The Temporary Read Online Free PDF Page B

sound of his voice, her eyes wide. ‘What does that say?’ persisted the stallholder. He pointed to a sign perched on the display, on which was depicted a large pair of melons with the warning ‘Please Don’t Squeeze’ emblazoned beneath them. The woman removed her hands from the oranges and left them to hang inertly by her sides.
    Ralph moved away quickly. Squashed fruit and bruised bits of vegetable lay trampled on the pavement, strangely ghoulish and unidentifiable, like the detritus of a serious operation. His foot slid on something pulpy and yielding, squelching beneath his shoe and oozing out around the sole. He limped along a few paces despairingly, trying to scrape it off against the kerb. It came away in smears, and by the time he managed to get rid of it he saw that he had spread it over rather a large patch of concrete. He looked around, embarrassed, and then walked awkwardly on as if nothing had happened. Moments later, recognizing the foolishness of his growing discomfort, he stopped at another stall and bought a bag of apples. The bag was made of brown paper and he had to hold it underneath to prevent it from giving way. He moved on, encumbered, through the nervous sunlight. As he approached the end of the small street he saw a well-dressed oriental girl bending over a large rubbish bin as if she had dropped something in it which she wanted to retrieve. She was exceptionally graceful, Ralph thought, fragile and luminous in that way Eastern girls were. People were looking at her as they passed. For a moment he thought ridiculously of offering to help her, but as he drew near he saw to his horror that the girl was clutching her belly with one hand and holding the other to her chest, while neatly depositing long ribbons of mucus and vomit into the bin. Her narrow shoulders shook slightly beneath her tailored jacket. Hehesitated as a double wrench of pity and selfishness twisted in his chest. The girl would be grateful for kindness, he knew – she was alone, after all, sick and far from home! – but as he stood there the scope of the city seemed to unfold and chide him, bidding him to keep to himself, to go about his business in its common parts, its streets thick with souls, and then return directly to what was his, to what he knew. He permitted himself to walk past her. Later, walking back in the direction of the lock, he imagined himself stopping to help the girl, his arm strong around her convulsing shoulders, a handkerchief produced to smooth over her glistening lips. She leaned weakly against him, her eyes filled with tears and gratitude. He strained guiltily to return to her, but his legs carried him stubbornly on.
    Once, a few years before, he had stopped to help an old woman who had fallen over in the street. It was late and he had come upon her lying on the dark pavement with her skirts around her waist, her mottled legs veined and appalling in the street light. She had smelt unspeakable as he bent down, the awful stink of cheap beer and neglect, and when he tried to pull her skirt down over her legs, fumbling with it ineptly in a parody of male adolescence, she had opened her bleary yellow eyes and watched him helplessly, as if he were an assailant.
    ‘It’s all right,’ he had said awkwardly. ‘You’re going to be all right.’
    She had not been wearing underwear, and her flesh had looked both wizened and bloated, androgynous somehow, identifiable as female only by the bloodless lips of her genitals. A trail of ooze glistened over the tops of her thighs; and Ralph had felt a sudden surge of aversion, not physical revulsion exactly, but more of an intellectual certainty that there was nothing here for him, that to stay would constitute a defection from hope, from aspiration, from the business, the responsibility ,even, of being himself. The street had been deserted, he remembered, and there was no one to see him as he left her there, scarcely believing what it was he was doing, and walked