The Human Stain

But what can I transform this into? I am stuck with it. As is. Sans language, shape, structure, meaning—sans the unities, the catharsis, sans everything. More of the untransformed unforeseen. And why would anyone want more? Yet the woman who is Faunia is the unforeseen. Intertwined orgasmically with the unforeseen, and convention unendurable. Upright principles unendurable. Contact with her body the only principle. Nothing more important than that. And the stamina of her sneer. Alien to the core. Contact with that. The obligation to subject my life to hers and its vagaries. Its vagrancy. Its truancy. Its strangeness. The delectation of this elemental eros. Take the hammer of Faunia to everything outlived, all the exalted justifications, and smash your way to freedom. Freedom from? From the stupid glory of being right. From the ridiculous quest for significance. From the never-ending campaign for legitimacy.

The onslaught of freedom at seventy-one, the freedom to leave a lifetime behind—known also as Aschenbachian madness.

"And before nightfall"—the final words of Death in Venice—"a shocked and respectful world received the news of his decease." No, he does not have to live like a tragic character in any course.

"Jeff! It's Dad. It's your father."

"Hi. How's it going?"

"Jeff, I know why I haven't heard from you, why I haven't heard from Michael. Mark I wouldn't expect to hear from—and Lisa hung up on me last time I called."

"She phoned me. She told me."

"Listen, Jeff—my affair with this woman is over."

"Is it? How come?"

He thinks, Because there's no hope for her. Because men have beaten the shit out of her. Because her kids have been killed in a fire.

Because she works as a janitor. Because she has no education and says she can't read. Because she's been on the run since she's fourteen.

Because she doesn't even ask me, "What are you doing with me?" Because she knows what everybody is doing with her. Because she's seen it all and there's no hope.

But all he says to his son is, "Because I don't want to lose my children."

With the gentlest laugh, Jeff said, "Try as you might, you couldn't do it. You certainly aren't able to lose me. I don't believe you were going to lose Mike or Lisa, either. Markie is something else. Markie yearns for something none of us can give him. Not just you—none of us. It's all very sad with Markie. But that we were losing you?

That we've been losing you since Mother died and you resigned from the college? That is something we've all been living with. Dad, nobody has known what to do. Since you went on the warpath with the college, it hasn't been easy to get to you."

"I realize that," said Coleman, "I understand that," but two minutes into the conversation and it was already insufferable to him.

His reasonable, supercompetent, easygoing son, the eldest, the coolest head of the lot, speaking calmly about the family problem with the father who was the problem was as awful to endure as his irrational youngest son being enraged with him and going nuts.

The excessive demand he had made on their sympathy—on the sympathy of his own children! "I understand," Coleman said again, and that he understood made it all the worse.

"I hope nothing too awful happened with her," Jeff said.

"With her? No. I just decided that enough was enough." He was afraid to say more for fear that he might start to say something very different.

"That's good," Jeff said. "I'm terrifically relieved. That there've been no repercussions, if that's what you're saying. That's just great."

Repercussions?

"I don't follow you," Coleman said. "Why repercussions?"

"You're free and clear? You're yourself again? You sound more like yourself than you have for years. That you've called—this is all that matters. I was waiting and I was hoping and now you've called.

There's nothing more to be said. You're back. That's all we were worried about."

"I'm lost, Jeff. Fill me in. I'm lost as to what we're going on about here. Repercussions from what?"

Jeff paused before he spoke again, and when he did speak, it was reluctantly. "The abortion. The suicide attempt."

"Faunia?"

"Right."

WHAT DO YOU D O . . . ?

"Had an abortion? Tried to commit suicide? When?"

"Dad, everyone in Athena knew. That's how it got to us."

"Everyone? Who is everyone?"

"Look, Dad, there are no repercussions—" "It never happened, my boy, that's why there are no 'repercussions.' It never happened. There was no abortion, there was no suicide attempt—not that I know of. And not that she knows of. But just who is this everyone? Goddamnit, you hear a story like that, a senseless story like that, why don't you pick up the phone, why don't you come to me?"

"Because it isn't my business to come to you. I don't come to a man your age—" "No, you don't, do you? Instead, whatever you're told about a man my age, however ludicrous, however malicious and absurd, you believe."