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.A silence that spread until it reached the hallway where the Bug’d died, his fingers clutching frantically at the floor.Joey couldn’t have spoken now even if he’d wanted to.He was in that hallway again, listening to the Bug moaning, “Mama, mama….” in a world where all the ears were stuffed with cotton and the only listener himself, with a gun in his fist.As he was the only listener in this room to hear the lost voice in his own throat begging for help.And who was there to help him? No one, not even Georgie….“That’s what Georgie said or is he a liar?”“A liar,” Joey mumbled tonelessly.“Joey,” the Spotter stated.“You’re not gonna hold out on a damn thing any more.Get that into your head and you’ll be okay.I got big things in mind for you but you’re gonna follow orders from now on, Joey.Look alive, Joey!” His eyes flitted at the kid’s lost and betrayed face.“Makin’ a big secret out of the Bug! Okay, we’ll forget it! Only I wanna hear you say it.I want it right off your lil ruby lips.C’mon, Joey,” he coaxed.“Speak up! You can speak up now.What’s the big secret when Georgie’s give’d you away.You killed the Bug and I wanna hear you say it! Cmon!”“I killed’m.You satisfied, you bastid?”He had never called the Spotter bastard to his face — nobody in the gang ever had — but the Spotter only smiled.The Spotter was completely satisfied, his sunken eyes bright, victorious.At last, he’d broken the kid, broken into a part of him that nobody had ever touched.And the Spotter knew he wouldn’t have made it if not for Georgie — Georgie whom the kid’d trusted like a brother.Every man had his weak spot: you could have sworn to that one on all the Bibles in the world.Downstairs, Joey plunged like a blinded man into the river of light that was Broadway, he moved with the shirtsleeved sweaty crowds under the huge electric name of DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS.At the corner newsstand, an old man with a face like a gray rag was shouting hoarsely, “Lates’ extry on Hall-Mills sex moider.Lates’ extry….” Out in the gutter the cars honked, and the laughter of the joyriders shrilled wild like the saxes in the upstairs dance halls.Joey climbed a floor to an upstairs speak, he drank five straight whiskies in a row, but even here the Spotter’d followed him, a bony ghost mocking at him from behind all the red perspiring and arguing faces.“Babe Ruth hit fifty-nine homers las’ season — ”“That ain’t the pernt.”“What’s the pernt then?”“What Babe did was save the game see? When Rothstein fixt the World Series he killt the game, but the Babe and his bat, he saved the game….”It was the Spotter, nobody else but the Spotter, only the Spotter, and who else could it be but the Spotter.“Saved the game from what!” Joey shouted furiously at the red faces staring at him, to recognize the Spotter.And although there were other drunkards roaring their heads off, the bouncer had Joey by the neck and the seat of his pants and before he knew what was happening, he was outside the speak door, while downstairs, the crowds waiting for him, packed him up and carried him to the nowhere he’d glimpsed at the bottom of one whiskey glass too many.“You’re drunk,” he heard her saying when he walked into their furnished room, “Joey — ”“No, Sweetie, no Sweetie,” he protested vaguely.“You’re drunk, Joey.”“Who’s drunk?” He teetered around the narrow room where they’d been living almost two weeks now, marvelling at this dumb body of his that could get itself so God damn stinko.He paused, he shook his finger at her, grinning, because he alone knew the big secret.What big secret? “Think I’m drunk, doncha?” he asked, a foxy grandpa, tapping the tip of his forefinger against his temple.“Ol’ head ain’t drunk, Sweetie.Not on your life, Sweetie.Not the ol’ head.” And wistfully he thought that if only he could put his hands inside his head and take out what he knew, to take it out and hold it in his hands….Hold what?He remembered.Oh, Georgie, why’d you do it, he thought heartbrokenly, and mourned for himself too.Georgie wasn’t the only rat that night by a long-shot.He’d doublecrossed himself, too.Eaten dirt….Joey lurched across the room to the double bed.The spring squealed at his dropped body.He covered his face with his hands.“Joey, Joey,” she cried, running to him.“What’s the matter, Joey.Joey!”“Who’s drunk?” he challenged her.“Not you,” she humored him.She loosened his collar, unknotted his necktie.There was whiskey spilled on the tie.She took it off, wet the corner of a towel at the sink in the room, scrubbed the bright silk.She kept glancing at him as she worked.He seemed to be asleep, but when she tried to help him out of his suit, he muttered, “Who’s drunk? Who’s drunk — ”“Joey — ”“You’re drunk yourself! You’re alla you drunk….”Sadie Madofsky winced.She sensed a truth in what he had said.For wasn’t she drunk to be living with Joey? And her father? Wasn’t he drunk, worse than drunk? She lay down on the bed without undressing, tried not to think, for it was no use thinking of her father, of Joey, of anyone.Her father had refused to listen to her, calling her kurva and driving her out of the house.Kurva, whore.Oh, so she had been seeing him before, her father had hammered at her.And once a week! And lying! Visiting her girl friend, indeed! A liar, no daughter of his, a whore! It was all crystal clear to Tailor Madofsky.A girl was either good or bad: a judgment like a bolt of lightning to be borrowed out of the fist of the Tenement God whose obscure delegate the tailor was.Implacable and righteous and all-powerful, that God [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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