The Age of Reason Read Online Free PDF Page A

knew everybody in the narrow little room: they weren’t people who came for a good time: they came along together after their jobs were done, quietly and in need of food. The Negro opposite Lola was the singer from the Paradise: the six fellows at the far end with their girls were the band from the Nénette. Something had certainly happened to them, they had had a bit of unexpected luck, perhaps an engagement for the summer (they had been talking vaguely the evening before last about a cabaret at Constantinople), because they had ordered champagne, and they were usually pretty careful. Boris also noticed the fair-haired girl who danced in sailor’s costume at the Java. The tall emaciated man in spectacles smoking a cigar, was the manager of a cabaret in the Rue Tholozé which had just been shut by the police. He said it would soon be reopened, as he had influence in high places. Boris bitterly regretted never having been there, he would certainly go if it reopened. The man was with a pansy who looked rather attractive from a distance, a fair-haired lad with delicate features, devoid of the usual mincing airs, and not without charm. Boris hadn’t much use for homosexuals because they always were pursuing him, but Ivich rather liked them: she said: ‘Well, at any rate they’ve got the courage not to be like everybody else.’ Boris had great respect for his sister’s opinions, and he made the most conscientious efforts to think well of such people. The Negro was eating a dish of sauerkraut: and Boris reflected that he didn’t like sauerkraut. He wished he knew the name of the dish which had just been brought to the dancer from the Java: a brown mess that looked good. There was a stain of red wine on the table-cloth. An elegant stain, which gave the cloth a satiny sheen in just that place. Lola had spread a little salt on the stain, being a careful woman. The salt was pink. It isn’t true that the salt soaks up stains. He ought to tell Lola that it didn’t. But he would have had to speak: and Boris felt he could not speak. Lola was beside him, soft and very warm, and Boris could not bring himself to utter the slightest word, his voice was dead. ‘Just as though I were dumb.’ It was delicious, his voice was floating at the far end of his throat, soft as cotton, and could not emerge, for it was dead. ‘I like Delarue,’ thought Boris, and felt glad. He would have been even more glad if he had not been conscious, all down his right side, from head to hip, that Lola was looking at him. It would certainly be a passionate look, for Lola could scarcely look at him in any other way. It was rather annoying, for passionate looks demand the acknowledgement of a friendly gesture, or a smile: and Boris couldn’t have made the slightest movement. He was paralysed. But it didn’t really matter: he couldn’t be supposed to have noticed Lola’s look: he guessed it, but that was his affair. Sitting sideways, with his hair in his eyes, he couldn’t see a glimpse of Lola, he could perfectly well suppose that she was looking at the room and the people. Boris didn’t feel sleepy, indeed he was in an excellent humour, as he knew everybody in the room: he noticed the Negro’s pink tongue: Boris had a high opinion of that Negro: on one occasion the Negro had taken his boots off, picked up a box of matches with his toes, opened it, extracted a match, and lit it, all with his toes. ‘He’s a grand chap,’ thought Boris with admiration. ‘Everyone ought to be able to use his feet just like his hands.’ He had a pain in his right side as a consequence of being looked at: he knew that the moment was near when Lola would ask him what he was thinking about. It was absolutely impossible to delay that question, it didn’t depend on him: Lola would ask it in due time, with a kind of fatality. Boris felt as though he had at his disposal a small but infinitely precious fraction of time. As a matter of fact it was rather a pleasant