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till they seemed to be one great black gelatinous mass. A whisp of conversation, like a sibilant
ghost, hushed through the instant of silence, from that mass, to Sorokin: "Man, I gotta get off...
gotta take a drive..."
Old junkies.
Back behind the jukebox, which was silent, lights faded, a tired harridan merely waiting for a
john to slip a coin into her to show her jaded charms, a man and woman were doing something
uncomfortable, the woman straddling the man's lap.
The booths were all filled. Groups of men in heavy sweaters, still feeling November with them,
outside the fly-specked windows of the bar. Longshoremen, sandhogs, merchant mariners, night
truckers; a group of Chinese over from Mott Street; hefty-thighed women clustered about one man
with a pack of tarot cards; no one was clean. The smell of swine was in the room. Heavy, changing
tone, first garlic, then sweat, then urine, it roiled overhead mixed layer on layer with cigarette
and pipe smoke, occasionally clearing sufficiently to smell the acrid aroma of bad marijuana, too
many seeds and stems to give any kind of a decent high. And dark. Dim shadows moving here and
there, like plankton dark under a sea heavy with silt.
The hum of voices, all somnolent, no hilarity, not a laugh, not a snicker. The substitute was an
occasional grunt, a forced sluggish thudding thrust of ughhh as of someone forcing a bowel
movement, and usually from a woman, groped under a table. A place of base relationships.
The word immoral did not even apply. It was akin to the drunk who lay on the floor, propped
against the wall between stacks of Coca-Cola cases, eyes wide yet unseeing, hands caked with
unidentifiable filth, clothes shapeless and gray. An object of no identity, so sunk into
alcoholism, addlewitted, that he was what the police called a wetbrain. The term drunk no longer
applied, just as the term immoral did not apply. What Sorokin saw here, around him, poised holding
Choate, at the door of the toilet, was the final descent of man, to base needs.
He saw the world as it really was, as it was for him, also. The world that was unaffected by
ambition or history or social graces. He saw the real side of life, which he had not seen for many
years. He saw, God help him, the seamy side of Life.
The bar was full, down reflecting the length of the streaked backbar mirror. Elbow to elbow as
four o'clock curfew raced toward them, bending and drinking, not even talking, getting as much
inside as possible before night overtook them and they were sent out into the world alone.
A Negro came up to Sorokin, a heavy-faced Negro with conked reddish hair and bloodshot eyes,
character gone from the face and replaced with weary cunning. He held up a pair of red plastic
dice. "You go'n th' toilet baby? We got us a few fren'z heah, wanna do a thang'a craps, huh,
howzabout?" and he laid his hand on Sorokin's backside. Sorokin stiffened.
"Forget it," he said, thickly. Spade fag, he thought, and was ill. Of all the horrors Whitey has
committed against the black man, homosexuality is the most perverse.
The black man drew himself up, snorted a word, and went away, smelling strongly of Arrid and Jean
Naté. Out of the corner of his eye, Sorokin saw him join another Negro in a side booth for two,
and knew they were discussing that damn straight whitey muthuh by the toilet door.
And in that instant, Sorokin was satisfied. He knew at last, somehow and inexplicably, he had come
of age. Late adolescence, the chase for masculinity, were found and over. He had seen all there
was to see, and what he had done since he had left this milieu, was to seek responsibility. To
mature was to belong; where you wanted to belong, surely, but to care about a life with
continuity. He was suddenly whole. And free.
He opened the door and went through into the filthy bathroom with Choate.
The moment they entered the white-tiled toilet, Choate broke away, and fell down on his knees by
the stand-up urinal. He began to vomit heavily, a rhinoceros sound deep from his stomach. Sorokin
moved away from him, realizing his own bladder cried for emptying. He entered the stall, letting
the swinging door slam hard behind him, and unzipped.
He began to urinate, thinking a codifying series of thoughts about the moment of realization he
had just known. He barely heard the sound of the outer door open, the scuff of feet against the
tiles, a heavy thwack! of something heavy hitting something yielding, and an almost immediate soft
ughhh of gentle pain.
Sorokin, still urinating, peered outside the stall, pushing open the door in idle curiosity.
Two Negroes, the same two from the bar, were working Choate over. One had smashed Choate behind
the ear with a white tennis sock full of coins, and Choate was bleeding from the scalp, half-
slumped into the vomit-filled urinal. The other one was groping for Choate's wallet.
Sorokin did not think about it. If he had, he would not have done it.
He charged out of the stall, head down, and plunged full-tilt into the Negro with the sockful of
silver. It had been the Negro with the red plastic dice. He hit him at full speed, head against
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chest, hands pushing the black man sharply away from him. The Negro careened backward under the
impact of the rush, and his head crashed against the white tiles with a sharp car-door crack. He
sank to the floor instantly, eyes closed.
Sorokin turned, just in time to see the glint of honed steel as the second Negro flipped open the
straight razor and set himself hard, slashing straight through in a flat arc from left shoulder
across his body, like a good tennis player fielding a smash with a tight backhand. The razor
silently hummed.
The black man caught Sorokin directly across the belly, and Sorokin felt it only as a tiny paper
cut might feel. He plunged forward, still doing a ballet turn from the first Negro, unconscious
against the tiles. Ingrained army infighting, learned at no small traumatic cost years before,
leaped unbidden into Sorokin's reflexes. (You never forget how to swim, once you've learned. You [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]