The American Trilogy: American Pastoral I Married a Communist the Human Stain (The American Trilogy, #1-3) by Philip Roth

Author:Philip Roth
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781400042548
Publisher: Everymans Library
Published: 2010-08-30T07:00:00+00:00

"If you wish to believe that I am not, that may be just as well. That may be for the best."

"Why don't you ask me about your mother, Meredith? Should I ask you? Where was your mother born? What is her maiden name? What is her father's name?"

"I don't want to talk about my mother."

"Because you know nothing about her. Or about me. Or about the person you pretend to be. Tell me about the house at the shore. Tell me the name of your first-grade teacher. Who was your second-grade teacher? Tell me why you are pretending to be my daughter!"

"If I answer the questions, you will suffer even more. I don't know how much suffering you want."

"Oh, don't worry about my suffering, young lady--just answer the questions. Why are you pretending to be my daughter? Who are you? Who is 'Rita Cohen'? What are you two up to? Where is my daughter? I will turn this matter over to the police unless you tell me now what is going on here and where my daughter is."

"Nothing I'm doing is actionable, Daddy."

The awful legalism. Not only the awful Jainism, but this shit too. "No," he said, "now it isn't--now it's just horrible! What about what you did do!"

"I killed four people," she replied, as innocently as she might once have told him, "I baked tollhouse cookies this afternoon."

"No!" he shouted. The Jainism, the legalism, the egregious innocence, all of it desperation, all of it to distance herself from the four who are dead. "This will not do! You are not an Algerian woman! You are not from Algeria and you are not from India! You are an American girl from Old Rimrock, New Jersey! A very, very screwed-up American girl! Four people? No!" And now he refused to believe it, now it was he for whom the guilt made no sense and could not be. She had been much too blessed for this to be true. So had he. He could never father a child who killed four people. Everything life had provided her, everything life offered her, everything life demanded of her, everything that had happened to her from the day she was born made that impossible. Killing people? It was not one of their problems. Mercifully life had omitted that from their lives.

Killing people was as far as you could get from all that had been given to the Levovs to do. No, she was not, she could not, be his. "If you are so big on not lying or taking anything, small or great--all that crap, Merry, completely meaningless crap--I beg you to tell me the truth!"

"The truth is simple. Here is the truth. You must be done with craving and selfhood."

"Merry," he cried, "Merry, Merry," and, the unbridled unchecked in him, powerless not to attack, with all his manly brawn he fell upon her huddled there on the grimy pallet. "It isn't you! You could not have done it!" She put up no resistance as he tore from her face the veil cut from the end of a stocking.

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