picked up in his cab and who paid him double to let her conduct her business in the back seat. She made him turn his mirror back to front. No one cares if the story is true or not.
Milligan says, yep.
Milligan wears his clothes like corsets, always too tight. He says it is good for his blood, the tightness. But his flesh erupts in strange bulges from his thighs and stomach and arms. He looks trussed up, a grinning turkey ready for the oven.
Milligan always has a story. His life is a continual charade, a collection of prostitutes and criminals, “characters,” beautiful women, eccentric old ladies, homosexuals, and two-headed freaks. Also he knows many jokes. Finch and May sit on the velvet cushions in Milligan’s room and listen to the stories, but it is bad for May who becomes depressed. The evenings invariably end with May in a fury saying, Jesus, I want a fuck, I want a fuck so badly it hurts. But Milligan just keeps laughing, somehow never realizing how badly it affects May.
May, Finch, Milligan, and the-man-who-won’t-give-his-name lounge around the kitchen drinking Glino’s homemade beer. Finch has suggested that they wash the dirty milk bottles before Florence Nightingale arrives and everyone has agreed that it is a good idea. However they have all remained seated, drinking Glino’s homemade beer. No one likes the beer, but of all the things that are hard to steal alcohol is the hardest. Even Fantoni cannot arrange it. Once he managed to get hold of a nine-gallon keg of beer but it sat in the back yard for a year before Glino got hold of a gas cylinder and the gear for pumping it out. They were drunk for one and a half days on that lot, and were nearly arrested en masse when they went out to piss on the commemorative plaque outside the offices of the Fifty-fourth District.
No one says much. They sip Glino’s beer from jam jars and look around the room as if considering ways to tidy it, removing the milk bottles, doing something about the rubbish bin-a cardboard box which was full a week ago and from which eggshells, tins, and bread-crusts cascade on to the floor. Every now and then May reads something from an old newspaper, laughing very loudly. When May laughs, Finch smiles. He is happy to see May laughing because when he is not laughing he is very sad and liable to break things and do himself an injury. May’s forehead is still scarred from the occasion when he battered it against the front door for three hours. There is still blood on the paintwork.
May wears an overcoat all the time, even tonight in this heat. His form is amorphous. He has a double chin and a drooping face that hangs downwards from his nose. He is balding and worries about losing hair. He sleeps for most of the day to escape his depressions and spends the nights walking around the house, drinking endless glasses of water, playing his record, and groaning to himself as he tries to sleep.
May is the only one who was married before the revolution. He came to this town when he was fired from his job as a refrigerator salesman, and his wife was to join him later. Now he can’t find her. She has sold their house and he is continually writing letters to her, care of anyone he can think of who might know her whereabouts.
May is also in love with Florence Nightingale, and in this respect he is no different from the other five, even Fantoni who claims to find her skinny and undernourished.
Florence Nightingale is their friend, their confidante, their rent collector, their mascot. She works for the revolution but is against it. She will be here soon. Everybody is waiting for her. They talk about what she will wear.
Milligan, staring intently at his large Omega watch, says, peep, peep, peep, on the third stroke…
The front door bell rings. It is Florence Nightingale.
The-man-who-won’t-give-his-name springs up. He says, I’ll get it, I’ll get it. He looks very serious but his broken, battered face appears to be very gentle. He says, I’ll get it. And sounds out of breath. He moves with fast heavy strides along the passage, his back hunched urgently like a jungle animal, a rhino, ploughing through undergrowth. It is rumoured that he is having an affair with Florence Nightingale but it doesn’t seem possible.
They crowd together in the small kitchen, their large soft bodies crammed together around the door. When Florence Nightingale nears the door there is much pushing and shoving and Milligan dances around the outside of the crowd, unable to get through, crying “make way there, make way for the lady with the big blue eyes” in his high nasal voice, and everyone pushes every way at once. Finally it is Fantoni who arrives from his shower and says, “For Christ’s sake, give a man some
Everybody is very silent. They don’t like to hear him swear in front of Florence Nightingale. Only Fantoni would do it, no one else. Now he nods to her and indicates that she should sit down on one of the two chairs. Fantoni takes the other. For the rest there are packing cases, kerosene tins, and an empty beer keg which is said to cause piles.
Fantoni is wearing a new safari suit, but no one mentions it. He has sewn insignia on the sleeves and the epaulettes. No one has ever seen this insignia before. No one mentions it. They pretend Fantoni is wearing his white wool suit as usual.
Florence Nightingale sits simply with her hands folded in her lap. She greets them all by name and in turn; to the-man-who-won’t-give-his-name she merely says “Hello”. But it is not difficult to see that there is something between them. The-man-who-won’t-give-his-name shuffles his large feet and suddenly smiles very broadly. He says, “Hello”.
Fantoni then collects the rent which they pay from their pensions. The rent is not large, but the pensions are not large either. Only Milligan has an income, which gives him a certain independence.
Finch doesn’t have enough for the rent. He had meant to borrow the difference from Milligan but forgot. Now he is too embarrassed to ask in front of Fantoni.
He says, I’m a bit short.
Florence Nightingale says, forget it, try and get it for next week. She counts the money and gives everyone a receipt. Finch tries to catch Milligan’s eye.
Later, when everyone is smoking the cigars she has brought and drinking Glino’s home brew, she says, I hate this job, it’s horrible to take this money from you.
Glino is sitting on the beer keg. He says, what job would you like? But he doesn’t look at Florence Nightingale. Glino never looks at anyone.
Florence Nightingale says, I would come and look after you. We could all live together and I’d cook you crepes suzettes.
And Fantoni says, but who would bring us cigars then? And everybody laughs.
8.
Everyone is a little bit drunk.
Florence Nightingale says, Glino play us a tune.
Glino says nothing, but seems to double up even more so that his broad shoulders become one with his large bay window. His fine white hair falls over his face.
Everybody says, come on Glino, give us a tune. Until, finally, Glino takes his mouth organ from his back pocket and, without once looking up, begins to play. He plays something very slow. It reminds Finch of an albatross, an albatross flying over a vast, empty ocean. The albatross is going nowhere. Glino’s head is so bowed that no one can see the mouth organ, it is sandwiched between his nose and his chest. Only his pink, translucent hands move slowly from side to side.
Then, as if changing its mind, the albatross becomes a gipsy, a pedlar, or a drunken troubador. Glino’s head shakes, his foot taps, his hands dance.
Milligan jumps to his feet. He dances a sailor’s dance, Finch thinks it might be the hornpipe, or perhaps it is his own invention, like the pink stars stencilled on his taxi door. Milligan has a happy, impish face with eyebrows that rise and fall from behind his blue-tinted glasses. If he weighed less his face might even be pretty. Milligan’s face is half-serious, half-mocking, intent on the dance, and Florence Nightingale stands slowly. They both dance, Florence Nightingale whirling and turning, her hair flying, her eyes nearly closed. The music becomes faster and faster and the five fat men move back to stand against the wall, as if flung there by centrifugal force. Finch, pulling the table out of the way, feels he will lose his balance. Milligan’s face is bright red and streaming with sweat. The flesh on his bare white thighs shifts and shakes and beneath his T-shirt his breasts move up and down. Suddenly he spins to one side, drawn to the edge of the room, and collapses in a heap on the floor.
