PARTISAN REVIEW
birth and brutality of parenthood. When I did not find these hostil–
ities it was just as if the laws of the universe had stopped and I
became wary and confused. It is awful to be faced each day with
love that is neither too great nor too small, generosity that does not
demand payment in blood; there are no rules for responding, no
schemes that explain what this is about, and so each smile is a chal–
lenge, each friendly gesture an intellectual crisis.
I cannot sit down to a meal without staring off in a distraction
and when they ask me what I am thinking I am ashamed to say
that I am recalling my
analysis
of all of them, pacing again, in some
amazement, the ugly, angry, damp alleys I think of as my inheritance.
But now that I look around the table and can see these family faces–
my father's narrow skull, the sudden valley that runs down my
mother's cheeks from the ears to the chin, my sister's smile which
uncovers her large, crooked teeth and makes one think for the mo–
ment that she is as huge as an old work horse, though she is, except
for her great teeth, very frail- everything I see convinces me that
I have been living with a thousand delusions. The simple, benign
reality is something else. (I have only one just complaint and that is
that the radio is never turned off.) But where are the ancient mis–
deeds and brutish insufficiencies that have haunted me for years?
My nephew, a brown-haired boy of three, disconcerts me as
much as anything else. When I take him on my lap I feel he is
mocking me for the countless times I have lamented that he should
be doomed to grow up
here.
Since the day of his birth I have been
shuddering and sighing in his behalf; I have sung many requiems
for him and placed sweet wreaths on his grave; but often he looks
at me, perhaps noticing the lines on my face and the glaze on my
eyes, as
if
he were returning my solicitude.
At least one thing I anticipated is true and it makes me happy
to acknowledge that I am bored. The evenings are just as long as
ever, dead, dead, "nothing going on." I take a deep breath and yearn
for the morning so that I can go downtown to see how the old place
is coming along. And when I get on the streets I see vigorous, cheerful
faces which, in spite of the dark co:ners and violent frustratiom in
small-town life, beam with self-love and sparkle with pride. These
magnificent countenances seem to be announcing: Look! I made it!
And the wives--completely stunned by the marvelous possession of
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