«Oh, New York, yeah. I forgot.»
«Say, what the hell are you going to do in New York, if I ain't getting too personal?»
«I'm going to rejoin my family.»
«You been away long?»
«About ten years,» I said, drawing the words out meditatively.
«Ten years! That's a hell of a long time. What were you doing, just bumming around?»
«Yeah, just bumming around.»
«I guess they'll be glad to see you... your folks.»
«I guess they will.»
«You don't seem to be so sure of it,» he said, giving me a quizzical look.
«That's true. Well, you know how it is.»
«I guess so,» he answered. «I meet lots of guys like you. Always come back to the roost some time or other.»
He said roost, I said kennel—
I borrowed a nickel from him on leaving and ducked into the subway. I felt tired, hungry, weather-beaten. The passengers looked sick to me. As though some one had just let them out of the hoose-gow or the alms house. I had been out in the world, far, far away. For ten years I had been knocking about and now I was coming home. Welcome home, prodigal son!
I tiptoed into the areaway and looked for a gleam of light. Not a sign of life. Well, they never came home very early. I would go in upstairs by way of the stoop. Perhaps they were in the back of the house. Sometimes they sat in Hegoroboru's little bedroom off the hall where the toilet box trickled night and day.
I opened the door softly, walked to the head of the stairs which were enclosed, and quietly, very quietly, lowered myself step by step. There was a door at the bottom of the steps. I was in total darkness.
Near the bottom I heard muffled sounds of speech. They were home! I felt terrifically happy, exultant. I wanted to dash in wagging my little tail and throw myself at their feet. But that wasn't the program I had planned to adhere to.
After I had stood with my ear to the panel for some minutes I put my hand on the door knob and very slowly and noiselessly I turned it. The voices came much more distinctly now that I had opened the door an inch or so. The big one, Hegoroboru, was talking. She sounded maudlin, hysterical, as though she had been drinking. The other voice was low-pitched, more soothing and caressing than I had ever heard it. She seemed to be pleading with the big one. There were strange pauses, too, as if they were embracing. Now and then I could swear the big one gave a grunt, as though she were rubbing the skin off the other one. Then suddenly she let out a howl of delight, but a vengeful one.' Suddenly she shrieked.
«Then you do love him still? You were lying to me!»
«No, no! I swear I don't. You
«That's a lie!»
«I swear to you... I swear I never loved him. He was just a child to me.»
This was followed by a shrieking gale of laughter. Then a slight commotion, as if they were scuffling. Then a dead silence, as if their lips were glued together. Then it seemed as if they were undressing one another, licking one another all over, like calves in the meadow. The bed squeaked. Fouling the nest, that was it. They had gotten rid of me as if I were a leper and now they were trying to do the man and wife act. It was good I hadn't been lying in the corner watching this with my head between my paws. I would have barked angrily, perhaps bitten them. And then they would have kicked me around like a dirty cur.
I didn't want to hear any more. I closed the door gently and sat on the steps in total darkness. The fatigue and hunger had passed. I was extraordinarily awake. I could have walked to San Francisco in three hours.
Now I must go somewhere! I must get very definite—or I will go mad. I know I am not just a child. I don't know if I want to be a man—I feel too bruised and battered—but I certainly am not a child!
Then a curious physiological comedy took place.
I crept upstairs on all fours and left the house as silently as I had entered it. The rain was over, the stars were out in full splendor. A light wind was blowing. The Lutheran Church across the way, which in the daylight was the color of baby shit, had now taken on a soft ochrous hue which blended serenely with the black of the asphalt. I was still not very definite in my mind about the future. At the corner I stood a few minutes, looking up and down the street as if I were taking it in for the first time.
When you have suffered a great deal in a certain place you have the impression that the record is imprinted in the street. But if you notice, streets seem peculiarly unaffected by the sufferings of private individuals. If you step out of a house at night, after losing a dear friend, the street seems really quite discreet. If the outside became like the inside it would be unbearable. Streets are breathing places...
I move along, trying to get definite without developing a fixed idea. I pass garbage cans loaded with bones and refuse. Some have put old shoes, busted slippers, hats, suspenders, and other worn-out articles in front of their dwellings. There is no doubt but that if I took to prowling around at night I could live quite handsomely off the discarded crumbs.
The life in the kennel is out, that's definite. I don't feel like a dog any more anyway...I feel more like a tom- cat. The cat is independent, anarchistic, a free-wheeler. It's the cat which rules the roost at night.
Getting hungry again. I wander down to the bright lights of Borough Hall where the cafeterias blaze. I look through the big windows to see if I can detect a friendly face. Pass on, from shop window to shop window, examining shoes, haberdashery, pipe tobaccos and so forth. Then I stand a while at the subway entrance, hoping forlornly that some one will drop a nickel without noticing it. I look the news stands over to see if there are any blind men about whom I can steal a few pennies from.
After a time I am walking the bluff at Columbia Heights. I pass a sedate brown stone house which I remember entering years and years ago to deliver a package of clothes to one of my father's customers. I remember standing in the big back room with the bay windows giving out on the river. It was a day of brilliant sunshine, a late afternoon, and the room was like a Vermeer. I had to help the old man on with his clothes. He was ruptured. Standing in the middle of the room in his balbriggan underwear he seemed positively obscene.
Below the bluff lay a street full of warehouses. The terraces of the wealthy homes were like overhanging gardens, ending abruptly some twenty or thirty feet above this dismal street with its dead windows and grim archways leading to the wharves. At the end of the street I stood against a wall to take a leak. A drunk comes along and stands beside me. He pees all over himself and then suddenly he doubles up and begins to vomit. As I walk away I can hear it splashing over his shoes.
I run down a long flight of stairs leading to the docks and find myself face to face with a man in uniform swinging a big stick. He wants to know what I'm about, but before I can answer he begins to shove me and brandish his stick.
I climb back up the long flight of stairs and sit on a bench. Facing me is an old-fashioned hotel where a school-teacher who used to be sweet on me lives. The last time I saw her I had taken her out to dinner and as I was saying good-bye I had to beg her for a nickel. She gave it to me—just a nickel—with a look I shall never forget. She had placed high hopes in me when I was a student. But that look told me all too plainly that she had definitely revised her opinion of me. She might just as well have said: «You'll never be able to cope with the world!»
The stars were very very bright. I stretched out on the bench and gazed at them intently. All my failures were now tightly bound up inside me, a veritable embryo of unfulfillment. All that had happened to me now seemed extremely remote. I had nothing to do but revel in my detachment. I began to voyage from star to star...
An hour or so later, chilled to the bone, I got to-my feet and began walking briskly. An insane-desire to repass the house I had been driven from took possession of me. I was dying to know if they were still up and
