Sophie's Choice - William Styron [274]
Sometime late that morning, not long after finishing the foregoing entry in my journal and writing a few letters, I was sitting at the table where I had worked so well those past days, brooding glumly over the dumfounding homo-erotic apparition which had passed like a thick black cloud across my consciousness (festering in my heart and making me fear for the basic well-being of my soul), when I heard Jack Brown’s limping footsteps on the stairs, followed by the sound of his voice calling me. I did not really hear or respond right away, so deeply had I fallen into my funk over the appalling and very real possibility that I had turned queer. The nexus between Mary Alice’s rejection of me and my sudden metamorphosis into sexual deviation seemed a little too pat; nonetheless, I could not deny the possibility.
I had read quite a bit about sexual problems while studying at that noted athenaeum of psychology, Duke University, and had come away with some fairly well established facts: that male primates in captivity, for instance, when denied female companionship, will try to bugger each other, often with gleeful success, and that many prisoners after long periods of incarceration will turn so readily to homosexual activity that it will almost appear to be the norm. Men who have been many months at sea will take their pleasure with one another; and when I was in the Marine Corps (a branch, of course, of the Navy) I was intrigued to learn the ancient origin of “pogey bait,” the slang name for candy: it obviously sprang from the inducement held out by older sailors for the favors of fair-cheeked, smooth-bottomed young cabin boys. Ah well, I thought, if I have become a pederast, so be it; there was ample precedent for my condition, since although I had not been formally confined or caged, I may have just as well been in prison or on a timeless voyage on a brigantine as far as my lifelong efforts at good, wholesome, heterosexual screwing were concerned. Was it not plausible that some psychic valve in me, analogous to whatever controls the libido of a twenty-year convict or a lovelorn ape, had blown its gaskets, leaving me guiltlessly different, victim of the pressures of biological selection but nonetheless a pervert?
I was darkly considering this proposition, and then Jack’s commotion at the door brought me up sharp. “Wake up, junior, there’s a telephone call!” he shouted. I knew on the way downstairs that the call could only come from the Pink Palace, where I had left Jack’s number, and I had a sense of foreboding which was amplified enormously when I heard the familiar voice, dolorosa, of Morris Fink.
“You got to come down here right away,” he said, “all hell has broke loose.”
My heart faltered, then raced on. “What happened?” I whispered.
“Nathan’s went off his trolley again. This time it’s real bad. The miserable fucker.”
“Sophie!” I said. “How is Sophie?”
“She’s all right. He beat her up again, but she’s all right. He said he was goin’ to kill her. She ran out of the house and I don’t know where she is. But she asked me to call you. You’d better come.”
“And Nathan?” I said.
“He’s gone too, but he said he’d be back. The crazy bastard. You think I should call the police?”
“No, no,” I replied quickly. “For Christ’s sake, don’t call the police!” After a pause I said, “I’ll be there. Try and find Sophie.”
After I hung up I stewed for a few minutes, and when Jack came downstairs I joined him in a cup of coffee to try to settle my agitation. I had spoken to him before about Sophie and Nathan and their folie à deux but only in dim outline. Now I felt compelled to hurriedly fill in some of the more painful details. His immediate suggestion was to do what for some dumb reason it had not occurred to me to do.