Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth Read Free Book Online Page A

oh,” cried Drenka as the helicopter’s energy roared above them, a dynamic force to magnify the monstrous loneliness, a wall of noise tumbling down on them, their whole carnal edifice caving in. “I wanted you to say it without
knowing
, I wanted you to do it on your
own
,” and here she wailed the wail that authenticates the final act of a classical tragedy. “I can die! If they can’t stop it, darling, I will be dead in a year!”
    Mercifully she was dead in six months, killed by a pulmonary embolus before there was time for the cancer, which had spread omnivorously from her ovaries throughout her system, to torture Drenka beyond even the tough capacity of her own ruthless strength.

U NABLE TO SLEEP , Sabbath lay beside Roseanna overcome by a stupendous, deforming emotion of which he had never before had firsthand knowledge. He was jealous now of the very men about whom, when Drenka was living, he could never hear enough. He thought about the men she had met in elevators, airports, parking lots, department stores, at hotel association conferences and food conventions, men she had to have because their looks appealed to her, men she slept with just once or had prolonged flings with, men who five and six years after she’d last been to bed with them would unexpectedly phone the inn to extol her, to praise her, often without sparing the graphic obscenities to tell her how she was the least inhibited woman they had ever known. He remembered her explaining to him—because he had asked her to—what exactly made her choose one man in a room over another, and now he felt like the most foolishly innocent of husbands who uncovers the true history of an unfaithful wife—he felt as stupid as the holy simpleton Dr. Charles Bovary. The diabolical pleasure this had once afforded him! The happiness! When she was alive, nothing excited or entertained him more than hearing, detail by detail, the stories of her second life. Her
third
life—
he
was the second. “It’s a very physical feeling that I get. It’s the appearance, it’s something chemical, I almost would like to say. There’s an energy that I sense. It makes me very aroused and I feel it then, I become sexualized, and I feel it in mynipples. I feel it inside, in my body. If he is physical, if he is strong, the way he walks, the way he sits, the way he’s himself, if he’s juicy. Guys with small dry lips, they turn me off, or if they smell bookish—you know, this dry pencil smell of men. I often look at their hands to see if they have strong, expressive hands. Then I imagine that they have a big dick. If there is any truth to this I don’t know, but I do it anyway as a little research. Some kind of confidence in the way they move. It isn’t that they have to look elegant—it is rather an animalistic appearance under the elegance. So it’s a very intuitive thing. And I know it right away and I have always known it. And so I say, ‘Okay, I go and fuck him.’ Well, I have to open the channels for him. So I look at him and I flirt with him. I just start laughing or show my legs and sort of show him that it’s all right. Sometimes I make a real bold gesture. ‘I wouldn’t mind having an affair with you.’ Yeah,” she said, laughing at the extent of her own impulsiveness, “I could say something like that. That guy I had in Aspen, I felt his interest. But he was in his fifties and there I always question how hard can they get. With a younger guy you know it’s an easier thing. With an older one you don’t know. But I felt this kind of vibration and I was really turned on. And, you know, you move your arm closer or he moves his arm closer and you know you’re in this aura of sexual feeling together and everybody else in the room is excluded. I think with that man I actually openly stated that it was okay, that I was interested.”
    The boldness with which she went after them! The ardor and skill with which she aroused them! The delight she found in