Martin had lived in the Bowery a week before he realized that the sounds and odors seemed less offensive to him; that his acquaintances and his surroundings appeared less brutal. Each night in the hotel some man died loudly in his bed. It was an incident. Martin felt himself in a husk through which no poison could penetrate. One day, in an effort to regain his lost perception he left the street, crossed old Italian town, passed barren, rock-like buildings and looked for the first time at Washington Square. He walked across the park, holding it all—the grassy air, the fat babies, the old men with tanned, bald heads and individualities he’d never seen before nor understood. On one bench he saw several of his comrades on Relief. They were sitting quietly in the warm, fall sunshine. “Talked out,” thought Martin, “and glad of it.” He passed them, nodded, smiled and wondered why they thought him so apart, youthfully looking at them for an answer instead of at himself. He then crossed over to the circular pool in the center of the Square where boys and girls were romping in the thin spray of the fountain. In the anticipation of the approaching colder weather when the water would be stopped and this late play ended for a time, they seemed more active than usual. “Why is it,” Martin asked himself, “that I feel kinship among the antitheses—these gay children or the devil!”
One child, like all the others but for thinner legs and an abundance of pale freckles, looked up at him and asked if he would watch her shoes and stockings while she waded. This responsibility was heartening; and he sat down on the edge of the pool while she went in rather cautiously. The child seemed even more fragile among the vigorous ones who were shoving each other and kicking up the water. For a long time Martin watched her. “She might have been my own little daughter,” he said aloud at last; and immediately the mist seemed to fall more heavily from the fountain and the play to become more violent until he wished it over with. The thought of home—a child—serenities attendant, brought the conflicting inquiries of his life more sharply before him and he brooded. A few drops of cold water in his face stopped the course of these reflections and he looked up frowning, his eyebrows raised. It was the little girl. She was laughing at his discomposure.
“You looked funny,” she said.
“Did I?”
“Yes. That’s why I threw the water. You looked cross. Did I keep you too long?”
“Not at all,” he answered, smiling at her. “You know quite well that wasn’t it at all. Furthermore, I shouldn’t be astonished if you did know, right now, why I was cranky.”
This amused her again.
“You’re the funniest person I ever knew,” she said. “You talk like a teacher.”
“I’m not a teacher; I’m a pupil,” Martin replied. “And I’m funny because I study funny things.”
“What kind of funny things?” asked the child, looking excited.