Paradise 精彩片段：
16
SIMON meets the poet at the International Arrivals Building, holding one hand behind him. The nine-hour Finnair flight from Helsinki has been ex?hausting, but she has met A, B, C, and D -- Russian poets so fabulously gifted that none of them has been allowed to publish so much as a weather report. "Thats terrific," he says. "You look beautiful." "They all speak English," she says, "this half-misunderstood English which is three times as good as regular English." She notices that he is holding something be?hind his back. "Whats that?" He produces a large, naked steak, a steak big as a Sunday Times. She is em?barrassed and pops the steak into her canvas carryall. "I dont get your metaphor," she says in the cab. "Is it hunger?"
Shes right, it is hunger. Dont tell her.
They sit in her kitchen. "The burning barns in your poems," he says, "why so many? Isnt that a little. . . repetitive?" "My burning barns," she says, "my splendid burning barns, Ill burn as many barns as I damn please, Pappy." He is older than she is, by ten years, and she has given him this not altogether welcome nickname. She looks absolutely stunning, a black three-quarter-length skirt embossed with black bird figures, a knitted sleeveless jacket, a yellow long-sleeved blouse, a red ascot. "Seriously, do you think there are too many? Barns?" Its the first time she has asked his opinion about anything connected with her work. "I was half teasing," he says. "But they did burn," she says. "Every one Ive ever known." "Simon says," Simon says, "Simon needs a beer." She rises and moves to fetch a St. Pauli Girl from the refrigerator.
The poet lives in the country, in an old Putnam County farmhouse that she has not touched except to paint the walls pale blue. She has painted over the old wallpaper, and the walls puff and wrinkle in places. The furniture is junk golden oak, one piece to a room except in the kitchen, where there is a table and two mis?matched chairs. "This one is Biedermeier," the poet says, "from my mother, and the other, the potato-chip jobbie, is Eames, from my father. That tell you any?thing?"
Simon takes the train from Grand Central to Put?nam County. He doesnt like the train, almost always in miserable repair and without air conditioning, and he hates changing at Croton, the rush from one train to another more like a stampede than anything else, but the views of the stately Hudson from the discolored windows are wonderful, and when he alights at Garri?son at the end of this trip she is sitting on the hood of her circus-red Toyota pickup, drinking apple juice from a paper cup.
The poet sings to him:
Row, row, row your bed
Gently down the stream. . .
THE professional whistlers wife calls and says that if the resident bitches and tarts dont keep their hands off her husband she will cause a tragic hap?penstance.
"Sounded a little pissed," Anne says.
"These housewives," says Veronica, "I guess you cant blame them they dont have the latitude."
Dore says, "Let her come around, her ass is grass."
"Simon is passive."
"I dont think hes so passive he grasps you very tightly. I think the quality of the embrace is important."