The boss squeezed. His face grew pallid and he let go suddenly. He tried to speak through his dry mouth, but Hugo had turned his back. At the brick gate post he paused and drew a breath.
His words resounded like the crack of doom. "So long!"
XVIII
In the next four weeks Hugo knew the pangs of hunger frequently. He found odd jobs, but none of them lasted. Once he helped to remove a late snowstorm from the streets. He worked for five days on a subway excavation. His clothes became shabby, he began to carry his razor in his overcoat pocket and to sleep in hotels that demanded only twenty-five cents for a night's lodging. When he considered the tens of thousands of men in his predicament, he was not surprised at or ashamed of himself. When, however, he dwelt on his own peculiar capacities, he was both astonished and ashamed to meander along the dreary pavements.
Hunger did curious things to him. He had moments of fury, of imagined violence, and other moments of fantasy when he dreamed of a rich and noble life. Sometimes he meditated the wisdom of devouring one prodigious meal and fleeing through the dead of night to the warm south. Occasionally he considered going back to his family in Colorado. His most bitter hours were spent in thinking of Mr. Shayne and of accepting a position in one of Mr. Shayne's banks.
In his maculate, threadbare clothes, with his dark, aquiline face matured by the war he was a sharp contrast of facts and possibilities. It never occurred to him that he was young, that his dissatisfaction, his idealism, his Weltschmertz were integral to the life-cycle of every man.
At the end of four weeks, with hunger gnawing so avidly at his core that he could not pass a restaurant without twitching muscles and quivering nerves, he turned abruptly from the street into a cigar store and telephoned to Mr. Shayne. The banker was full of sound counsel and ready charity. Hugo regretted the call as soon as he heard Mr. Shayne's voice; he regretted it when he was ravishing a luxurious dinner at Mr. Shayne's expense. It was the weakest thing he had done in his life.
Nevertheless he accepted the position offered by Mr. Shayne. That same evening he rented a small apartment, and, lying on his bed, a clean bed, he wondered if he really cared about anything or about anyone. In the morning he took a shower and stood for a long time in front of the mirror on the bathroom door, staring at his nude body as if it were a rune he might learn to read, an enigma he might solve by concentration. Then he went to work. His affiliation with the Down Town Savings Bank lasted into the spring and was terminated by one of the oddest incidents of his career.
Until the day of that incident his incumbency was in no way unusual. He was one of the bank's young men, receiving fifty dollars weekly to learn the banking business. They moved him from department to department, giving him mentally menial tasks which afforded him in each case a glimpse of a new facet of financial technique. It was fairly interesting. He made no friends and he worked diligently.