In his three or four hours of banging away Boro easily wangled his quid!.. from pub to pub, always his style, "Sugar, please! ”… a dead stop.. and off again… It was flashy stuff, hard work, but not so tough as his number outside. He didn’t like being indoors, he much preferred the street, life in the open air! the piano on wheels to play outside standing up.. Still the street’s no joke, you can realize, much worse than the pubs when it comes to cops. You’re in their paws, that tells everything!.. Always there crabbing and bullying, that you’re bottling up their gutters!. treated like mutts!. And then the street..the competition! the minstrels! the blackfaces!..Ought to see the type! what yappers! coal-heads! they banged out the bamboola! the thing they were doing at the time!.. the day’s jazz.. screaming it out a little like Joconde!
.. their yowling!
The people ate it up!.. Those bums came up from the beaches, they were allowed since the war. They’d finish a sidewalk in three yelps. They’d take in enough for a week! For that, it was less dumb doing the pubs, Boro was forced to admit..
Circumstances forced us to work in the open too, pushing around our instrument on rollers!
Naturally it turned out badly. I’ll tell about it later on..
The mountains of junk around Titus were an amazing sight. Everything was just itching to fall down.. Things would topple over for no reason at all. It would collapse in avalanches, in valleys, in rushes of hardware, over baby carriages, women’s bicycles, crockery and knickknacks, curios, it would thunder down, down on the mattresses pillows blankets enough to cover the fourteen docks, loads of bottle baskets, fiendish slaughters, pyramids of top hats, fans for a thousand tropics, enough to uncurl the cutting blasts, to brush off all the north winds, such a wall of quilts that if they came down on you it meant sure death by soft swooning, a coma under feathers!.. Titus felt quite comfortable in the midst of this enormous mass!.. in the heart of trading.. right in the chaotic crater, that’s where he felt in top form, with a reason for living, right in the sanctuary, behind his globe, his water-lamp… Had to see him in action, there was no one like him for breaking down a customer, for brushing away all his shrewdness. just by undoing the package, his way of feeling the weight of the thing under the lamp shade… the lace.. the tea service, the delicate knickknack, the cherished bauble, the way he depreciated the article, just by breathing on it… so that it wasn’t worth a thing… it was just cheap junk, a rabbit fart… it was amazing enough that he, Titus in person, so difficult and delicate, let himself be interested in such cheap, shoddy stuff, such paltry filthy slop, it wasn’t worth the string it was tied in!.. He’d start just by putting it on the scale. the way he’d tap the pan. it didn’t weigh anything. really nothing!. a piffle!.. He’d listen to the sound of the poor thing… the bright red coffeepot. really it was worthless!. He’d question the person with a frown. How much did he want? very skeptical.. He’d reset his turban.. He’d scratch his head… He wouldn’t hear the answers. The remarks were blotted out because of his hearing device.. He’d take it out just at that moment from under the table… at the end of the discussion, at the final veto… his ear trumpet of great deafness.. He’d blink. squint.. whistle… He couldn’t believe his big eyes.. the naive person was exaggerating so. the nerve!. He’d put in his trumpet again. He wanted to hear it again!. the terrifying figure!. Ah! shocked!. couldn’t be possible! He didn’t believe his ear! He’d raise his eyelids to pronounce judgment. his offer? a tenth!. if that! And maybe!. first a fiver and then! and then that was all! Take it. leave it!.. he’d bring the drama to a quick end. Ah! not another word! not another sigh!.. It wasn’t worth insisting. He’d settle down in his easy chair.. He’d pull his big coat over him.. lower his turban over his eyes. He stopped seeing anything!. You wouldn’t see him!..
It was dingy in his place, almost dark, except for the globe lamp on the table which gave out a kind of gleam, an aquarium green. The blinds were never opened except for a moment before dinner when Delphine was cleaning, when the governess came, his "governess”! she wouldn’t have any other name.
"Call me Delphine or governess! but not your maid! I’m not your maid! I’m not your maid!”
As soon as you arrived she let you know then and there what her rank in the house was, so you wouldn’t look down on her, as soon as you said hello, that she wasn’t a maid, "Governess”!.. and in a tone which you couldn’t answer!.. It’d been going on for twenty years!
She didn’t overwork keeping house, it was impossible at Claben’s, she’d sweep the centers of the rooms, she’d pile up the heaps, she’d arrange the valleys, so you could worm your way, get to the door..
Claben didn’t talk much, I mean with his customers, he stuck to his kind of mystery, he’d say things to himself in a sort of Yiddish, had to catch a word here and there. he’d bluff from the start with his pasha’s jacket, his enormous purple and yellow puffs, his jowled pierrot’s head, his threelayered turban.. he’d bewilder them.. he’d shock the timid ones.. he’d let them do the talking.. whereas Delphine was the opposite, constant clamoring.. endless monologues.. about nothing at all. her troubles shopping, in the street, in the stores with arrogant people.. that people had stepped on her feet, here, there, practically anywhere, in the trolleys, in the buses. Touchiness itself!.. She’d go to do her shopping in the center… as far as Soho… at the same time she bought her tickets.. she needed her theatre at least three times a week.. Which means that she followed what was going on! Ah! not like a maid at all!. like a real lady, like a governess!
.. Sometimes.. not very often.. there’d be spells of absence.. she’d stay out a week. she’d come back streaked, swollen, her face all mottled, she’d got into a brawl with riffraff.. her dress in rags.. and she’d drunk all her dough.. her whole ex-teacher’s pension, all her wages from Claben, plus a tiny bit of cash that came to her from an aunt. she had to resign from teaching three times, we learned how, little by little.. because of violent rows she raised with her pupils over trifles, terrible changes of character!. much later she realized what she was really cut out for.. her true vocation.. her tragedy!
she knew how to tell about it. to anyone who’d listen..
and even those who weren't interested.. she’d let them see how educated she was! and what feeling she had!..what emotiveness! what soul! ah! it was something out of the ordinary!..
She’d interefere in the business, too, at the drop of a hat.. she took all kinds of liberties!.. in the midst of a discussion about a pledge she’d put her word in.. these unheard-of interruptions would drive Claben crazy, but he kept his temper and didn’t bawl her out, she would have been sore, might never come back. And he couldn’t do without her.. not that she was very honest, she stole lots of little things from him.. but someone else would have been worse!. It was far too tempting in his shop… too much of a bazaar, the whole enormous place… He preferred to keep Delphine and spy on her to death. They didn’t argue very often except over the word "governess”.. but about that every day. He hated the word "governess”..
"After all, Delphine, I’m not weak in the head!”
"I’m not your maid either!”
That was the answer. Always the same argument. Still if she’d done housework elsewhere she’d have been called a "maid”! She wouldn’t have got away with it!.
Later on in all confidence she told me about it.. she confessed everything..
"You understand? Between you and me. I’ve acted, I have! ”
Big secret. hush-hush..
"I’ve acted, haven’t I? In the theatre! Ah!”. She enjoyed your surprise. Were you by chance interested in it? Delphine? Delphine?. Didn’t that name mean anything to you?