Crazy Cock Read Online Free PDF Page B

divining her thoughts, Vanya shifted uneasily, grewstrangely embarrassed, and made vacillatory attempts to prolong the conversation. There was something on her mind which she had been trying all evening to give expression to. More than once she had attempted to approach the subject obliquely, but Hildred was either obtuse or else unwilling to render the smallest assistance.
    â€œYou would like to go to Paris with me, then?” said Vanya impulsively.
    â€œI would like it better than anything in the world. But . . .”
    â€œListen, you don’t think it strange that I should talk to you the way I did tonight?”
    â€œI feel as though I had known you all my life.” And then suddenly she added quietly: “This is where you live?”
    â€œFor the present,” answered Vanya, nodding her head.
    They were silent a moment.
    â€œVanya,” said Hildred, impulsively again and in a low, eager voice, “Vanya, I want you to let me help you. You must! You can’t go on this way.”
    Vanya grasped Hildred’s hand. They stood looking into each other’s eyes. For a full minute they stood thus, neither daring to trespass beyond the spoken word.
    Finally said Vanya calmly: “Yes, I will let you help me . . . gladly . . . but how?”
    Hildred hesitated.
“That,”
she answered, “I don’t know myself.” The words dropped slowly, like flakes of snow from her lips. “Just consider me your friend,” she added earnestly.
    Whether it was the effect of these last few words or a determination to carry out a preconceived idea, at any rate, Vanya turned abruptly and bounded up the stoop. Looking down upon her somewhat startled companion, her friend, she pleaded with her to wait. “Just a few minutes,” she begged. “I have something I want to give you.”

4
    I N THE beginning there were cow paths and the cow paths were all there was of the Village. Today she sprawls out like a sick bitch debilitated by an attack of delirium tremens. Dreary. Greasy. Depressing. Tourists dragging themselves along by the roots of the hair. Poets who haven’t written anything since 1917. Jewish pirates whose cutlasses intimidate nobody. Insomnia. Cock-eyed dreams of love. Rape in a telephone booth. Perverts from the vice squad hugging the lampposts. Cossacks with fallen arches. A bohemian world jacked up with a truss. Hammocks on the third floor.
    Every night, regular as clockwork, a rubberneck drew up in front of the Caravan and deposited its load. A fine goofy joint with atmosphere or what was left of atmosphere. Wasn’t it here that O. Henry tossed off his masterpieces? And didn’t Valentino come here, and Bobby Walthour? Who that had ever been anybody had not been here at one time or another? Why, Mary Garden herself had been known to swish majestically through this
Liebestod
of candle grease and burnt umbers. And Frank Harris—he with the luxurious mustachios and the pontifical swagger—was it not in this same bat-gloom that he sat listening to the tiresome pribbleof his admirers? It was here that O’Neill nursed his lecherous dreams, here that Dreiser plopped, dour, morose, scouring mankind with his fierce, brooding eyes, eyes of melancholy, eyes of genius, any kind of eyes you want.
    I T WAS well after the lunch hour when Tony Bring entered the Caravan. A tall girl with red hair was moving from table to table blowing out the candles. A piano tinkled in the corner. An underground life, he thought, as he scrutinized the sodden faces on which the shadows bit cruel marks of sloth and vice. Somehow, not the evil of existence but its dismal, thwarting aspect oppressed him. Veils of cigarette smoke collected in blue wisps and floated like thin chords of music above a screen of silhouettes. Here and there a candle sputtered its last, filling the room with an acrid, choking odor.
    In the far gloom, drumming nervously with his thick fingers, sat a