436
PARTISAN REVIEW
such crucial necessity. Or such a feeling of loneliness. For I had no
help in answering. Out of my single strength it was necessary for me
to return <the verdict for reason, in its partial inadequacy, and against
the advantagkes of its surrender.
As I began to play the record for the third time, Etta came into
the room. Without speaking to me, she went to the shelf and, taking
down a brightly colored album, waited, an impatient frown on that
fresher and somewhat harder or unworked version of my own face.
I now scarcely heard the music. I was already braced for a struggle
the inevitability of which I recognized at once. I groped inside the
cabinet of the phonograph for the lever. "Just a minute. What are
you doing?" she said coming forward a step. I turned with an
aggressive movement. "Wh·at?" I said. "I want to use the machine,
Joseph." "I'm not finished with it yet." I don't care," she insisted.
"You've had it to yourself all this time. It's my turn. You've been
playing that!: thing over and over." "You snooped, didn't you," I
said accusingly. "I did not. It was so loud everybody heard it
downstairs." "Well, you'll have to wait, Etta." "I will not," she
said. '"I want to play these Cugat records mamma gave me. I've
been wanting to hear them all day." I did not step aside. At my
back the turntable whirred, the needle making a dull scrape among
the last grooves. "As soon as I play part two of this Pll go." "But
you've had the phonograph since dinner. It's mly turn." "And I
say no." I replied. "You have no business saying no to
me,"
she
said. "No business!" I exclaimed with an abrupt, raw jerk of anger.
"It's my phon()graph; you're keeping me from my phonograph!"
"Well, if that isn't small," I said. "What you call me or think about
me doesn't matter." Her voice rose above · the
tac-a-tac
of the
machine. "I want to listen to Cugat. I don't care."
"Look," I said making a strong effort to control myself. "I came
up here with a purpose. What purpose it isn't necessary to tell you.
But you couldn't stand to think .that I should be here, alone, no
matter why. Maybe you thought I was enj()ying myself, ah? Or
hiding away. So you hurried to see
if
you could spoil it for me.
lsn't that true?" "You're such a clever man, uncle!" "Clever man!"
I said, mimicking. "Movie talk. You don't even know what you're
saying. This is absurd, quarreling with a stupid child. It's a waste
of time. But I know you want to show how you feel toward me. I
know how much and how genuinely you hate me. I thank God,
child that you are, that you have no power over me." "You're crazy,
Uncle," she said.
"All right, that's said and over, there won't be any more of it,"
I said, and believed that I was succeeding in checking myself. "You
can listen to the conga or whatever it is when I leave. N()w, will
you go or sit down and let me play this to the end." "Why should
