PARTISAN REVIEW
happening to him, one disaster after another. Violence erupted spon–
taneously in his presence and he was usually the victim. He was
always either limping or wearing a bandage; he fell out of trees as
a child, got shot in the leg when he was old enough to go hunting,
lived through so many narrow escapes and calamities that finally
shocks left no mark at all upon him.
But there must have been something else. What happened be–
tween us? No, no, merciful stars, not
that!
But yes, and on a gray,
November afternoon, mad and dark, and as though I had just
come into the world, an orphan, responsible to no one, magnificently
free. Embraces and queer devotions, ironically mixed with that fine,
beguiling notion of those years in which one thinks himself chosen
from all people on earth for happiness. "I'll love you always! Noth–
ing can separate us!" And it was true, for in his anarchic face,
in his non-human, reckless force, I saw the shadow of something
lost, some wild, torrential passion lived out years and years before
in my soul. How shameful! What unutterable, beautiful chaos! Yes,
it was he, he, image of all the foregone sin that forever denies
innocence. Nothing can ever separate us.
How I regretted that walk to the mailbox to send a letter to
New York.
If
I hadn't done that there is at least a good possibility
that I might never have seen him again and might have been spared
that long night in which I tried to account for humiliating days and
emotions. I couldn't sleep at
all
and yet I didn't want the night to
pass because it seemed to me that once morning came everyone in
town would remember what kind of man I first fell in love with.
I looked up the dark street in the direction of his house and
thought, suppose, great heavens, that I had married him. This idea
completely unnerved me because I had wanted to marry him and
would have done so if he had not violated one of those rigid, adol–
escent, feminine laws. I finally broke with him only because he went
away for three days and didn't write to me on each of them.
His
infidelity crushed me and with real anguish I forced myself to say,
"My heart is utterly broken.
If
you don't care enough for me to keep
your promises.... " The thought of the risk I had taken chilled me
to the bone. I might at this moment have been asleep in his house,
my stupid head
pre~ed
against his chest, touching the stony curve
of his chin.
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