1
The turning of a corner suddenly thrust Poldy against the march of
homecoming workers. He shocked with a squad of young girls walking
arm in arm, a taut buoyant line. They giggled and wavered for a
moment, unwilling to break the lovely repeated pattern of their arms.
Then the line swung away from him like a slackened whip. He walked
forward, progressing in a blind zigzag, his eyes closed against the
sun. But it seemed to him after a while as if he were no longer
walking, but being drawn onward by the suction of all those bodies
moving against him ... as if they were mute automatons being moved on
the belt of some vast machine, and he was part of the machine that
had to move counterwise ... a unique intimate part, articulating with
the crowd. "Surely I am not to die yet," he said to himself ...
"surely there is a way to be saved." And there came to him a word
that he wanted to cry out, a strange word that he had never heard
before, which held the secret of all things. Fast as he was walking,
the sense of walking was lost to him. He yielded himself passively
to the motion, he felt his body in complete subjection to the will of
the machine on which they all moved ... and the word within him was
urgent as matter that had to be voided, he felt prophetic powers
closing upon him, because he was haunted by the impishness of a word.
But soon he became afraid because they moved against him too swiftly.
He wanted to fling his arms out as children do and call out
mischievously, "Stop!" ... to see them storm against his arms, a mute
animal terror in their eyes as the huge belt moved on relentlessly,
leaving them behind. He wanted to trick them with the word, to fling
it into that orderly route ... cry it with his arms stretched
straight above him and his fingers spread wide. And at the clang of
it panic would spread through them, they would drift confusedly here
and there ... a viscous flow of bodies, as if they were held on a
plate being tipped different ways. It was no word that he had ever
heard before ... a foreign word of three syllables ... and as he
groped for it in his mind it came to him. "Kuramos!" he would shout
... "Kuramos...."
But now the lust for something unknown swept over the people; and
because there was a man on the street selling something, who was so
short that he could not be seen from the outside of the crowd, they
thought that _there_ was the miracle ... in that mysterious axis
around which the crowd was ranged. And those on the outside began to
ask, "What is it?" and to conjecture what it was. And the question
spread, some hearing it with joy and others with terror, each one
answering it according to his desire. Soon the street was blocked,
and those on the outside fought with those who were nearer; and each
one who came in contact with the fighting could not withstand it,
until everyone was struggling with his neighbor, wrestling blindly
with the thing that opposed him ... and the little man in the center
stopped flourishing his knives and looked at them with terror. He
climbed up to his wagon and lay on it with his belly to the boards,
and reached down to draw up his signs and his satchel; and they
closed in on the space where he had been standing.
Just then it was that Poldy saw a figure standing quietly in the
turmoil, a man with a face that was indescribably narrow, the eyes
and mouth switched about as if they were trying to adjust themselves
lengthwise. The face smiled and blew hard at a whistle. Policemen
came running from all sides, as though they had been lying in wait
for the cue. Their clubs sputtered in the crowd, and there followed
an insane waving of arms as those who were fighting tried to clutch
at the clubs, still bucking their heads at those who were near them.
The man lying in his wagon curled himself up in the farthest corner
of it. And he did not dare crawl down again until they were all
dispersed, moving once more away from the sun in an orderly rout.
Poldy touched his forehead. It was bleeding and his mouth ached.
The fellow who blew the whistle was coming toward him, smiling
apologetically.
2
On closer inspection Poldy decided that it was not so much the
narrowness of his face which had twisted the eyes and mouth. The
nose too was slightly out of focus, and it seemed to act like an axis
on which the other features were turned. The result was an
expression of perpetual slyness, a winking-off to someone in the
distance. The fellow had one leg longer than the other, and it was
only when he tried to walk fast that this sly expression of his face
changed. Then his whole face was contorted ... his mouth hung open,
too much of the lower lip exposed, and his eyelids quivered, his
whole body seeming to shake with inward laughter. He came close to
Poldy, stood at attention and clicked his heels. But in order to do
so he had to bend back a little and sideways, a swaggering pose with
a hint of pugnaciousness in it, as though he were preparing to leap
forward and attack.
"I saw you being clubbed," he announced, and bowed very courteously.
"My card."
Poldy took it mechanically. He was still wiping blood from his
forehead and felt in no humor to speak. He pocketed the card and was
about to go away, when the cripple caught his arm and begged him to
read it. It was elaborately printed: "David Solner, Expert on
Authority."
"A very original title," Poldy remarked politely.
The fellow threw his head back and burst out laughing. "_I_ thought
it was." He jerked his thumb at the policemen. "They don't know who
I am, of course."
"No ... I suppose not."
"They always play right into my hands. Oh it's too easy, much too
easy. But just then..." He drew nearer and put his hand on Poldy's
shoulder with great good fellowship. "Just then I had real action."
"I'm glad you were not disappointed," Poldy said in his best manner.
"However, I must be going." But he had gone only a few steps when he
felt a tugging at his arm. The expert on authority's face had
elongated itself as if it were elastic, there was a look of
consternation at the prospect of Poldy's departure. And this look
poised paradoxically above the swaggering pose of his body made him
seem so forlorn that Poldy had not the heart to turn away. He
suffered himself to be led into the park, where they settled
themselves on one of the benches around the fountain. The cripple's
walk registered his joy, growing so ecstatic with all its elaborate
bending and twisting, that it seemed to be all a mimicry ... as if he
were only clowning it for the children, and might turn around any
minute and say, "How did you like that? Now watch this one." When
he sat down he crossed his legs and swung his long foot with a
delicate rhythmic motion, almost maidenly. At last he turned to
Poldy.
"As you see, I'm a cripple," he began in a very matter-of-fact voice.
"Cripples very often are beggars. Is that right?"
Poldy nodded.
"But sometimes you see a beggar who doesn't seem to be crippled. Is
that right?"
Again Poldy nodded. The catechism seemed to have been memorized and
rehearsed many times, and he felt that the safest answer was a silent
one.
"But in that case," the fellow continued, "what do you do?"
Poldy was confused. "I forget where we were at," he said humbly.
"If you'll only repeat..."
David began again with stern emphasis. "If you see a beggar who is
_not_ crippled, what should you do? ... What should you do?" he
repeated, leaning forward and regarding Poldy slyly. Poldy
hesitated. "Really, now, I don't know," he said. "I've never
thought of the situation."
"Think ... think..."
Poldy frowned and pursed his lips, making an elaborate display of
thinking. His decision seemed to be of great importance to the
cripple, who was regarding him with an expression of challenging
slyness. At length Poldy ventured an opinion.
"I might count his fingers," he said slowly.
"Right!" and David slapped his thighs gleefully. "Count his fingers.
Right! Now I know that you're a man I can talk to. Yes, I can trust
you. In fact I knew it the moment I saw you in the crowd, but I
never talk to anyone until he can answer that question. Because, of
course, there may not be the correct number of fingers. You have to
be clever to find that out. Well, you're one of the clever ones, I
see. I can trust you. But now it's your turn. Ask me any question."
"Well now..." Poldy thought for a moment. "Of course," he observed
briskly, "you have other work besides ... beside your work as expert
on authority?"
David spread his hands in negation. "A cripple!" he sighed. "How
can I work? ... Well, I do run errands."
"Your work as an expert on authority doesn't pay, then?"
"No ... oh, no. It's a labor of love." He turned to Poldy with a
challenging look, a hint that he desired further questioning. But
Poldy was silent, and finally David was forced to talk.
"I make toys, too..."
"Indeed."
"Oh, yes. You should see them." He brought out a little cardboard
figure from his pocket, the face drawn in with the regularity of a
child's drawing, a fringe of hair on the forehead to heighten the
stupid expression. Little red strings were tied to the head and arms
and legs, terminating in an intricate knot whose loops were kept
apart by pins. David held it nonchalantly in his hand for a while,
to let the intricacy of it register on Poldy. Then with a rapid
movement of his thumb and forefinger he manipulated the pins. The
cardboard man began to dance, an insane ecstatic dance.
"It's marvelous ... marvelous," Poldy said. "But what is it for?"
David nudged him with his elbow and looked well pleased. "I knew it,
I knew it," he crowed. "I knew you would ask. Clever, isn't it?"
"Exceedingly."
"It took me almost two years to make it. Some people would say it
shows real inventive power, wouldn't they..."
"And not be far from the truth."
"Here ... see if you can do it."
Poldy touched the doll gingerly. Its staring mechanical face
affected him almost with terror. He remembered a man he had once
seen at a fair ... standing in one of the booths, his face painted so
that it looked like a doll's, and another man lecturing on him ...
now ladies and gentlemen, step inside and you will see them cut Bimbo
in two. And with that the man had been given a hearty push, and he
stumbled a few steps, never once relaxing the doll-like expression of
his face. Then he recovered his balance, and raised his hands again
with marionette rigidity. Poldy had felt sick at heart at this
mummery, at the man's degradation before the crowd. Unwillingly he
manipulated David's toy, while the owner looked on approvingly. "Do
you know, I had a model for that head?"
"Yes ... it's very lifelike."
"Oh, no ... it's not lifelike at all. I don't call myself an artist.
This fellow who was my model used to come into the hospital. He
moved his head just the way that the doll does ... all day, mind you.
Wait..." He fumbled nervously in his pocket, but only a crumpled
piece of paper was forthcoming.
"I can't find it," he said forlornly.
"Isn't it on the paper?"
"No..." He threw the paper away and turned his back to Poldy and
stared morosely at the pavement. He even stopped swinging his leg.
Poldy tried to rally him.
"Why do you carry it ... the doll?" And David at once rewarded him
with a grateful glance, the leg started to swing again, he clasped
his knees and held his elbows rigid with delight.
"I was waiting for you to ask. Listen. When I was in the hospital I
had nothing to do. So I decided to figure out how many times this
fellow wagged his head, by the minute, you understand. That's what I
was looking for. I thought I had the paper in my pocket with the
figures on it. So one morning I said to the nurse, 'Give me your
watch.' 'What do you want it for?' she asks. 'I want to count my
pulse.' 'No ... that's not what you want it for.' 'I want to see
what time it is.' 'Well, I'll tell you the time.' 'I want to see
what kind of a watch it is. I used to fix watches...'"
"Really! You're expert in many ways, I see."
"No, not in the least. I only told her that."
"And did she give you the watch then?"
"Oh, no. She wouldn't give it to me for that reason either. So at
last I said to her: 'Well, I want to count the number of times a
minute that Joe wags his head.' She didn't believe that at all, so
she laughed and gave me the watch. Then I called Joe over to my bed.
'Joe,' I said, 'come talk to me....' and I held the watch in my hand
and counted it by the minute hand, just as the doctor counts your
pulse."
"A very interesting experiment. And the result?"
Once more David flashed him an approving look. He searched his
pocket again, but this time nothing was forthcoming, and an
expression of alarm came over his face, unfolding down from his
forehead like a mask. First the eyebrows elevated themselves, making
the apex of a triangle, the nostrils distended, the lower lip
dropped. He held the expression for a moment, then switched it off.
"I can't find it," he announced sadly.
"Perhaps you remember?"
"No ... no ... But tell me, what do you think?" His face brightened
and he looked at Poldy anxiously. "Perhaps I never did it?"
"Oh, it's altogether likely..."
But this accommodating answer had an electric effect on David. He
jumped away from Poldy to the end of the bench, and lowered his eyes
sullenly. "Ah ... I knew I couldn't trust you ... I knew it," he
muttered, and he would not talk to Poldy for a long time.
"But you started to tell me why you keep that doll," Poldy coaxed.
"Oh, _that_," his mood changed again and he flashed an appreciative
smile at Poldy, as if he had a bright pupil who was asking the right
questions. "I'll tell you. After I got that idea about Joe, I
decided to figure out how many times a day I swing to one side. Now
allowing sixteen hours to the day, since there's nothing doing while
I sleep, and about thirty-one swings a minute, it gives you sixteen
times sixty times thirty-one, which is twenty-nine thousand seven
hundred and sixty. But allowing three hours when I'm standing still
and two hours when I work at the press--I press clothes in a shop--I
subtract five times sixty times thirty-one, which is nine thousand
three hundred, leaving ... do you follow?"
"Continue, continue."
"Oh, there's nothing to continue about," he ended sullenly. "Don't
you see it now?"
"I confess that I don't."
"You can guess, can't you?"
"I'm not good at guessing."
"Well, never mind," David said sulkily. "I knew I couldn't trust
you."
"I'd _like_ to know...." Poldy said with great humility.
David leaned closer toward him and tapped off his words in the manner
of one closing a deal. "Now don't you think I deserve something for
all that?" he whispered.
"Of course ... of course."
"There you are!" He sprang back and raised his voice briskly. "Did
they get you? Tell me, did they get you?"
"I don't know what you mean..."
David burst out laughing. "The war ... the war. You had to go?"
"I had to go."
"Mmm ... I thought so. But tell me, didn't you foresee it?"
"Foresee it!"
"Yes, of course. Tell me now," his voice became smoothly
argumentative, he eyed Poldy in the manner of a storekeeper who has
to persuade a difficult customer, "Tell me, what did you expect? Now
if you had been crippled, say ... if something had been the matter
with you _then_ ... well, that would have been different, wouldn't
it..." Poldy felt an impulse to strike him, but David seemed to
divine the trembling in his arm, and rebounded to his former
position. "Well, never mind," he said airily. "Strange title that,
on my card. Don't you think so?"
"It's very strange."
"You saw me blow the whistle..."
"Yes, I saw you."
"That's part of my job."
"Indeed."
"Wherever people," David began with strongly marked accents,
"wherever people are being bullied ... I'm there! I watch it! If
things are too slow I blow the whistle. It's a delicate matter too,
knowing when to blow it. But it's quite all right, you see. I'm in
it myself. Now this leg, you might say," he stretched it grandly,
"bullies me all the time. It's my authority. 'Swing,' it says ... I
swing. That's why I figure that I have a right to enjoy myself.
They owe me something for this, I say."
"And do you find many diversions?"
"Oh, I know where to look," he said mysteriously. "Did you read in
the papers the other day of a meeting here in the square? I follow
the papers and so I know where to go. There was a riot here and one
man was killed. The club hit him wrong ... they can't always be
careful about such matters. You should have seen his head wobble
before he fell, just as if he was saying, 'This is all wrong, _all_
wrong.' Besides, wherever they build."
"Build, you say?"
"Yes, build ... put up buildings. There's generally a chance there
of seeing somebody killed. They fall down. Now have you ever
watched a man trying to balance himself on a beam a hundred feet in
the air?"
"No, not particularly..."
David nudged him ecstatically. "_There's_ something, now ... The way
he has to dance around ... that's authority, too. Do you see it now?"
"It grows clearer to me."
"Now, have you ever noticed a crowd being driven back when they want
to see something?"
"I seem to remember it..."
"They walk backwards. Strange thing, isn't it, to see people all
walking backward." He mused for a time, and resumed in the manner of
someone pleasantly reminiscing. "I had a great show once when I was
riding on the ferry. They had some soldiers on the island that they
were punishing. Made them work right on the edge of the island ...
picking up the stones that they have there or laying them down, I
couldn't tell which. One slip and they would be in the water, and no
one caring to save them. I think that's important, don't you?"
"Important?"
"Yes," David nodded. "It's important that they knew no one would
save them. That's what made it so interesting. I ran to the railing
and leaned over to see it clearer--"
"Yes, I can imagine that it was highly entertaining."
"Oh no, that was nothing," David retorted. "In fact, the whole thing
was rather dull until a wind came up, and then their shirts blew out
in back, like big white balloons that they were attached to. And
their legs looked so tiny and helpless, you'd think they were bugs
being held in the air." David paused, laughing heartily at the
picture he conjured up, looking at Poldy for appreciation. "You've
seen that, haven't you?"
"Yes ... I recall it now..."
"Now you don't look as though you could balance yourself on wet
stones..." He eyed Poldy shrewdly.
"I've never tried, to tell the truth."
"Could you stand on top of a ladder that was steep as a wall, and
paint without holding on to anything?"
Poldy considered.
"No, I'm afraid you couldn't," David said severely. "You had a hard
time of it in the war ... didn't you..."
Poldy turned on him a wide and troubled glance, but David only looked
back innocently. After a while David made a loud clicking sound and
bit his under lip, releasing it slowly, letting it slide from his
teeth as though he were sucking a delicate flavor from his thoughts.
Behind the coarse long hairs of his lashes his eyes shifted back and
forth ... Poldy felt he could almost hear them buzzing like insects
behind a hedge. He rose to go, feeling a sudden repulsion towards
the cripple, and in some way that was not clear to him, degraded by
their conversation. Again he had the desire to strike him, but the
expert on authority looked back at him with an expression of sad and
profound innocence. After a moment David too stood up, and pointed
excitedly toward the fountain. "Look ... look," he breathed. And
Poldy saw a tatterdemalion fellow followed by a crowd of urchins, who
kept their way a little to one side of the main stream of people.
The boys were torturing their quarry by the simple device of
advancing toward him in a body, and scattering the moment he made a
motion to strike them. As the game gained speed the figure in the
center became more and more frenzied, striking in all directions with
its arms ... until the dark silhouette looked like that of a
many-armed god performing for his worshippers. Poldy heard David
laughing beside him, a constrained and secretive laugh, as though the
peculiar flavor of the joke were known only to him. "Look ... look,"
he breathed again. "Oh, I can't stand it..." He took the whistle
from his pocket and blew it, and the boys dispersed. When the
policeman came he seized the man by the collar, and the man, with an
obliging motion, ducked his head forward so as to give him a firmer
hold. And now that it was over David stretched himself luxuriantly.
"I'll be going too," he announced. "I have a job on for tonight."
"A job?"
"Yes, it's around here. I may get round to it if I'm not too busy.
At eight o'clock. Have you my card?"
"It will be a valued memento."
"Will you come to see me sometime? The address is on the card. Come
tonight," he added slyly, "and we can go out together."
Poldy hesitated. He did not know whether his strange friend
attracted or repelled him, but there was a certain exhilaration that
he felt in his presence, a new gaiety that came to him when he could
fall in with the other's laughter. Moreover there was the feeling
that he was to be made privy to some secret entertainment, they two
being the only ones in the whole city to share it. He nodded and
they parted on cordial terms. Poldy stood and watched David swinging
off towards the eastern side of the park, hitting the posts as he
walked and sometimes giving an extra rap to a favored post. And now
that he was alone, Poldy saw that the sunset had faded, nothing left
of it but an afterglow reflected on the faces of the people who
passed ... a pink softness on every face that made it look too naked.
Now flesh was revealed as something too weak to stand the caprice of
steel with which it was surrounded. "They should have made something
stronger than flesh when they invented everything else," Poldy mused.
But of a sudden he started to run across the park to the street where
he had been walking before. He came to a place that advertised
fortune-telling. There was a huge picture of a Hindu in front, and
it was just as he had suspected. Under the picture was the word
Kuramos.
3
They were collecting money in front of the library. A blanket was
spread on the street and people threw in coins or bills. When the
blanket had been laid at the beginning, a poor woman stopped and
threw down three pennies. After that nobody gave for a long time.
Young girls went about shouting shrilly, and a bugler stood by,
lifting his horn valiantly and glancing at the empty blanket each
time he had to stop and wipe his lips. At last a dollar bill
fluttered down from one of the busses, but a wind swept it down the
street and a crippled soldier stopped it. Quicker than anyone could
bend down he put his knee on it, and held it so until someone stooped
down to him and drew the dollar bill out. The soldier smiled up
jovially and went on his way. After that the blanket filled rapidly,
a fever of throwing money seized those who passed. Those who had
never given to beggars, who had never dared to throw a coin from them
... all those to whom the process of giving or taking money was
carefully hedged in as though it were obscene, threw all they had
into the blanket. They threw it awkwardly and with a look of guilt,
because it seemed as if the privacy of things had been violated ...
as if, because of this public and shameless giving, the world had
changed, and people might stop and void themselves anywhere, and no
one would wonder at it.
A crowd gathered, watching a man writing figures on a blackboard,
each number higher than the last. But Poldy could not understand it
... the relation between the numbers being written and the bright
metal circles and oblong papers that lay in the blanket. He could
not recognize them any more as coins and dollar bills. They had
become for him color and shape, geometric patterns without value.
And after a while he saw that few glanced any more at the numbers on
the blackboard; but everyone counted each thing that fell into the
blanket, seeing also that it was only a shape and a texture, a sign
that someone had given.
At times as Poldy rested on the library steps he passed into a
stupor, from which he emerged to see things more intensely, with a
sense that he must use his reprieve ... store up the sights and
sounds that were on this earth against the time of darkness that
threatened him. Sometimes, in the vivid afternoon light, the city
seemed like a brightly-figured rug that someone was shaking before
him, and he had to catch the pattern of it as it rippled in front of
his eyes. Then he wanted to call out, "Don't shake it so fast ...
hold it still a moment." And as if he had been heard he would see
the tapestry suddenly clear and still before him ... and figures and
things would begin to move on it with a slow precision, with a single
action that seemed to be the whole story of what they could do.
Now he found himself staring at a man and a woman who were sitting
opposite him. The woman's face had three sores on it, rosy and
pointed like little nipples. Her hands and her body were swollen,
only her lips were finely moulded with the delicacy of pain. The man
said nothing to her, only looked at her from time to time. "Well..."
Poldy thought, apologetically ... "well, they're not in very good
condition, but they could be sold for a pair."
Then it was a beggar woman who was stopping in front of everyone for
alms, her palm cringing to her breast and her fingers cupped. "Not
because she is afraid," he said, "but to strike more suddenly." And
when she came and stood near him, he remembered ... count her
fingers, count her fingers. But the sum of her fingers was correct.
"Ah, but that won't do. You'll have to be more crippled than that
before I give you anything." And he looked deliberately before him,
to a place across the street where they were building. There he saw
a tent made of two steel beams meeting and filled in with sky, and he
saw four men dancing in it ... an archaic dance, their knees charging
and their hands lifted to a rope. The men were silent, no cry or
song passed between them, no voice of anyone directing. Yet they
moved in the unison of a perfect dance, feeling the rhythm from the
vibration of the rope against their palms. Poldy watched the step
with delight, and leaned forward to see it more clearly, forgetting
the beggar woman.
And now a preacher came and mounted the steps to a sufficient
distance above the street. People gathered, assembling in different
places like well-trained resonators for his voice. Poldy did not
notice this swift gathering of the crowd, its rising around him like
stealthy water, until he was trapped in it ... standing on the
topmost step near the preacher and looking down at them. But the
sight of all the faces lifted to him was terrifying, and it seemed
that while they were listening to the preacher they were also
intently staring at him. A feeling of dizziness came over him, a
panic of all his senses, in which he saw everything suddenly
distorted and ominous.
First it was the glasses ... The preacher was wearing glasses, and
the light splintered them into prisms that kept swarming back and
forth over his eyes, devouring them. But sometimes it seemed to
Poldy that the prisms stopped in their feasting and stared at him,
with a direct and terrible scrutiny. Otherwise nothing was clear.
The faces that looked up at him seemed to waver and turn into
loosely-tied balloons ... he could feel the strings that held them
fastened in his eyes. There were no other faces. The faces had
dissolved into a white foam that drifted waywardly over the shoulders
of the crowd, that was teased upward by the wind of the preacher's
voice. The faces were swinging back and forth over the shoulders of
the crowd with an ominous softness, like waters about to spring ...
It was hot on the steps. He had been standing so long that his body
was going numb with the heat. He could feel his thighs fusing into a
paralysis, and the desire to walk and break their cohesion came over
him with physical pain. He wanted to move, he wanted to hide himself
from the faces that were swinging back and forth, preparing to spring
at him. Yet he was held there against his will ... the voice of the
preacher held him, as it went slyly from one pitch to another, like
the delicate passes of a hand hypnotising someone. He was held by
the preacher's glasses, with the prisms swarming back and forth over
them and devouring the preacher's eyes ...
But now the voice asked them a question ... "What was it ... what was
it?" Poldy said to himself. He had heard it only a second ago, and
now he could not remember it. He saw the preacher's hands spread
wide like an echo of it ... he noticed the fingers, how white they
were and puffed high between the joints ... and he felt for a moment
that he had caught at something to steady him, that he could look at
the hand spread high in the air and stay his dizziness. But what was
he saying ... what was he saying? Strange that he could not
understand words any more ... Everyone understood, everyone was
laughing. He saw two women who stood near-by turn and smile to each
other with pleased and knowing expressions ... just as if they were
hearing a child play the difficult part of his lesson. Then again
there was nothing but the tide of faces, and the preacher's glasses
drifting on them ... drifting back and forth with the stupid
insistence of something floating on water ...
And now he heard an old woman in the crowd murmuring amen. He heard
the sound of her amens like timid chirps, and then he saw a bird come
and perch on the rim of the fountain. He closed his eyes and
listened to the bird chirping ... such faint slow ones ... and after
that there came a soft steaming sound, that he knew was being made by
the old woman. Right there before the people she threw back her head
and let the sound steam softly out of her lips. It was terrible and
disgusting. He was afraid to open his eyes and see it. But it
stopped at last and he heard instead the voice of a thousand people
shouting, ever farther and farther away ... until that too changed
and became the preacher's voice, and the voice went on alone, probing
the silence like a fine and insistent needle. Yes, it was the voice
that was hurting him ... hurting everyone with its dainty probing
motions. A mass operation was being performed, and the preacher, by
slyly changing his voice, was taking up one fine instrument after
another. Somewhere in the crowd a man lifted his hand begging the
preacher to stop ... a silly helpless motion, as though the man was
under an anesthetic. And still the faces were drifting above the
shoulders of the crowd ... teased upward by the preacher's voice,
weary of levelness ... looking for someone who would serve as a
pillar for them to dance around. But at last the sermon ended, and
the choir stood up to sing....
Then there was only a moment. The faces found him ... they leaped
upon him in an orgy of whirling, he was the smooth shining cup in the
center of their whirling, he was the hollow funnel dancing like a top
in the core of a whirlpool. Nothing could save him from the faces
dancing closer and closer upon him, from the moment when, in their
frenzy, they would close in on the center of their whirling. But
just when he thought this would happen, he saw the bird perching
again on the rim of the fountain. Its body was tilted to one side
like a child's pencil stroke. It was going to fall but it flew away
instead, and then, through the roaring sound around him, Poldy heard
his own strange thought ... "Birds never fall, because they can
spread a net of wings to catch themselves in time..." The bird came
back and he saw its eye. The eye was a bubble that had come up to
the surface of feathers and stayed there looking out. It was a tiny
vortex swirling into bright black immobility. The bird tilted its
head and the eye did not spill over ... "A bird's eye does not spill
because its axis can balance the waters around it ... I can balance
the faces..." At that they receded from him. Here and there, with
lazy convergence the foam shaped itself into features, and he looked
up to see the preacher bending over him. "Are you all right now?"
the preacher asked.
Poldy smiled and suffered them to raise him and help him walk to one
of the benches. He was ashamed of himself for fainting, and he
turned away, while they regarded him fearfully and sadly. It was
over now and the people departed. Only the women lingered on the
steps, strolling to and fro, luxuriating in the slowness of their
step, in the tenderness of walking arm in arm. The starched ripple
of voile and tapping rain of high heels accompanied them. Over that,
their voices ... a soft anarchic choir, fluttering up to a crescendo,
pausing like subsiding wings. Poldy heard them, and their voices and
the motion of their bodies had for him an indescribable beauty ...
Meanwhile the sun was going away. Windows went blind one after
another as the sun left them ... the purple shadow of a tall building
splayed down into the street, where it rose and flooded the other
buildings. The girls walked ever more slowly, their feet on the
steps turned outward with an ancient barefoot placidity ... until the
sun was gone, and through the noise of the street day and night could
be heard together, as two notes of a chord held for a moment in
subtle equilibrium. And now one of the women passed him again,
walking alone this time, preoccupied and frowning a little. Their
eyes met, and Poldy thought she must have come back to speak to him.
He rose and stepped toward her, and looked eagerly into her face; and
when she turned away he caught her arm, fearful that she would leave
him. Seeing this, and the girl's silent struggle to free herself,
people gathered around them. Poldy tried to flee, but someone
grasped his wrist and held him ... and after that there was a
bewildering succession of places and people and voices, until he
found himself sitting alone. He did not understand what his offense
had been. He sat in his cell staring miserably at the floor,
wondering when they would let him out, and whether he would be in
time to meet David.