Sophie's Choice - William Styron [58]
About his affluence he was breath-takingly direct. Perhaps only a man so indefatigably good-hearted could recite the catalogue of his worldly goods without sounding odious, but he was able to, in a guttural hybrid English whose dominant overtone, Sophie’s ear had learned to detect, was Brooklynese: “Forty thousand dollars a year income before taxes; a seventy-five-thousand-dollar home in the most elegant part of St. Albans, Queens, free of mortgage, with wall-to-wall carpeting plus indirect lighting in every room; three cars, including a Cadillac Fleetwood with all accessories, and a thirty-two-foot Chris-Craft sleeps six in comfort. All this plus the most darling and adorable wife God ever gave. And me a hungry Jewish youth, a poor nebbish with five dollars landing on Ellis Island not knowing a single individual. Tell me! Tell me why shouldn’t I be the happiest man in the world? Why shouldn’t I want to make people laugh and be happy like me?” No reason at all, thought Sophie one day that winter as she rode back to the office sitting next to Blackstock in the Cadillac after a trip to his house in St. Albans.
She had gone with him to help him sort out some papers in the auxiliary office he maintained at home, and there for the first time she had met the doctor’s wife—a buxom dyed blonde named Sylvia, garishly clad in ballooning silk pants like a Turkish belly dancer, who showed Sophie around the house, the first she had entered in America. This was an eerie organdy and chintz labyrinth glowing at high noon in the empurpled half-light of a mausoleum, where rosy cupids simpered from the walls down upon a grand piano in fire-engine red and overstuffed chairs glistening beneath protective shrouds of transparent plastic, and where the porcelain bathroom fixtures were jet-black. Later, in the Cadillac Fleetwood with its huge monogram on the front doors—HB—Sophie watched in fascination as the doctor made use of his mobile telephone, installed only recently for a few select customers on an experimental basis, and in Blackstock’s hands, a surpassing implement of love. Later she recalled the dialogue—his part of it, at any rate—as he made contact with his St. Albans abode. “Sylvia sweetness, this is Hymie. Loud and clear you read me? I love you, darling pet. Kisses, kisses, darling. The Fleetwood’s now on Liberty Avenue passing just now Bayside Cemetery. I adore you, darling. Here’s a kiss for my darling. (Smack, smack!) Back in a few. minutes, sweetness.” And a short while later: “Sylvia darling, this is Hymie. I adore you, my darling pet. Now the Fleetwood is at the intersection of Linden Boulevard and Utica Avenue. What a fantastic traffic jam! I kiss you, my darling. (Smack, smack!) I send you many, many kisses. What? You say you’re going shopping in New York? Buy something beautiful to wear for Hymie, my beautiful sweetness. I love you, my darling. Oh, darling, I forgot, take the Chrysler. The Buick’s got a busted fuel pump. Over and out, darling pet.” And then with a glance at Sophie, stroking the receiver: “What a sensational instrument of communication!” Blackstock was a truly happy man. He adored Sylvia more than life itself. Only the fact that he was childless, he once told Sophie, kept him from being absolutely the happiest man on earth...
As will be seen in due course (and the fact is important to this narrative), Sophie told me a number of lies that summer. Perhaps I should say she indulged in certain evasions which at the time were necessary in order for her to retain her composure. Or maybe her sanity. I certainly don’t accuse her, for from the point of view of hindsight her untruths seem fathomable beyond need of apology. The passage a while back about her early life in Cracow, for example—the soliloquy which I have tried to transcribe as accurately as I have been able to remember it—is, I am now certain, made up mostly of the truth. But it contained one or two significant falsehoods, along with some crucial lacunae, as will eventually be made clear. As a matter of fact, reading back through much of what I have written so far, I note that Sophie told me a lie within moments after we first set eyes on each other. This was when, after the ghastly fight with Nathan, she leveled upon me her look of desperation and declared that Nathan was