The starved wastrels revelled in that smell. They looked towards the frying food with eager mouths and glistening eyes. Their nostrils smelt its heat and its savour greedily. Their faces were all fierce and emaciated. Their bodies were unkempt, crooked, weazened. But just then, the joy of an unexpected banquet had filled even their haggard and stupefied souls with a pleasure that made them laugh and chatter irresponsibly like children. The sorrows and the miseries of life were forgotten in that moment of common rejoicing. And perhaps that joyous mumble of chattering voices, rising through the steam in that slum eating-house, was a beautiful hymn of praise to the spirit of life.
And Gypo stood among them like some primeval monster just risen from the slime in which all things had their origin.
While around him crowded the others, like insects upon which he had been destined to fatten.
As he looked about him, with the slow, languorous eye movement of a resting bull, he felt the exaltation and conceit of a conqueror at the hour of victory. An intelligent being, gifted with such strength and the power to analyze his sensations, would have said: “This is the greatest moment of my life.” But Gypo did not think. There was nothing about him in relation to which he could think. A queen will not dream of flaunting her beauty and her raiment at a boors’ banquet. But she will, on a public holiday, bow to their clamorous cheers. So with Gypo.
The cumbersome mechanism of his mind had been put in motion that evening by the necessity for forming a plan after leaving the police-station. The unaccustomed strain had unmoored it. It floundered about until Gallagher’s promise perched it on a foolish eminence whence it regarded the rest of humanity with contempt. It sprawled its ponderous foundations on that crazy eminence as arrogantly as if it were about to rest there for eternity.
He rolled his eyes about at the heads that were standing thickly around him, some on a level with his biceps, some on a level with his waist, while here and there a tall man like himself, stood with a red, lean, knotted neck strained forward, with throbbing throat, towards the food counter.
“Biga lot o’ people,” murmured the Italian suddenly, making a polite gesture with his hands to indicate the number of people present and the nature of his suspicions.
“That’s all right,” muttered Gypo. “Count ’em as ye hand out the grub. I’ll pay. Don’t you fret yersel’. Keep back there.”
He had been standing with his palms against the edge of the marble-topped counter. Now, in order to put his hand into his right trousers pocket, he had to pick up a small-sized man and crush him in between two women, who leaned away behind their shawls. Then he thrust his hand into his pocket and fingered the wad of Treasury notes. The very touch of them sent a wave of remembrance through his body. A slight tremor ran up, almost tangibly like a breath of cold wind in a hot place, up the extent of his body until it entered his brain. The remembrance of the origin of that wad of notes staggered him momentarily. He remembered the fat white hand, surmounted by a carefully brushed blue sleeve, that had handed him the wad over a desk, saying ever so icily: “You’ll find twenty pounds there. Go.”
But after the first shock he curled his thick upper lip slightly and licked it with the tip of his tongue. The movement of his mouth had the appearance of a grin. The girl who happened to glance at him just then, found his gaze centred on her. She dropped the fish slice into the pan with some sort of an exclamation in a foreign language. But Gypo, though he was looking at her, did not see her. He was busy with his clumsy thick fingers, separating a single note from the roll without taking the roll from his pocket. At last he succeeded in doing so. He grunted and pulled out a single Treasury note.
He held it up.
“Here ye are,” he cried. “This’ll pay for the lot. Hand out the grub.”
The Italian smiled immediately and began to serve the packages into the eager hands that reached out for them. He counted out loud as he did so: “One, two, three, four …”
An uproar commenced immediately. People crowded in from the door struggling to get served. Those who had been served struggled to get out into the street, with their food in steaming, dripping, paper packages in their hands. Altercations arose. The shop was full of sound. There were catcalls, whistling, cursing and laughing. Then a big docker brought the uproar to a climax by smashing his big boot through the wooden bottom of the counter, uttering a drunken yell as he did so. Then he sprawled over the counter, laughing foolishly and reaching out with his two hands towards the girl who shrank away terrified. The Italian uttered an exclamation of terror. Gypo turned towards the docker, lifted him up by the back and shouted:
“Keep quiet.”
The two words reechoed through the shop, like two rocks rolled down from opposite precipices and meeting in a glen, with two separate sounds, a heavy thick sound as
