Out in the street, he paused as two men came toward him from one direction, a woman from the other. She walked slowly, looking at him in apparently careless interest, a look of appraisal.
— Pardon me, he said. She stopped. — Are you. . are you. .
— Trying to make a pick-up? she asked him.
— Yes maybe but it isn't that bad, it isn't that crude, it isn't just for that, it's that maybe you can. . that I need. .
The man in the checked suit stopped, stayed by Mr. Sinisterra's hand.
Otto stopped swaying, stayed by the woman's hand on his wrist. — Come along with me, she said. He started to withdraw his hand, to take her arm, and he felt his wrist caught in a chain. — But what's this? I… I mean you. .
She gave the nippers a slight twist, and repeated, — Come along with me.
— I knew it, said Mr. Sinisterra, standing behind a refuse can. — A cop?
— It sticks out all over her.
— It sure does. She's got a front like a cash register. We're screwed. If he has any of the queer on him we're really screwed. What are you going to do?
— Be quiet.
— Where you going?
— I'm going to church.
— What the hell are you going to church for?
— To confess.
— To confess this? to tell them. . why Jeez what's the matter with you, them priests have a pipeline right into the cops. .
— Be quiet. You think I'm a half-wit? I'm going to confess a sin.
— What sin, for Christ sake?
— Pride, said Mr. Sinisterra, removing the mustache from his lip, and putting it into his pocket. — And to burn a candle.
— For who you're goin to burn a candle, said the man in the checked suit, stepping back to look at his companion, his simple face falling into one of the few expressions it afforded, complete bafflement.
— For Johnny the Gent, said Mr. Sinisterra, walking on. — He had humility.
The music was the Sorcerer's Apprentice, threading into the lobby as though seeking a listener, for the bar was empty.
It came forth as though lunging from a coil hidden beyond the portieres, trailing and lunging, as though these notes reaching the lobby now had been audible in the bar moments before; and, sitting in the bar, one might have followed the single course of the thing from behind, to behold it rearing over its prey.
Then it struck. Mr. Pivner stirred, started, woke in alarm, to recover all that he could in this unfamiliar chair, his newspaper, which had slipped to the floor as he read, ZOO ESCAPES INCREASE, HUNT MADMAN Police believe that they are on the trail of the man, apparently insane, who broke into the Bird House at Central Park Zoo last week in an attempt to turn loose the specimens on display there. Theft was discounted as the motive. The lunatic, described as a tall Negro of uncertain age, was seen by Bertha Hebble, a cleaning woman, as she passed. .
— I beg your pardon sir, the young gentleman who you were waiting for has not come in yet. It is getting quite late, and. .
— I must get home. I must get home, but I want to write a note, said Mr. Pivner, standing. He went to the desk, and the music lurked as he wrote. Then he put on his hat, which he had been carrying, and turned toward the revolving door, which the manager set in motion, and said — Good night, as the music towered in ambuscade's tense imitation of silence.
Sticking from an ashcan halfway down the block he saw a cane. He looked about him quickly, to establish his loneliness in fact; and when the four notes struck in finale he was beyond reach, moving slowly, escaping again in unconscious defiance of something which he did not understand, affirming with each step an existence still less comprehended, so crowded were its details, so clamorous of worth, until heeded, and then speechless as the night itself.
VI
"Des gens passent. On a des yeux. On les voit.'
The sky was perfectly clear. It was a rare, explicit clarity, to sanction revelation. People looked up; finding nothing, they rescued their senses from exile, and looked down again.
Behind the bars which kept children out of their cages, the two polar bears moved continuously without touching each other, the male in an endless circuit, down to the front where he half reared, dropped and returned to his mate who stood swinging her head back and forth, timekeeper for their incarceration, clocking it out with this massive furred pendulum. — He's doin that every time I come here, swingin his neck, a little girl complained, straining at the outside bars. A little boy asked, — What's their names? The female turned toward the rock cave, exposing the people to the filth of her unformulated rear. A young Negro stood and stared. A fat man in a yellow and brown necktie aimed his light meter, and stepped back to adjust an expensive camera.
— You thought I'd gone to Lapland, didn't you.
— My dear fellow, I hadn't the faintest notion where you'd gone, Basil Valentine said without turning from the bears' cage. His voice sounded strained and a little weary. He was wearing a double-breasted gray coat, slightly fitted, fully buttoned, a gray hat with a rolled brim, gray gloves, and his tie was striped black and dark red. The polar bear approached looking him over, reared at the bars, sex apparent wobbling among fur drawn into spines by the water, and retired, gone green up about the neck. — But you do look rather better this morning, Valentine added, as though needing the makeshift of this observation to turn around, and look. — Where've you been?
— v-I? In a Turkish bath. Good God but it's cold.
— If you would put on an overcoat when you come out. .
— What difference would that make, it would still be cold wouldn't it? — You know, Valentine went on, as they came out of the arcade, — when I look down to your feet, I'm almost surprised to see them there, on the ground. I half expect empty trouser-cuffs blowing in the wind.
— Yes, I hate the cold.
— Shall we go down and buy you an overcoat? To see you hunched up, with your hands in your pockets. .
— An overcoat? No but listen, there's something. There's something. I went to the bank this morning, for some money. I went to get some money out, and they told me there's only a few hundred dollars. Why, there should be… there should be…
Basil Valentine pursed his lips, not as though coming forth to the subject at hand, but shifting from one preoccupation to another. — You've never known what sort of hand Brown kept on that account, have you.
— Why no, I… He put money in, and I took it out.
— And you haven't seen him. . recently. Since your. . the spree you went on?
— I interrupted his murder. . but there. I'd just escaped my own.
— What do you mean? Valentine asked impatiently.
— Never mind, I won't try to explain it. Situations are fragile.
— Come now. . what happened? Basil Valentine demanded, walking on with his head lowered as they approached steps leading down. He spoke no more loudly than he might have done asserting some demand upon himself, and as impatiently, knowing the question but finding it necessary to hear it in words, as though the answer, cogent as the query, were bound to follow upon it, — and enough of this foolishness, he added.
— No. No, I'm not joking. Who can tell what happened? Why, we have movement and surprise, movement and surprise and recognition, over and over again but. . who knows what happened? What happened when Carnot was stabbed? Why, the fellow climbed into the carriage and stuck a knife in his belly, and no one would ever have known it if he hadn't stopped to shout, "Vive 1'anarchie." All of our situations are so fragile, you see? If I meet you, by surprise? in a doorway? or come by invitation, for cocktails? or by carefully prearranged accident? Even that. No matter, you'll see. They're extremely fragile. And all this… all this. .