Dangling Man by Saul Bellow

Author:Saul Bellow [Bellow, Saul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141389301
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

of chiming telephones, of the janitor’s booming radio one floor below. On a pedestal a bronze Laocoön held in his suffering hands a huge, barbarically furred headpiece of a lampshade with fringes of blackened lace. Buttoning my gloves, I passed into the outer hall, thinking, as I did so, that by this time Kitty had slipped back into bed and that she and her companion had (I sought a way to say it) fallen together again, his appetite increased by the intrusion. And, while I could objectively find no reason why she should not do as she pleased, I found myself nevertheless ambiguously resentful and insulted.

Fog and rain had gone, abolished by a high wind, and, in place of that imagined swamp where death waited in the thickened water, his lizard jaws open, there was a clean path of street and thrashing trees. Through the clouds the wind had sunk a hole in which a few stars dipped. I ran to the corner, jumping over puddles. A streetcar was in sight, crashing forward, rocking on its trucks from side to side and nicking sparks from the waving cable. I caught it while it was in motion and stood on the platform, panting; the conductor was saying that it was bad business to flip a car in the wet, you wanted to be careful about such tricks. We were swept off with quaking windows, blinking through floods of air, the noise of the gong drowning under the horn of the wind.

“Reg’lar gale,” said the conductor, gripping the hand rail.

A young soldier and a girl got on, both drunk; an elderly woman with a pointed, wolfish face; a seedy policeman, who stood with his hands buried in his pockets so that he seemed to be holding his belly, his chin lowered on the flaps of his collar; a woman in a short skirt and fur chubby, her stockings wrinkling over her knees, her eyes watering, and her teeth set.

“You’d think,” said the conductor pityingly as she worked her way through the car, “that a woman like that, who ain’t no youngster, would stay home close to the steam on a night like this, instead of knockin’ around on late cars. Unless,” he added to the policeman and me, “she’s out on business,” and showed his yellow teeth in a smile.

“Do’ch’ster next. Do’ch’ster!”

I jumped off and struggled homeward against the wind, stopping for a while under the corner awning to catch my breath. The clouds were sheared back from a mass of stars chattering in the hemispheric blackness—the universe, this windy midnight, out on its eternal business.

I found Iva waiting up for me. She did not ask where I had been, taking it for granted, I suppose, that I had followed my custom after quarrels, of walking along the lake shore. In the morning we had a short talk and were reconciled.

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