210
PARTISAN REVIEW
neither anticipating nor immersed.
In
the game they bided their time
before the craved interruption.
If
they merely waited I would never
arrive. They were old enough to know what they wanted never arrives
on time. But if they began to dread it as an interruption they would not
be disappointed.
I tried to confide in the woman. I said things like, I feel less
precarious delivering than sorting. Sorting I become nostalgic for the
routes, I added, for effect. She told me there was a project up in the air
to
have the villagers come to the central office for their mail. The
Central Office, shades of Citizen Kane. The plan grieved me. My
woman's name was Fall, Mrs. Fall. She was moved by my grief. Rather,
she moved away from its manifestations. That surprised me. For I had
so perfected speaking of my woes it did not occur to me others could
take them seriously, as living things, as other than pretexts for
eloquence. I was at a greater distance from them than those who heard
me speak of them. It frightened her, what I said about myself. I took
that fright for the rejection of my advances. For I usually seduced with
a dazzling recitation of my woes. I did not consider them advances until
they procured or failed to procure all that advances are supposed to.
Maybe my infirmity was precisely this distance from my woes, from my
feelings (touche, lady novelists). But the only feeling I was sure of was
ambivalence, recently raised to the status of a feeling. For the other
feelings did not want themselves polluted by a half-breed. That I could
founder in a sea of ambivalence and find sweet the subsequent
shipwreck, that, I know, is difficult to grasp. So I spoke a lot. The only
palliative for all that ambivalence was warm baths of utterance. I was
accused from time to time of not distinguishing between dependent
and independent clauses but for me all clauses are dependent, never
mind the grammarians and their fin e distinctions, they all depend on a
listener, hang like spittle from the fang of his gaze. For a little time I
believe what I say if the response is sufficiently warm. Then I sink back
to disbelief, curse those who are taken in more than those who mock, I
reject them for rejecting me not.
She wanted to leave me, she was so overwrought. But there was
nowhere to go since we were in her house, her bedroom, her bed. I did
not know quite what disturbed her: was it my grief at the imminent
loss of my post, or was it my distance from my grief, from which I
transformed it into eloquence, that deadened me to the resources useful
in changing the situation, hanging the supervisor up by his balls, if he
had any. You do not understand, I said.
It
was rare for me to deliver
opinions about others. Monopolizing culpability was something else.
