With disgust Christopher thrust her back. The girl fell against the door and knocked her head. But the boy did not care. He gripped his lips with his hands. There ... just there, where he had felt Sophie’s kiss before! Now there remained nothing of it. It had faded from his lips. Something else had taken its place.... He began to run towards the Danube. In his flight, he rubbed his hands against the walls as if to wipe off the moist warmth clinging to his palms.
He pulled up sharply at the corner lamp. Again it all rushed to his brain. He gave a cry and ran back. He wanted to strike the girl again, strike her hard, to mete out vengeance for his disgust. Incredible insults came to his mind, words which till then he did not know he knew, dirty words like those used by the scum of the streets. Words! They were blows too, blows meant for all womankind.
The girl was still standing in the door. Her body was leaning back. Her arms were raised and she lazily put up her hair dishevelled by the blow.
Christopher stared at her with wide-open, maddening eyes. He looked at her movements; she seemed to him a corpse which had regained movement and had come back to life. How her bosom swelled under her raised arms.... He staggered and whined and stretched out a defending hand.
The girl snatched at the proffered hand. She dragged Christopher in through the door. The boy only felt that something had bereft him of his free will. Something from which it was impossible to escape.
Two rows of dark doors appeared at the sides of the filthy courtyard. Fragmentary, hideous laughter was audible behind one of them. A reddish gleam filtered through a crack.
Christopher’s steps were insecure on the projecting cobbles. He stepped into the open reeking gutter. He shuddered. He was full of awful expectation, strained fear and tears of inexpressible pain.
The girl did not release his hand. She dragged him like her prey. At the bottom of the courtyard a door creaked. The darkness of a stuffy room swallowed them.
CHAPTER X
In a city night is never fully asleep. Somehow, it is forever awake. Here and there it opens its eye in a window and winks. A door opens with a gaping mouth. Steps are about. Their echo strikes the walls of the houses and resounds to the neighbouring lane though no one walks there.