Read The Bell Jar for Free Online

seemed
slightly warped and much too silver. The face in it looked like the reflection
in a ball of dentist’s mercury. I thought of crawling in between the bed sheets
and trying to sleep, but that appealed to me about as much as stuffing a dirty,
scrawled-over letter into a fresh, clean envelope. I decided to take a hot
bath.
                    There must be quite a few things
a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m
going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be
seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: “I’ll go take a hot
bath.”
                    I meditate in the bath. The
water needs to be very hot, so hot you can barely stand putting your foot in
it. Then you lower yourself, inch by inch, till the water’s up to your neck.
                    I remember the ceiling over
every bathtub I’ve stretched out in. I remember the texture of the ceilings and
the cracks and the colors and the damp spots and the light fixtures. I remember
the tubs, too: the antique griffin-legged tubs, and the modern coffin-shaped
tubs, and the fancy pink marble tubs overlooking indoor lily ponds, and I
remember the shapes and sizes of the water taps and the different sorts of soap
holders.
                    I never feel so much myself as
when Pm in a hot bath.
                    I lay in that tub on the
seventeenth floor of this hotel for-women-only, high up over the jazz and push
of New York, for near onto an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I
don’t believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I
guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy
water.
                    I said to myself: “Doreen is
dissolving, Lenny Shepherd is dissolving, Frankie is dissolving, New York is
dissolving, they are all dissolving away and none of them matter any more. I
don’t know them, I have never known them and I am very pure. All that liquor
and those sticky kisses I saw and the dirt that settled on my skin on the way
back is turning into something pure.”
                    The longer I lay there in the
clear hot water the purer I felt, and when I stepped out at last and wrapped
myself in one of the big, soft white hotel bath towels I felt pure and sweet as
a new baby.
     
    I
don’t know how long I had been asleep when I heard the knocking. I didn’t pay
any attention at first, because the person knocking kept saying, “Elly, Elly,
Elly, let me in,” and I didn’t know any Elly. Then another kind of knock
sounded over the first dull, bumping knock--a sharp tap-tap, and another, much
crisper voice said, “Miss Greenwood, your friend wants you,” and I knew it was
Doreen.
                    I swung to my feet and balanced
dizzily for a minute in the middle of the dark room. I felt angry with Doreen
for waking me up. All I stood a chance of getting out of that sad night was a
good sleep, and she had to wake me up and spoil it. I thought if I pretended to
be asleep the knocking might go away and leave me in peace, but I waited, and
it didn’t.
                    “Elly, Elly, Elly,” the first
voice mumbled, while the other voice went on hissing, “Miss Greenwood, Miss
Greenwood, Miss Greenwood,” as if I had a split personality or something.
                    I opened the door and blinked
out into the bright hall. I had the impression it wasn’t night and it wasn’t
day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and
would never end.
                    Doreen was slumped against the
doorjamb. When I came out, she toppled into my arms. I couldn’t see her face
because her head was hanging down on her chest and her stiff blonde hair fell
down from its dark roots