Sophie's Choice - William Styron [277]
Sophie halted for an instant, and as she raised her left hand to throw back a lock of hair I sensed something slightly unnatural in the gesture, wondered what it was, then realized that she was favoring her right arm, which hung limply at her side. It obviously was causing her pain.
“Who was he after you about this time?” I demanded. “Blackstock? Seymour Katz? Oh Christ, Sophie, if the poor guy wasn’t so wacky, I wouldn’t be able to stand this without wanting to knock his teeth out. Jesus, who does he have you cuckolding him with now?”
She shook her head violently, the bright hair tossing in an uncombed and untidy way above the forlorn, haggard face. “It don’t matter, Stingo,” she said, “just somebody.”
“Well, then what else happened?”
“He screamed and shouted at me. He took more Benzedrine—maybe cocaine too, I don’t know what exactly. Then he went out the door with this enormous slam. He shouted that he was never coming back. I lay there in the dark, I couldn’t sleep for a long time, I was so worried and scared. I thought of calling you but it was terribly late by then. Finally I couldn’t stay awake any more and went to sleep. I don’t know how long I slept, but when he come back it was dawn. He come in the room like an explosion. Raving, shouting. He woke up the whole house again. He dragged me out of bed and throwed me on the floor and shouted at me. About me having sex with—well, this man, and how he would kill me and this man and himself. Oh mon Dieu, Stingo, never, never was Nathan in such a state, never! He kicked me hard finally—hard, on the arm here, and then he left. And later I left. And that was all.” Sophie fell silent.
I put my face down slowly and gently on the mahogany surface of the bar with its damp patina of cigarette ash and water rings, wanting desperately to be overtaken by coma or some other form of beneficent unconsciousness. Then I raised my head and looked at Sophie, saying, “Sophie, I don’t want to say this. But Nathan simply must be put away. He’s dangerous. He has to be confined.” I heard gurgle up in my voice a sob, vaguely ludicrous. “Forever.”
With a trembling hand she signaled to the bartender and asked for a double whiskey on ice. I felt I could not dissuade her, even though her speech already had a glutinous, slurred quality. After the drink came she took a hefty gulp and then, turning to me, said, “There is something else I didn’t tell you. About when he come back at dawn.”
“What?” I said.
“He had a gun. A pistol.”
“Oh shit,” I said. “Shit, shit, shit,” I heard myself murmur, a cracked record. “Shit, shit, shit, shit...”
“He said he was going to use it. He pointed it at my head. But he didn’t use it.”
I made a whispered, not entirely blasphemous invocation, “Jesus Christ, have mercy.”
But we could not just sit there bleeding to death with these gaping wounds. After a long silence I decided on a course of action. I would go with Sophie to the Pink Palace and help her pack up. She would leave the house immediately, taking a room for that night, at least, in the St. George Hotel, which was not far away from her office. Meanwhile, throughout all this, I would somehow find the means to get in touch with Larry in Toronto, telling him of the extreme danger of the situation and urging him to come back at all costs. Then, with Sophie safely in her temporary seclusion, I would do my damnedest to find Nathan and somehow deal with him