350
PARTISAN REVIEW
remarkable that you should be responsive to the low moan of cushions ;
if you ask me, it's even suspicious how warmly you are washed by every
slow hydraulic sigh released by grease racks, barber chairs and door
stops; strange that you are passionately moved-imagine-by the
yearn of warping boards , the tireless cries of wood rot, thin as thread
and exquisitely tangled , but perhaps it's that sadistic element in you
which appreciates broken slats and tacks like teeth, screws, nails ,
staples with their twin penetration like the drilled wounds of eyes, the
elongating pains of picture wire , the screams of burning bulbs , and
although in your overburdened state it may be kind ofyou to regret the
steady dampening ofsalt on humid days, still, one need not be a queen
and have a palace to enjoy the sweet granular silence of sugar in its
crock. Voices: they were everywhere around her like gnats . In snowfall ,
frost . He had his hat . To rise? to doff one final time? good day,
Madame-good-by, surprise- ... to leave? He could do that . Run
under it our of the rain . How many of his dreams had flight and
freedom in them? Ham and eggs . Pie and cheese. Muff and sniff.
She 'd hear the Sourhern slurs ofmelting custard and be .. . entranced .
He had his hat . He could do that. But noises he made deliberately to set
her off, stomps around the room or weights he placed on the floor to
make it groan , soda he shook and swallowed , screws he gave an extra
turn to, fists he left printed in the air, the pounding he gave the
coverlet , or conversely the squeaks he silenced with sewing machine
oil, the jars he swaddled in socks , the lids he glued or the many things
he simply removed in the trunk of their car to cast on the dump or drop
in a lake or bury : none of these acts moved her because , she said, under
torture matter could be made to say anything . Mud, mold , matter–
what one called it didn ' t count- but it had neither courage, nor loyalty,
nor conscience . In her husband 's police chief state matter would
moisten its tongue for its own ass , and she didn't believe that right, she
refused absolutely to consider it , matter alone meant nothing , a calf of
slime , she said, not an object of thought, of piety or speech ; it was a
convenient carrier at best, a carton for cats , and so she thought of it the
way typhoid must have thought of Mary, no more, not even as a
necessary ambience or elevation or so much as a stand for music , pedi–
ment for a statue or tower with an aerial , though that was closer , and
what was he , then , in his dense maleness, a series of surfaces like a stack
ofplates, what was he with his bowling and his beer and his business-
