The two. three. four flights!. Finally she emerges! Ah! what a vision in laces!.. He didn’t lie!.. She clutches the rail, gasping. she’s all in!. A short-winded doll!. a plaster cast!.. black eyes!.. embers!.. Chantilly lace… furbelows!. velvet flounces!. a whole train!. and her skirts full of medals!. in tiers. they jingle! little bells!.. they chime soon as she moves! More lacework.. narrow waist!.. all of it with spots!.. more spots! grease! dust!
sauces!.. In her ears barbaric pendants that almost drop to her shoulders.. She’s choking after the rail.. Suddenly she perks up!. Here she is! She’s giving us the once*over! She plants herself!.. she grumbles!..
"Greatness av my life! ”
She’s defying us!.. crap like us! It’s an outrage! She’s flaring up, puckered, twitching, lips twisted, violet, black.. from looking at us with anger.. towering rage..
"You wanta me, Cascade?. You wanta me, pimpa?”
That’s what she calls him.
"Get the cards, baby-doll!’’
That’s an order.
"In front those roughnecks?”
"Yes! And shut up, slut!”
That gags her. her innards are tied up in knots… she starts coughing!.. and coughing!..
Ang£le stands there not saying a thing.
Carmen sees her.
"And that bitch?”
Angele lets out a shriek.
"Cascade, throw that pig out! Back to the doghouse, you hag!.. back to the doghouse! If she stays another minute!.. I’m going to clear out!.. I didn’t come from Rio to be made a fool of!.. I already find seven floozies on the bed! Do I have to stand that lunatic besides? The idea! Good-by!. I’m no angel. Goo-oo-ood night! ”
They’re off!.. The doll starts choking… she shakes the whole place. She’d better rest. better sit down there on a step.. she’s going to faint!..
"Dumb bitch! ” she chokes.. "Dumb bitch!.. and you haven’t seen everything! Just wait for the thirteenth! You’ll have thirteen in your bed!”
She’s having a high time, a little cracked!. dizzy'. she suddenly lies down… she can’t sit up!.. she’s squirming and convulsing on her belly!.. What a time the other kids are having, in seventh heaven!. The way they giggle!. They’re all over the place!. On the cushions! the rugs!. cackling. kicking up! They’re twisted into one another with delight!.. the old ones, the young ones, big necking!.. It’s like a movie!.. life in a castle!.. and pretty loose! They hand around glasses, bottles, first the Calva and then the sausages. There’s no crapping around!. Everything goes!. The old-timers yell at each other!
Boro goes back to the piano.. The chorus starts up again.
"The Knights of Misfor-or-or-tune!” The girls tuck up their dresses.. they unhook themselves to breathe easier.. They slap their thighs.. wild laughing!.. cheeks all red.. Some are thin and some chubby!..
Cascade starts getting sore, he’s riled, they tickle him, pull his hair.. Not a bit of respect left!..
"What! My women! And you too, you tramps? Trying to get in my hair?. Well I’ll be damned!. If that’s not the limit!. Where’ll it all end? Bughouse!. The grandmothers worse than the brats!. The world’s cracking up!. It’s the sidewalk of vice!”
Suddenly the fun’s over. They’re all in!. Everyone’s crying. He stands up, indignant, sits down again astride. he mops his forehead..
"So it’s only a joke? Gentlemen! Just wait a minute! Peace!
health!. Now Mimi the foie gras! the rillettes, the olives!.. I see the gentlemen are still hungry!. Boro!.. Boro!.. Play "The Golden Wheat,” Boro! You hear me?” But the girls preferred "The Poet”.. "A poet told me!” All right, "The Poet”! "That there was a sta-a-a-ar!”. But they got no further… Everybody started squabbling again!.. about Angele!..
Some were for!.. Some against!.. about the airs she put on. etc.. etc.. If she had a right to make faces!. that she wasn’t very polite!. The whole coop was clucking away!.. It made a wild racket. jabbering so you couldn’t hear yourself!.. The two of us would have liked to talk some more with Cascade!. About our brawl with the cops!. to explain what happened. After all, it was serious!. about the rioting and violence… I didn’t want things to get nasty… If the cops were getting shitty with me… it meant someone must have done me dirt. tipped off the Special Brigade… It was teeming against the windowpanes in sheets, cats and dogs, it was pouring buckets, winter wasn’t far off. I’d been in London four months. four months already! It wasn’t always comfortable because of the nosy bodies! Still it was better than across the Channel!. much better than taking a beating with the 16th Cavalry. croaking wet every day from Artois to Quercy. counting if you still had all your limbs in every foxhole.. barbed wire everywhere, waiting for you!. Good-by!. I’d had three years of it!. my youth knocked around in the army!. it had ended pretty badly with the Viviani business! Hail Deroulede!.. I brought back my bones and the mortgage! holes everywhere!.. my arm twisted! Just a hunk of flesh left. maybe enough for them to yank me in again! The little game wasn’t over!..War hooks on!. You’ve got to watch out!. Wars keep going. My ear got a lousy screwing too. A buzzing inside!. whistling!. Like that, a bullet… In a way it’s alarming. the whistling’s hell on sleep. My leg dragging along.. Not much to joke about.. The little pimps made me smile. They’d eaten up the hokum!
it turned their little heads!. I didn’t say anything!.. That’s experience!. I knew!. No need to boast!. They were children in a way!. "emancipated,” my ass!. They’d learn somersaults over there in the sectors!. Everything that wasn’t in the papers!. It wasn’t enough to talk out of the corner of your mouth and chew the fat!.. They’d see the rest of it!.. I was all right at Cascade’s!.. I was staying put!.. It looked magical to me after what I’d been through!. The others would see! the guys who were steamed up would get over it!. they could all argue as much as they liked, life at the Leicester was all the same a real treat. Too happy, that was all!. Leave that?. Youth is crazy!. Go looking for slaughter, crazy contraptions, poor sucker! eat gunfire!. You rot in the water.. trench mud. your dome full of gases.. Here’s to your health, Meatballs!. I love you!. Wacky with duty!.. And taratata!.. Shit! I wasn’t going to wise them up!.. Never wise up a dope! There’s the bugle, men!.. They’d have argued with me!. Aah!. Information’s no use!. They want a change!. Bon voyage!. They’ll be dead before I do it again!.. When it was full of customers outside. Just think!. Right near. full of traffic!. And they were throwing away all their chances!.. The streets jammed! full of dough!. The girls never stopped. It was a real circus of customers, couldn’t pick a pin up!. a merry-go-round, a crowd of lovers! Shaftesbury, full! Tottenham! full!. the kind of thing they never dreamed of!. Right side by side, in a hurry, continuous! easygoing! happy-go-lucky, Tommies, Sammies, Boys, my balls! sweating whiskey and little presents!.. Sidewalks made of gold, that’s a fact!.. Just had to lie down to pick it up.. Cascade wasn’t exaggerating a thing!.. Those were the palmy years, the end of 1914, T6, T7!. The take had never been so good. The pimps had it wonderful! and there they were evaporating!.. They were slipping away!. Nitwits!. Their bunions were burning ’em!.. Whooping cough and panic! They were getting their knapsacks ready!. They were storming the consulates!.. Bedford Square was full of ’em!.. Rarin’ to go!..
Stung all at once!.. Bamboozled by the newspapers!.. Cascade stuck to his guns!.. They’d gone off their nuts!., In the frenzy!. the wind of glory!. The girls all up in the air!. in distress!. That was the result of it!. The hurricane had left him a queer heritage!.. He was still complaining!.. Twelve pieces. Twelve items! all at once! Everything for Cascade! Ah! some joke!. Maybe it wasn’t over yet!.. Now how to handle it?.. Ship the whole lot of them to the Leicester?.. With Angele in charge?. that was the most practical thing. Whoring right at the corner. right nearby!