Hunger and Thirst (65 page)

He looked at young full breasts ripe for the taking. At old and dried up breasts taken or atrophied in frustrated silence. At bland eyes, then noses, thick noses, square jaws, double in a city haunted by ghosts. Spectres passing in the sun and gone in the night. The end, the beginning, it is one.

He was walking along a ditch.

A great lengthy ditch whose sides were concrete and yawning windows. But they weren’t windows. They were eye sockets barren of the eye showing the bare shallow blackbrains inside. Sluggish of operation, impervious to change. Closed in winter, empty and sightless in summer.

And if they had no eyes, what then? Then they would stumble about in much the same manner. They would find means of tripping. There. A socket-less people blundering through their days.

Would they see less?

How they run and scamper. He leaned in the sun and watched them. He felt strange. He was a ghost standing there. Only the sex eyes of young girls pierced the spirit shell. That only for a moment. Then they were gone and he was alone where millions walked. Surrounded by loneliness that walked and chattered and ate and ran and had a million voices. Where eight million people live and enjoy the benefits of democracy and don’t know who lives next door.

Signs. Sweaty armpits. Orange drinks. A lonely milk can. A bank. Bodies clothed by tradition. Tired eyes staring at the sidewalk black with perished gum blobs. Woolworth. Old men. Red ribbons bedizening the breast of a smocked girl smiling at him. A resting taxicab crouching like a smug cat before a fireplace. A red building baking on a corner. A fat boy whistling a never-written melody, blowing out music that died at birth. The scream of a coarse girl. Three comradely fannys rolling to lunch. Giggles. Then back to the office and the bald boss. And the limping clock. Breathless stale shells, dens of nine to five.

The lunchtime smoke. The unconscious dream time. The curling of idle smoke across the line of vision. Relaxation. Lazy flow of thoughts. Idle limbs. Rare moments when they wrested themselves from the wild current and watched it tumble and bob past. A brief second before leaping back in and being swamped again.

Broome Street.

Old and young. Teeth by nature and machine. Smiles, laughter and gesticulation. A tugging at his stomach. He was hungry. He had eaten no breakfast.

The argument had started early. He had gone to a movie the night before, come back with his brain teeming with ideas for a story. His brain which had been a dead unpromising lump for months. And, in the early hours, he had jumped up with long lost energy and started to type. Grace came out and said that her husband was trying to sleep. Erick took the typewriter all the way to the sun porch and sat there with the door closed. But it was under their bedroom and there was a stamping of feet on the stairs. And George came bursting through the doorway and his face was hard and it had begun.

His teeth clenched. He shivered as he walked on. He remembered the time a man had pushed him in Germany. And he had wanted to unlock his rifle and just empty bullets into everyone. He wanted to do it now.

He remembered leaning his rifle on the dirt parapet and watching the three German soldiers fall over from his bullets. One had leaped and then twitched on the ground. Thinking of it made his body shake. He stopped and looked at everyone passing, feeling sexual desire and a wild shapeless lust for violence and brutality.

He passed another store. Surplus war material. How familiar it was. The partitioned trays. He saw himself hanging over it, sunken-eyed and sweaty, crosslegged and slumped in a smokey mess hall. Perhaps it was the very tray he ate from once. That was the horror of things alike, you never knew.

He looked at holsters and bayonets and knives and bugles and flash lights and flags. Relics of an ancient war. And he thought—Don’t throw them away, we’ll probably be able to use them again.

Spring Street. Shirts. Underwear. Sweaters. All in windows. A big Technicolor sign. Kotex. GIRLS! Your secret is safe! Oh Christ, how magnificent! He yearned to shout it out. And, to whom is anything physical a secret anymore? It is an institution bereft of mystery in this teeming oven. The joy was gone, swallowed by proliferative advertisement, by free talk, by people leering, by endless mental elbows in the ribs. The Body heaved on the public dissection table for all to see.

BUT MUSTN’T TOUCH!

He felt himself tighten violently and hate burst from his throat and dripped from his chin. He wiped it away quickly, awkwardly. He walked on, shoulders slumped. Posture poor. Straighten up, son. How many times had his mother told him that? He slumped over even more. He was sick of her and her pale face and her grey hair and her eternal sitting in her wrapper in the living room chair, knitting and knitting, coughing. And never getting angry. In his cruelest moments, showing no anger but only looking at him with mute, pleading eyes. And, even in pain, never speaking a harsh word to him.

It enraged him.

He tried to walk with his eyes closed. He kept bumping into people. He cursed at them. His mind turned over like a slowing machine. What is life but death aware? What, I beg you, is underneath? Is there no meaning to all this? The old ladies, the fat and the thin, the stringent laughter, the hackles rising, the beauty and the body?

There must be a purpose to all these wanderings. To be born, to live, and then to die for the consummation of physical wants. It seemed the gist. There must be more though. But he couldn’t find it. Lost in private despairs, he could see none of it. And he was weary of trying. Ready to leave. He was throwing up his hands. The world was not for him. It was unfathomable. Else there was nothing to fathom and it was just a ghastly cosmic mistake.

East Houston Street.

A casual-eyed negro was selling glass rings to eager customers while the sign clearly read—
Diamond Rings
.

Mother what is that? It is a nigger, it is a coon, it is a boogie, it is a jig. Naah, naah, naah, mustn’t touch, Mother will kick your little ass in.

Sprawling resters. A little time before the machines roared again. Young deathbornes chatting in their clipped irrevocable tones. Shouts of laughter. Skin stretched so tautly and so efficiently over emptiness. A young Italian girl was leaning against a sodden wall, dreamily watching her cigarette smoke drift into the light.

A girl was standing with a boy. She was swinging her arms in front of herself and clapping her hands, in back of herself and clapping then again. Chatting.

You married? No. Well you’re young anyhow. Huh, how old do you think I am? You’re about 25. Oh yeah? Yeah. You’re 18 then. Yeah, I wish I was 18.

Bond Street. G.T. Jones. Hot breath of the subway rushing out of earth slits. Suddenly—East Street. He stopped and blinked. Lost forever 3
^rd
and 2
^nd
and 1
^st
. It is very sad. Where did they go?

Washington Place.

Hot and terrible, a canyon of heat and sweat. A truck and a horse-drawn wagon were side by side.

The horse was old and motley brown. There was a valley in its back. The eyes were glazed and tired. There was a noisome tired munching of oats. The ribs stood out like covered xylophone slats. The thin body heaved and gasped. The legs stood akimbo for more balance. The old straggle tail hung limp in the sun. The ears twitched the flies away wearily. And the old red wagon stood behind, derelict and old.

Die, horse.

Let your tired soul loose. Come with me and the old woman. We will walk together side by side, the three of us. To a happy place.

Lies.

Waverly.

And this prize you shall win for learning. This reward for a fulsome mind. That your eyes shall be opened. That your ears shall hear. That the mirth shall be undone. That you shall see gaping wounds where you saw nothing. That you shall see futility where before there was hope of progress. That you shall see evil and poverty and sadness where before your callous eye passed over these things and could not focus beyond your tiny life. That you shall see the raping current on which the world is chip-tossed.

This is your gratification.

Talk to me, city! Tell me of your loves and hates, your rapine and your tortures. Your lusts and frustrations. Your hollow lights and flinching at the honest sunlight. Of your loans up to $500.

He traced his mechanical steps up 14
^th
Street.

The sun burned on his head. He felt his body wet under the clothes. The people jostled by and pushed him aside. His mind worked slowly and artificially. The sun was too hot. He walked unobserved beneath the awesome facades of business, searching. He was hungry and thirsty and tired. But he couldn’t stop. Something kept his feet moving. Oblivious, he moved on.

He started along the pock-marked face of Broadway.

Two blocks up, he stopped in the shade and, dizzily, leaned against a store window. He watched his reflection staring out ghostlike on a background of toy, colored alligators. There was a sharp pain in his head now, the dull eating of a headache. The alligators swirled around crazily. Their yellow bodies seemed to squirm and vibrate. Their red eyes glowered at him malevolently.

He brushed a shaking, irritated hand over his sweat-covered neck to brush off a crawling bug. He pushed away from the window and walked on. His eyes were wet. The sidewalks would not stand still.

His stomach heaved and growled. He stared stupidly ahead and walked on. The sweat rolled off his back and he felt the drops run across his chest and soak into his underwear. He loosened his belt, pushed his fingers into his protruding stomach.

17th. 18th. 19th. 20th. 21st. The condemned man. The last mile. It was so like that.

And here was what? Another park. Lush spot decaying in the wilderness. Choked Eden.

People still hurrying. Young bodies and old. Nameless tunes floating to obscurity. Laughter. Futile meanderings. Generation of diapers. And death. Trucks, liquor, cigarettes, stomachs, bodies, heat, hunger—Oh wretched pitiful bugs!

He ran in front of a truck.

It ground to a stop inches from him.

He pretended he didn’t even notice it. He walked away rapidly and leaped on the sidewalk. He brushed along the buildings. A siren hit his ears. Signs whirled by. People, faces, endless whiteness. Legs and breasts and arms. A blur of rushing people passed him by.

At last. It came to him. A way to overcome sex. Always be hungry and disillusioned. Hunger replaced the sex drive physically and disillusion placed it neatly in the narrow little niche where it rightfully belonged.

The world is covered with the wet paint of sex. His mind discoursed as he plodded on. Despite signs we reach out curious fingers and, when we pull them away to discover that we are marked, we mutter angrily and look offended. Never at ourselves. Oh, never that. We are imperious, implacable, grand noble men and women. We are God’s creations, love us. The world is against us. It is the devil. It is Fate. We sit back rocking on our sour heels like two-bit Jobs. If we were genuinely disgusted we would …

Yes, that’s what we’d do.

Instead of by war. By honest means. Putting off the sordid, putting off the ignominy of futile attempt. Finding rest eternal from the endless treadmill.

He crossed 24
^th
Street, wiping great drops from his face.

A taxi rushed by and a hot wind rushed up his leg. He ignored it. A voice said, “Be careful.” He walked on.

Gallant merchants giving their all.

Our competitors won’t like this but YOU will!

It makes me happy to see such kindness. I want to go in and embrace the man and say—God will reward you for this great charity toward your brother man. Oh,
bless
you, kind sir, may your tribe increase!

He walked on past whirling peppermint sticks of barber shops, under shrines of commerce, over matchbooks and gum wrappers, under steel and blaze.

30
^th
. 31
^st
. 32
^nd
. Restaurants. People hurrying.
Prices Slashed To the Bone!

He stepped in between two moving cabs. One brushed against him and almost knocked him over. A dart of fear clutched his heart. His chest constricted.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered fearfully, jumping on the sidewalk.

Then, walking on, he smiled wanly to himself. The will to live. After all this. Strange. Almost absurd. What was the point?

It was foul hot. One could hardly breathe. There was no air. It was like standing trapped in a boiler. The heat simmered up and hit his face. The sweating city breathed in his face. It had no friends.

Gimbel’s. Macy’s. He passed beneath their walls, shrines of the bargain. Cathedrals of thrift. Brassieres all shapes and sizes and suggestions. If you ain’t got, we give. Be a hypocrite and start some fine young fellow on his way to twenty years. Cruelty to dumb animals. Thumb me a woman. Her breasts came from South Orange.

Nearing 42
^nd
Street.

More people. Rushing faster. Clip clop clip they rushed past him. He swirling dizzily among their their alien waves. He went under and came up. They rushed, called, did not laugh. They were all going somewhere. He alone was going nowhere. But perhaps he
was
going somewhere. Maybe he just didn’t know where he was going.

He passed a construction site. A large wooden structure was hanging over the sidewalk. He plunged into the dim tunnel. It smelled of heat and sweaty bodies and hot rubble. He stared ahead dully. His feet moved on and on, unguided. Street after street. He was in the sun again. Block by block. Would it ever end?

Times Square.

Broadway. Magic spot.

He shuffled past.

Bleating horns tore at his ears. People blazed their devious paths. Neon eyes blinked down at him as he walked. A limp American flag stirred in a slight breeze. The sun was hiding behind a sullen cloud.

An old lady pulled a few newspapers out of a trash can and hustled on to greater glory.

People waiting for other people. Stares, worried mutters, idle couching against strange walls. Boys and girls together. Sun on his neck. Cigar and spittle. Subway breath. Gaudy shirts and rags, the people. He passed them and did not like them. He did not see them clearly. They were passing away.