William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice Read Online Free PDF Page B

made a shrill piping sound. She sat down again on the sofa, hands folded across her lap, calmly regarding the man who was no longer her husband and yet not a stranger, but something somewhere between the two. “Helen, I swear I don’t know … Riding over here I was wondering what I’d say. Wondering because God knows we’ve lost something. Wondering because thirty years ago I didn’t think all this would happen.” He would halt, thrust his head into his hands for a moment, concentrating. Then, snatching the wineglass from the table in an awkward, greedy motion, he would drink, drain it in a gulp, and replace it on the edge of the table, from which it once fell unbroken and noiselessly to the carpet. He leaned over unsteadily and picked it up, saying, “I didn’t think all this would happen.” He paused. “You won’t believe me, will you?”
    She didn’t look at him any more. She gazed through the window at the mimosa tree, bedraggled in the darkness, dripping rain. “You won’t believe me but the first thing I thought of was you. You think I’m not telling the truth, don’t you? You think I’m saying that because … You think …” He thrust his head into his hands. “Oh, God knows what you think.”
    The grief is coming now, she said to herself: He’s beginning to know what suffering is. Perhaps that’s good in a way. Even he. Perhaps that’s good for a man—finally to know what suffering is, to know what a woman somehow knows almost from the day she’s born.
    He looked upward. He was silent for a moment. She heard him fumbling on the table with the whisky. Outside the mimosa seemed to come alive; the pink, mossy blooms groped at the air: something trembled, shuddered, sighed, although it was only the early evening wind. She heard the frog’s throbbing voice, a late-summer sound of waning life, feeble-and steadfast and unafraid. He spoke again: “Why don’t you say something? What’s the matter? Why don’t you say something? What’s the matter?” She could feel him bending forward in the chair, the voice coming as from a great distance—querulous and half-drunk, very tired, “Answer me, Helen. What’s the matter? Don’t you feel anything? You haven’t said a word all night.” Again he ceased talking. She watched the mimosa, saw a glow from the kitchen and, faint among the distant pantry sounds, heard Ella Swan’s tireless, patient lament. She said nothing. “Helen, say something to me. Helen! Now. Say something. Helen!”
    Perhaps not yet suffering. Or grief. But quick. And soon.
    She took a spoonful of medicine, swallowed it with water from a glass on her dresser: A cigarette. I’d give anything for a cigarette, but Dr. Holcomb … She sank down on the bed, on the damp place, and stretched out across the sheets. The sunlight in the room didn’t fade; it glowed without shadow on the walls and ceiling. In a vase on her dresser four dahlias were withering. There were so many things … She had forgotten them. There were so many things … She shut her eyes for a moment. I must throw them out, she thought: the dahlias, I must throw them out before I leave. And in the darkness the fancied smell of old rancid water was sour and strong. She opened her eyes. By the dahlias light fell upon the figurine dresser lamps, upon those beribboned eighteenth-century lords and ladies frozen timeless and unaltered in some grave and mannered dance, the light and the heat and the silence in the house suddenly all becoming one, with form, it seemed, and with substance, inert and unyielding. She closed her eyes again, thinking: I must somehow get that fan fixed. And slowly thinking: Carey Carr is coming at noon. I must be ready. Not moving or stirring because of the weariness that had emptied her like a vessel. I have always been so sick. All my life I have yearned for sleep. Remote and apart from the silence in the house she was aware of faint noises outside: half-heard, half-remembered sounds flickered