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Something Happened :: Хеллер Джозеф
Страница: 366 из 398It's so much easier to ride things out until my mood changes and I kid myself into thinking I will never really want to leave her.
I just don't know how it's done.
Weaklings do it. Will she forward my mail? Or will I have to telephone and talk to her about that and other things. I guess it helps to have a wife who falls in love with another man and wants a divorce first. But mine is so lacking in initiative of that kind she might never come around to it. I would still have all that packing to do. I have shelves of books from college days with handwritten notes I scribbled in the margins. I probably will never look at them again. Yet I would want to take them with me. I would have to find an apartment, furnish the apartment, make my own dinner most evenings or eat out, get some girl friends I could stand, and sooner or later get married to one of them so that I could start looking forward to a divorce again.
I wish there were someone I could hire by the hour to go through the whole wearying procedure for me from beginning to end, even to experiencing those ritualistic qualms of guilt, concern, and remorse without which a conscience can never feel antiseptically pure again.
I remember a pledge: when Derek reached five, I promised myself, I would go. What irony! (All I did was fuck her once, and now I am saddled with him.) It isn't his fault. Even without him, I'd still be unable to go; and even if he were normal, I would want to. I will always want to.
I yearn to.
I do have dreams about divorce. I want to leave my home but I'm unable to. Even when they let me. (They always let me. I don't go. I don't want them to let me.) I'm unable to get anywhere. I want to speak but I'm unable to. People leave messages for me and I am unable to get back to them. I have to take a test and I am unprepared. All term long I have been unable to find my way into the correct classroom. The lessons have proceeded without me. The term is ending. I have trouble finding my way to the correct examination room. Every building I enter is wrong. Time is passing. I will fail.
I would not even know how to begin if I had to begin with a straight face. I don't think I'd be able to make all those necessary pompous statements without cracking a smile. I think I might actually burst out laughing. I think a man like me would have to fly way off the handle into the wildest emotional state to get it done, go mad, utterly berserk, for an hour or two and give no thought at all to mail, children, books, underwear, and pinstripe suits. Man can live without a pinstripe suit, if he has to.
I just don't know how it's done.
Weaklings do it. Will she forward my mail? Or will I have to telephone and talk to her about that and other things. I guess it helps to have a wife who falls in love with another man and wants a divorce first. But mine is so lacking in initiative of that kind she might never come around to it. I would still have all that packing to do. I have shelves of books from college days with handwritten notes I scribbled in the margins. I probably will never look at them again. Yet I would want to take them with me. I would have to find an apartment, furnish the apartment, make my own dinner most evenings or eat out, get some girl friends I could stand, and sooner or later get married to one of them so that I could start looking forward to a divorce again.
I wish there were someone I could hire by the hour to go through the whole wearying procedure for me from beginning to end, even to experiencing those ritualistic qualms of guilt, concern, and remorse without which a conscience can never feel antiseptically pure again.
I remember a pledge: when Derek reached five, I promised myself, I would go. What irony! (All I did was fuck her once, and now I am saddled with him.) It isn't his fault. Even without him, I'd still be unable to go; and even if he were normal, I would want to. I will always want to.
I yearn to.
I do have dreams about divorce. I want to leave my home but I'm unable to. Even when they let me. (They always let me. I don't go. I don't want them to let me.) I'm unable to get anywhere. I want to speak but I'm unable to. People leave messages for me and I am unable to get back to them. I have to take a test and I am unprepared. All term long I have been unable to find my way into the correct classroom. The lessons have proceeded without me. The term is ending. I have trouble finding my way to the correct examination room. Every building I enter is wrong. Time is passing. I will fail.
I would not even know how to begin if I had to begin with a straight face. I don't think I'd be able to make all those necessary pompous statements without cracking a smile. I think I might actually burst out laughing. I think a man like me would have to fly way off the handle into the wildest emotional state to get it done, go mad, utterly berserk, for an hour or two and give no thought at all to mail, children, books, underwear, and pinstripe suits. Man can live without a pinstripe suit, if he has to.