Contrary Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page A

on going forward toward your inevitable death, hoping only that
you would be given as much time as possible, and not too much. Hoping that it
would not end in pain. Hoping that it would be as right and good as it could be
for both of you. He saw this very clearly, and for a moment it was like that
time of awakening in the night and suddenly knowing the answer to everything.
But as you try to grasp it, it slips away and down and back into the sleep you
have left behind you. The idea seemed good and then it was gone and he stood
there, feeling the evening dampness, looking at his wife in her kitchen,
feeling his hunger for the evening meal, feeling the faint edge of the liquor.
A man standing on his land.
    There could have been other tunnels. Other roads. Maybe one that would
not have dulled the shyness of her, the awareness. A life of more simplicity,
without all this jangling, these tin noises and twistings .
A place where he could have been a hard, brown man with outdoors in his eyes
and the gift of quietness and long thought.…
    He smiled at himself. Plow jockey. Peasant life. Cottage with a dirt floor,
mulled wine, and potato pancakes, for God’s sake.
    You started with a woman and she was magic and she was mystery and that
was the way it was supposed to be. And then you grew into each other and
learned each other so that what had been high adventure became a comforting, a
warmth, a reassurance of existence. Good gal, you can say. Contentment, you can
say. But, oh, where did the shy one go, the shy wild one of all the awareness,
of magical blue vein on porcelain breast, who loved earth under her hips, eyes
strained shut against sunlight. She went to the same place, Ben, as did that
great walker and talker and dreamer of a thousand things. They look out of the
old muddy prints and they are still together. Every tunnel is right and every
tunnel is wrong. Choice is immutable.
    “What in the world are you doing out there, dear?”
    “Thinking, I guess.”
    He went into the kitchen, blinking at the lights. “Kids around?”
    “Ellen had a date. They picked her up while you were showering. Brock’s
in his room.”
    “Who did Ellen have a date with?”
    She put her hand on his arm. “Darling, listen to me a minute. Please try
to be nice to Brock tonight. Just try. You don’t know how it is for me, you two
sitting there like wooden dummies. I’m right in the middle. You know, you just
can’t keep on treating him like a criminal for the rest of his life.”
    “It seems to me that that particular label was applied in a very
accurate—”
    “Ben!”
    “All right. All right. I’ll try. Who did Ellen go out with?”
    “Thank you, darling. Oh, she went out with the Schermer boy again. In the jeep. There was another couple. I think she said they were
going to the drive-in movie.”
    “You think!”
    “Don’t bark at me. Goodness! Look, aren’t these nice chops?”
    He said they looked very fine indeed and he mixed himself another drink
and carried it into the living room, aware of her silent disapproval. He turned
on the television. A grave man sat behind a big desk with his hands gently
folded and looked Benjamin Delevan directly in the eye and said grave sensible
things about people and nations. Apparently the most sensible thing that could
be said about nations was that every effort must be made to alleviate the
tension in the family of nations, and the tension seemed inevitable. If you
looked at him while he said it, it seemed to make sense. If you thought it
over, it made no sense. But they didn’t want you to think it over. They wanted
you to look at the next item. The next item was a grinning shot of the
President as he boarded a plane. Then there was the man at the desk again. And
then a clock that said Calcutta under it, and then a crowd of dark people in
white pajamas waving illegible signs and hollering, and then a toy airplane
crushed against an artificial mountain. Ben sipped his drink. The grave