"It's going to rain," he said.
He went into second gear, the engine sputtering and gasping and he raced the engine, jamming the throttle down and snapping the choker in and out savagely.1 Sagging clouds moved in a gray blur over a bluish silvery sky.2
"I want to go to the Quirinal Hotel."3
"Maybe," Bobby said.4
They relapsed into silence that was their usual form of intercourse.5 The road climbed up into the hills and left the rich grain fields below. Up here the country was quite barren and the hills were rocky and hard-baked clay furrowed by the rain.6 Why, he wondered, swerving the car to avoid a dead pye-dog, do I love this place so much? Is it because here human nature hasn't had time to disguise itself?7 It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction.8
The rain began with gusty showers, pauses and downpours; and then gradually it settled to a single tempo, small drops and a steady beat, rain that was gray to see through, rain that cut midday light to evening.9 Boy, it began to rain like a bastard.10 For a long while, they were both silent as they listened to the gusting wind and the throbbing patter of the rain.11
"For God's sake," Bobby said, "don't be so damned quiet. I'm flipping already."4
She looked at him.12
Outside the sky was darkening and the foliage yawned flaccidly in the turgid suggestion of a breeze.13
And here came Rudy.14 He was walking along the edge of the road and he had his thumb out trying to get a ride. They stopped the automobile and he ran to get in.15 Cheppity chep chep. Chep.16 He couldn't see who they were, and his face had the squint-eyed look it always had when he took aim with a marble.15
"Going home?"3 Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.17
"I have come from Alabama: a fur piece. All the way from Alabama a-walking.18 I am going to a war."3
It was love at first sight.19
"What war?"3
A golden forelock of his hair fell over his forehead into his eyes. Most wonderful of all, he had only one arm, the right, with which he painted. The other was a sleeve tucked into his pocket. He had lost the contents of the sleeve in the Great War.20
"What war? Any war. I haven't seen a paper lately but I suppose there's a war there always is."3 He stopped for a moment and lit a fresh cigarette.21
"Where we headed?" Rudy asked.14
A faint light came through Bobby's eyes, then either darkened or died.4 Then his blood began to boil within him.22 "What do you care where we're headed? You got an appointment? You got tickets for the opera?"14
He felt the anger mounting up within him. She had no business to love him like that; not now, at any rate.23 "What do you think the purpose of life is — to go to the movies and daily with every girl that comes along?"16
"No, old sport.17 No, I just like to know where I'm goin.'14 But no matter, the road is life.24 O brave new world," he began, then suddenly interrupted himself; the blood had left his cheeks; he was as pale as paper. "Are you married to her?" he asked.
"Am I what?"
"Married. You know — forever. They say 'forever' in the Indian words; it can't be broken."
"Ford, no!"25
They reached the little town of Mora a little after midnight.5 Around the turn it came into view, and broadened in white.25 It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides.26 There was a big number on the door of the building. The number was five.27
"This is only the second season that the hotel's been open in summer," Nicole explained.3 "People like to say the grounds look like the world would look if God had had money."
"I thought God did have money."21
They got out of the car.28
"I'm going to bed," Nicole announced.3
"I hope you sleep well."
"I'm sure I shall."29
It was a mighty nice little room.14 The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock. Looked at from a distance, however, the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room.17 She went to the mirror hanging above the old walnut dresser in the corner and stared at herself. Already she imagined she could see dark rings under her eyes.30
Bobby unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his pants.4 He poured a drink and drank it standing.31 He drank — of course, not whisky like a goy, but mineral oil and Milk of Magnesia; and chewed on Ex-Lax; and ate All-Bran morning and night, and downed mixed dried fruit by the pound bag.32 The grating and rattling of the elevator door opening and closing came from the corridor.31
"You do not love me," he cried. "You no longer love me. Why? Why?"33
"If you aren't the grouch. Well, I can't help it, if you're going to be as jealous as that."30
"At the moment I'm b-b-b-b34 bababadalgharaghtakamminarronkonnbronntonneronntuonnthunntrovarrhoun
awnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!35 I am an invisible man."36
"So what!" she barked, slamming the door.37
And, there he was, standing by the table.38 "What'd you do?" Rudy asked.14 He watched her approach him, a glance of mixed longing and distrust.39 White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile made. Her lips trembled.31
"I thought you were never coming."40 He kissed her neck between ear and coat-collar.31
The stairs were narrow and badly lit.41 They ran down the stairs and out into the street.2 Outside the owls hunted maternal rodents and their furry broods.42 They climbed down a slippery bank of pine needles. There lay the pond, set in its little alp of green — only a pond, but large enough to contain the human body, and pure enough to reflect the sky.43 They were going to have a communion together — something that thrilled her, something holy. He was walking beside her in silence.
"Where?" he asked.
"Down the middle path," she murmured, quivering.44
"You read too much poetry." He grinned. She liked his grin.45
"I like," she observed, "your name."46
He sank down on the grass near a patch of matted elfinwood and inhaled the bright air.47 His slightly pouting lips, his mastiff eyes, were begging her to beg him to go on.45
"Kiss me," she whispered, in acute distress, "kiss me."48 He kissed her quickly. She wished his warm, expressionless beauty did not so fatally put a spell on her, compel her and subjugate her.49
"Oh God," she whispered, and rolled her eyes to heaven.50 "Hot dog!13 Do it some more!" she begged, down on her knees as she was and clutching him around the legs with her two arms.51 The naked crooks of his knees were plump, caught and scratched by thorns. She lay aggressively receptive, flushed, her navel no goblet but a pit in an earthquaking land, flexing taut and expansive.38 She tossed back all her dark hair.53 "All animals should go naked."54
"Don't you see where I stand — how much I want you —.55 I want to protect you, dear, from all the horrors that happen to little girls in coal sheds and alley ways, and, alas, comme vous le savez trop bien, ma gentile, in the blueberry woods during the bluest of summers."56
"You don't know how hard it is to decide right off," she said weakly.
"You mustn't feel bad," he said kindly. "Things straighten out in the course of time.55 We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing."57
He crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won salvation for himself and his beloved.58 He did not rouse then, but a few minutes later he got up slowly and lazily, stretched, and looked carefully about him.26
Gentle tugging of her hand. They returned through three narrow streets.59
"Good night," she said and disappeared behind the closing door.33
"How was it?" Bobby asked.4 He looked old, though he was then about forty.5 "My, my. A body does get around.18 What is the meaning of this?24 I mean, what's this all . . ." Bobby started again weakly.4
"I was looking for a mop."
"What do you mean you were looking for a mop?"
"Well — ah."24
"What do you mean? No, never mind what you mean."43 Something in truth lay dead between them — the love she had killed in him and could no longer call to life.60
"I didn't want to tell you this, because I didn't want to hurt your feelings."21 Tears came into her eyes.61
He came forward two steps.39 "It's not very pleasant being in love."62
"I guess."
"You guess. You know."
"I guess I know."63
They were silent again.23 She walked up to the open suitcase as if stalking it from afar, at a kind of slow-motion walk, peering at that distance treasure box on the luggage support.56
"What the hellya got in there?"9
She looked very surprised at the question.64 "My clothes," she said.9 "Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better . . . "25
"Oh, I see . . . well, that's that, isn't it."
"It certainly looks as though it were."29
"Are you sure?" Bobby asked.4
She looked at him.12
"Well, well, I'll be washed and ironed and starched.61 I guess I never appreciated how lucky I was to have a girl with imagination and lively feet to play with."45
She made no answer because she could think of nothing to say.55 They both kept their eyes on the floor.39
In the morning she was gone.65 He murmured to himself over and over again that he worshipped her, making the sound of a sort of incantation and an obstacle to thought.39 The next day, Sunday, he scarcely got out of bed. He wanted to scream.66 Freedom is slavery. The tears welled up in his eyes.67
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!!32
Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.54 A way a lone a last a loved a long the35
1 — The Sound and The Fury, William Faulkner
2 — The 42nd Parallel (U.S.A. Trilogy), John Dos Passos
3 — Tender is The Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
4 — Deliverance, James Dickey
5 — Death Comes For The Archbishop, Willa Cather
6 — The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
7 — The Heart of The Matter, Graham Greene
8 — The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
9 — The Catcher in The Rye, J.D. Salinger
10 — Sophie's Choice, William Styron
11 — Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
12 — To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
13 — The Naked and The Dead, Norman Mailer
14 — Ironweed, William Kennedy
15 — The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
16 — The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
17 — The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
18 — Light in August, William Faulkner
19 — Catch-22, Joseph Heller
20 — The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
21 — The Plagerist, Benjamin Cheever
22 — The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
23 — Point Counter Point, Aldus Huxley
24 — On The Road, Jack Kerouac
25 — Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
26 — The Call of The Wild, Jack London
27 — Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
28 — Appointment in Samarra, John O'Hara
29 — A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
30 — An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
31 — The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
32 — Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth
33 — Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm
34 — I, Claudius, Robert Graves
35 — Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
36 — Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
37 — The Day of The Locust, Nathanael West
38 — The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford
39 — The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
40 — The Death of The Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
41 — Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
42 — Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
43 — A Room with A View, E. M. Forster
44 — Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
45 — Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
46 — The Ambassadors, Henry James
47 — Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
48 — The Rainbow, D.H. Lawrence
49 — Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
50 — All The King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
51 — Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
52 — Lord of the Flies, William Golding
53 — Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
54 — Animal Farm, George Orwell
55 — Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
56 — Lolita, Vladimir Nobokov
57 — A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
58 — Kim, Rudyard Kipling
59 — The Ginger Man, J.P. Donleavy
60 — The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
61 — Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
62 — Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
63 — Angel of Repose, Wallace Stegner
64 — A Dance to the Music of Time (series), Anthony Powell
65 — Howards End, E.M. Forster
66 — A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul
67 — 1984, George Orwell