Chapter 6 Section 4

When times are tough, people feel compelled to eat and drink.So Blacksmith Town was full of fat adults and children, with stubby thighs and baggy trousers, staggering past.They struggled out of the car.They wear sweatshirts and go for a run as a family.They swaggered through the streets full of brains.They eat it in stores, in cars, in parking lots, under trees, while waiting in line for the bus and buying movie tickets. It seems that only the elderly are exempt from this frenzy of eating and drinking.Incoherent and bewildered at times, they are slender and healthy-looking—the women well-groomed and neat, the men focused and well-dressed—picking out shopping carts outside the supermarket.

I walked across the middle school lawn to the back of the building, toward the small open-air gym.Babette was running up the gymnasium steps.I sat in the head row of the stone strip seats.The sky was covered with streaky clouds.After she ran to the top of the gymnasium, she stopped, put her hands on the high parapet, and leaned her body on it to rest for a while.Then she turned and walked down, breasts throbbing against her chest.The wind blew her baggy sweatshirt.As she walked down, she spread the five fingers of her hands and pressed her buttocks.She raised her face, enjoying the cool air, so she didn't see me.When she reached the bottom step, she turned to face the seat again and started stretching her head and neck.Then she started running up again.

Three times she ran up the steps like this, and then walked slowly down.There was no one around.She does the exercise seriously, with her hair flowing, her legs swinging, her shoulders heaving.Every time she reached the top, she leaned over the parapet with her head down and her upper body shaking.When she came down for the last time, I went to the edge of the field to meet her.I hugged her and put my hands inside the waistband of her gray cotton sweatpants.A small plane appeared on top of the treetops.Babette was drenched in sweat, warm, and humming like a small animal. She ran, she shoveled snow, she caulked tubs and sinks.She played crossword puzzles with Wilder; at night, she read classic pornographic novels in bed.what do i doI twirled garbage bags and twisted them up; I swam laps in the school pool.When I was out for a walk, if a bumpy car followed me silently and suddenly appeared beside me, I would jump up like an idiot.Babette talks to dogs and cats.Out of the corner of my right eye I glimpse colored dots of light.Her face lit up with excitement as she planned ski trips we never did.I walked up the hill to the college and saw whitewashed stones lining the driveways of some new homes.

Who will die first? This question actually pops up from time to time, like where are the car keys.It stops a sentence between us and prolongs a mutual glance.I wonder if this idea itself is part of the nature of sex, Darwinism reversed, bestowing sorrow and fear on the widow.Or is it some kind of noble gas in the air we breathe, a rare element like neon, with a melting point and atomic weight?I put my arms around her on the cinder track.The children came running to us, thirty girls in brightly colored shorts, an unimaginable throbbing mass of matter.Rapid breathing, ragged rhythm when footsteps landed.Sometimes, I think our love is inexperienced, and the question of death becomes a reminder of reason, it cures our ignorance of the future.Are simple things doomed, or is that just a superstition?We watched the girls come running again.They are now ready for the race, with little heaviness in the eagerness expressed in their faces and peculiar gait, allowing them to land softly.

Marriott Airport, Downtown Travel Agency, Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center. On the way home, I said, "Bee wants to come over for Christmas. We can put her in bed with Steffi." "Do they know each other?" "They met at Disneyland. No problem." "When have you been to Los Angeles?" "You mean Anaheim." "When have you been to Anaheim?" "You mean Orlando. It's been three years now." "Where was I then?" she said. Bee, my daughter from our marriage to Tweedy Browner, had just started seventh grade in the Washington suburbs.She lived in South Korea for two years and had trouble adjusting to life in the United States.She took a taxi to school and made international calls to friends in Seoul and Tokyo.When she was abroad, she ate ketchup sandwiches and Trix corn on the sticks.Now, she cooks chive sprouts and dried shrimp for sizzling meals, always hogging Tweedy's restaurant-quality gas range.

That Friday night, we ordered Chinese food and the six of us sat down to watch TV.This is the rule set by Barbie.She seems to think that if children watch TV with their parents or step-parents one night a week, the effect is to take the glamor out of TV in their eyes and make it a healthy family activity, terribly narcotic and brain-poisoning in TV. power will be weakened.This reasoning left me with a vague sense of being slighted.In fact, an evening spent like this is a subtle punishment for all of us.Heinrich sat eating his omelette in silence.Steffi became agitated every time something shameful or insulting seemed to happen to someone on the TV screen.She has a big heart that is anxious for others.She would often leave the room and not return until Denise signaled to her that the scene was over.Denise used this time to persuade her sister to be strong, saying that people need to be mean and shameless to live in the world.

On Fridays, after a night of sitting in front of the television, it became my official habit to bury my head in my research on Hitler until late into the night. One night like this, after I went to bed, I said to Babette lying next to me that the headmaster had advised me as early as 1968 that if I wanted to be taken seriously as an innovator of the Hitler problem, I should be serious about my own. Work on the name and appearance.He said Jack Gherardini was not a good name, and asked me what other name I could use.We finally agreed that I should create a couple of additional initials and call myself JAK Gradini, a label that made my name appear to be wearing a borrowed coat.

The headmaster warned me about what he called my tendency to be poor about my self-image.He strongly advised me to gain weight.He wanted me to "grow up" and become a worthy expert on Hitler.He himself was tall, broad-jawed, red-faced, potbellied, with big feet and goose-looking, a frightful combination.My advantage is that I am quite tall and have big hands, but I need size too much - or so he thinks - an unhealthy overweight look, stuffed, bulky and exaggerated.He seemed to be saying that it would greatly benefit my career if I got uglier. So, Hitler gave me a purpose to grow and develop; I've tried to do that sometimes.The thick black-rimmed glasses and darkened lenses were my own idea, a choice made because my current wife wanted me to live without a shaggy beard.Babette said she liked the letter JAK and thought it would not be vulgar to draw attention.For her, those few initials connote dignity, importance and prestige.

I'm just a figment of my name.