Read Herzog for Free Online Page B

put out this murky fire inside. He yearned for the Atlantic comthe sand, the brine flavor, the therapy of cold water.
        He knew he would think better, clearer thoughts after bathing in the sea. His mother had believed in the good effects of bathing. But she had died so young.
        He could not allow himself to die yet. The children needed him.
        His duty was to live. To be sane, and to live, and to look after the kids. This was why he was running from the city now, overheated, eyes smarting. He was getting away from all burdens, practical questions, away also from Ramona. There were times when you wanted to creep into hiding, like an animal. Although he didn't know what lay ahead except the confining train which would impose rest on him (you can't run in a train) through Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, as far as Woods Hole, his reasoning was sound.
        Seashores are good for madmen-provided they're not too mad. He was all ready. The glad rags were in the bag under his feet, and the straw hat with the red and white band? It was on his head.
        But all at once, the seat of the cab heating in the sun, he was aware that his angry spirit had stolen forward again, and that he was about to write letters.
        Dear Smithers, he began.
        The other day at lunch - those bureaucratic lunches which are a horror to me; my hindquarters become paralyzed, my blood fills up with adrenalin; my heart! I try to look right and proper but my face turns dead with boredom, my fantasy spills soup and gravy on everybody, and I want to scream out or faint away- we were asked to suggest topics for new lecture courses and I said what about a series on marriage. I might as well have said "Currants" or "Gooseberries."
        Smithers is extremely happy with his lot.
        Birth is very chancy. Who knows what may happen?
        But his lot was to be Smithers and that was tremendous luck. He looks like Thomas E.
        Dewey. The same gap between the front teeth, the neat mustache.
        Look, Smithers, I do have a good idea for a new course. You organization men have to depend on the likes of me. The people who come to evening classes are only ostensibly after culture. Their great need, their hunger, is for good sense, clarity, truth-even an atom of it. People are dying - it is no metaphor - for lack of something real to carry home when day is done. See how willingly they are to accept the wildest nonsense.
        O Smithers, my whiskered brother! what a responsibility we bear, in this fat country of ours! Think what America could mean to the world. Then see what it is. What a breed it might have produced. But look at us-at you, at me. Read the paper, if you can bear to.
        But the cab had passed 30th Street and there was a cigar store on the corner which Herzog had entered a year ago to buy a carton of Virginia Rounds for his mother-in-law, Tennie, who lived a block away. He remembered going into the phone booth to tell her he was coming up. It was dark in there, and the patterned tin lining was worn black in places.
        Dear Tennie, Perhaps we'll have a talk when I get back from the seashore. The message you sent through Lawyer Simkin that you didn't understand why I no longer came to see you is, to say the least hard to figure. I know your life has been tough. You have no husband.
        Tennie and Pontritter were divorced. The old impresario lived on 57th Street, where he ran a school for actors, and Tennie had her own two rooms on 31/, which looked like a stage set and were filled with mementos of her ex-husband's triumphs.
        All the posters were dominated by his name, PONTRITTER DIRECTS EUGENE O'NEILL, CHEKHOV Though no longer man and wife, they had a relationship still. Pontritter took Tennie riding in his Thunder-bird. They attended openings, went to dinner together. She was a slender woman of fifty-five, somewhat taller than Pon. But he was burly, masterful, there