Sophie's Choice - William Styron [208]
...“Fidelity would become you more,” he is saying in the midst of his runaway rant. She hears his voice over the roaring slipstream of wind rushing past the convertible’s windshield. Although it is chilly, Nathan has put the top down. Sitting next to him, she has covered herself with a blanket. She does not fully understand what he has said to her, half shouts to him, “What did you say, darling?” He turns to face her, she catches a glimpse of his eyes, distraught now, the pupils all but vanished, swallowed up in the violent brown ellipses. “I said fidelity would become you more, to use an elegant variation.” She is seized with puzzlement and a vague clammy fear. She looks away, heart pounding. Never in their months together has he displayed real anger toward her. Cold dismay begins to wash over her like rain on naked flesh. What does he mean? She fixes her gaze on the landscape wheeling by, the tended evergreen shrubbery at the margin of the manicured parkway, the forest beyond with its explosive turning leaves, blue sky, bright sun, telephone poles. WELCOME TO CONNECTICUT/DRIVE SAFELY. She is aware that he is driving very fast. They overtake car after car, passing with a whooshing noise and a vibration of air. She hears him say, “Or to not use an elegant variation, you’d better not fuck around, especially where I can see it!” She gasps aloud, she cannot believe he is saying this. As if he had slapped her she feels her head jerk sideways, then she turns. “Darling what do you—” But “Shut up!” he roars, and now again the words flow forth as upon a spillway, undammed, a babbling continuation of the jumbled semicoherence he has assailed her with since they left the Pink Palace well over an hour before. “It would appear that that luscious Polish ass of yours is irresistible to your employer the adorable quack from Forest Hills, which is quite all right, quite all right, mind you, it is a darling piece of equipment if I do say so myself, having not only fattened it up but availed myself of its uncommon pleasures, this I can understand Dr. Flimflam yearning for with all his heart and aching prick...” She hears him give a heh-heh-heh brainless giggle. “But for you to cooperate in his enterprise, to actually lay it down and hump this despicable cheat, then, then to flaunt it all right before my eyes as you did last night, letting him stand there and get one last wet feel, poking that revolting chiropractic tongue down your throat—oh, my little Polish tart, it is more than I can bear.” Unable to speak, she fixes her gaze on the speedometer: 70, 75, 80... It is not so bad, she thinks, thinking in kilometers, then in swift adjustment says to herself: Miles! We are going to go out of control! Thinks: It is beyond madness, this jealousy, that I am sleeping with Blackstock. Far behind them there is the dim sound of a siren, she is somehow aware of a flashing red light, its reflection like a tiny raspberry winking on and off against the windshield. She opens her mouth, poises her tongue for speech (“Darling!” she is trying to say), cannot utter the word. Talktalktalktalktalk... It is like the sound track of a movie pieced together by a chimpanzee, in part coherent but creating no design, making no final sense; its paranoia causes her to feel weak and ill. “Schoenthal is one hundred percent right, it is pure sentimental rubbish embedded in the Judeo-Christian ethos that makes suicide morally wrong, after the Third Reich suicide should become the legitimate option of any sane human being on earth, isn’t that right, Irma?” (Why was he suddenly calling her Irma?) “But I shouldn’t be surprised at your hankering to spread your legs for any joint that comes your way, to be quite honest and I haven