And I did not believe he was enough of a realist or a humorist to marry
a harlot and prosper in his soul.
Whoever she was, she would eat him away altogether, or eat away years
of him. When he found himself out--that he could not accept himself
with her--it might be too late. He was stubborn. The ordeal would
continue--brave front and eroding guts. What should a man do?
_I am not my brother's keeper._
How often that wretched phrase has been used as the alibi for vicious
neglect!
How rarely has it served in the intended sense. It is but a warning
to Peeping Toms, to Meddlesome Matties and Interfering In-Laws,
Overweening Do-gooders, Paul Prys, the Rabble of the Self-righteous.
Would God the Peepul understood the Words of Jesus had one meaning,
always, and often the opposite of the convenient, accepted
interpretation; that their Christ appreciated how nothing can be
truly said of the Father that does not make a suitable apothegm for
Beelzebub!
Who asked them to _interpret_, anyway?
He told them to _act_.
_I am not my brother's keeper._
The Holy Writ that John Sumner never comprehended, or Anthony Comstock,
old Cotton Mather, and a dozen billion more.
What man, seeing even a pig caught under a fence, does not pull it out,
although it might be the Sabbath?
Which is germane to the circumstance?
What of the Good Samaritan?
I left the sunset hanging over the gray composite of the roofs--the
willow trees in penthouse gardens, the chimneypots that twirled with
supper cooking, and the fly-eyed walls, the thousand-lenses, the
bloodshot windows staring at New Jersey--staring from the square sides
of skyscrapers that towered around me in stiff, unplanned attention,
waiting for night, waiting with God knew what stony thoughts and
brickish resignation--doubtless for Soviet rockets.
I pushed down my shorts, kicked them onto a bed as Paul had kicked his
jacket, and turned on the water in the tub.
I lay down there, donning the warm garment gradually, the wet, the
clean, the only other that fits as perfectly as the grave. I turned
off the tap with my foot. I looked at my skin, which was still fairly
smooth, for all the long time I'd worn it, weathered it, and given it
unnatural chores of excretion.
Good-bye to All That. Good-bye Mr. Chips. And Miss Chippies.
Yak-yak.
This is the cup.
And
take this cup from me.
Nyanh-nyanh.
I soaped the person.
The phone rang.
It does.
You get out of the bathtub. You wrap a towel around your midriff and
make footprints on your rug. You sit and drip.