Letting Go (72 page)

Nevertheless, though he continued to believe in his rights—unable yet to relinquish the idea that there is some foundation of justice upon which this world is built—he looked forward to his own pleasure less and less. At last, even that moment toward which they both aimed (Libby particularly, with a kind of holy obsession, a marriage counselor’s faith in “coming together”), that moment in which Libby showed her teeth and whimpered—her sound of ecstasy—became for him the most disheartening of all. He was afflicted with a deeper and deeper sense of consequence; at any time their life might be swallowed up by disaster and chaos.

Then, of course, Libby became sick, and out of what seemed on the surface a sheer lack of energy, her own ecstatic moments were less frequent; she seemed to pin all her hopes on him, and so he had on more than one occasion to reach a climax for two. And it was just then that his body had chosen to go into partnership with his will; what he had earlier tried to hold off, or thought to try to hold off, he no longer had to try so hard at. He had, in fact, to work and work and work until his belly ached and his wrists were locked in pain, while Libby, pale and motionless, and tiring too, would ask if he was almost there, if he would soon be there, if now he was there … And when at long long last, his pulses knocking, his body flooded with despair, he was able to tell her yes, yes, as misery itself seemed to be running through him and out of him, he would find her eyes riveted to the muscles of his face, measuring the joy and comfort she was able to give to her husband despite her incapacity. It was as though she had relinquished her own pleasure out of choice, so as to add hers to his and thereby overwhelm his mind’s preoccupation with his body’s joy. With the feverish girl already disappointed enough, he would begin the posturing: the ecstatic groan, the passionate sigh, the final collapse (I am sated!) onto her bosom, which was covered generally
with a flannel nightdress to prevent her catching a chill and collapsing still further into illness.

It is a short journey from posturing to total unhappiness, shorter than one might imagine when the posturing begins, as it often does, as a stop-gap measure. And from there to a change in character—or in appearance—is not so very long either. A silence came over Paul Herz, a desire not to speak. Rather, at first, not to be heard. He found himself in the presence of others with nothing whatsoever to say. In the beginning the change troubled him—that is, when he noticed it as a change. After all, he was only a few years out of college, where he had always had a sense of himself as an energetic and frank conversationalist—hadn’t he virtually talked Libby into a new girl? Perhaps so, but soon enough it was in silence that he began to find his only relief; eventually he even began to derive a kind of strength from thinking of himself as a silent person. It was his only power … until Chicago, where some of Libby’s unconquerable belief in change (and who had inspired that in her?) rubbed off on him.

There it began to appear that perhaps in his new job lay his salvation. His students were generous and responsive—they knew nothing about him—and in the classroom he found pleasure once again in his own voice, in instruction; he could be intelligent, he could be frank, he could even be witty. He had gone off to staff meetings with a genuine desire to open up communication again with the outside world. He had thrown something off—new faces made him feel less ashamed. But one of the new faces turned into John Spigliano’s. And that bastard right off threatened him more than he should have. So what if he lost his job? So plenty! He should have forced himself to stop arguing with the stupid ass—only the dispute was not simply with Spigliano. All that talk about humanity. Feeling! Who but himself was he arguing with?

Across the table from him there was not only Spigliano but Wallach too, whose new face resolved very quickly into that old and familiar face. A man who by all rights he should like, old or new; who by all rights should be his friend! Who
was
his friend! That evening they had sat in the light snowfall outside of Cobb, joking with one another, he had felt inside him a kind of unloosening. Relaxation. Remembering friendship, remembering in fact his old pal, Mush Horvitz, he had remembered that there were still the pleasures of social contact. If he and Libby could turn out to others—stop turning in to pick at one another’s guts—they might rebuild marriage on a new
foundation; they might not have to lean so heavily on each other. After all why was he so unhappy? When one considered unhappiness from all angles, it was ridiculous. Didn’t he have a will? Couldn’t he make up his mind and cease being dissatisfied? Used properly the will could set just about anything right; this he still believed. An intelligent man, certainly a young, intelligent man, could most assuredly alter the pattern of his life; the mistake was to think of it as a pattern. He had walked with Gabe Wallach down to Goodspeed, and he had even been conscious of the sympathy flowing between them; he had felt that Wallach had respect for him, and to that he could not help but respond. If Wallach had kissed Libby long ago, it was because Libby was a kissable girl. Besides, he knew that it was he himself whom Libby loved. So beneath his wife’s office window he had called out to her, as years before he had called out from beneath her window in Clara Dickson Hall. In part he was trying to impress his companion: they were going to be all right, they were okay on their own now, and no longer in need of help. His singing to Libby was a kind of present to Wallach. But it was a gift to himself too, a gift of nostalgia and sentimentality. Many years had passed since he had made his girl passionate about Shakespeare, about anything. And after all they had been through together … “Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon—”

And following the sentimental moment, the bottom had fallen out. His wife had informed his friend, his brand new friend, that her husband could give her plenty of babies, thank you, and like a man whose lawyer bends the truth to get him off the hook, he felt weakness, confusion, and then contempt, first for himself and then for the lawyer. From that moment on he was more willing to admit that all control over his life had gone out of his hands; perhaps he was more willing for it to be so.

Now there was a baby coming his way, and out of no real decision on his part. Events and others had decided for him: Wallach’s suggestion, and Jaffe’s assistance, and Libby’s pounding need—and so he went along from day to day, making phone calls, paying bills, and soon would come little Nahum. Tomorrow or the next day he would have to pack his bag and go down Asher’s dank stairway and step back onto the moving platform that he saw that moment as his own particular emblem. He would have to go back to what awaited him in Chicago; at the very least he had a job to return to. But why? There, in fact, was one more thing he did not have to go back to. He
did not have to go to his father’s sickbed; he did not have to comfort his mother; he did not have to return to Libby; he did not have to go back to his job. Anything else?

“What else is there?” he asked aloud.

Ah yes. Himself. He could take off his wedding ring (which he had not yet been quite able to do); he could leave the University. But how to divest himself of himself … Stretched out on Asher’s sofa, fatigue helped to direct his thoughts to the precise issue at hand, self-divestment. In his drowsy state he was able to think of himself as something to be peeled back, layer after layer, until what gleamed through was some primary substance. Peeling, peeling, until what was locked up inside was out in the open. What? His Paulness. His Herzness. What he was! Or perhaps nothing. To unpeel all day and all night and wind up empty-handed. To find that all he had rid himself of was all there was.
And that?
Here his body trembled, as bodies will, overcome with grief or revelation—that he
was
Libby,
was
his job,
was
his mother and father, that all that had happened was all there was.
Or?
At the very moment that he plunged down into sleep, he soared too above all the demands and concerns he had known, beyond what he had taken for expectation, beyond what he had interpreted as need and understood as pity and love. He nearly glimpsed for himself a new and glorious possibility. But whether there was no glorious possibility, or whether sleep separated him at that moment from some truth about life’s giving and taking, was impossible to say. He felt himself hovering at the edge of something; since it was sleep he next experienced, perhaps it was only that.

He did not know how long the phone had been ringing. In that first uninsulated moment his only knowledge was that they had thrown the El back up. The room was half in darkness; the other half was neither dark nor light. But outside he saw the sky; when he had got his bearings he rose and answered the phone.

“What?”

“Maury.”

“No—”

“This
is
Maury. It’s Mush, Paul.”

“Maury. Maury, I saw Doris—”

“We called everywhere—your uncle—Paul, what’s happened to you?”

“I’m at my uncle’s.”

“When are you getting
down
here?”

“Right down—”

“You spoke to Doris, you got my telegram. Paul, are you still there?”

“I don’t have the address, Maury. I walked off without the address.”

“Take it down! Will you? Beth David. Ninth Floor. On Prospect—Paul, your father’s going. You better get down here—your mother’s in no shape to be alone.”

“What’s the matter with her?”

“Your father’s
dying—
”

“Mush, all right—”

“I’m in the lobby. I’ll wait in the lobby.”

“All right, please—”

Please. Let me alone. Let me be. He turned back toward the sofa; he seemed to have just discovered the pleasure of being out of it. Neither fat Maury nor hot Doris existed as much of a force in his life. Neither could hold a candle to dear old sleep, which, if it was not the glorious possibility he had failed to catch a glimpse of earlier, was doing nicely as a substitute. He had powers of his own; he could remove himself from the scene. You cannot frustrate or overwhelm a man who isn’t around. If he could drowse away the next few days … But, alas, this time he had the misfortune to dream, and to wake from the dream so suddenly as to believe that his symbols had been of some significance. Secrets!
What’s the secret?
He pulled Asher’s stool up to the drawing board and tacked on a clean white sheet. In thick black pencil strokes he wrote as fast as he could, not even bothering to snap on a bulb, afraid he would emerge from the dreamy spell and miss out on the truth.

all beside the point. He put down Asher’s drawing pencil; his head dropped forward on the board. But now he was wide awake. Chicken equals shikse—so what? Someone is throwing gasoline around, so what? If he were to understand it all, right down to his father polishing his shoes in bed—what then? The problem, Libby, is not psychological. The problem is something else. Why did you have to go to that doctor? “Because I couldn’t take it any more.” “Why didn’t you at least talk it over with me? What about this bill?” He was shaking the day’s mail in her face. “Because we don’t talk
anything
over.” “We usually talk twenty-five dollars over.” “I didn’t know it was twenty-five dollars when I went. I didn’t do it again, did I?” “I don’t know, did you?” “No!” “What did you think an analyst was going to tell you?” “There’s something wrong with me, Paul.” “You’ve been sick—” “What
makes
me sick?” “Germs! Bugs! Viruses!”
“You!”
she cried. “Then divorce me! Let’s get it over with—” Five and a half years, and it was the first time that word had been uttered in their house. Libby’s face fell, and his own sense of failure was complete. They had all been right, Asher, his mother, his—
Impossible!
But he had said the word at last; it hurt very little to say it again. “Let’s get a divorce then.” “But you’re my
husband
,” Libby cried. “Maybe then that’s the trouble—” “It’s
me!
” She wept. “Stop crying, damn it, it’s not you.” “I don’t want a divorce, I want a regular normal life—” “Libby, it’s hopeless, it’s awful—” “That’s why I went to the
doctor—
”

The phone rang, not back in Chicago, but in New York, three feet from where he sat. Even before he had raised it to his ear, he heard the voice starting in. He set it down. It started to ring again, and he did not bother to lift it this time, only pressed it down in its cradle. And that was how it went throughout the afternoon: what little light there was in the room slipped away, and the phone rang, and at Asher’s drawing board he held down the receiver as though it were a lid beneath which all the premises of his life were melting away.