It seemed incredible to Carl that these people were housing hearts and minds, for he could see them only as so many sterile lumps of flesh that were using every desperate trick to minimize the crawling shadow of their unimportant graves. Two of the women knew him and greeted him with an insincere and inquisitive cordiality.
“Wh-y-y, Mister Felman, when did you get back?” said Mrs. Rosenthal, the fattest of the group.
“I returned yesterday,” answered Carl, injecting a great solemnity into his voice.
“Yesterday? Well, well. And did you have a nice time in the army? I’ve been told that it’s really marvelous for a man—makes him so strong and healthy. And then all the traveling about, you know, must be so interesting.”
“Oh, ye-e-es, it’s a wonderful place,” said Carl, gravely mimicking her drawling voice. “Bands, and uniforms, and parades. It’s really quite fascinating.”
“Well, I’m so glad you liked it,” said Mrs. Benjamin, another woman in the group, who felt that it was time to advance a well-placed sentence. “I want you to meet my husband. Mo, this is Mister Felman, who’s just come back from the army.”
“Glad t’ meet yuh,” said the man on the doorstep, blurring the words in a swiftly mechanical fashion, but looking very closely at Carl.
Carl returned the salutation in the same fashion, taking a shade of amusement from his parrot-like impulse. These hollow creatures—what else could one do save to imitate their mannerisms and ideas, for self-protection, and rob and defraud them at every opportunity, thus giving them a mild apology for existence? After another round of wary commonplaces he managed to break away. His mother met him at the door and he said “Hello” and was about to pass her when her sharp voice halted him.
“You haven’t got an ounce of affection in you! A nice way to greet your mother! Hello, and he walks right by like I was some boy he met on the street.”
For a moment Carl stood without answering. This woman who had given birth to him—an incomprehensible chuckle of an incident—was almost non-existent to his emotions—a mere shadow that held an incongruously raucous voice and guarded one of the gates of his surface prison. As he stood in the hallway, doubting the reality of her shrill voice, he asked himself: “Am I an inhuman monster, unfit to touch this woman’s dress, or am I a poet standing with candid erectness in an alien situation?”