Sabbath’s Theater

by Philip Roth

  There was a smile on her face after the morphine boost. Why, this little bit left of her looked almost sexy! Amazing. And she had a question to ask.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Because I am almost blocked out about it. I could not remember today. Maybe you said, ‘Yes, I want to piss on you, Drenka,’ and whether I really wanted it, I don’t think I really pondered so much upon that, how would it be, but I would say that to you, yes, you could, to make you hot and to make you happy, to do things that work for you, or something . . .”

  Immediately after the morphine it was never easy to follow her. “And the question is what?”

  “Who started? Was it that you took your dick out and said, ‘I want to piss on you, Drenka. May I? I want to piss on you, Drenka’? Is that how it started?”

  “Sounds like me.”

  “And then I thought, ‘Oh well, this transgression, why not? Life is so crazy anyway.’”

  “And why were you thinking about that today?”

  “I don’t know. They were changing my bed. The idea of tasting somebody else’s piss.”

  “It was harrowing?”

  “The idea? It was both harrowing and the idea was exciting. So then I remember you stood there, Mickey. In the stream. In the woods. And I was in the stream on the rocks. And you stood there, over me, and it was very hard for you to start getting it out, and finally there came a drop. Ohhh,” she said, recalling that drop.

  “Ohhh,” he muttered, his grip tightening on her hand.

  “It came down, and as it came upon me, I realized that it was warm. Do I dare to taste it? And I started with my tongue to lick around my lips. And there was this piss. And the whole idea that you were standing above me, and at first you strained to get it out, and then suddenly came this enormous piss, and it just came into my face and it was warm and it was just fantastic; it was exciting and everywhere and it was like a whirlwind, what I was feeling, the emotions. I don’t know how to describe it more than that. I tasted it, and it tasted sweet, like beer. It had that kind of taste to it, and just something forbidden that made it so wonderful. That I could be allowed to do this that was so forbidden. And I could drink it and I wanted more as I was lying there and I wanted more, and I wanted it on my eyes and I wanted it in my face, I wanted lots of it in my face, I wanted to be showered by it in my face, and I wanted to drink it, and then, I wanted it all the way then, once I allowed myself to let go. And so I wanted everything of it, I wanted it on my tits. I remember you were standing over me, and you did it on my cunt also. And I started playing with myself as you were doing it, and you made me come, you know; I was coming while you were just squirting it over my cunt. It was very warm, it was so warm, I just felt totally . . . I don’t know—taken by it. Then I come home afterward and I was sitting in the kitchen, remembering it, because I had to sort it through—did I like it or not—and I realized that, yes, it was like we had a pact; we had a secret pact that tied us together. I’d never done that before. I didn’t expect to do it with anyone else, and today I was thinking I never will. But it really made me have a pact with you. It was like we were forever united in that.”

  “We were. We are.”

  Both crying now.

  “And pissing on me?” he asked her.

  “It was funny. I was unsure. Not so much that I wouldn’t want to do it. But to let go of my own, you know—would you like my piss, the idea of abandoning myself in that way to you, because I was sort of, not that I wouldn’t like it, but how would you react to it, my own piss in your face? You wouldn’t like the way it tasted, or that I would offend you. So I was shy about it at first. But once I started doing it, and I realized that it was okay, that I didn’t have to be frightened, and seeing your reaction—you took some of it, you even drank some of it . . . and . . . and . . . I like it. And I had to stand above you, and so it made me feel that I can do anything, anything with you, and anything is all right. We’re in this together, and we can do anything together, everything together, and, Mickey, it was just wonderful.”

  “I have a confession to make.”

  “Oh? Tonight? Yes? What?”

  “I was not so delighted to drink it.”

  A laugh came out of that tiny face, a laugh a lot bigger than the face.

  “I wanted to do it,” Sabbath told her. “And when it first began to come out of you, it came out in a little trickle. That was okay. But then when it came the full stuff—”

  “‘But then when it came the full stuff’? You are talking like me! I have made you speak translated Croatian! I taught you, too!”

  “You sure did.”

  “So tell me, tell me,” she said excitedly. “So what happened when it began to come out the full stuff?”

  “The warmth. I was astonished by it.”

  “Exactly. But it’s very pleasant that it’s warm.”

  “And there I was, between your legs, and I had to take it in my mouth. And Drenka, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.”

  She nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “You could tell?”

  “Yes. Yes, darling.”

  “It thrilled me mostly because I could see it was thrilling you.”

  “And it really was. It was.”

  “I could see that. And that was enough for me. But I couldn’t abandon myself to drinking it quite the way you could.”

  “You. How strange,” she said. “Tell me about that.”

  “I guess I have idiosyncrasies, too.”

  “How did it taste to you? Was it sweet? Because yours was very sweet. Beer and sweet together.”

  “Do you know what you said, Drenka? When you finished the first time?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t remember? When you finished pissing on me?”

  “Do you remember?” she asked.

  “Could I forget? You were radiant. You were glowing. You said, triumphantly, ‘I did it! I did it!’ It made me think, ‘Yes, Roseanna drank all the wrong stuff.’”

  “Yes,” she laughed, “yes, I think maybe I did. Yes, you see, that fits what I told you, that I was so shy. Exactly. It was like I passed a test. No, not to pass a test. As though . . .”

  “As though what?”

  “Maybe what I was worried about was that I would regret it. There are many times when one has ideas to do things or maybe you get led in to do something, and afterward there’s a sense of shame. And I wasn’t sure—would I have shame for it? That was what was so incredible about it. And now I even love to talk about it with you. It was a lustful feeling . . . and a feeling of giving, also. In a way that I could not do to anyone else.”

  “By pissing on me?”

  “Yes. And allowing you to piss on me. I feel that, I felt that—you were totally with me then. In all senses, as I was lying there afterward in the stream with you, holding you in the stream, in all senses, not just as my lover, as my friend, as someone, you know, when you are sick I can help you, and as my total blood brother. You know, it was a rite, a passage of a rite or something.”

  “Rite of passage.”

  “Yes. Rite of passage. Very definitely. That’s true. It’s so forbidden and yet it has the most innocent meaning of anything.”

  “Yes,” he said, looking at her dying, “how innocent it is.”

  “You were my teacher. My American boyfriend. You taught me everything. The songs. Shit from Shinola. To be free to fuck. To have a good time with my body. To not hate having such big tits. You did that.”

  “About fucking you knew before you met me, Drenka dear, at least a little something.”

  “But in my life, married, I didn’t have many outlets in this regard.”

  “You did all right, kid.”

  “Oh, Mickey, it was wonderful, it was fun—the whole kitten and kaboozle. It was like living. And to be denied that whole part would be a great loss. You gave it to me. You gave me a double life. I couldn’t have endured with just one.”

  “I’m proud of you and your double life.”

&n
bsp; “All I regret,” she said, crying again, crying with him, the two of them in tears (but he had got used to that—we can live with widespread and we can live with tears; night after night, we can live with all of it, as long as it doesn’t stop), “is that we couldn’t sleep together too many nights. To commingle with you. Commingle?”

  “Why not.”

  “I wish tonight you could spend the night.”

  “I do, too. But I’ll be here tomorrow night.”

  “I meant it up at the Grotto. I didn’t want to fuck any more men, even without the cancer. I wouldn’t do that even if I was alive.”

  “You are alive. It is here and now. It’s tonight. You’re alive.”

  “I wouldn’t do it. You’re the one I always loved fucking. But I don’t regret that I have fucked many. It would have been a great loss to have had otherwise. Some of them, they were sort of wasted times. You must have that, too. Haven’t you? With women you didn’t enjoy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, I had experiences where the men would just want to fuck you whether they cared about you or not. That was always harder for me. I give my heart, I give my self, in my fucking.”

  “You do indeed.”

  And then, after just a little drifting, she fell asleep and so he went home—“I’m leaving now”—and within two hours she threw a clot and was dead.

  So those were her last words, in English anyway. I give my heart, I give my self, in my fucking. Hard to top that.

  To commingle with you, Drenka, to commingle with you now.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Amid the dark fields, halfway up the hill, the living room lights were softly burning. From the bottom of the steep drive, where he paused to reconsider what he was doing—what he had already half-thinkingly done—the lights made the house look cozy enough for him to call the place home. But from outside, at night, they all look cozy. Once you’re no longer outside looking in but inside looking out . . . Still, the closest he had to a home was this one, and because he couldn’t leave what was left of Morty nowhere, here was where he’d come with Morty’s things. Had to. He was not a beggar any longer, not a mischievous intruder, nor was he washing in toward shore somewhere south of Point Pleasant, nor at dawn would someone out for a jog along the beach with the Lab find his remains among the night’s debris. Nor was he boxed in beside Schloss. He was custodian of Morty’s things.

  And Rosie? I’ll bet I can keep her from cutting off my dick. Start there. Set modest goals. See if you can get through the rest of April without her cutting it off. After that, you can raise your sights a little. But begin with just that and see if it’s doable. If it’s not, if she does cut it off, well, then you’ll have to rethink your position. Then you and Morty’s things will have to find a home elsewhere. In the meantime, display to her not the least apprehension about being mutilated in your sleep.

  And don’t forget the benefits of her stupidity. One of the first rules of any marriage. (1) Don’t forget the benefits of her (his) stupidity. (2) She (he) cannot be taught anything by you, so don’t try. There were ten of these he’d worked up for Drenka to help her through a stretch with Matija when just the meticulous way Matija double-tied his shoelaces made her see life as nothing but blackness. (3) Take a vacation from your grievances. (4) The regularity of it isn’t totally worthless. Et cetera.

  You could even fuck her.

  Now, this was an odd thought to have. He could not, on reflection, remember thinking anything more aberrant in his entire life. When they’d moved up north, of course, he used to fuck Rosie all the time, into her up to the hilt all the time. But when they’d come up here, she was twenty-seven. No, first thing was to keep her from cutting off his dick. Trying to fuck her could even work against him. Modest goals. You’re just looking for a home for you and Mort.

  In the living room she would be reading, in there with a fire going, stretched out on the sofa, reading something somebody at the meeting had given her. That’s all she read now—the Big Book, the Twelve-Step Book, meditation books, pamphlets, booklets, an endless supply of them; not since leaving Usher had she stopped reading a new one that was just like the old one that she could not live without. First the meeting, then the booklets by the fire, then in bed with Ovaltine and the “Personal Story Section” of the Big Book, alcoholics’ anecdotes with which she put herself to sleep. He believed that when the lights were out she prayed some AA prayer in bed. At least she had the decency, in his presence, never to mutter the thing aloud. Though sometimes he gave it to her anyway—who could resist? “You know what my Higher Power is, Roseanna? I’ve figured out what my Higher Power is. It’s Esquire magazine.” “Couldn’t you be more respectful? You don’t understand. This is a very serious business for me. I’m in recovery.” “And how long is that going to last again?” “Well, it’s a day at a time, but it will be forever. It isn’t something that you can just put aside. You have to keep going.” “I guess I won’t see the end of it, will I?” “You can’t. Because it’s a constant process.” “All your art books on those shelves. You never look at one. You never look at a picture in any of them.” “I don’t feel guilty, Mickey. I don’t need art. I need this. This is my medicine.” “Came to Believe. Twenty-four Hours. The Little Red Book. It’s an awfully tiny aperture onto life, my dear.” “I’m trying to get some peace. Some inner peace. Serenity. I’m getting in touch with my inner self.” “Tell me, whatever happened to the Roseanna Cavanaugh who could think for herself?” “Oh, her? She married Mickey Sabbath. That took care of that.”

  In her robe, reading that shit. He imagines her, robe undone, holding her book with her right hand while diddling herself idly with the left. Ambidextrous, but happens to feel more comfortable playing around with the left. Reading and not even aware for a while that she is starting up. A bit distracted by the reading. Tends to like to have some cloth between her hand and her pussy. Nightgown, robe—tonight, panties. The material turns her on; why that is she doesn’t quite know. Uses three fingers: outer fingers on the lips, middle finger pressing the button. Circular movement of the fingers, and soon the pelvis in a circular movement, too. Middle finger on the button—not the tip of the finger, the ball of the finger. First a very light pressure. Knows automatically where the button is, of course. Then a little pause, because she’s still reading. But it’s getting more difficult to concentrate on what she is reading. Not sure she wants to do it yet. The pressure of the ball of the two fingers surrounding the button. As she gets more excited, the ball of one finger is right on the button yet the feeling is somehow spread by the other fingers. Finally she puts the book down. Intermittently now, her fingers are still while her pelvis does the moving. Then back on the button, round and round, the other hand on her breast, on her nipples, squeezing. She has now decided that she is not going to be reading for a while. Takes her right hand down from her breast and rubs the whole thing forcefully with both hands, still outside the material. Three fingers next, over where the button is. Always knows exactly where it is, which is better than I can say for myself. Nearly fifty years on the job, and still the damn thing is there and then it’s here and then it’s gone and you can spend half a minute looking everywhere before kindly her hands reposition you. “There! No, there! Right there! Yes! Yes!” And now she stretches her legs straight out, a long cat stretch, her hands pressed tight between her thighs. Squeezing. Manages a pre-come that way, a forshpeis, squeezing the whole cunt hard as she can, and now she has decided: she doesn’t want to stop. Sometimes she does it through the cloth the whole way; tonight she wants her fingers on the inside of the lips and she pushes the panties aside. Going up and down now, straight up and down, and not in a circular motion. And faster, going much faster. Then, using the other hand, she slips her middle finger (elegant long finger it is, too) into her cunt. Very fast with it, until she feels the first premonitory convulsions. Moves her legs back up now, spreading the legs apart while bending the knees and bringing the feet together so that, almost beneat
h her buttocks, the toes are touching. Opens herself up all the way. Wide open now. And constant contact with two fingers on the clit, the middle finger and the ring finger. Up and down. Tensing herself. Buttocks up now, raising herself up on her bent legs. Now she slows down a little. Stretches her legs out to slow it down, bringing it all almost to a stop. Almost. And now she bends her legs up again. This is the position in which she wants to come. Here begins the muttering. “Can I? Can I?” All the while she is making the decision when, she is muttering aloud, “Can I? Can I? Can I come?” Whom does she ask? The imaginary man. Men. The whole lot of them, one of them, the leader, the masked one, the boy, the black one, asking herself maybe or her father, or asking no one at all. The words alone are enough, the begging. “Can I? Can I come? Please, can I?” And now she is keeping the pressure even, now a little harder, increasing the pressure, constant pressure, just right there, and now she feels it, she feels it, now she’s got to keep going—“Can I? Can I? Please?”—and here are the noises, ladies and gentlemen, in combinations peculiar to each woman alone, the noises that could serve as well as fingerprints to individualize the whole sex for the FBI—ohh, ummmm, ahhh—because now she’s started, she’s coming, and the pressure is harder but not extremely hard, not so hard that it hurts, two fingers up and down, wide pressure, she wants wide pressure because she wants to come again, and now the feeling is moving down toward the cunt, and she puts her finger in, and now she thinks she could enjoy having a dildo there, but she’s got her finger there, and that’s, that’s IT! And so she goes up and down with her finger as though somebody were fucking her, and voluntarily now she tightens her cunt to increase the feeling, squeezes tight to give herself more feeling, up and down, while still working the clit. It changes what she feels when she introduces her finger into her cunt—on the button it’s very precise, but with the finger in her cunt the feeling is distributed, and that’s what she wants: the distribution of the feeling. Though it’s physically not easy to coordinate the two hands, with supreme concentration she works to overcome the difficulty. And does. Ohhhh. Ohhhh. Ohhhh. And then she lies there and she pants for a while, and then she picks up the book and goes back to her reading, and, in all, there is much here to be compared with Bernstein conducting Mahler’s Eighth.