Sabbath’s Theater Read Online Free PDF Page B

only had my boyfriend, and he comes so soon. I never had a man like you.” “Can I come inside you, Silvija?” “Yes, yes, I always wanted a man to come inside me. Just don’t tell my aunt and my uncle!” “I fuck your aunt. I fuck Drenka.” “Oh, do you? My aunt? Do you? Is she a better fuck than me?” “No, never, no.” “Is her pussy tight like me?” “Oh, Silvija—your aunt is standing at the door. She’s watching us!” “Oh, my God—!” “She wants to fuck with us, too.” “Oh, my God, I never tried that before—”
    Little was left undone that first afternoon, and Sabbath was still safely out of Silvija’s room hours before the girl returned with her uncle. They couldn’t have enjoyed themselves more—so saidSilvija, Matija, Drenka, Sabbath. Everybody was happy that summer, including even Sabbath’s wife, to whom he was more kindly disposed than he had been for years—there were times now over breakfast when he not only pretended to inquire about her AA meeting but pretended to listen to her answer. And Matija, who on his Mondays off drove Silvija into Vermont and New Hampshire and, on one occasion, to the very end of Cape Cod, seemed to have rediscovered in the role of uncle to his brother’s daughter something akin to the satisfaction he had once derived from, all too successfully, making a real American out of his son. The summer had been an idyll for everyone, and when she left for home after Labor Day Silvija was speaking endearingly unidiomatic English and carried a letter from Drenka to her parents—
not
the one devilishly composed in English by Sabbath—reiterating the invitation for the youngster to return to work in the restaurant and live with them again the next summer.
    To Sabbath’s question—whether, if she herself were to swear to an oath of fidelity, she would have the strength to uphold it—Drenka replied of course she would, yes, she
loved
him.
    “You love your husband, too. You love Matija.”
    “That is not the same.”
    “But what about six months from now? For years you were angry at him and hated him. Felt so imprisoned by him you even thought of poisoning him. That’s how crazy one man was making you. Then you began to love another man and discovered in time that you could now love Matija as well. If you didn’t have to pretend to desire him, you could be a good and happy wife to him. Because of you I’m not entirely horrible to Roseanna. I admire Roseanna, she’s a real soldier, trooping off to AA every night—those meetings are for her what this is for us, a whole other life to make home endurable. But now you want to change all that, not just for us, but for Roseanna and Matija. Yet why you want to do this you won’t tell me.”
    “Because I want you to say, after thirteen years, ‘Drenka, I love you, and you are the only woman I want.’ The time has come to
tell
me that!”
    “Why has it come? Have I missed something?”
    She was crying again when she said, “I sometimes think you miss everything.”
    “I don’t. No. I disagree. I actually don’t think I miss anything. I haven’t missed the fact that you were frightened to leave Matija even when things were at their worst, because if you left you’d be high and dry, without your share of the inn. You were afraid to leave Matija because he speaks your language and ties you to your past. You were afraid to leave Matija because he is, without doubt, a kind, strong, responsible man. But mostly Matija means money. Despite all this love you have for me, you never once suggested that we leave our mates and run off together, for the simple reason that I am penniless and he is rich. You don’t want to be a pauper’s wife, though it is all right to be a pauper’s girlfriend, especially when you are able, with the pauper’s encouragement, to fuck everybody else on the side.”
    This made Drenka smile—even in her misery the cunning smile that few aside from Sabbath had ever got to admire.