— I wish he didn't smell, said Max. — I've told you before, he's an oral type. But if you want a real obsessive neurosis look at this, he said nodding to where Anselm approached on hands and knees, a beatific expression on his blemished face. — Have you read any of his poetry? I don't see why Bildow takes it.
— Why shouldn't he smell? Anselm demanded from below. — He doesn't wash.
— Screw, will you Anselm? Hannah said, with a step toward Stanley.
— What did Saint Jerome say? "Does your skin roughen without the bath?" — Screw. — "Who is once washed in the blood of Christ need not wash again."
Hannah reached Stanley and took his arm. — Don't you want to leave? Come on, I'll walk you as far as the subway.
— Yes… in a minute, he said looking down at the warm indentations Agnes Deigh had left in the chair.
Hannah muttered something. She was staring at Esme again, and suddenly said to Max, — She looks like she thinks she is a painting. Like an oil you're not supposed to get too close to.
— She's high right now, can't you see it? She's been on for three days.
Hannah snorted, and took Stanley's arm again. — Coming?
He looked down to see someone tugging at his trouser leg. — What kind of an ass-backwards Catholic are you? asked Anselm from the floor.
— Why. why…
— Shut up, Anselm, said Hannah. — For Christ sake, go home and take a nap.
— For Christ sake, you say to me! What do you know about Christ?
— Take a nap.
— Well I can't. Do you know why? Because of Christ. Because when I lie down and feel my hands against my own body, that's all I can think of, that thin body of Christ. I can feel it, with my own hands. Does that interest you?
— Please. said Stanley.
— Not a God-damned bit, said Hannah.
— Well don't try to talk to me about Christ then, said Anselm, and started away. Then he turned his head back to them. — Do you know who went around like this? Do you know that Saint Teresa went around on all fours, with a basket of stones on her back? and a halter? That's the ritu quadrupedis, if you think it's so God damn funny don't you. And do you know what Christ said to her? "If I had not already created Heaven, I would create it for thy sake alone." Don't try to talk to me about Christ, he said, and went toward the other end of the room, quadrupedis. Stanley stood still; and Hannah turned from him angrily.
Herschel was still propped against the bookcase, where he had left himself a while before. Hannah's approach woke him to a look of fear and no understanding. — By now you probably don't even know what your name is, she said, her tone merciless sobriety.
— Hannah.
— No. I'm Hannah, and who are you? He stumbled past her to the other side of the room and interrupted Ed Feasley, who was telling Adeline that the literal translation of the German word for surrender, niederlage, is to lie under.
— Adeline, said Herschel. — Baby, drawing his breath through his open mouth, liquidly audible. — Is your name really Adeline? I had a nurse once named Adeline, a west black woman Adeline. One day I bit her right square under the apple tree. What do you think of that?
The white Adeline thought enough of it to stand away from him. Herschel swung before her, like a man whose feet were grounded on springs. — Is your name really Adeline? he pled, now with such insistence that if she would answer, or even allow the affirmative by silence, it would legitimize anything to follow. But the door opened upon them, and four late arrivals appeared, hazy-eyed, with willowy movements, the three boys unshaven arid the girl unclean, smelling like lives from the swamp. — We've been having a ball, man, one of them said. — Have you got any tea?
A policeman, his tunic unbuttoned, appeared in the doorway to announce loudly that he had had a call from headquarters to answer a complaint at this address… a party. too much noise. have to quiet down. and could somebody get me another drink?
Otto took Esme's arm and helped her up, almost using that arm which lay helpless in the sling. He recovered enough of his wit to say, — May I take you home? Now you're supposed to say, Sure, where do you live? Esme looked up, smiled pleasantly, blankly. She did not understand; and sophistry, confronted by simplicity, was lost. — It seems like we've always been just here, she said.
Someone appeared before Otto with a manila envelope. — Here's the story, the one you said you'd send to your friend on a magazine for me, he said, and disappeared.
Herschel stood mumbling to himself. All sense of humor was gone, all sense of anything. His eyes, looking and finding nothing, had stopped seeking and lay open and empty. Only when Hannah reappeared, reflected in their glassy surface, they clouded. — Now I suppose you want to get your tattoo? she said. He nodded helplessly. — Herschel, don't be such a fool. Go back to analysis. Do you think a tattoo will solve everything?
— Hannah. baby.
— What are you going to have tattooed on you, anyhow? Names? Pictures?
— Leave me alone, he whispered.
A discussion of fierce intellectual intensity continued in one corner. Someone had said that everyone knew that Tennyson was a Jew. In the middle of the room two young men met. — I thought you'd gone home, one said, The other embraced him. — I was waiting for someone to ask me. The Swede sat on the windowsill, head in his hands. — Those horrid horrid vulgar labels, all over my bags, he sobbed. — But I could hear them laughing behind the door, behind the locked door, I could hear them laughing. The flat girl said, — Aren't you going to say good night to our host? And her escort, a full-blown woman, said, — God no, I never speak to him.
Agnes Deigh returned, straightening her skirt and loocening her waist. Then there was Stanley's voice saying, — No, I promised I'd go home with Hannah, the tone of the seven-year-old's loyalty to the squat and eternal mother. A boy in a bow tie thanked Agnes Deigh for the party, and she cried, — Darling it wasn't my party, I'm leaving too. Will you take me home? As she went out she stopped with Max, who stood smiling under the forgotten scars of the Workman's Soul. — There's somebody in the can darling, she said, — somebody passed out in the tub, somebody I've never seen before. You'd better go in and look at him, there's blood all over the place.
At their feet squatted the late guests, smoking something the size of a thumbnail which they passed among them, like a pitiful encampment of outcast Indians satisfying the wrong hunger. — This stuff doesn't really affect me, one said, — but don't you notice that the ceiling is getting closer?
The policeman who had been making faces put down an empty glass, and woke up his buddy. They left.
Otto felt strange, holding her thin wrist: that Esme could give all and lose nothing, for the taker would find she had given nothing; plundering her, the plunderer would turn to find himself empty, and she still silently offering. When she looked up, he was lost to himself as though the woman in that painting had turned her unchanging eyes on his helplessness, and he looked away from her eyes, at the straight darkness of her hair, and cowardly, down at her ringless fingers. Her eyes embarrassed him with their beauty, all at once as she showed them.
— Whore! said a voice at their feet, throaty, breathing heavily, as if there were indeed a load of stones on his back. Then in a clear hard voice Anselm called Esme a name which fell from his mouth like a round stone, and seemed to strike the floor and remain. She looked down at him. — Come on. Look out, Otto said, pulling her away. But she stood, for all her delicacy, firm, and smiling. — Anselm, she said, her voice gentle and quenching as she repeated the name. — Anselm.