100
PHiliP l. GREENE
"If
two people want to relate to each other," Marvena said,
"there must be some kind of connection. Isn't Holden kind of
dis–
connected?"
"Yes, but that's what makes him whole. That
is
the ironic
paradox. The existential coming-into-being
is
a result of this self–
confrontation. That is why I used the Prometheus image."
"Isn't the book about love?"
Rollie uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. "That
is
the
dichotomy. How can you love in a loveless world. The ultimate
meaning of love is self-love."
"All by yourself?"
"I don't mean you shouldn't have someone. There must always
be someone."
"Is that what you call spiritual intercourse?"
"There are many kinds," Rollie said. It was rolling now.
Marvena reached in her bag for another tissue and clenched it
in her fist. She wore her hair in the new manner, soft, falling over
the eyes. In the lamplight she looked chaste and sensuous. She
smiled at him and waited.
"You know the line from Shakespeare," Rollie said, "'Let me
not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments'?"
"It's a
poem
about true love."
"Ah, yes, true love," Rollie said. He thought of himself and
Bonnie at Wisconsin in his little cubby-hole office and her pleading
little grey eyes blinking true love like a pinball machine. That was
the door-opener, but he had difficulty remembering what the heat
had been
all
about. He leaned over to put out
his
cigarette and
brushed against Marvena's hand. She looked up and away quickly.
"The act of love," Rollie said, shifting to a tone of wise counsel,
"is
a spiritual, you could even call it a religious, encounter. That is
probably the underlying meaning of the I-Thou relationship."
"The act of love?" Marvena looked puzzled.
"Making love." The words buzzed across the light. Rollie
saw himself and the girl as two poles of a battery with the current
sent across the invisible wire of sound. No one had ever clinically
pursued the dynamics of the interview situation. There were abso–
lutely no theorists in this field. They had turned a deaf ear on
him
in Wisconsin when he tried to explain his conference with Clarissa.
There had been some bad moments with Bonnie over that.
