"You cannot reduce the journey of a soul to that...
"You cannot reduce the journey of a soul to that kind of psychologyIt is not worthy of you
"Then you explain itExplain it to me, pleaseHow do you explain that when you took all thiswhat looks to me like misery and nothing more, that when you did that, took upon yourself real suffering, which is all this is, suffering that you have chosen, Merry, real suffering and nothing more or less than suffering"--his voice was wavering but on he went, reasonable, reasonable, responsible, responsible--"then, only then--do you see what I'm saying?--the stutter vanished?"
"I've told youI am done with craving and selfhood
"Sweet, sweet child and girl He sat down amid the filth of the floor, helpless to do anything other than try to his utmost not to lose control
In the tiny room, where they now sat no more than an arm's length from each other, there was no light other than what fell through the dirty transomShe lived without lightWhy? Had she renounced the vice of electricity too? tas hermes She lived without light, she lived without everythingThis was how their life had worked out: she lived in Newark with nothing, he lived in Old Rimrock with everything except herWas his good fortune to blame for that too? The revenge of the have-nots upon those who have and ownAll the self-styled have-nots, the playacting Rita Cohens seeking to associate themselves with their parents' worst enemies, modeling themselves on whatever was most loathsome to those who most loved them
There used to be a slogan she'd crayoned in two colors on a piece of cardboard, a handmade poster that she'd hung over her desk, replacing his Weequahic football pennant; the poster had hung there undisturbed all during the year before her disappearanceTill it went up, she had always coyly coveted the Weequahic pennant because the Swede's high school sweetheart had taken it to sewing class in 1943 and stitched into the felt along the bottom edge of the orange and brown triangle, in thick white thread, "To purse logo All-City Levov, XXXX, Arlene The poster was the only thing he had dared to remove from her room and destroy, and even doing that much had taken three months; appropriating the property of another, adult or child, was simply repugnant to himBut three months after the bombing he marched up the stairs and into her room and tore the poster downIt read: "We are against everything that is good and decent in honky AmericaWe will loot and burn and destroyWe are the incubation of your mother's nightmares In large square letters the attribution: "weathermen motto And because he was a tolerant man he'd tolerated that too"Honky" in his daughter's handHanging there for a year in his own home, each red letter shadowed heavily in black
And because even though he hadn't liked it one bit he did not believe it was his right blah-blah blah-blah blah, because--out of regard for her property and her personal freedom--he couldn't even pull down an awful poster, because he was not capable of even that torebki louis vuitton much righteous violence, now the hideous realization of the nightmare had come along to test even further the limits of his enlightened toleranceShe thinks if she raises a hand she'll swat and kill an innocent mite that is innocently floating by her--so in touch is she with the environment that any and every move she makes will have the most stupendously dire consequences--and he thinks that if he removes a hateful and disgusting poster that she has put up, he'll do damage to her integrity, to her psyche, to her First Amendment rightsNo, he wasn't a Jain, thought the Swede, but he might as well have been--he was just as pathetically and naively nonviolentThe idiocy of the uprightness of the goals he had set
"Who is Rita Cohen?" he askedWho is she?"
"The girl who came to me in your behalfAfter you disappearedShe came to my office
"Nobody has ever come to you in my behalf, no one I have ever sent
"Yes, a short little girlI gave her your ballet slippers and your Audrey cartier must 21 Hepburn scrapbook and your diaryIs she the person who put you up to this? Is she the person who made the bomb? You used to talk to somebody on the phone when you were still at home--those secret conversations you had The secret conversations that, like the poster, he had also "respected If only he had torn down that poster and pulled the plug on her phone and locked her up then and there! "Was that the person?" he asked her now"Tell me the truth, please
"I only speak the truth
"I gave her ten thousand dollars for youDid you or did you not get that money?"
Her laugh was kindly"Ten thousand dollars? Not yet, Daddy
"Then I must have an answer from youWho is the Rita Cohen who told me where I could find you? Is this the Melissa from New York?"
"You found me," she replied, "because you have been lookingI never expected not to be found by youYou sought me out because you must seek me
"Did you come to Newark to help me find you? Is that why you came here?"
But she replied, gucci indy bag "No