Free The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Page B

mirror with her name and the daisies on it. Doreen looked at
me and I looked at her and we both burst out laughing.
                    “You can have my soup if you
want,” she said. “They: put twelve soups on the tray by mistake and Lenny and I
stuffed down so many hotdogs while we were waiting for the rain to stop I
couldn’t eat another mouthful.”
                    “Bring it in,” I said. “I’m
starving.”

5
     
    At
seven the next morning the telephone rang.
                    Slowly I swam up from the bottom of a black sleep. I
already had a telegram from Jay Cee stuck in my mirror, telling me not to
bother to come in to work but to rest for a day and get completely well, and
how sorry she was about the bad crabmeat, so I couldn’t imagine who would be
calling.
                    I reached out and hitched the
receiver onto my pillow so the mouthpiece rested on my collarbone and the
earpiece lay on my shoulder.
                    “Hello?”
                    A man’s voice said, “Is that
Miss Esther Greenwood?” I thought I detected a slight foreign accent.
                    “It certainly is,” I said.
                    “This is Constantin
Something-or-Other.”
                    I couldn’t make out the last
name, but it was full of S’s and K’s. I didn’t know any Constantin, but I
hadn’t the heart to say so.
                    Then I remembered Mrs. Willard
and her simultaneous interpreter.
                    “Of course, of course!” I cried,
sitting up and clutching the phone to me with both hands.
                    I’d never have given Mrs.
Willard credit for introducing me to a man named Constantin.
                    I collected men with interesting
names. I already knew a Socrates. He was tall and ugly and intellectual and the
son of some big Greek movie producer in Hollywood, but also a catholic, which
ruined it for both of us. In addition to Socrates, I knew a White Russian named
Attila at the Boston School of Business Administration.
                    Gradually I realized that
Constantin was trying to arrange a meeting for us later in the day.
                    “Would you like to see the UN
this afternoon?”
                    “I can already see the UN,” I
told him, with a little hysterical giggle.
                    He seemed nonplussed.
                    “I can see it from my window.” I
thought perhaps my English was a touch too fast for him.
                    There was a silence.
                    Then he said, “Maybe you would
like a bite to eat afterward.”
                    I detected the vocabulary of
Mrs. Willard and my heart sank. Mrs. Willard always invited you for a bite to
eat. I remembered that this man had been a guest at Mrs. Willard’s house when
he first came to America--Mrs. Willard had one of these arrangements where you
open your house to foreigners and then when you go abroad they open their
houses to you.
                    I now saw quite clearly that
Mrs. Willard had simply traded her open house in Russia for my bite to eat in
New York.
                    “Yes, I would like a bite to
eat,” I said stiffly. “What time will you come?”
                    “I’ll call for you in my car
about two. It’s the Amazon, isn’t it?”
                    “Yes.”
                    “Ah, I know where that is.”
                    For a moment I thought his tone
was laden with special meaning, and then I figured that probably some of the
girls at the Amazon were secretaries at the UN and maybe he had taken one of
them out at one time. I