24
PARTISAN REVIEW
Sunday afternoon at the Mayberry's place in New Jersey everyone
fell asleep, Nitsa
&
their kids, Vasiliki, Jane
&
Louise upstairs, George
stretched out on the living room floor, not far from the fireplace."
Little Georgie
&
I, the only ones who are awake in the whole house. A
heavy, damp day, raining intermittently (no sun until 7:00 P.M., when
we were preparing to leave) one of those Sunday afternoons when the
necessity of sleep can become the greatest bourgeois virtue.
George was the first asleep, even ", hile the others were stepping
over him
&
around him. I did not notice how he was sleeping until
long after the house was quiet. He lay, ; r
,TIS
thrown back
&
one knee
raised, his head twisted to one side in a position that seemed so
uncomfortable, surely one must wake for a moment if he happened
to
fall into it; he kept it, unchanged, for over two hours. His mouth was
wide open (the room slowly filling with the smell of the many
martinis, beers, and shots of whisky he had already drunk). The upper
lip was swollen
&
flapped down over his teeth, sucked in with every
breath he drew
&
flung out with the inhaling. He snored, but so loudly
&
with such agony that again, one must wake from such snoring alone ,
deep, rasping, painful breaths, as in the desperation of a disease,
drawing it in, holding it, forcing it out, the express ion of his face
growing always more pained
&
intense. Dead to the world
&
to himself,
twisted
&
abandoned, not knowing how he must appear
to
the
conscious observer, all life suspended
&
only the inner life going on,
dreaming dreams whose meaning he does not know
&
which he will
probably not even remember.
How little of our life is conscious,
&
of that how littl e is actually
our own! Awake or asleep we are possessed by forces of which we are
unaware for motives which we do not know or understand. And even
the past that is our own, claimed, with the best will, by the activity of
heart, hands
&
mind, is linked with the unconscious past-for what
reason, to what purpose? The body is constantly engaged in dying
&
the psyche is content with death's slow rate-with destroying itself, so
that the idea of living in harmony with one's natural forces seems all
but hopeless.
Discovery-Where feelings are not dealt with directly, where they
-George Mayberry was an associate editor at
New Republic
in the mid–
forties when Rosenfeld was a major contributor
to
the back of the book. The
members of the Rosenfeld family here are Vasiliki and the children, Eleni (or
Nitsa) and George.
