The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Read Online Free PDF Page A

know so much but don’t know this. It’s like in the fifteenth century when everybody believed the world was flat and only Columbus and a few other fellows knew the truth.
    But it’s different in that it took talent to figure that the earth is round. While this truth is so obvious it’s a miracle of all history that people don’t know. You savvy.’
    Biff rested his elbows on the counter and looked at Blount with curiosity. ‘Know what?’ he asked.
    ‘Don’t listen to him,’ Blount said. ‘Don’t mind that flat-footed, blue-jowled, nosy bastard. For you see, when us people who know run into each other mat’s an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That’s a bad thing. It’s happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us.’
    ‘Masons?’ Biff asked.
    ‘Shut up, you! Else I’ll snatch your arm off and beat you black with it,’ Blount bawled. He hunched over close to the mute and his voice dropped to a drunken whisper. ‘And how come? Why has this miracle of ignorance endured? Because of one thing. A conspiracy. A vast and insidious conspiracy.
    Obscurantism. The men in the booth were still laughing at the drunk who was trying to hold a conversation with the mute. Only Biff was serious. He wanted to ascertain if the mute really understood what was said to him. The fellow nodded frequently and his face seemed contemplative. He was only slow--that was all. Blount began to crack a few jokes along with this talk about knowing. The mute never smiled until several seconds after the funny remark had been made; then when the talk was gloomy again the smile still hung on his face a little too long. The fellow was downright uncanny. People felt themselves watching him even before they knew that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a person think that he heard things nobody else had ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did not seem quite human. Jake Blount leaned across the table and the words came out as though a dam inside him had broken. Biff could not understand him any more. Blount’s tongue was so heavy with drink and he talked at such a violent pace that the sounds were all shaken up together. Biff wondered where he would go when Alice turned him out of the place. And in the morning she would do it, too--like she said. Biff yawned wanly, patting his open mouth with his fingertips until his jaw had relaxed. It was almost three o’clock, the most stagnant hour in the day or night The mute was patient. He had been listening to Blount for almost an hour. Now he began to look at the clock occasionally. Blount did not notice this and went on without a pause. At last he stopped a to roll a cigarette, and then the mute nodded his head in the direction of the clock, smiled in that hidden way of his, and got up from the table. His hands stayed stuffed in his pockets as always. He went out quickly. Blount was so drunk that he did not know what had happened. He had never even caught on to the fact that the mute made no answers. He began to look around the place with his mouth open and his eyes rolling and fuddled. A red vein stood out on his forehead and he began to hit the table angrily with his fists. His bout could not last much longer now.
    ‘Come on over,’ Biff said kindly. ‘Your friend has gone.’ The fellow was still hunting for Singer. He had never seemed really drunk like that before. He had an ugly look. ‘I have something for you over here and I want to speak with you a minute,’ Biff coaxed. Blount pulled himself up from the table and walked with big, loose steps toward the street again. Biff leaned against the wall. In and out-in and out. After all, it was none of his business. The room was very empty and quiet. The minutes lingered. Wearily he let his head sag forward. All motion seemed slowly to be leaving the room. The counter, faces, the booths and tables,