you keep safe from all of us.”
As always when his writing was discussed to his face, a precarious trembling entered Bech’s chest: a case of crystal when heavy footsteps pass. He had the usual wild itch to run, todisclaim, to shut his eyes in ecstasy. More, more. He protested, “Why didn’t anybody at least knock on the door when I was dying in the bathroom? I haven’t whoopsed like that since the army.”
“I wanted to, but I couldn’t move. Norma said it was just your way of always being the center of attention.”
“That bitch. Did she really run off with that woolly little prep-school snot?”
Beatrice said, with an emphatic intonation dimly, thrillingly familiar, “You
are
jealous. You
do
love her.”
Bech said, “I just don’t like creative-writing students pushing me out of my bed. I make a good Tiresias but I’m a poor Fisher King.”
There was no answer; he sensed she was crying. Desperately changing the subject, he waved toward a distant light, whirling, swollen by the mist. “That whole headland,” he said, “is owned by an ex-member of the Communist Party, and he spends all his time putting up No Trespassing signs.”
“You’re nice,” Beatrice sobbed, the child at rest in her arms.
A motor approached down the muffling sandy road. Headlights raked the porch rail, and doubled footsteps crashed through the cottage. Norma and Wendell emerged onto the porch, Wendell carrying a messy thickness of typewriter paper. “Well,” Bech said, “that didn’t take long. We thought you’d be gone for the night. Or is it dawn?”
“Oh, Henry,” Norma said, “you think everything is sex. We went back to Wendell’s place to flush his LSD down the toilet, he felt so guilty when you got sick.”
“Never again for me, Mr. Bech. I’m out of that subconscious bag. Hey, I brought along a section of my thing, it’s not exactly a novel, you don’t have to read it now if you don’t want to.”
“I couldn’t,” Bech said. “Not if it makes distinctions.”
Norma felt the changed atmosphere and accused her sister, “Have you been boring Henry with what an awful person I am? How could the two of you i
ma
gine I’d misbe
have
with this
boy
under your noses? Surely I’m subtler than
that
.”
Bech said, “We thought you might be high on pot.”
Norma triumphantly complained, “I never got
any
thing. And I’m positive the rest of you faked it.” But, when Wendell had been sent home and the children had been tucked into their bunks, she fell asleep with such a tranced soundness that Bech, insomniac, sneaked from her side and safely slept with Beatrice. He found her lying awake waiting for him. By fall the word went out on the literary circuit that Bech had shifted mistresses again.
BECH PANICS
T HIS MOMENT in Bech’s pilgrimage must be approached reverently, hesitantly, as befits a mystery. We have these few slides: Bech posing before a roomful of well-groomed girls spread seraglio-style on the floor, Bech lying awake in the frilly guest room of a dormitory, Bech conversing beside a granite chapel with a woman in a purple catsuit, Bech throwing himself like a seed upon the leafy sweet earth of Virginia, within a grove of oaks on the edge of the campus, and mutely begging Someone, Something, for mercy. Otherwise, there is semi-darkness, and the oppressive roar of the fan that cools the projector, and the fumbling, snapping noises as the projectionist irritably hunts for slides that are not there. What made Bech panic? That particular March, amid the ripening aromas of rural Virginia, in that lake of worshipful girls?
All winter he had felt uneasy, idle, irritable, displaced. He had broken with Norma and was seeing Bea. The train ride up to Ossining was dreary, and the children seemed, to this bachelor, surprisingly omnipresent; the twin girls sat upwatching television until “Uncle Harry” himself was nodding, and then in the heart of the night little Donald would sleepwalk, sobbing,
As always when his writing was discussed to his face, a precarious trembling entered Bech’s chest: a case of crystal when heavy footsteps pass. He had the usual wild itch to run, todisclaim, to shut his eyes in ecstasy. More, more. He protested, “Why didn’t anybody at least knock on the door when I was dying in the bathroom? I haven’t whoopsed like that since the army.”
“I wanted to, but I couldn’t move. Norma said it was just your way of always being the center of attention.”
“That bitch. Did she really run off with that woolly little prep-school snot?”
Beatrice said, with an emphatic intonation dimly, thrillingly familiar, “You
are
jealous. You
do
love her.”
Bech said, “I just don’t like creative-writing students pushing me out of my bed. I make a good Tiresias but I’m a poor Fisher King.”
There was no answer; he sensed she was crying. Desperately changing the subject, he waved toward a distant light, whirling, swollen by the mist. “That whole headland,” he said, “is owned by an ex-member of the Communist Party, and he spends all his time putting up No Trespassing signs.”
“You’re nice,” Beatrice sobbed, the child at rest in her arms.
A motor approached down the muffling sandy road. Headlights raked the porch rail, and doubled footsteps crashed through the cottage. Norma and Wendell emerged onto the porch, Wendell carrying a messy thickness of typewriter paper. “Well,” Bech said, “that didn’t take long. We thought you’d be gone for the night. Or is it dawn?”
“Oh, Henry,” Norma said, “you think everything is sex. We went back to Wendell’s place to flush his LSD down the toilet, he felt so guilty when you got sick.”
“Never again for me, Mr. Bech. I’m out of that subconscious bag. Hey, I brought along a section of my thing, it’s not exactly a novel, you don’t have to read it now if you don’t want to.”
“I couldn’t,” Bech said. “Not if it makes distinctions.”
Norma felt the changed atmosphere and accused her sister, “Have you been boring Henry with what an awful person I am? How could the two of you i
ma
gine I’d misbe
have
with this
boy
under your noses? Surely I’m subtler than
that
.”
Bech said, “We thought you might be high on pot.”
Norma triumphantly complained, “I never got
any
thing. And I’m positive the rest of you faked it.” But, when Wendell had been sent home and the children had been tucked into their bunks, she fell asleep with such a tranced soundness that Bech, insomniac, sneaked from her side and safely slept with Beatrice. He found her lying awake waiting for him. By fall the word went out on the literary circuit that Bech had shifted mistresses again.
BECH PANICS
T HIS MOMENT in Bech’s pilgrimage must be approached reverently, hesitantly, as befits a mystery. We have these few slides: Bech posing before a roomful of well-groomed girls spread seraglio-style on the floor, Bech lying awake in the frilly guest room of a dormitory, Bech conversing beside a granite chapel with a woman in a purple catsuit, Bech throwing himself like a seed upon the leafy sweet earth of Virginia, within a grove of oaks on the edge of the campus, and mutely begging Someone, Something, for mercy. Otherwise, there is semi-darkness, and the oppressive roar of the fan that cools the projector, and the fumbling, snapping noises as the projectionist irritably hunts for slides that are not there. What made Bech panic? That particular March, amid the ripening aromas of rural Virginia, in that lake of worshipful girls?
All winter he had felt uneasy, idle, irritable, displaced. He had broken with Norma and was seeing Bea. The train ride up to Ossining was dreary, and the children seemed, to this bachelor, surprisingly omnipresent; the twin girls sat upwatching television until “Uncle Harry” himself was nodding, and then in the heart of the night little Donald would sleepwalk, sobbing,
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