He did not know where to go. A garish coldness, the rancid cutting of alcohol across the sidewalk—a saloon. It appealed to him as a challenge to an ebullient giant. He entered. He needed to whet the brilliant splendor of his mood against what was most sordid and drear in all the world. He went up to the bar and ordered a drink and let it stand, unable to bring its desecration to his consecrated lips. He was throbbing gently as if he had run and won a race:—these were remnants of energy to be disposed of.
The place reeled a bit and then closed in on him. Several fellows sagged at his side by the bar. One was talking:
“I guv’ him hell. Y’ort to ’a’ seen me guv’ him hell.”
The barkeeper went over the bar with a wet rag and it gleamed. He looked in the mirror at his thick face above the serried bottles with undisguised affection. He took a comb from his white vest and parted his hair afresh in its oily middle. He loved that face. He leaned back and was lost in love and contemplation. Through a side door, two women loose over a naked table. Their faces were paste, their eyes were red-rimmed above two little glasses of whiskey.
“I love her. I love her. I must love her. Why does she love me? Why do I never understand?” The wonder of the world was as remote from his mind as his thoughts from this naked room with its hard wood and faces, its brittle bottles.
One of the women tried to catch his eye. She was half nodding with drink and disgust. A rotten night. David saw her examining herself in the mirror. Her face was suddenly sweet. She opened her coat. She folded in and downward the starched corners of her waist so that her neck showed and the gap of her bosom. She looked up and smiled at David. She called for more drink and beat her hand in supplement to her call against the table. David left. Her flesh had sounded dead against the shrill-varnished wood.
Tom was propped up with a book, in his black dressing-gown.
“Hello, Davie.” He looked up but did not move. “Have you read Gulliver’s Travels since you were a kid? Take my advice and do! How that man Swift must have loved life to have hated men so!”
David thought this was nonsense. “What is there to hate in a thing we love?”
Tom laughed. “You talk like a god, David. Are you a god? Hate does not enter into love only where there is paradisal satisfaction. To what mortal is that granted?” He watched David stand pensively, glowing. With a searching smile: “Also hate may not enter where there is complete delusion.” David started. “To have perfection in one’s love, one must be a god. To have complete delusion one must be—an ass. Are you a god, Davie?”