S. by John Updike Read Free Book Online Page A

before. It’s as if there is a level the sun has never reached before.
He
makes it possible, the Arhat, he per
mits
it—his voice, his glow. God, I love him, even though he makes me suffer. Love—
luff
, he says—is agony.
A-go-ny
, Midge.
    A cute little lizard has just showed up. He’s quite bright green. As I’m talking he stares at me with one eye. He
really
knows how to be motionless.
    I began to tell you about my dynamic-meditation session. It must have been a week ago, though it feels a lot longer. I wasn’t nearly so secure here then, so plugged into the energy sources. About ten people, most of them younger than I, plus Fritz, whose name here, I must remember, is Vikshipta. A bit like “stick shift.” Durga was there too, queening around with all her orange hair and a ton of bogus-gold bangles on her wrists and a big loose violet robe that didn’t quite conceal how overweight her hips are. I bet she put him up to it: the boy who after we’d all settled into the lotus position in a circle shouted I reminded him of his loathsome mother, even though she didn’t have a big black pussy like I did, and tried to hit me. I shouldn’t say “tried,” the little shit
did
hit me, right across the jaw so my back teeth on that side ached for days, and then tried to grab my arm to twist me down—you could see he was excited, if you know what I mean. We are all naked, I should have explained, except for the leaders, who keep their robes on. I was dumbfounded and numb, I initiallywent into what Dr. Epstein used to call my masochistic-recessive mode, of, you know, the good girl who retreats into the knowledge that
she’s
not doing anything and somebody
else
is to blame. The few occasions when Daddy and Mother would get violent, over his drinking usually, I’d go into that mode, and in a way also when they bulldozed me out of Myron Stern, the boyfriend I had in college I know I’ve told you about, out of him and into Charles, who was just graduating from Harvard. Having all your clothes off in front of a lot of strangers makes you feel oddly detached. The meditation leaders in their robes weren’t doing anything to help, just swirling around shouting “Who
are
you?” at people, or “Ko veda?,” which means “Who knows?,” and the other sannyasins were making a kind of moaning hullabaloo that wasn’t any help either, and I looked up past this brat’s shaved head—you don’t
have
to shave your head here, but he was going all the way—and I saw this very Irish sort of Peg o’ My Heart smirk on Durga’s big white chalky face and I just got
mad
, Midge: you wouldn’t have known me. He, the aroused boy, had me pretty much on my back by then, and I kneed him right where he was most interested, let’s say, and then got a grip on his ears, since he didn’t have any hair, and pulled his head this way and that, and wound up pounding it on the floor while Durga and Fritz, I mean Vikshipta, were trying to separate us, which they hadn’t been doing while
he
was on top. Somehow that boy, who you could tell from the few words he pronounced and the supercilious way he tipped his head back and tucked up his upper lip had had all the advantages, was that particular kind of boy I’ve always taken an irrational dislike to. You see them all the time, the sons of people you know and the kind of country-club kid who used to be hot after Pearl. They act so—what’s the word?—
entitled
, screwed upor not, flunking out of Andover or not, and if they don’t rack their Porsches up against a tree or overload their little heads with cocaine will end up being a professional something-or-other just like their smug chauvinistic absolutely insensitive old-fart daddies. The
language
I used against this poor boy you wouldn’t believe, Midge. It just vomited out of me, with all this suppressed rage. Tell Irving that meditation with him was never like
this
.
    I don’t know what it was set me off, really. Nobody likes somebody