THE FEAR OF INNOCENCE
819
unrefreshed, we sat silent in the cab to the station, walked silent, a
space between us, on to the platfonn.
It was only when the trainmen were bawling departure, the
steam swirling about our legs, that I grabbed Vivian and she flowed
into me without reserve; the sweet warm darkness of our mouths
dissolved us to one pulsing; without forgiveness ot: pity, we submitted
to each other. And we still did not speak. From my seat, the train
moving, I saw her below me receding, receding, and her lips made
without sound, "I love you" and I called the same, voiceless, to her
diminishing image.
I had not killed the child; it was born seven months later, while
I was in Pearl Harbor-a boy. I read the letter with the news in the
loft-like lounge of the BOQ, between the blurred bleating of the radio
and hushed conventional cries of the card-players, and I tore the
sheets crosswise, took up again the history of the Medes and Persians
that insulated me from the compulsory evening camaraderie, the un–
remitting male heartiness, and the oblique exploitation of self-pity.
I stood no drinks, bought no cigars. It was weeks before I told
anyone, though in the dark I practiced sometimes possible attitudes of
acceptance; but I could project nothing susceptible to love, only
imagine the monster native to my guilt and anger, thriving grossly at
the breast toward eventual power and the realization of his licit hate.
Chiefly I avoided the fraternity of fathers, smokers of cigars,
watchers of waist-lines, who would pass from hand to indifferent
hand, settling back at the end of dinner, the greasy photos of their
kids; none marked really the faces dear to others ("Let me see. You
have two boys?" "No, a girl." "Oh yes, I remember, a cute kid."),
fixed each in his solipsist, smug idolatry, submitting evidence of
potency, the reduplicated image. ("My youngest. Eighteen pounds
and only ten months. I think I'll take ice-cream on my pineapple, I
skipped the potatoes.")
Vivian sent me a picture of David (the Beloved, a hopeful name),
frog's body and the wrinkled dark head of a Filipino, like a nut-meat,
making the moue of anguish from a tangle of sheets. I kept it, not
knowing why, in my wallet. Once in Kobe, very drunk, I showed it
to a middle-aged
geisha,
but when she bent to it the inevitable, honest
tenderness of women,
uAh, kawaii, naaa!
Dear baby!" I jerked it
