“’Lo, Mistah Felman. What brings you-all back here?”
Carl affected an irritated aloofness.
“I came back to enjoy a little shame,” he said.
“What dat last word you said?”
“Shame, shame,” repeated Carl, frowning at the man.
“Guess you-all’s crazy,” said the negro, throwing up his hands and stumping away.
This was one of Carl’s favorite tricks. Whenever he desired to avoid a forced exchange of commonplaces, or the threat of a humiliation, he would speak in a cryptic fashion that aroused bewilderment or annoyance in the person before him and helped him to end the conversation. He found that the rear door of the apartment was locked and knew that his parents were visiting an adjacent moving-picture theater or sitting outside on the tiny lawn. Happily, he eyed the open window and remembered how often in the past his mother had scolded his father for that enormous crime. Ah, the windows in their minds were well nailed and shaded. He felt relieved at the knowledge that he could probably sit for an hour or two and rest before they returned. He climbed through the window with the jocose satisfaction of a criminal whose mock-hanging has been postponed, and sat on a weak-jointed rocking-chair in the small dining-room.
Not a fraction of change had come to the cluttered dullness of the room. He saw the same rickety table of round oak, where an inferior circle was displaying with mild pride an embroidered square of white linen; the modest and orderly showing of cut-glass and silverware—tinsel of an old defeat—; the plaster-of-paris bust of an Indian, violently colored and bearing an artificial scowl; the mantlepiece that held a little squatting Chinaman made of colored lead and the bric-a-brac effigy of a doll-like courtier in washed out pinks and blues. On the wall opposite him a brass clock, moulded into crude cherubs intertwined with stiff blossoms, busily spoke of itself, forgetful of the time that it was supposed to measure, and little prints of uncertain landscapes hung in golden frames upon the wall-paper that was stamped with heavy purple grapes against a tan background. Carl shuddered as though he were in the midst of a weak and disorganized nightmare, in which reality was indulging in a hackneyed burlesque at its own expense, and he crashed his fist upon the oak table.
“Damn it, I’ll get out of this some day,” he shouted, craving the sharp relief of sound, and then he grinned at the clumsy futility of his explosion.
“If you ever do manage to escape from this conspiracy of barren peace and flat lies it won’t be with angry noise,” he said to himself. “A vicious calmness will help you more.”