FICTION
Philip Roth
HIS MISTRESS'S VOICE
I feel the hurry-up thing choking me, having to move along
faster, that I have to do something I can't begin to do . The fine line
gets finer. I was roaming around thinking I ought to call him, but it's
ridiculous. I've been talking to him all day anyhow. I'm going to
wear myself out going on like this. All circuits busy. Impulses flying
out and you couldn't believe how bad some of them are . My dumb
confusion. My excess. I couldn't stop and yet wondered what I was
doing. Betrayed and I'm the betrayer. So tight was the net and so
meshed. I don't think he understands me at all. Simplify my life .
Make myself controlled and disciplined . Restraint. Judgment . Think–
ing. Less impulse. Less hysteria. Less me. Always less of. But there's
so much , so infinitely much abounding, and yet everything's under a
pile of crap. It was a great mistake in general, but specifically it's
sickening. I rushed in, touched it, and thus this: the definitive expe–
rience of getting fucked-up. Excess and illusion. "An education. You
learned something," he said. But what's all the preparationjor? His
letter arrives. I start reading from the signature backwards up the
page to the top of the back page when I flip it over and begin reading
from the bottom back up to the front until I finally come to my
name. Then I sit down and read it like a person. Then I drive a nail
through it and hang it on the wall . A rapist was in the courtyard one
night and somebody's dog chased him . He was doing three women a
night. The police caught him two doors down from here . Omens are
happening. This is your behavior, they say . Dogs chasing rapists .
Iron folding gates at the edge of the shops . Filthy streets. Only in
those silly places , expensive restaurants, is there the sense that noth–
ing's happened. A hundred dollars a head for dinner and hateful
smug waiters who know who owns who. Everything else is berserk.
I can't eat. This is the least of it. This isn't finished by any means.
Hating myselffor being so mediocre . This private soap opera I have
going- the rage and slop , I hate it .
I thought if he was brilliant I'd be in some way protected , safe ,
preserved . There was nothing realistic about this. I'm not very good
