Freirs looked as if he were about to ask a question, but Deborah spoke up first; 'Honey, you're gonna have them thinking you were drunk!' She lowered her eyes. "Course I know you'd never touch a drop.'
He grinned briefly, 'I'll not claim that! But I'll grant I was feeling spoke up first. 'Honey, you're gonna have them thinking you were since morning, and had a long ways still to walk.'
'You mean back to the bus?' said Carol.
'No, I kept on heading north, at least until I got out of the park. When that was behind me I took to the cross streets and started working my way up in a kind of zigzag fashion, wandering from one side of the island to the other. I actually believed I could cover every block. The streets up there were even dirtier, and there didn't seem to be as many people as before. There were the same holes in the ground, though, and the same steam coming out, as if the whole town had been built on top of a volcano. My own breath was steaming too, like a dragon's, and when I walked through a steam cloud I couldn't tell which part came from underground and which came from me. I was hungry and tired by then, and little by little I could feel the day get colder as the sun began going down, even though there were still a few hours left of afternoon. Most of the faces around me were black or foreign-looking now, and by the time evening came I felt like I'd wandered into a completely different country. But I put myself in the hands of the Lord and kept right on walking.
'The farther I walked, the more black faces I saw. Everybody'd watch me as I passed, at times just with curiosity, at times with something more, I saw a few people smile, like they knew some joke against me, and a lot of others glared at me with hatred in their eyes. At one point a group of kids tried to stop me from going up their road. They formed a line across the sidewalk and told me that if I wanted to get past I'd have to give them all my money – just like the kings of Jerusalem asking pilgrims for a toll. But like I said, I'm not a one to get scared off. There were a lot of them, but I was bigger, and I knew the Lord was with me. I turned out the pockets of my pants to show them I had nothing and just kept on walking. No one tried to stop me, and I never looked back. My pockets stayed turned out for the rest of the night.'
'For the rest of the-' Freirs stared with disbelief. 'What'd you do, spend the night in Harlem?'
Sarr shrugged. 'Can't say. I just kept moving, that's all, and I wasn't much aware of the passage of time. I even forgot to worry about what my mother'd think. I just knew that the night was coming early, I didn't have my money, and everything around me was godless and ugly and mean. The houses – well, they were a horror, they looked as if they'd been deserted for years, like the ruins down the road from here, only there were lights coming on in some of the windows. And the shops were foul and dingy, though their prices were just as high as all the rest. Even the churches made me wonder, they looked so much like shops, with doorways along the sidewalk and billboards in front. There was one place, the Church of the Dog… ' He shuddered.
'And the people I saw! If only I could forget. The ones in the alleys, or sitting on the curb, or lying in the street asleep with bottles by their heads… It was almost night now, freezing cold, and they should have been indoors. So should I, though I didn't pay much heed to it till the sky turned really dark. I managed to find a few faint stars up there, but not a great many – nothing like out here. And then the streetlights all came on, up and down the blocks without a sound. They made everything seem even darker, and the stars were blotted out. That's the time I felt the loneliest, I think. I found myself looking into every window I passed and wishing I could join the folks inside, black as they were. It seemed so warm and light in there, especially from out on the street with the homeless ones and half-starved dogs and frozen-looking cats.'
Idly he glanced down at Bwada, who was curled beside his chair, preoccupied with licking one fat grey forepaw, toes spread and gleaming nails extended. In the sudden silence she paused a moment and looked up, then turned her attention back to the paw.
'You'd think she was just a sweet-tempered old lady,' said Deborah, 'but it's all play-acting. I saw the way she tore open Joram's hand.'
"Twas nothing,' Sarr said quickly, noticing Carol's look of uneasiness. 'She meant no harm, nor Brother Joram either. A misunderstanding, that's all it was. A clash of spirits.' Still, the city was momentarily forgotten, and the deep-rooted old affection he'd been feeling – almost a reflex now, whenever he thought of the cat – was pierced by the memory of that bellow of pain, the small grey shadow fleeing toward the woods, his own stammered apologies and the other man's furious, accusing glare as he yanked back his hand and watched the upturned palm fill quietly with blood.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
How right Jeremiah had been! How eternally mysterious the world was, and all the beings in it…
He realized, with a start, that Carol was asking him something about the city and that his head had begun to throb uncomfortably. The drink was wearing off.
'There's not much more to tell,' he said, 'not that much I actually remember. I recall a fight outside a barroom, with one man spitting teeth, and some children throwing dice against a playground wall, but what sticks out more is the line of police cars I saw parked along one lonely street with the lights out and the motors running, and the men in their uniforms sitting together inside, talking and laughing as if they were waiting for something. After I was past them I stopped to look back, and I saw one of them come out of a building and another going in. And farther up the block a boy about my own age, sitting on his stoop, made an angry face at me-1 guess he supposed I was one of the police – and asked me if I'd gone and had myself a piece. That's just the way he put it. He pointed to the building I'd passed and said there was a fourteen-year-old girl in there, living in the basement. Her mother'd run off to Puerto Rico, and this afternoon they'd put her father in jail, and now the girl was all alone and the police were taking turns with her.'
He fell silent for a moment, surprised by the vividness of his own memory and wondering what impression it had made on Carol. Somewhere inside him, where his thoughts were darkest, he felt the first unwelcome stirrings of a reawakened lust, but fought them down.
Carol had stopped eating and was frowning in his direction. 'I can't believe a thing like that could happen around Christmastime. It's just too sick! Where were all the decent people hiding?'
'They must have been inside,' he said. 'I only saw the ones left out in the cold. And everyone was crazy, and no one seemed to care. Everyone was talking to himself, or singing like a drunk, or making odd gestures in the air, or shouting his lungs out at things I couldn't see. I remember a huge black man, big as a bear, who stumbled past me carrying on a conversation with himself in two different voices. And then behind him came this skinny old white man, the only one I saw up there, tagging after him like someone in a clowns' parade, laughing and pointing and making the madman sign, as if to tell the world, See, this man is crazy!' Sarr twirled his finger beside his head. 'I think the second man was as far gone as the first.