The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (21 page)

 

 

"Why? . . . no . . . no . . . Yale, you make me embarrassed! Don't look
at me!"

 

 

Yale bent over and kissed the wiry hairs that formed a triangle below her
stomach. "Ouch," she laughed, "you tickle." He pressed his face against
her belly and blew. The noise was like a muffled machine gun fire. They
tumbled together laughing. She rolled on top of Yale. Her expression
suddenly changed. Her eyes opened wide and then she gasped and buried
her face in Yale's neck. "Oh . . . oh . . . you are inside me."
She sobbed her delight. "I love you so much . . . be with me always."
Her fingernails raked his back and she whimpered her apology.

 

 

They lay together. Night came gradually to the city. The sunlight that
drifted into the room vanished and the soft gray shadows of twilight
embraced them. From far below in the streets the noise of traffic and the
occasional honking of an automobile horn, distant and in another world,
reached their ears. The five o'clock exodus from the city had begun. Alone
and in the wonder of each other, they whispered their love, and while
they talked of their delight, Yale could feel the rhythmic embrace of
her vagina, and she could feel within her the towering strength of the
man she loved.

 

 

Later when he had awkwardly put on the contraceptive, she hadn't laughed,
but drew him down against her, and she liked the weight of him against
her breasts, and the climax of their love held within it a sharp ecstasy
that kept them sleepily joined for nearly an hour afterwards.

 

 

"We've got to eat, don't you think," Yale opened his eyes and the room
was dark.

 

 

"Mmmm I'll eat you," she said sleepily, ". . . with peanut butter."

 

 

"I'm too tough."

 

 

"No you're not, you're tender." She bit his arm. He yelled and slapped
her on the buttocks. "You have a very pretty behind."

 

 

"I like it," she said. "It's so useful for sitting on."

 

 

He put on the light beside the bed. "Come on, my lovely princess, I will
take you into the motley crowds, and show them what they are missing
while you daintily eat a big steak."

 

 

She stood up on the bed. "Take me like this."

 

 

"Sure, come on. He grabbed her arm, and pulled her through the sitting
room. As she screamed her protest he opened the door into the hall.
An elderly man and woman were walking by. They looked at them startled.
Yale slammed the door. He and Cynthia fell on the floor of the room
laughing wildly.

 

 

"Oooh, we'll be thrown out," Cynthia said.

 

 

Doubled over with laughter, Yale said, "You should have seen their faces.
Gosh . . . did you see the old lady? I thought she would scream.

 

 

"I have to go to the bathroom," Cynthia announced.

 

 

"What for?" Yale said.

 

 

"Dummy, I have to go."

 

 

"Oh, I'll watch you!"

 

 

"No you won't." She ran into the bathroom. He heard the lock being
snapped.

 

 

Yale walked over to the window. The curtains fluttered in the warm
October breeze. Sticking his head out he looked down in the street and
then across the roof of the Penn Station toward the river. The city
twinkled beneath him in a myriad of lights. For the first time in his
life he felt that he belonged. He was a part of this wonderful, ceaseless
motion. These millions of people with their millions of lights driving
back the darkness were his brothers. The loneliness that always seemed
to pervade his thoughts and cling to his very being was gone. He was no
longer alone. His island was joined to a mainland of life by Cindar's
wonderful, good love.

 

 

He heard water running in the bathtub. "Hey," he said, pounding on the
door. "I want to take a bath with you." She opened the door, and grinned
at him. "Come on!"

 

 

Cynthia got in first. "It's hot," she screamed.

 

 

Yale tried to climb in alongside of her. Finding that impossible, he got
in and sat with his back to the spigot. He tried to lean forward and soap
her breasts. She wiggled her toes against his penis. In a second the
bathroom was dripping with water as he splashed her and she returned
his splash. Water slurped over the side of the tub. Yale, blinded for a
moment, couldn't see anything. "Help," he yelled, rubbing his eyes, and
then she was kneeling in front of him, solicitously drying his face with
a face cloth and carefully wiping the soap from the corner of his eyes.

 

 

As she knelt before him in the tub, Yale looked into her face. What
is beauty, he thought? What is it that makes Cindar beautiful beyond
saying to me? Is it her eyes wide apart -- maybe too wide apart for
any perfect standard of beauty? Is it the shape of her face and her
high cheekbones? Is it her body so trim and nice to hold? Or is it the
warm intensity of her? The racial Jewish feeling that she exuded that
this-is-my-man; come sickness his head will be on my breast, come health
and I will walk alone proudly with him carrying his children or bearing
with him his problems and worries.

 

 

"There," she said, kissing him tenderly. "Enough of sex. If you don't
feed me soon, I'll be so faint you'll have to carry me to the table."

 

 

Walking with Cynthia through the hotel lobby, Yale was on tiptoe with
happiness. Cynthia wore a light polo coat. Her black hair fell loosely
on her shoulders. Yale held her arm. He returned the smiles of older
faces that seemed to light up as he and Cindar passed, reflecting for
a moment the glow and vitality of their youth.

 

 

They walked from 33rd Street uptown, heading in the general direction
of Times Square.

 

 

"This is such fun," Cynthia said, skipping with delight. "I've never been
in New York City except with my family. I feel so happy. Oh, Yale, is this
what love does to you? Does it make you glow with being alive? I feel as
if I love all these people bustling by. I love these stores with their
lights on, and this lovely evening with the stars twinkling way up there
beyond the buildings. The world is a wondrous place, isn't it, Yale?"

 

 

Yale tightened his hold on her arm. "Let's make a solemn agreement, Cindar.
No matter what! Through the rest of our lives, let's be alive and curious
and never lose the feeling of wonder. Let's always be crazily alive, if
necessary. No matter what, let's be aware of the mystery and strangeness
of living and loving. If I love you a million years, I promise to find
you wondrous."

 

 

She stopped and kissed him and said solemnly, "I do. And let's be a
little practical too. Have you enough money? That room is expensive."

 

 

"Oh, I am rich," Yale said. "I saved practically my whole pay all summer.
Remember, I am a rich man's son. Thirty bucks a week . . . for doing
nothing."

 

 

Cynthia remembered. She remembered Pat Marratt sitting in his wing chair,
glaring at her and hating her Jewishness. Suddenly the gaiety was gone.
The world had intruded. She walked along silently, thinking of how
impossible this all was. Yale could never escape his father. The power
and dominance that Pat exuded in his every action would swallow Yale
up. She remembered last night. Aunt Adar had come into her room. "Yes,
yes, he's nice, Cynthy, but don't forget he is a Gentile. And for his
family you are an outsider, too. These things don't usually work out.
Be careful, my little one, don't get yourself hurt."

 

 

Weeks ago when she talked with her father about Yale and asked his
permission to drive back to school with him, he had rumpled her hair.
"I love you, Cynthy -- you are so much like your mother -- you wear
your heart on your sleeve. It's a strange world. I changed my name
to Carnell, and our farm grew. The buyers who heard the name Carnetsky
could see my nose, perhaps? You have your mother's nose and a pretty name,
Carnell. Mr. Patrick Marratt's memory goes back a long way. I met him once
when I was Carnetsky. Years ago. Now I see only his buyer. A good steady
customer. Surprises me, though, that he buys from Jews. Is it good, do
you think, Cynthy, to have a rich man's son for a friend? Like him, but
try not to love him." He had looked so sad when he said it that Cynthia
hugged him. "But I do love him, Daddy," she had said. "I do love him."

 

 

Sitting across the table from Yale in Toffenetti's, Cynthia toyed with
a large baked potato. The trouble was, she thought, she was in love with
Yale and he was just a boy. This love of theirs, so precious, so delicate,
would never withstand a future directed by Pat Marratt.

 

 

Yale watched her, and wondered what had changed her mood. "You know I
read that after intercourse a man, or even a woman, may be sad. A man
because in creating, supposedly dies a little. I have never been inside
any other woman, Cindar. I never will be. And I think 'post coitum triste'
is nonsense."

 

 

"Maybe the sadness comes much later," Cynthia said. "Maybe it doesn't
come until you have loved many times, and wonder is gone and the man
you love hates you because you are a Jewess!"

 

 

"Cynthia, for God sakes," Yale said. "After all these months, you think
I could ever feel that way! I'm not my father. I haven't an ounce of
prejudice or hatred in me for anyone -- for Jews, Negroes, anyone.
I don't even hate Pat. I'll fight his ideas. I'll fight hatred, but
I won't hate those who hate."

 

 

Cynthia looked at him, love in her sad smile. "You are the intellectual.
The one who sees shades of gray. Never black and white. But your father
lives in a world of good guys and bad guys. He defeats the bad guys by
hating them. Hitler in Germany is like that. No. You'll never win unless
you learn to hate, too."

 

 

Yale laughed, enjoying the discussion for its own sake. "The meek shall
inherit the earth," he said. And then seriously, "Cynthia, I don't have
any religion, particularly a religion that can justify hatred or killing
or any act of violence, but I do understand myself enough to know that
while I am not my father, some day I will be the stronger of the two of
us. Not an Oedipus complex," he grinned, twisting a spoon in his hands,
"but a very deep feeling that I am putting together a philosophy of life
based on love -- not hate. Some day this philosophy will sweep up Pat
and everybody else who hates." Yale said the last words with an intensity
that frightened Cynthia. He was his father's son, she thought, but a tree
growing from different soil.

 

 

"What is this philosophy?" she asked.

 

 

Yale shook his head. "I don't know enough about it to tell you yet,"
he admitted. "Or, myself for that matter. I just know that Pat won't
own me. But you will, Cindar, always. Come on, let's walk around Times
Square."

 

 

In the glow of lights, and the throb and hum of the Square, Cynthia's
happiness returned. There was no answer, she thought. You couldn't live
for a tomorrow that might be years away. When the time came they would
get married or they wouldn't get married. But for now it couldn't he
wrong to love and be loved, or to trust and be trusted; for perhaps
trust and love were in many ways one.

 

 

Yale tugged her into a bookstore they were passing. "Look," he said,
"all these books selling for forty-nine cents each. Isn't it wonderful
. . . so much knowledge waiting quietly in those millions of pages --
just waiting to be read."

 

 

Like two happy archaeologists digging in ruins, they explored the piles
of books in the shop exclaiming with joy at their discoveries. By the time
they were back on the street Cynthia had a bundle of five books. Yale had
three. "I bought you a copy of
Of Time and the River
," he said. "Look at
the size of it. Isn't it fabulous? Come on. Let's go back to the hotel.
While you read it to me, I'll kiss your breasts and blow on your belly.

 

 

"But you can't do that," she said when they were back lying together
in their bed. "When you put your tongue on my breasts, I can't concentrate!
Look, I haven't read three pages."

 

 

Yale took the book from her hands, and dropped it gently on the floor.
She leaned back in his arms and he snuggled against her breast. "Cindar,"
he whispered, "isn't it nice that you love me? Isn't it nice that I
love you?"

 

 

And Cynthia thought it was nice, and accepted Yale into her body. . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

11

 

 

"Well, kiddo, this is it! We've made it. Proud, august, seniors about
to graduate." Sonny shook Yale's bed, threatening to tip it sideways
and tumble the bedding, mattress and Yale on the floor. "Get up! It's
ten o'clock, a beautiful, beautiful May day. Brother, have I got things
to do."

 

 

"You do them," Yale yawned. "I haven't a darn thing to do until twelve.
This is a day I've been looking forward to since last September. Imagine,
no more classes, no studying. I'm going on a picnic
and just loaf."

 

 

"With Cynthia?"

 

 

"Sure, who else? You can run your graduation dances and worry about
reception lines and orchestras and refreshments and all that slush.
Not for me, boy, I am going on a picnic with my girl and if you're nice,
tomorrow I'll promise you something. If you're real nice, after graduation
Cynthia and I will go to your dance and I'll help you spike the punch."

 

 

Sonny hit him with his pillow. "Some do the work and some take all the
enjoyment. I don't know what in hell this little old college is going
to do without me to organize things."