Otto looked up, avoiding the eyes of Max. She was watching him, suddenly, still hidden on the couch. Pretending he had not noticed her, he let a few pages slip under his finger and continued.
He never saw, never before today, What was able to take his breath away, A face to lose youth for, to occupy age With the dream of, meet death with.
And she was alone. The sight of her had startled him: looking out at nothing, her lips silent and almost smiling while the rest chattered, her body still where everyone else shifted, conscious only in herself while all the others were only self-conscious. Alone on the couch, and alone in the room like the woman in that painting whose beauty cannot be assailed, whose presence cannot be discounted by turning one's back, but her silence draws him to turn again, uncertain whether to question or answer. Otto put the book back in the shelf, and started toward her. Then a tweed arm was around his shoulders. Beside him someone was saying, — There was a woman in Brooklyn who used to do it, but I think the police got her. She charged two hundred dollars. And someone else said, — Is this the first one she's ever had? You can't let it go much longer than two months. — She might make something on the side, a third person said, — You get two dollars an ounce for mother's milk these days.
— Someone has been very cruel not introducing us, said the owner of the tweed arm. Otto freed himself and set off again, as someone in the other group said, — I'm surprised she's never been in a mess like this before.
Through the smoke, among the bumping buttocks and wasted words, he arrived. She looked up and smiled. — May I get you something? he asked her. He had taken out the cigarette package and put the last remaining cigarette between his lips, which were dry. — I'm sorry, it's my last, he said, struggling to light it, and then in confusion, — Oh I'm sorry, I should have. He stood gesturing at her with the fuming cigarette.
— I'd like a cigarette, she said.
— But I… here, take this. He had forgotten the casual stance, the raised eyebrows, lips moistened, slightly parted. His mouth was dry, and palms wet with perspiration. — I'm sorry. Let me get you one.
— No, I have some I think, she said, and reached for her bag on the floor. — My name is Esme, she told him when she sat up with a cigarette.
— Oh. Is it? said Otto, struggling to open a small match box with one hand. She helped him with the light, looking into the room beyond him. Her large eyes were exaggerated in their beauty by the hollows of her thin face, and the image he sought, distended afloat on their surfaces, drowned and was gone.
— Yes. And you?
— Me? Oh. My name's Otto, he said. A face to lose youth for, to occupy age, with the dream of, meet death with.
— But won't you sit down?
He sat.
The room was filled with smoke, dry worn-out smoke retaining in it like a web the insectile cadavers of dry husks of words which had been spoken and should be gone, the breaths exhaled not to be breathed again. But the words went on; and in those brief interruptions between cigarettes the exhalations were rebreathed. — I don't know, he told me he was a negative positivist. — Well he told me he was a positive negativist. — Incidentally have you read Our Contraceptive Society? —My dear fellow, I wrote it, for Christ sake. Adeline had been cornered by Ed Feasley, who was telling her that the trouble with America was that it was a matriarchy and had no fatherland myth. Someone said, — No one here really understands New York. It's a social experience. Max was discussing or-gone boxes as though he had lived in one all of his life. Buster Brown had an arm around Sonny Byron, a young Negro said to be descended from an English poet of whom few in the room had heard. One of the policemen was asleep. The other sat holding his glass, making faces at no one. Anselm was working his way round the wall, so as not to lose his balance, toward the window. The chinless Italian boy was standing all alone, looking at the painting.
Charles was in the bathroom looking through the medicine cabinet. Hannah was divided between intellect and emotion: on the one hand, arguing that D. H. Lawrence was impotent with a youth in eye-shadow who insisted that at heart he was a "raving queen"; on the other, she was trying to protect Stanley from Agnes Deigh, where he sat on the arm of her chair with the white fingertips dug into his knee.
— Sometimes I know just what it must be like, being the left arm of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, said the big Swede, who looked ready to weep.
— Baby, don't touch me, said Herschel, — my head is bracka-phallic, and he began to sing as he sank back toward the floor.
Anselm managed to reach the window, which he opened, and crawled to the fire-escape, making a mess in someone's yard below.
The critic in the green wool shirt was stooped over the poet, saying — These snotty kids who come out of college and think they can write novels.
Mr. Feddle was busy inscribing the fly-leaf of a book.
Someone came in at the door with a manila envelope under his arm, and went over to the policeman who was making faces. — The radio in your patrol car is making a hell of a racket, he said. The policeman buttoned his tunic over the mangy red sweater and went out. Then the boy who had come in said, — It's snowing.
— Chrahst, how unnecessary, said Ed Feasley. He had just told Adeline that the literal translation of the German word for marry, jreien, was to free; for aside from immediate intentions she was being considered as a character in forthcoming fiction. This Harvard boy who had never learned a trade watched her with indulgent curiosity.
— Ye haven't an arm and ye haven't a leg, Hulloo, hulloo. sang Adeline's sometime escort from a far corner, with sudden cheer as though he'd just discovered the song.
Ye haven't an arm and ye haven't a leg, Ye eyeless noseless chickenless egg, Ye'll have to be put in a bowl to beg
(he sang, delighted with such a device), and an unlikely chorus followed:
I'm going down to Dutch Siam's, yes I am.
Then someone said loudly what everyone had been suspecting. — There's no more to drink. The room quieted. Even the eyeless noseless chickenless egg was abandoned, as its chorister struggled to an optimistically vertical position against the bookcase.
— Oh God, said Agnes Deigh. — Give me my bag will you darling? she asked an anonymous trouser seat, pulling at the coat which hung above but did not match. She handed a folded twenty-dollar bill to a boy wearing her racing colors and stood, saying — I've got to go to the can anyhow, where is it?
Hannah had been watching her. She felt in the pockets of the deep-seated denim pants, came up with nothing, and said, — What time is it? to Max, probably the only other sober person in the room.
— Three-fifteen, said Max, for whom time was also a matter of the clock.
She sniffed, as with a personal grievance. — It's disgusting, giving a string of Mozart operas as benefits so they can buy new scenery for The Ring. Mozart pimping for Wagner. And that old bag, she added, — with her Mickey Mouse watch. Then she looked down the room and asked, — Who's that skinny girl on the couch, with that. Otto?
— She writes poems, her name's Esme. I think she's been modeling for some painter. She hasn't got any stomach.
— I've heard about her, Hannah muttered. — On the needle. A schiz.
— Manic depressive, schizoid tendencies, Max elaborated. — Has anybody ever seen her child?
— Child? She's a mother, her? She's too fucking spiritual.
— She says she has one four years old.
— Christ. And look at Herschel, he's simple, but Stanley, this thing he has on the Church, that's why he's stuck on that old bag with the Mickey Mouse watch, he wants to bring her back to the Church he thinks. I wish he'd get off it.