Butââhe drew her further asideââIâll say this now. . . . It doesnât matter what you tell me, a thing like that can never happen again . . .
never
, do you understand?â He turned and walked away quickly.
She stood watching him as he walked off with quick, resentful steps. A deep flush mounted to her cheeks. The glare of the street made her eyes smart. She hated the sunlight . . . hated it . . . hated it.
As he walked away his mind was filled with bitterness and disgust. He recalled how the one called Toots had walked up to Hildred and kissed her on the lips. And only the night before, according to her own words, she and Ebba had staged an exhibition for some old billy goat, some rich, jaded idiot who was curious about curious things. And there was Willie Hyslopâs yellow teeth and the silken mustache which had just begun to sprout, which exaggerated his effeminacy. They had dirty mouths, all of them, mouths which, erroneously or not, the world associates with degenerates. He wondered why he hadnât walked away from them at once. He rubbed his perspiring hands on his overcoat as though to remove the danger of contamination.
5
R ETURNING HOME unexpectedly one afternoon he was astonished to find a pair of sleeping beauties in his bed. They lay like angels exhausted by heavy and incessant flights. He looked sharply at Vanya; she was struggling to keep her eyes shut. Hildred pretended to be snoringâshe was snoring hard enough for a regiment.
Five minutes later he was rolling over the Brooklyn Bridge. White jockeys with spurs of malachite were scudding through the low-hanging clouds that hung like collars of fat about the slender ribs of the skyscrapers. The creaking wharves below plowed the leaping flood like blunt-edged combs. From the Battery to the bridge, like one vast fantasy in stone, the city wavered and trembled, shivered, shuddered, quivered with ecstasy. Between the black crevices, far, far below, moving like intoxicated ants, the cityâs millions swarmed.
At Sheridan Square he dismissed the cab. He became part of the throng whose activity at this hour of the day rose to the surface like a creamy, rose-tinted froth. At this very moment, in every part of the world, people were dreaming or talking about New York. New York! What was it made people sodamned silly about New York? The swirl and jelly-dance on the sidewalks, the magnificent prisons blotting out the sky, the rancid smells, the razzle-dazzle . . . what? . . . just what? Here he was in the thick of it and not a drop of joy or pride in his heart. The beautiful women of New York . . . where were they? He saw only faces laid out with the monotony of graves, graves smothered with wreaths which had lost their perfume; they walked along like sawdust dolls galvanized by a swig of gin, wax virgins who had no virginity, bargain hunters pricked with the itch of possession, their cool, calculating faces registering a perpetual âTo Letâ expression.
Outside the bohemian joints stood ridiculous figures buried in ridiculous costumes. How should one suspect that the wretch one brushed against in the doorway would be only too glad to dispose of a corpse for a five-spot, that the first female one encountered harbored in her body the active germs of all the venereal woes, or that the suave gentleman with the cauliflower ear, who escorted you to a table, was a Borgia raised to the nth degree? Behind the velvet there might be enough gats to decimate an army corps.
Not far from Jefferson Market he came upon a modest three-story building; it was entirely dark except for a gleam no bigger than a knife blade coming from the ventilators in the basement windows. He stood before a heavy iron gate and rang the bell. The proprietor himself came to the door, peered through the grating, and after a nod of recognition turned on a pink light in the vestibule and unbarred the gate.
The place was jammed. It was always jammed. In
never
, do you understand?â He turned and walked away quickly.
She stood watching him as he walked off with quick, resentful steps. A deep flush mounted to her cheeks. The glare of the street made her eyes smart. She hated the sunlight . . . hated it . . . hated it.
As he walked away his mind was filled with bitterness and disgust. He recalled how the one called Toots had walked up to Hildred and kissed her on the lips. And only the night before, according to her own words, she and Ebba had staged an exhibition for some old billy goat, some rich, jaded idiot who was curious about curious things. And there was Willie Hyslopâs yellow teeth and the silken mustache which had just begun to sprout, which exaggerated his effeminacy. They had dirty mouths, all of them, mouths which, erroneously or not, the world associates with degenerates. He wondered why he hadnât walked away from them at once. He rubbed his perspiring hands on his overcoat as though to remove the danger of contamination.
5
R ETURNING HOME unexpectedly one afternoon he was astonished to find a pair of sleeping beauties in his bed. They lay like angels exhausted by heavy and incessant flights. He looked sharply at Vanya; she was struggling to keep her eyes shut. Hildred pretended to be snoringâshe was snoring hard enough for a regiment.
Five minutes later he was rolling over the Brooklyn Bridge. White jockeys with spurs of malachite were scudding through the low-hanging clouds that hung like collars of fat about the slender ribs of the skyscrapers. The creaking wharves below plowed the leaping flood like blunt-edged combs. From the Battery to the bridge, like one vast fantasy in stone, the city wavered and trembled, shivered, shuddered, quivered with ecstasy. Between the black crevices, far, far below, moving like intoxicated ants, the cityâs millions swarmed.
At Sheridan Square he dismissed the cab. He became part of the throng whose activity at this hour of the day rose to the surface like a creamy, rose-tinted froth. At this very moment, in every part of the world, people were dreaming or talking about New York. New York! What was it made people sodamned silly about New York? The swirl and jelly-dance on the sidewalks, the magnificent prisons blotting out the sky, the rancid smells, the razzle-dazzle . . . what? . . . just what? Here he was in the thick of it and not a drop of joy or pride in his heart. The beautiful women of New York . . . where were they? He saw only faces laid out with the monotony of graves, graves smothered with wreaths which had lost their perfume; they walked along like sawdust dolls galvanized by a swig of gin, wax virgins who had no virginity, bargain hunters pricked with the itch of possession, their cool, calculating faces registering a perpetual âTo Letâ expression.
Outside the bohemian joints stood ridiculous figures buried in ridiculous costumes. How should one suspect that the wretch one brushed against in the doorway would be only too glad to dispose of a corpse for a five-spot, that the first female one encountered harbored in her body the active germs of all the venereal woes, or that the suave gentleman with the cauliflower ear, who escorted you to a table, was a Borgia raised to the nth degree? Behind the velvet there might be enough gats to decimate an army corps.
Not far from Jefferson Market he came upon a modest three-story building; it was entirely dark except for a gleam no bigger than a knife blade coming from the ventilators in the basement windows. He stood before a heavy iron gate and rang the bell. The proprietor himself came to the door, peered through the grating, and after a nod of recognition turned on a pink light in the vestibule and unbarred the gate.
The place was jammed. It was always jammed. In
Similar Books
