The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell

Author:William Maxwell [Maxwell, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-48497-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 1959-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

29

Lymie got home before Spud and passed through Dick Reinhart’s room on the way to his own. Reinhart was in a sagging overstuffed chair and his feet, braced against his study table, were higher than his head. He looked up from Steve Rush’s copy of Psychopathia Sexualis and said, “Well, Don Juan, did you have yourself a time?”

“I guess so,” Lymie said. His mind was churning with images and excitement, and he wanted to talk to someone but not to Reinhart. “How late is it?” he asked.

“Quarter to one,” Reinhart said. “Time all Phi Betes were in bed.” His eyes were already searching for the place where he had stopped reading: CASE 138. Z., age thirty-six, wholesale merchant; parents were said to have been healthy; physical and mental development normal; irrelevant children’s diseases; at fourteen onanism of his own accord; began to….

Reinhart looked up from the page and saw that Lymie was still standing there. “You ought to read this book sometime,” he said. “It’s very interesting. I used to think I was a regular heller but compared to some of these guys I’m not so bad I guess. I could teach Sunday school if I wanted to.”

Lymie went on to his own room and undressed. Then with his bathrobe pulled around him and his winter overcoat over his knees, he sat down in Spud’s Morris chair and tried to read The Eve of St. Agnes, which Professor Severance had assigned for Monday. He got as far as the owl that for all his feathers was a-cold and then the page blurred, the words ran together like water. When his eyes focused again, he was looking at the row of suits, his and Spud’s, hanging from the pole in the closet.

Lymie got up and went over to the closet and reached for the two victrola records which he kept on the shelf, under Spud’s R.O.T.C. hat and spurs. He turned out the light and went into Pownell’s room, which was also dark, and put one of the records on Pownell’s victrola. The record was “Tales from the Vienna Woods” played by the Philadelphia Orchestra. As a rule he only played his records on Sunday morning early, when there was nobody around who might object to classical music. Now he drew a chair up and sat with his head between the doors of the machine. The room filled with waltzers, with girls turning and turning to the music, and he was in love with all of them, with their soft white arms, their small breasts, their dark eyes and their shadowy hair, which became Sally’s hair, her coal-black bangs. She turned and smiled at him deliriously, and the peach-colored skirt flared out like the petals of a flower.

Lymie played the record twice and then turned the victrola off and sat with his forehead resting on the hard arm of the chair. There was a strange ache in his chest which he seemed to remember from a long time before, from when he was a child maybe.

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