The Bell Jar Read Online Free PDF Page B

won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: “I’ll go take a hot bath.”
    I meditate in the bath. The water needs to be very hot, so hot you can barely stand putting your foot in it. Then you lower yourself, inch by inch, till the water’s up to your neck.
    I remember the ceiling over every bathtub I’ve stretched out in. I remember the texture of the ceilings and the cracks and the colors and the damp spots and the light fixtures. I remember the tubs, too: the antique griffin-legged tubs, and the modern coffin-shaped tubs, and the fancy pink marble tubs overlooking indoor lily ponds, and I remember the shapes and sizes of the water taps and the different sorts of soap holders.
    I never feel so much myself as when I’m in a hot bath.
    I lay in that tub on the seventeenth floor of this hotel for-women-only, high up over the jazz and push of New York, for near onto an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I don’t believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.
    I said to myself: “Doreen is dissolving, Lenny Shepherd is dissolving, Frankie is dissolving, New York is dissolving, they are all dissolving away and none of them matter any more. I don’t know them, I have never known them and I am very pure. All that liquor and those sticky kisses I saw and the dirt that settled on my skin on the way back is turning into something pure.”
    The longer I lay there in the clear hot water the purer I felt, and when I stepped out at last and wrapped myself in one of the big, soft white hotel bath towels I felt pure and sweet as a new baby.
    I don’t know how long I had been asleep when I heard the knocking. I didn’t pay any attention at first, because the person knocking kept saying, “Elly, Elly, Elly, let me in,” and I didn’t know any Elly. Then another kind of knock sounded over the first dull, bumping knock—a sharp tap-tap, and another, much crisper voice said, “Miss Greenwood, your friend wants you,” and I knew it was Doreen.
    I swung to my feet and balanced dizzily for a minute in the middle of the dark room. I felt angry with Doreen forwaking me up. All I stood a chance of getting out of that sad night was a good sleep, and she had to wake me up and spoil it. I thought if I pretended to be asleep the knocking might go away and leave me in peace, but I waited, and it didn’t.
    â€œElly, Elly, Elly,” the first voice mumbled, while the other voice went on hissing, “Miss Greenwood, Miss Greenwood, Miss Greenwood,” as if I had a split personality or something.
    I opened the door and blinked out into the bright hall. I had the impression it wasn’t night and it wasn’t day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and would never end.
    Doreen was slumped against the doorjamb. When I came out, she toppled into my arms. I couldn’t see her face because her head was hanging down on her chest and her stiff blonde hair fell down from its dark roots like a hula fringe.
    I recognized the short, squat, mustached woman in the black uniform as the night maid who ironed day dresses and party frocks in a crowded cubicle on our floor. I couldn’t understand how she came to know Doreen or why she should want to help Doreen wake me up instead of leading her quietly back to her own room.
    Seeing Doreen supported in my arms and silent except for a few wet hiccups, the woman strode away down the hall to her cubicle with its ancient Singer sewing machine and white ironing board. I wanted to run after her and tell her I had nothing to do with Doreen, because she looked stern andhardworking and moral as an old-style