Read Online Reinhart's Women by Thomas Berger - Free Book Online Page B

operate, I’m trying to dispose of all capricious objections beforehand.”
    “You’re taking me to some kind of religious service? I can’t say I’m fascinated by the prospect, if that’s what you mean. Is this necessary?” A devilish impulse claimed him. “Shall we pray for the salvation of sex deviates?”
    Blaine shrank into himself. “Why you fil—” He caught control at the last moment it could still be captured, and coughed violently. “I’m not always prepared for what you call humor, dear Dad,” he said in a voice made guttural by resentment, “but will you let me explain?”
    Reinhart exposed his two palms.
    “It’s a little Christian community,” Blaine said, assuming an expression that suggested sanctity, “on what used to be a farm, what still is a farm, on good, rich Ohio farmland.” He showed the kind of smile that is obviously more eloquent to him who produced it than to the innocent bystander. “Clean air, fertile soil, honest labor.”
    “Are you serious?” Reinhart had never seen his son in this mood, which seemed perilously near the rhapsodic.
    “For God’s sake, haven’t you the remotest shred of decency?” cried Blaine. “Can’t you see this isn’t easy for me?”
    “Sorry,” said Reinhart. He tried to contribute to a polite conversation. “It takes a certain kind of person to be a farmer, though, I’m sure. It has never seemed attractive to me.”
    Blaine suddenly looked too bland to be true. “But have you given it a try? How would you know?” He produced a sly smile. “I thought you always prided yourself on a liberal approach to things.”
    Reinhart shrugged. “I know enough about my basic tastes. But listen, I’ll be glad to buy some home-grown vegetables, if you want to drop in for a minute or two. I just don’t want to stay too long, because I have a feeling Winona might get home meanwhile and want to talk.” He frowned. “But wait a minute: they wouldn’t have fresh produce yet at this time of year. We’re just getting into spring.” He put the rest of it together, and peered at Blaine. “You’re not proposing that I be installed at this farm, are you? Put out to pasture with the other old fogies? ...Your point is that if Winona ceases to support me, as you fear she might, if as expected she abandons herself utterly to unnatural pursuits, I can’t count on you. But I have already accepted that fact. Why elaborate on it?”
    Blaine pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road, adjacent to a wire fence. In the middle distance was a group of cows, an animal of which Reinhart could not remember having seen an example at close range since he was a child. In college he had read a passage in Nietzsche casting doubt on the possibility that the beast of the field could ever explain its serenity to a human being. “Tell me why you’re happy,” says the man. The animal would like to answer, “Because I forget,” but the creature forgets even this before it can reply, and the would-be dialogue comes to nothing.
    “What concerns me, Dad, is that at fifty-four years of age you have no profession, no occupation, no means of support, and no property, and if you would ever have to go it alone, I can’t see how you could survive without going on welfare.”
    Reinhart stretched his long frame. “These land-cruisers really are more comfortable than cars that make sense,” said he. “You simply can’t get away from that truth. ... That’s not beside the point, Blainey: long before it was fashionable, I hated big cars, probably because I couldn’t afford one. But the funny thing now is that, without benefit of a movement, I am liberated from all sorts of restraints, including those I have imposed on myself. It was ridiculous that I lived almost half a century trying to measure up to the principles of other people.” He smiled with genuine good feeling. “The fact is that I love to cook, and I am really good at it. I know you don’t agree, but the reason