In the next four weeks Hugo knew the pangs of hunger frequently. He
found odd jobs, but none of them lasted. Once he helped to remove a late
snowstorm from the streets. He worked for five days on a subway
excavation. His clothes became shabby, he began to carry his razor in
his overcoat pocket and to sleep in hotels that demanded only
twenty-five cents for a night's lodging. When he considered the tens of
thousands of men in his predicament, he was not surprised at or ashamed
of himself. When, however, he dwelt on his own peculiar capacities, he
was both astonished and ashamed to meander along the dreary pavements.
Hunger did curious things to him. He had moments of fury, of imagined
violence, and other moments of fantasy when he dreamed of a rich and
noble life. Sometimes he meditated the wisdom of devouring one
prodigious meal and fleeing through the dead of night to the warm south.
Occasionally he considered going back to his family in Colorado. His
most bitter hours were spent in thinking of Mr. Shayne and of accepting
a position in one of Mr. Shayne's banks.
In his maculate, threadbare clothes, with his dark, aquiline face
matured by the war he was a sharp contrast of facts and possibilities.
It never occurred to him that he was young, that his dissatisfaction,
his idealism, his _Weltschmertz_ were integral to the life-cycle of
every man.
At the end of four weeks, with hunger gnawing so avidly at his core that
he could not pass a restaurant without twitching muscles and quivering
nerves, he turned abruptly from the street into a cigar store and
telephoned to Mr. Shayne. The banker was full of sound counsel and ready
charity. Hugo regretted the call as soon as he heard Mr. Shayne's voice;
he regretted it when he was ravishing a luxurious dinner at Mr. Shayne's
expense. It was the weakest thing he had done in his life.
Nevertheless he accepted the position offered by Mr. Shayne. That same
evening he rented a small apartment, and, lying on his bed, a clean bed,
he wondered if he really cared about anything or about anyone. In the
morning he took a shower and stood for a long time in front of the
mirror on the bathroom door, staring at his nude body as if it were a
rune he might learn to read, an enigma he might solve by concentration.
Then he went to work. His affiliation with the Down Town Savings Bank
lasted into the spring and was terminated by one of the oddest
incidents of his career.
Until the day of that incident his incumbency was in no way unusual. He
was one of the bank's young men, receiving fifty dollars weekly to learn
the banking business. They moved him from department to department,
giving him mentally menial tasks which afforded him in each case a
glimpse of a new facet of financial technique. It was fairly
interesting. He made no friends and he worked diligently.
One day in April when he had returned from lunch and a stroll in the
environs of the Battery--returned to a list of securities and a strip
from an adding machine, which he checked item by item--he was conscious
of a stirring in his vicinity. A woman employee on the opposite side of
a wire wicket was talking shrilly. A vice-president rose from his desk
and hastened down the corridor, his usually composed face suddenly white
and disconcerted. The tension was cumulative. Work stopped and clusters
of people began to chatter. Hugo joined one of them.
"Yeah," a boy was saying, "it's happened before. A couple o' times."
"How do they know he's there?"
"They got a telephone goin' inside and they're talkin' to him."
"I'll be damned."
The boy nodded rapidly. "Yeah--some talk! Tellin' him what to try
next."
"Poor devil!"
"What's the matter?" Hugo asked.
The boy was glad of a new and uninformed listener. "Aw, some dumb vault
clerk got himself locked in, an' the locks jammed an' they can't get him
out."
"Which vault? The big one?"
"Naw. The big one's got pipes for that kinda trouble. The little one
they moved from the old building."
"It's not so darn little at that," someone said.
Another person, a man, chuckled. "Not so darn. But there isn't air in
there to last three hours. Caughlin said so."
"Honest to God?"
"Honest. An' he's been there more than an hour already."
"Jeest!" There was a pregnant, pictorial silence. Someone looked at
Hugo.
"What's eatin' you, Danner? Scared?"
His face was tense and his hands were opening and closing convulsively.
"No," he answered. "Guess I'll go down and have a look."
He rang for an elevator in the corridor and was carried to the basement.
In the small room on which the vault opened were five or six people,
among them a woman who seemed to command the situation. The men were all
smoking; their attitudes were relaxed, their voices hushed.