There was later a trip down inside with Jimmy. He shouted a great many things at me in Anglo-Italian, which caused me a good deal of anxiety but no understanding. I learned on coming up that he was trying to tell me not to approach the combustion chamber adjoining the checkerwork. That is a clear shaft to the bottom. I was given in some detail the story of the man who fell down a year ago, and was found with no life in him at the bottom.
"Kill him quick," said John the Italian; "take him out through hot-blast valve."
Two burns on my wrists were an embarrassing legacy of this affair, for they required an explanation whenever I took off my coat. My arms were too long and shot from my sleeves, when poking out, and got exposed to the gas and flame, which were still rising in the checkerwork.
This incident put me into good standing with John, the Slav, I am delighted to say. He was a stoical person, without much conversational warmth, but he approached me at the foot of the furnace steps in the late afternoon; "Some people, no show new man; I show him, I Slovene, no Italian, been in this country eighteen year." That was about all, but enough for a basis of friendship.
I sat on my bed and sewed up a rip in my trousers, eleven inches long. It was lucky I had salvaged that khaki "housewife" from the army. My gray flannel shirt lay on the bed. There were little holes, you could pass matches through, all over it, with brown edges that sparks had made.
Would that sleeve last?
I made it last.
Then there were the pants.
That second-hand paint-spattered pair of mine had lasted five days. The next, a sort of overally kind, had stood it a month, the last week in entire disgrace; these mohair ones I got at the Company store were going yet. But the seat needed emergency attention.