“I see that you dislike melodrama,” observed a bulbous woman in penitent lavender, who was beating a carpet in the courtyard.
“You’re mistaken. Melodrama is a weirdly drunken plausibility and can not sincerely be disliked,” said Geroid. “But I must not leave without complimenting your lavender wrapper. Few people have mastered the art of being profoundly ridiculous.”
“I can see that you’re trying to be ridiculously profound,” said the woman as she threw a bucket of stale water at Geroid. He fled down the street, dragging the child with him. They left the cumbersome sterility of the city behind them and passed into the suburbs.
“Here we have a tragedy in shades of naked inertness,” said Geroid to the little girl.
“I don’t quite understand you,” answered the little girl. “I see nothing but scowls and brownness.”
A tree stood out like the black veins on an unseen fist. A square house raised its toothless snarl and all the other houses were jealous imitators. Wooden fences crossed each other with dejected, mathematical precision. A rat underneath a veranda scuffled with an empty candy box. The green of dried grasses spread out like poisonous impotence.
“Here is the house where my mother lies dead,” said the little girl.
Her father—peace germinating into greasy overalls—came down the steps. His blue eyes were parodies on the sky—discs of sinisterly humourous blue; his face reminded one of a pear that had been stepped on—resiliently flattened.
“I have come to measure your wife for her coffin,” said Geroid Latour.
“You’ll find her at the bottom of the well in the back-yard,” answered the man.