Going Postal Read Online Free PDF Page B

swallowed, and with just a hint of old potatoes.
    The locker room turned out to be down some steps into the basement, where, presumably, the floors couldn’t collapse because there was nothing to collapse into. It was long and narrow. At one end was a monstrous oven, which, Moist learned later, had once been part of some kind of heating system, the Post Office having been a very advanced building for its time. Now a small round stove, glowing almost cherry-red at the base, had been installed alongside it. There was a huge black kettle on it.
    The air indicated the presence of socks, cheap coal, and no ventilation; some battered wooden lockers were ranged along one wall, the painted names flaking off. Light got in, eventually, via grimy windows up near the ceiling.
    Whatever the original purpose of the room, though, it was now the place where two people lived; two people who got along but, nevertheless, had a clear sense of mine and thine. The space was divided into two, with a narrow bed at either end. The dividing line was painted on the floor, up the walls, and across the ceiling. My half, your half.
    So long as we remember that, the line indicated, there won’t be any more…trouble.
    In the middle, so that it bestrode the boundary line, was a table. A couple of mugs and two tin plates were carefully arranged at either end. There was a salt pot in the middle of the table. At the salt pot, the line turned into a little circle to encompass it in its own demilitarized zone.
    One half of the narrow room contained an overlarge and untidy bench, piled with jars, bottles, and old papers; it looked like the work space of a chemist who made it up as he went along, or until it exploded. The other had an old card table, on which small boxes and rolls of black felt had been stacked with slightly worrying precision. There, on a stand, was also the largest magnifying glass Moist had ever seen.
    That side of the room had been swept clean, the other was a mess that threatened to encroach over the Line.
    Unless one of the scraps of paper from the grubbier side was a funny shape, it seemed that somebody, with care and precision and presumably a razor blade, had cut off that corner of it that had gone too far.
    A young man stood in the middle of the clean half of the floor. He’d obviously been waiting for Moist, just like Groat, but he hadn’t mastered the art of standing to attention or, rather, had only partly understood it. His right side stood considerably more to attention than his left side, and, as a result of this, he was standing like a banana. Nevertheless, with his huge, nervous grin and big, gleaming eyes he radiated keenness, quite possibly beyond the boundaries of sanity. There was a definite sense that at any moment he would bite. And he wore a blue cotton shirt on which someone had printed ASK ME ABOUT PINS !
    “Er…” said Moist.
    “Apprentice Postman Stanley,” mumbled Groat. “Orphan, sir. Very sad. Came to us from the Siblings of Offler charity home, sir. Both parents passed away of the Gnats on their farm out in the wilds, sir, and he was raised by peas.”
    “Surely you mean on peas, Mr. Groat?”
    “ By peas, sir. Very unusual case. A good lad if he doesn’t get upset, but he tends to twist toward the sun, sir, if you get my meaning.”
    “Er…perhaps,” said Moist. He turned hurriedly to Stanley. “So you know something about pins, do you?” he said in what he hoped was a jovial voice.
    “Nossir!” said Stanley. He all but saluted.
    “But your shirt says—”
    “I know everything about pins, sir,” said Stanley. “Everything there is to know!”
    “Well, that’s, er—” Moist began.
    “Every single fact about pins, sir,” Stanley went on. “There’s not a thing I don’t know about pins. Ask me anything about pins, sir. Anything you like at all. Go on, sir!”
    “Well…” Moist floundered, but years of practice came to his aid. “I wonder how many pins were made in this city last