Mr. Farr was fussing uncomfortably down the narrow dark stairs like a man walking on a sheet of ice. Without looking and without slipping, he was aware that the utterly evil boys had littered the steps and the darkest corners with banana peels; he knew that by the time he got to the bathroom, the sinks would be clogged and the chains pulled off on purpose. He remembered what he had read—"Mr. Farr, you son of a bitch"—scrawled on a wall, and he remembered that day when a sink turned up full of blood with no one knowing how to explain it. A girl ran up the stairs and knocked over the loose papers in her hand; the butt of her cigarette burned his lower lip as he tried in vain to open the bathroom door. From inside I heard his moaning protests, his yanking and slapping, and the high-pitched howl in his voice, the kicking of his little shiny leather shoes, his favorite swear words (for he mumbled and cursed in private like a trucker, of course). so used to thinking in the dark), and finally let him in.
"Do you always lock the latch?" she asked me as she slid down, glued to the tiled wall.
"No, it's just that it got stuck," I explained. She shuddered and unbuttoned her fly.
He was the editor-in-chief, a great stenographer, chain-smoker, toast drinker, endowed with excellent humor, round face and even rounder paunch, and dark nostrils. In other times, I thought to myself as I looked at him in the toilets of the Tawe News offices, perhaps he had become a somewhat effete man, given to swaggering, fond of waddling around with a fine cane, gold chain chain across his waistcoat, a gold tooth and even a flower from his own garden pinned to the buttonhole of his jacket. Now, each attempt to make a precise gesture was thwarted and deformed before it was completed; when he put the tips of his thumb and index finger together, all you could see was his mourning nails and nicotine stains. He handed me a cigarette and shook his jacket to hear if he had matches.
"Here, here's a fire, Mr. Farr," I said.
It was convenient to be on good terms with him, because it was not for nothing that he was in charge of covering all the news of importance, from an occasional crime, like when Thomas O'Connor killed his wife with bottles, although that was before I arrived, until the strikes and the best fires. I held the cigarette between my fingers just like him, as if it were a badge of bad manners.
"Look at that word written on the wall," he said. what ugliness For those things there should always be an appropriate time and place.
He winked at me and scratched his bald head as if the idea had come from right there.
"That was written by Mr. Solomon," he said.
Mr. Solomon was a news editor and a Methodist.
“Old Solomon,” said Mr. Farr, “would be quite capable of cutting any child in two for a little fun.
"Sure I do," I said, smiling, though at the same time I wished I had answered in such a way as to show Mr. Solomon a contempt that, deep down, I was far from feeling. That was a great moment for me, a moment of great virility, all the more pleasurable as it had only been three weeks since I had started working there. Leaning against the cracked tiles on the wall, smoking and smiling, contemplating the circles on the ground that the toe of my shoe made, I was able to share the evil with an older and important man. He should have been composing the pertinent commentary on last night's performance of The Crucifixion, or perhaps lounging around, new hat askew, through the crowded city, for it was not for nothing that it was Saturday and Christmas Eve, at waiting for an accident to happen.
"One of these nights you should come for a walk with me," Mr. Farr said to me with great deliberation. We'll go down to the Fishguard, to the docks. There you can see how the sailors mend sitting at the bar. Why don't we go tonight, huh? There are women at Lord Jersey's who cost only a shilling. I see you like Woodbine cigarettes, just like me.
He washed his hands as children do, rubbing the scab with the towel; She stared at herself in the mirror leaning against the sink, she smoothed the lines of her mustache, but I saw that they immediately fell off again.
"Let's go to work," he said.
I went out into the hall and left him with his face pressed against the mirror, exploring his furry noses intently.
It was almost eleven o'clock, a good time to have a cup of cocoa or a Russian tea at the Café Royal, which was above the tobacconist's on the Calle Mayor, where the young clerks met, and the saleswomen, and the boys who worked in the shops. their parents' offices, and the assistant stockbrokers or solicitors, who would meet there every morning to gossip and tell their stories. I pushed my way through the crowd: men from the valley who had come down to Swansea for the football; peasants who had gone shopping, others who were contemplating the shop windows; silent, ragged men, standing on the corners of the crowded streets, enduring the downpour alone; mothers who pushed their strollers left and right; old women with a brooch on their black dresses, leading their elegant and fragile granddaughters by the hand, wrapped in their shiny raincoats and their puddle-splashed stockings; dapper little dandies dazed by bad weather, and businessmen in wet spats. I went through a forest of umbrellas thinking about the paragraphs I would never get to write. In a story I'll take you all out one day.
Mrs. Constable, flushed and laden with parcels, recognized me as I came out of Woolworth's with the same impetus as a bull charging the greatcoat.
"I haven't seen your mother in ages!" You have to see these Christmas crowds! Regards Florrie. I'm going to see if I have a tea in the Modern. Come on! -said-. If I have lost a frying pan!
I saw Percy Lewis, when we went to school together, he would stick gum in my hair.
A tall man stared at the entrance to a hat shop, impassive to the crowd, rigid, immobile. All the exciting incongruity of such an important date was boiling and growing around me when I reached the entrance to the cafe and went up the stairs.
"What do I put on it, Mr. Swaffer?"
"The usual, please." A cup of cocoa and a cake.
Most of the boys were already there. Some had a sketch of a mustache, others long sideburns and frizzy hair; some smoked a curved pipe and talked holding it between their teeth; there were some in striped pants and stiff collars, and even one in a bold bowler hat.
"Sit here," said Leslie Bird, who worked in Dan Lewis's shoe section.
'What, have you been to the cinema this week, Thomas?'
“Yeah, I was at the Regal watching White Lies. Very good, huh? Connie Bennett is terrific. Remember her in the bubble bath, Leslie?
"Too much foam for me, boy."
The open vowels of the city closed here and there; the familiar local accents were exaggerated.
At the highest windows of the International Stores across the street stood a group of girls in uniform, all with teacups in hand. One of them waved a handkerchief. I wondered if she had directed the gesture at me.
"There's that brunette again," I said. She is looking at you.
"They look really good in their work uniform," he said. On the other hand, when you find them all dolled up, they are truly frightening. I once knew a nurse. In her uniform she was a charm; she seemed refined. No, really, I'm serious. One night I ran into her on the promenade all dressed up on Sunday. And you could tell the difference within a league. She looked like she was in disguise. As she spoke, Leslie was watching the window out of the corner of her eye.
The girl waved again and turned to chuckle.
"How ordinary," he said.
"Look how ticklish she laughs," I said. She took out a cigarette case.
"A gift," he said. I bet anything that my uncle, the one with the three balls, will pick it up in less than a week. Here, help yourself to a Turk.
His matches were Allsopps brand, the best.
“I got them at the Carlton,” he said. In the bar there is a very pretty girl. She knows them all, and don't see how she knows calico. You've never been there, have you? Why don't you come over there tonight? I'm sure Gil Morris will be there too. We usually go a couple of Saturdays a month. And there will be dancing at the Melba.
“I'm sorry,” I said, “but I have to go out for a drink with our editor-in-chief. It will be again, Leslie. Until next time!
I paid the three pence I owed.
“Good morning, Cassie.
"Good morning, Hannen.
The rain had stopped, and Main Street was sparkling. Walking along the tram rails, a very dapper man held up a banner in which he affirmed to the four winds his fear of God. He knew him; it was Mr. Matthews; years ago they had saved him in the British port, and every night he would walk the streets in his rubber shoes, with a missal and a lantern. There was also Mr. Evans, the producer, who entered through the side door of the Clarín. Three typists hurried out for lunch of soft-boiled egg and milkshake, leaving a trail of lavender perfume in their wake. Should I take the long way, through the arcades, to stop for a while and look at the old man with the empty carriage whom I always saw glued to the music house, the one who would take off his cap and set his hair on fire for a penny? ? It was just a trick to amuse the children. At last I took the shortcut up Chapel Street, skirting a field of shacks called the Strand, opposite the tempting Italian restaurant where young men with attentive and observant parents spent their good quarters late at night to disguise the breath before taking the tram back home. I then went up the narrow office staircase and into the reporters' room.
Mr. Solomon was yelling, glued to a telephone. I happened to hear his last words:
"You're just a dreamer and a delusional, Williams," he said, and hung up. That boy is a mere dreamer," she repeated without addressing anyone. He never said bad words.
I finished my review of The Crucifixion and handed it over to Mr. Farr.
“Too much verbosity, too much self-indulgence.
Half an hour later, dressed in a golf suit, Ted Williams arrived; he very smiling he touched his nose with his thumb behind Mr. Solomon's back and sat quietly in a corner with a file to trim his nails.
"Why had he taken it out on you?" I asked in a whisper.
'I was out to investigate a suicide, a streetcar conductor named Hopkins, and the widow bought me a cup of tea; in fact, she forced me to stay. That was it. He was a boy with an attentive manner and a conquering air, more girlish than manly, who kept dreaming of landing on one of the big Fleet Street dailies and spending the two weeks of summer vacation in front of her. the offices of the Daily Express, watching celebrities in the surrounding taverns.
On Saturday I had the afternoon free. It was already one o'clock, time to leave. However, I stayed. Mr. Farr said nothing. He pretended that he was very busy scribbling words and drawing caricatures, although without the slightest resemblance, of Mr. Solomon's toucan profile and the flat-nosed apprentice who whistled out of tune behind the partitions of the telephone booth. I wrote my name, I wrote 'Reporters Room', I added Tawe News, Tawe, South Wales, England, Europe, Earth. And I made a list of books I had not written: The land of my fathers: a study of the Welsh character in all its aspects; Eighteen Years: A Country Autobiography; The ruthless ladies: novel. For all that, Mr. Farr still did not look up. I wrote Hamlet. I assumed that Mr. Farr, who stubbornly transcribed the notes taken at the last meeting, had not forgotten about our appointment.
“Damn Mayor Daniels,” I heard Mr. Solomon mutter over his shoulder.
Half past one. Ted kept dreaming. It took me a long time, if not an enormous time, to put on my coat. I tied my scarf—a souvenir from my elementary school—untied it and tied it another way.
"Some people are so lazy they can't even make the most of their half day off," said Mr. Farr suddenly. At six o'clock in Las Lámparas, in the back bar. He didn't even turn to stop writing for a moment.
"What, are you going for a walk?" my mother asked.
"Yes, I'm going for a walk in the meadow." Don't wait for me for lunch. I went to the Plaza.
"Press," I said to the girl in the dirndl and hat.
—Two reporters have already come this week.
—Special investigation.
He led me to an armchair. During the news, as the stubborn seeds sprouted before my eyes in the shape of arms and legs, I thought of cheap women and queer sailors in the slums. There might be a knife fight; Ted had once met a confidant outside the sailors' home. The confidant had a mustache. Those sinuous plants continued to dance in front of the screen. If Tawe were a slightly larger port town, there would be little curtained rooms for showing pornographic films. The easy life was coming to an end. I later entered an American university where I was dancing with the rector's daughter. The hero, whose name was Lincoln and who was tall and dark and had buck teeth, I dispatched in no time. The girl called my name as she hugged her shadow; the college choir, all dressed in sailor caps and bathing suits, called me old and called me king; Jack Oakie and I ran across the field, and on the shoulders of the crowd the rector's daughter and myself lowered the iridescent curtain with a kiss that made me leave the theater a little dizzy, my eyes shining. And so I stepped out into the bright light of the streetlights and found myself in the rain that was beginning to fall.
A whole hour to waste soaking wet in the middle of the crowd.
I watched the queue outside the Empire, studied the Nuit de Paris posters, thought of the long legs and startling faces of the showgirls I had seen walking arm in arm in the afternoon sun earlier in the week. winter; I thought of their mouths (or rather, I remembered them, and treasured the detail for The Ruthless Ladies, a novel that would never begin) as red scars; her hair, the color of ravens' wings and silver. Her perfumes and makeup reminded me of a warm, chocolate-colored Orient; her eyes were like puddles. Lola from Kenway, Babs Courcey, Ramona Day would be with me throughout my life. Until I died (probably from a devastating and painless disease), until I said my last words, carefully studied, they would always walk by my side, they would take me back to my past youth, those nights already lost on the main street, in that the shop windows were burning and the songs were being heard from the bars, and the sirens of Hafod were sitting in the smoky stalls with their bags on their knees and their bangles jingling on their shoulders. I stopped to look at the window of Dirty' Black, the Man of Fantasies, but I was innocent. There was only snuff and picapica powder, stink bombs, rubber pens, cardboard masks; all the novelties were inside, but I didn't dare go in for fear of being served by a woman, Mrs. Dirty Black herself, mustachioed and with sharp eyes behind her glass-bottomed glasses, or even a skinny girl with a dog's face. , which I once saw in there, which winked at me and which undoubtedly smelled of seaweed. At the market I bought licorice and gummies for bad breath, because you never know what can happen.
The back of The Three Lamps was full of mature men. Mr. Farr had not yet arrived. I leaned against the bar, between a councilman and a lawyer who were drinking toasted beer. I wish my father could have seen me. On the other hand, I was glad he was in Aberavon, where I had gone to visit Uncle A. It wouldn't have been lost on him that I wasn't a snotty brat anymore, and he wouldn't have had a chance to get angry about the angle in that he held the cigar between his lips, nor because of the threat of the jug that he was holding. I liked the taste of beer, the white, lively foam, the shining bronzes of its depths, the world that was suddenly revealed through the walls of darkened glass, the hasty inclination of the mug towards the lips, the slow swallowing. , the fall of the beer to the overflowing belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners of the lips.
"Give me another one, miss." She was a rather mature waitress. Don't you fancy one?
—No, if I'm working I don't drink, and that's the same for everyone.
-However you want.
Wasn't that an invitation to have a drink with her later, to wait for her at the back door until she slipped in, then to walk along the sandbank, at night, to a soft dune where couples lay dispersing? of love under their respective coats, contemplating the lighthouse of Mumbles? She was fat and on the ugly side, her brown hair tied up in a fishnet, flecked with gray. She gave me change like a mother giving her son a few pence to go to the cinema. I thought I wouldn't even go out with her for pies.
Mr. Farr hurried up Main Street, angrily refusing the offered matches and cigarettes, averting his gaze from the ragged people. He knew that the poor, the sick, the ugly, the people whom no one likes, surrounded him so closely that a single look of greeting, a single gesture of sympathy, would have made him lose himself among them. The night would have been ruined forever.
"My, I see you're a beer drinker," he said when he was at my side.
“Good evening, Mr. Farr. Well, once in a while, I do hit the beer, but mostly for a change. What do you take? It sucks at night, huh? -I told.
Sheltered in a prosperous house, safe from the rain and the haunting streets, where neither poverty nor the past could reach him, he lazily took his glass in the company of businessmen and professionals, and held it up to the light.
"And worse than it's going to be," he commented. Wait till we go to the Fishguard and you'll see. To his health! There she will see the sailors mending their nets. And she'll see the old Jersey fisherwomen. To breathe fresh air you have to go to the bathroom.
Mr. Evans, the producer, hurried in through a side door concealed by curtains. He whispered for her cup, shielded it under his coat, and drank it secretly.
"The same," said Mr. Farr, "and half for the chicken's neck."
The bar was too classy to show that it was Christmas. "No Ladies Allowed," read a sign. We left Mr. Evans guzzling alcohol inside his tent.
Children were screaming down Goat Street. One of them, untimely, tugged at my sleeve.
—A penny for the menda! "She told me.
Large women in men's caps blocked the doorways. A well-dressed girl winked at us from around the corner of the green-painted iron contraption in front of the Carlton Hotel. We delve into the music; the bar was decorated with ribbons and balloons; a tubercular tenor clung to the piano; behind the counter, the pretty girl from Leslie Bird was flirting with a group of guys who were practically all over her, asking her to show them their garters and wanting to buy her a few glasses of lemon gin, a walk alone at midnight , to a wet adventure in the cinema. Mr. Farr looked scornfully over his glass while I eyed the young men with some envy, for I had noticed that everyone liked the girl, who clapped her hands happily and swaggered with great pride in her beauty and exulting with joy as he stepped back to manipulate the beer taps.
—Innocent sons of the valleys. Bah. Tonight there will be vomiting at large," he said pleased.
Other slick-haired young men, pale, stocky, with high cheekbones and deep eyes, loud ties, double-breasted waistcoats, baggy trousers, and wide work-beaten hands covered with scars, all of them obviously tipsy, had gathered to sing around the piano, and the flattened-chested tenor led the chorus in a clear voice. oh! To join in that suggestive game, to the wobbly chorus, to sing the "Bread from Heaven" with your shoulders back and your arms entwined with those of Little Moscow, and to be called "cheeky," "comrade," and joke! and telling jokes in front of the bar, lavishing themselves on those dirty and yet innocent love affairs, which were to end in nothing, in the midst of spilled beer and piles of glasses...!
"Let's get away from these damned nightingales," said Mr. Farr.
"Too much of a mess," I agreed.
"Let's go somewhere worthwhile."
We went down almost on all fours through the alleys of the Strand, next to the undertaker's; we passed through an alleyway lit by gas-lamps, where invisible children were crying all at once, and came to the door of the Fishguard when a man as muffled as Mr. Farr himself was sneaking out with a bottle or perhaps a club in his gloved hand. The bar was deserted. Behind the bar was an old man with trembling hands who was staring at his crude watch.
“Merry Christmas, father.
"Good evening Mr F.
"A drop of rum, father."
A red bottle trembled on top of the two glasses.
“A very special poison, son.
"I'm sure his eyes are popping out," said Mr. Farr.
My iron head stood high and steady; there was no sailor rum that could rot the rocks in my belly. Poor Leslie Bird, port sniffer; poor little Gil Morris, who on Saturday nights acted out his dissipation with a lead pencil under his eyes. How I would have liked to be seen there, in the dark room, full of pictures of boxers falling apart from the walls.
“More poison, father.
"Where have the guests gone today?" Have you been to the Riviera?
“They're in the back room, Mr. Farr. There is a party in honor of Mrs. Prothero's daughter.
In the back room, under a damp-corroded royal family, were several women dressed in mourning and sitting in a row on a hard bench; they were laughing and crying at the same time, their stoppered glasses lined up next to the Guinness bottles. Opposite, on another bench, two men dressed in ratty sweaters drank appreciating what they drank and how much they drank, observing the emotion of the women. And in the only chair, in the center of the room, the old woman with the cap tied under her chin, a feather boa, and white gym shoes, laughed and cried louder than everyone else. We sat on the men's bench. One of the two touched his cap in greeting, with an injured hand.
"What's the party about, Jack?" asked Mr. Farr. This is my colleague, Mr. Thomas. This is Jack Stiff, the undertaker's warden.
Jack Stiff spoke with a lopsided mouth.
"It's for Mrs. Prothero." We call her Old Garbo because she's nothing like him, does she understand? It will be an hour since she received a message from the hospital. Mrs. Harris Winifred brought it; her second daughter had died of childbirth.
"And the little girl too," said the man next to her.
"So all the old ladies came to offer their condolences and took up a good collection." He now he has begun to drink it and invite everyone. We already have a couple of half liters racked at her expense.
-What a shame!
The rum burned and kicked in that hot room; I had a head as steady as a mountain, and could have written twelve books before dawn, and could even have rolled the Carlton wench across the Tawe sands like a barrel.
"Drinks for the troops!"
Before the new audience, the women wept louder as they slapped Mrs. Prothero's knees and hands, straightening her cap, praising her dead daughter.
"What will you take, Mrs. Prothero, dear?"
"No, take it with me, dear, it's the best thing in the house."
"Well, I think a Guinness will do me good."
"And you don't want me to put something in it?"
"Well, so be it, but only for Maggie's sake."
"Think if she were here, my dear, and if she were to sing 'One of the Ruins' or 'Mussels and Cockles'… She had a real lady's voice."
“Oh, Mrs. Harris! Please no!
"Come on, come on, we're just trying to cheer him up." Grief killed the cat, Mrs. Prothero. Let's all sing together, dear.
The pale moon was rising over the gray mountain, and the sun was setting under the blue sea when I went to the pure crystal fountain with my love, sang Mrs. Prothero.
"It was your daughter's favorite song," said Jack Stiff's friend.
Mr. Farr tapped me on the shoulder. He slowly dropped his hand from a great height, his small birdlike voice speaking to me from a swirling swirl of buzzing near the ceiling.
"A drop of fresh air for you and me," he said.
Umbrellas and bonnets, white gym shoes, bottles, the mold king, the mortician singing undertaker, and the "Rose of Tralee" mingled in the room. Two little men, Mr. Farr and his twin brother, led me through an ice-skating rink to the door, and there the air slapped me to the ground. Suddenly it became night. A wall collapsed and swiped my hat in the blink of an eye; Mr. Farr's brother disappeared under the cobbles. Here comes another wall, like a charging buffalo. Skip it, son. Have a drop of Angostura, a splash of cognac, Fernet Branca, Polly, oh, it's his mother's treasure! Help yourself to a handful of dog hair.
"What, are you feeling better?"
I sat in the plush chair I hadn't seen before, sipping a glass of something moth-eaten and enjoying the argument between Ted Williams and Mr. Farr. Mr. Farr spoke severely.
"You have come to look for sailors."
"No, not at all," Ted said. I came looking for local color.
There were posters on the walls: 'Lord Jersey. Property of Titch Thomas. Forbidden to play with money. Forbidden to blaspheme», «The Lord can help himself, but you can't», «Today he doesn't trust; tomorrow he does», «No more ladies than ladies are allowed».
"It's a pretty weird place," I said. Have you seen the posters?
-Are you okay?
—I feel wonderful.
"There's a pretty girl waiting for you. Notice how she looks at you.
But if you don't have a nose...
My drink, in a flash, had turned into beer. There was a hammer blow.
—¡The word! ¡The word!
With the noise of the new room, a master of ceremonies without a stiff neck and with a cigar in his mouth summoned Mr. Jenkins to sing a few bars of "The Lily of the Lagoon."
"By public demand," said Mr. Jenkins. "Order!" Order! To Katie, from Sebastopol Street. What is it about, Katie? Katie sang the national anthem.
"Mr. Fred Jones, as usual, will add his bawdy ditty, won't he?"
A somewhat broken baritone voice spoiled the efforts of the choir.
I recognized her, because she was mine, and I silenced her.
A Salvation Army girl dodged the arms of two men and sold them an issue of War Cry.
A young man in a bedazzled headscarf, two-tone summer shoes with toe holes, and no socks danced until the entire bar chanted, "Mabel!"
Ted patted next to me.
"Now that's style!" It's the Nijinsky of the night scene! Now that's news! I wonder if you could grant me an interview...
"He's in a shower," said Mr. Farr.
"Don't contradict me.
A gust of wind from the port split the street in two. I heard the creak of the dredger in the harbor and the siren of a ship coming in through the mouth; the gas lamps leaned bending, and then the smoke closed over the dirty walls, where King George and Mary were dripping with water, just above the women's bench, and Jack Stiff whispered into a hand over his mouth that it looked like a claw.
"Old Garbo's gone."
The sad and jubilant women all huddled together.
"Mrs. Harris's little girl didn't quite get the message." Old Garbo's daughter is fine; it was the little girl who was born dead. And now the old women want their money back, but they can't find Garbo anywhere. Her.” He licked his hand. I know very well where she has gone.
"To a joint in the port," said his friend.
In low voices, the women reviled Mrs. Prothero: a liar, an adulteress, a bastard father, a thief.
—The one I told you about has been caught.
—Yes, and it was never cured.
“She got a tattoo of Charlie's name.
'You owe me three pounds eight shillings.
—For me, ten past two.
“My money from the dentist.
'A pound ten he took me out of my old-age pension.
Who filled my glass without ceasing? The beer was dripping down my cheeks and down my neck. His mouth was full of saliva. The bench was spinning non-stop. The Fishguard's structure leaned to one side. Mr. Farr withdrew slowly; he twisted the telescope and his face, with wide, hairy nostrils, was breathing before mine.
“Mr. Thomas is going to be sick.
“Watch out for the umbrella, Mrs. Arthur.
"Hold her head."
The last tram to go home rumbled by. He didn't have a penny to pay for the ticket.
"Get down there!" Careful!
The winding hill that led up to my father's house reached up to the sky. There was no one standing. I dragged myself to the unmade bed. The lakes of the wallpaper converged on me and sucked me in.
Sunday was a quiet day, though the bells of Santa Maria, less than a mile away, pealed long after mass time like holes in my head. I stayed in bed until noon, knowing that I would never drink again. I remembered the wobbly forms and the distant voices of the city at ten o'clock at night. I read the newspapers. That morning all the news was bad, although an article entitled "Our Lord Loved Flowers" moved me so much that it made me cry with astonishment and contrition. I excused myself from the Sunday gathering and finished a three-vegetable stew.
That afternoon, in the park, I sat alone in front of the kiosk, which was deserted. I caught a ball of paper blowing in the wind down the gravel path towards the stones between the flowers; crushing it and smoothing it on my knee I wrote the first three lines of a hopeless poem. A dog sniffed out my hiding place, behind a leafless tree, and he nuzzled my hand.
"My only friend," I said.
He stayed with me until nightfall, sniffing and sniffing here and there.
On Monday morning, full of shame and hate, afraid to look at them again, I destroyed the article and the poem and threw the pieces on top of the closet.
“You should have been with us on Saturday,” I said to Leslie Bird on the streetcar on my way to work. Fuck!
Early Tuesday night—it was Christmas Eve—with a borrowed half-crown I went into the back room of the Fishguard. Jack Stiff was alone. The women's bench was covered in sheets of newspaper. A bunch of colored balloons hung from the lamp.
-Cheers!
-Merry christmas!
"Where is Mrs. Prothero?" The man had a bandaged hand.
"Oh, hasn't he heard? She spent all the money from the collection. She took him to the other side of the bridge, to Heart's Delight. He didn't let any of the other old women see her. She was carrying over a pound. He had spent a considerable part before he knew her daughter wasn't dead, and he couldn't look them in the face. I pay for this, take it. So, on Monday morning he finished what was left. Then she was seen crossing the bridge by two boatmen, and they saw her stop there in the middle, but they didn't arrive in time.
-Merry christmas!
“There are some white sneakers on the shelf.
That night none of old Garbo's friends turned up there. Much later, when I showed this story to Mr. Farr, he answered me thus:
"You haven't learned anything. You have mixed all the characters. The boy with the scarf was dancing in the Jersey. Fred Jones was the one singing at the Fishguard. Bah, all the same. Come tonight for a couple of rounds at Nelson's. There is a girl there who will show you where a sailor bit her. And there will also be a policeman who knew Jack Johnson.
"Someday I'll put them all in one story," I said.
