’d rather be nobby Norma than bland Bea.”
“She’s beautiful,” Wendell said, to Norma, of Beatrice. “But so are you. The Lord Krishna bestows blessings with a lavish hand.”
Norma turned to him and grinned. Her tropism to the phony like a flower’s to the sun, Bech thought. Wide warm mouth wherein memories of pleasure have become poisonous words.
Carefully Bech asked the other man, “Why does your face resemble the underside of a colander in which wet lettuce is heaped?” The image seemed both elegant and precise, cruel yet just. But the thought of lettuce troubled his digestion. Grass. All men. Things grow in circles. Stop the circles.
“I sweat easily,” Wendell confessed freely. The easy shamelessness purchased for an ingrate generation by decades of poverty and war.
“And write badly,” Bech said.
Wendell was unabashed. He said, “You haven’t seen mynew stuff. It’s really terrifically controlled. I’m letting the things dominate the emotions instead of vice versa. Don’t you think, since the
Wake
, emotions have about had it in prose?”
“Talk to me,” Norma said. “
He’s
absolutely self-obsessed.”
Wendell told her simply, “He’s my god.”
Beatrice was asking, “Whose turn is it? Isn’t anybody else worried about the windows?” Wendell gave her the pipe. She smoked and said, “It tastes like dregs.”
When she offered the pipe to Bech, he gingerly waved it away. He felt that the summit of his apotheosis had slipped by, replaced by a widespread sliding. His perceptions were clear, he felt them all trying to get through to him, Norma seeking love, Wendell praise, Beatrice a few more days of free vacation; but these arrows of demand were directed at an object in metamorphosis. Bech’s chest was sloping upward, trying to lift his head into steadiness, as when, thirty years ago, carsick on the long subway ride to his Brooklyn uncles, he would fix his eyes in a death grip on his own reflection in the shuddering black glass. The funny wool Buster Brown cap his mother made him wear, his pale small face, old for his age. The ultimate deliverance of the final stomach-wrenching stop. In the lower edge of his vision Norma leaped up and grabbed the pipe from Beatrice. Something fell. Sparks. Both women scrambled on the floor. Norma arose in her shimmering kimono and majestically complained, “It’s out. It’s all gone. Damn you, greedy Bea!”
“Back to Mexico,” Bech called. His own voice came from afar, through blankets of a gathering expectancy, the expanding motionlessness of nausea. But he did not know for a certainty that he was going to be sick until Norma’s voice, a few feet away in the sliding obfuscation, as sharp and small as something seen in reversed binoculars, announced, “Henry, you’re absolutely yellow!”
In the bathroom mirror he saw that she was right. The blood had drained from his face, leaving like a scum the tallow of his summer tan, and a mauve blotch of sunburn on his melancholy nose. Face he had glimpsed at a thousand junctures, in barbershops and barrooms, in subways and airplane windows above the Black Sea, before shaving and after lovemaking, it witlessly smiled, the eyes very tired. Bech kneeled and submitted to the dark ecstasy of being eclipsed, his brain shouldered into nothingness by the violence of the inversion whereby his stomach emptied itself, repeatedly, until a satisfying pain scraped tears from his eyes, and he was clean.
Beatrice sat alone in the living room, beside the dead fireplace. Bech asked her, “Where is everybody?”
She said, unmoving, uncomplaining, “They went outside and about two minutes ago I heard his car motor
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