Sophie's Choice - William Styron [210]
...“They got Daytona Beach for car races,” says the cop, “this here’s the Merritt Parkway, for what we call motorists, now what’s the big hurry?” He is fair-haired, youngish, freckle-faced, not unpleasant-looking. He wears a Texas sheriff’s hat. Nathan says nothing, staring straight ahead, but Sophie senses him muttering rapidly beneath his breath. Still talktalktalktalktalk but sotto voce. “You want to make you and that nice girl into a statistic?” The cop wears a nameplate: S. GREZEMKOWSKI. Sophie says “Przepraszam...” (“If you please...”) Grzemkowski beams, answers, “Czy jesteś Polakiem?” “Yes, I’m Polish,” Sophie returns, encouraged, continuing her native spiel, but the cop interrupts, “I just understand a few words. My people are Polish, up in New Britain. Listen, what’s wrong here?” Sophie says, “This is my husband. He is very upset. His mother’s dying in...” She frantically tries to think of a Connecticut place, is able to blurt, “In Boston. That’s why we were speeding.” Sophie stares at the cop’s face, eyes innocent violets, the slablike plane faintly bucolic, the countenance of a peasant. She thinks: He could be tending cows in some Carpathian valley. “Please,” she cajoles, leaning forward over Nathan, pouting her prettiest, “please, sir, do understand about his mother. We promise to go slow now.” The Grzemkowski presence reverts to stolid business, the voice becomes police-gruff. “I’m givin’ you a warning this time. Now slow down.” Nathan says, “Merci beaucoup, mon chef.” He gazes directly ahead into infinity. His lips work wordlessly, without cease, as if speaking to some helpless auditor lodged within his breast. He has begun to sweat in glycerine streams. The cop is suddenly gone. Sophie hears Nathan whispering to himself as the car moves once more. It is almost noon. They drive north (more sedately) through bowers and overhanging clouds and raging storms of multichrome leaves in aerial frenzy—here belching color like blazing lava, there like exploding stars, all like nothing Sophie has ever seen or imagined—the pent-up muttering which she cannot comprehend becomes vocal, unleashed in a new spasm of paranoia. And in its encompassing fury it terrifies her as completely as if he had set loose in the car a cage full of savage rats. Poland. Anti-Semitism. And what did you do, baby, when they burned the ghettos down? Did you hear the line about what one Polish bishop said to the other Polish bishop? “If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a kike!” Harharhar! Nathan, don’t, she thinks, don’t make me suffer so! Don’t make me remember! The tears are rolling down her face when she plucks at his sleeve. “I’ve never told you! I’ve never told you!” she cries. “In 1939 my father risked his life to save Jews! He hided Jews under the floor of his office at the university when the Gestapo came, he was a good man, he died because he saved these... ” On the sticky bolus of her own distress, rising in her gorge like the lie she has just uttered, she strangles, then hears her voice crack. “Nathan! Nathan! Believe me, darling, believe me!” DANBURY CITY LIMITS. “Baked a kike!” Harharhar! “I mean not hided, darling, hid...” Talktalktalk—She half listens now, thinking: If I could get him to stop and eat somewhere, I could steal away and make a phone call to Morty or Larry, get them to come... And she hears herself say, “Darling, I’m so hungry, could we stop...” Only to hear amid the talktalktalk: “Irma my pet, Irma Liebchen, I couldn’t eat a single Saltine cracker if you paid me a thousand dollars, oh shit Irma I