Read Online Two Weeks in Another Town by Irwin Shaw - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Irwin Shaw
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most appetizing, or bull-baiting, view to the pen entrance. The bull roars underground. The cow lows, tenor, then contralto, tosses her head from side to side, supplicating the chandelier. The president, still dressed in black, appears, unharmed, legally elected, and raises the iron door to the bull’s pen. The bull comes out, black, humped, wide-horned, like a wave going over sand. The froth, the spume, the wrack, the curl of the breaker, the suck of the tide, is Attendant Number One, impaled, then trampled, no longer white.
After humanity, the animal kingdom. The bull regards the white, supplicating cow, theoretically in heat, opts for death as against procreation, bunches his legs delicately, drives the horns into the white, frantic flank, so appetizing on other occasions. The white cow is no longer white, no longer standing, her flank no longer frantic, her supplication finished. The bull stands beside her, dreaming under the glass chandelier.
Humanity’s turn again. Attendant Number Two, dressed in white, races down the corridor, past the box stall where I am hidden, crouched behind the bolted iron door, next to a man whose face is averted and whose name is on the tip of my tongue.
The attendant’s feet on the corridor make a sandy, dragging noise, like the sound of the wire brush on a drummer’s traps. From his throat comes a noise. Water glugging down a tin rain pipe. Attendant Number Two flees into the stall next to mine and bolts the door, breathing rainily. The bull trots up to the door and surveys it without malice. Then he breaks it down. From the next stall come the sounds one might expect to hear, loud, explicit, intermingled with calls on Christ, as the bull does the work he has been bred to do.
Then Attendant Number Two is as silent as Attendant Number One, as silent as the white cow.
The bull reappears in the corridor, in a dim light, and snuffs intelligently at the door to the stall in which I crouch, next to the man whose face is averted. I hunch against the iron, not breathing, seeing both sides of every question, every door. The other man remains rigid and motionless. The bull decides that the shoes outside the door are data of no importance and turns to seek more interesting diversions. But the man with the averted face has passed his limit of silence and immobility. He moves, he makes a noise, he sighs, he bubbles, he moans. I jab him sharply in reproof, my index finger going in up to the knuckle, between the fourth and fifth ribs. The bull stops, comes back to the door, discovers humanity on the other side of the iron, Columbus off the coast of Hispaniola, land birds, the smell of flowers, sweet water. The bull charges the door. It clangs, but it holds. The bull charges again and again, the horns splintering, sparks flying, the door groaning, the rhythm increasing, becoming intolerable, the dust like rain, the noise like the scream of a jet in close support. I throw my weight against the door, flesh against iron, shuddering with each assault, howling wordlessly. The other man sits on the yellow straw of the stall, his face averted.
The door holds.
The bull backs off, considering.
Then he begins to leap, a lion with horns, athletic, ambitious, an iron gazelle, his hooves reaching higher with each leap, his horns like torches in the open space above the door. Finally, he gets his front legs over the top of the door. He hangs there, filling the space between the door and the ceiling beams. He looks down at me and the other man, who has turned his back and sits regarding the rear wall of the stall.
The bull stares down reflectively, with mild, fatal eyes, and I know that now is the time for distraction, for song and d ance and laughter. I go to stage center, squarely in the middle of the stall, and looking winningly at the bull, who has paid his entrance fee and deserves the best, I begin to dance and sing: tap, soft-shoe, buck and wing, modern, classic. Petrouchka, entrechats, Swan Lake, Fancy
After humanity, the animal kingdom. The bull regards the white, supplicating cow, theoretically in heat, opts for death as against procreation, bunches his legs delicately, drives the horns into the white, frantic flank, so appetizing on other occasions. The white cow is no longer white, no longer standing, her flank no longer frantic, her supplication finished. The bull stands beside her, dreaming under the glass chandelier.
Humanity’s turn again. Attendant Number Two, dressed in white, races down the corridor, past the box stall where I am hidden, crouched behind the bolted iron door, next to a man whose face is averted and whose name is on the tip of my tongue.
The attendant’s feet on the corridor make a sandy, dragging noise, like the sound of the wire brush on a drummer’s traps. From his throat comes a noise. Water glugging down a tin rain pipe. Attendant Number Two flees into the stall next to mine and bolts the door, breathing rainily. The bull trots up to the door and surveys it without malice. Then he breaks it down. From the next stall come the sounds one might expect to hear, loud, explicit, intermingled with calls on Christ, as the bull does the work he has been bred to do.
Then Attendant Number Two is as silent as Attendant Number One, as silent as the white cow.
The bull reappears in the corridor, in a dim light, and snuffs intelligently at the door to the stall in which I crouch, next to the man whose face is averted. I hunch against the iron, not breathing, seeing both sides of every question, every door. The other man remains rigid and motionless. The bull decides that the shoes outside the door are data of no importance and turns to seek more interesting diversions. But the man with the averted face has passed his limit of silence and immobility. He moves, he makes a noise, he sighs, he bubbles, he moans. I jab him sharply in reproof, my index finger going in up to the knuckle, between the fourth and fifth ribs. The bull stops, comes back to the door, discovers humanity on the other side of the iron, Columbus off the coast of Hispaniola, land birds, the smell of flowers, sweet water. The bull charges the door. It clangs, but it holds. The bull charges again and again, the horns splintering, sparks flying, the door groaning, the rhythm increasing, becoming intolerable, the dust like rain, the noise like the scream of a jet in close support. I throw my weight against the door, flesh against iron, shuddering with each assault, howling wordlessly. The other man sits on the yellow straw of the stall, his face averted.
The door holds.
The bull backs off, considering.
Then he begins to leap, a lion with horns, athletic, ambitious, an iron gazelle, his hooves reaching higher with each leap, his horns like torches in the open space above the door. Finally, he gets his front legs over the top of the door. He hangs there, filling the space between the door and the ceiling beams. He looks down at me and the other man, who has turned his back and sits regarding the rear wall of the stall.
The bull stares down reflectively, with mild, fatal eyes, and I know that now is the time for distraction, for song and d ance and laughter. I go to stage center, squarely in the middle of the stall, and looking winningly at the bull, who has paid his entrance fee and deserves the best, I begin to dance and sing: tap, soft-shoe, buck and wing, modern, classic. Petrouchka, entrechats, Swan Lake, Fancy
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